Kempthorne still holding records
BOISE – Former Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne has not complied with a 2-year-old directive from the state attorney general’s office to make his gubernatorial records public because he has not had time to vet them, his attorney said.
Michael Bogert said the records hadn’t been vetted because of Kempthorne’s quick transition from Idaho’s chief executive to U.S. Interior secretary in May 2006.
“Once the governor leaves office, as with any governor, there are documents that might meet exemptions (from the public records law),” Bogert said.
The Idaho State Historical Society, where Kempthorne was told to send his records like every governor before him, isn’t buying it.
“They should be here,” said Linda Morton-Keithley, the administrator of public archives and research library at the Historical Society.
Bogert said the society has not requested the records; Morton-Keithley said the society has.
Interior Department spokesman Shane Wolfe said Kempthorne representatives are negotiating a resolution to the issue. He also said Kempthorne has not received an official records request.
The dozens of boxes of documents from Kempthorne’s seven years in office are being held by the Department of Administration with access given only with Kempthorne’s approval.
The tussle over the records started shortly after Kempthorne resigned as governor. He tried to give the records to the University of Idaho, from which he graduated, and have them sealed for 25 years.
He dropped that plan after the attorney general’s office told him it was illegal. Kempthorne, a Republican who served one term as a U.S. senator from Idaho, had his Senate records sealed for 25 years, as allowed by federal law.
Morton-Keithley said the records of Idaho’s governors are used by academics, lawyers, reporters and sometimes just curious citizens.
“We have a pretty broad audience,” she said.
Deputy Attorney General Bill von Tagen said the Historical Society must make a formal request for the attorney general’s office to sue to recover the records.
The society’s executive director, Janet Gallimore, said there are no plans to sue to get the documents. She said she plans to talk to the Department of Administration about the documents.
James Risch, the lieutenant governor who served as governor for seven months after Kempthorne resigned, turned over his gubernatorial records almost immediately after leaving the state’s top job.
“I think transparency in government is critical,” Risch said. “No. 1, if you don’t have transparency, everyone assumes you’re trying to cover something up. On top of it, people need to know what their government is doing.”
Wolfe said Kempthorne shares that belief.
“There are legitimate considerations that need to be worked through, legitimately exempted documents that need to be separated from freely accessible public records,” Wolfe said Tuesday. “When his administration ended, faster than anyone could have imagined, Secretary Kempthorne did not have the luxury of working through the final details, sorting and organizing all the documents from his long administration.”