Bring on your PIO, county

Reporters and editors aren't high on many popular professions lists. But there's a rung on the ladder even lower, in the eyes of some journalists. It's called, Public Information Officer.

With general disdain for PIOs whose jobs are to filter cold truths out of "news" and spin messages like bureaucratic tops, it's not often that journalists clamor for creation of more PIO jobs in the public sector. But we're clamoring for one now.

Kootenai County is by far the biggest non-education governmental entity in the northern portion of Idaho, and its challenges at times tax the imagination. Three elected officials - commissioners - oversee the funding of the whole, yet have little actual influence over departments whose heads are also elected. Those elected officials, like the sheriff, county clerk and prosecutor, oversee their own fiefdoms. They can and, at times, they have, told the commissioners to get stuffed. But more meaningful to taxpayers and other county patrons, communication has suffered dreadfully. A good PIO can go a long way toward fixing that.

Improving internal county communication, department to department, would be a starting point. The public would be well-served if the PIO were then able to streamline communication with that public. Because many citizens don't know who at the county is responsible for specific issues those citizens might have, phone calls and emails get bounced around like movie theater popcorn. Most citizens, however, are not entertained.

With its complex structure that supposedly provides political checks and balances, Kootenai County is also the target of numerous public records requests - demands for information to which the public is entitled. The Press, in its pursuit of facts about employee payoffs, for instance, has filed its fair share of public records requests. Only after county and newspaper officials' frustration had reached a boiling point last year did we all sit down and examine ways to improve the process. For the newspaper's part, we were pleased to learn that most of the records request difficulties we encountered could be significantly improved if one qualified person at the county could serve as clearinghouse for multiple departments.

For these reasons we strongly encourage the county to create a public information position and fill it with a highly qualified individual skilled in communication and in finding efficiencies. Done correctly, this job will have a positive impact not just on the county's customer service, but on its bottom line as well.