Hayden’s ALPR discussion raises a larger question: How should government restrain itself?

HAYDEN, ID — Hayden does not have government-operated automated license plate readers, and the mayor and city council say they have no plans to install them.

That was stated repeatedly during Tuesday night’s Hayden City Council meeting.

But by the time the discussion ended, the larger question was no longer whether the current mayor and council oppose ALPR technology.

It was whether residents should have to depend on the assurances of the people currently holding office.

Councilman David Erickson, who requested the ALPR discussion, said Hayden does not currently use the technology and is not considering implementing it.

He also acknowledged that future elected officials may see the issue differently.

“My concern is that in future years, future decades, that leaders could come along, whether on council or future mayors, that might have a different perspective,” Erickson said.

Councilman Tom Schafer went further, questioning whether the council should do more than publicly state its opposition.

“Is that good enough? I don’t think so,” Schafer said.

He suggested the city consider a formal policy statement and consult legal counsel about whether Hayden could adopt enforceable protections concerning surveillance technology.

By the end of the discussion, Mayor Alan Davis agreed the city could consult its attorney about what authority Hayden has and return to council with that information.

The exchange echoed a much older question about government.

James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51:

More than two centuries later, that tension remains remarkably local.

Tuesday’s meeting did not begin as an abstract discussion about constitutional safeguards.

Before opening the regular public-comment period, Davis addressed residents in the council chamber and those watching online.

He said two items on the agenda — nuisance abatement and automated license plate readers — had been inaccurately portrayed on social media.

Regarding Hayden’s nuisance code, Davis said describing the issue simply as “weeds” failed to reflect the broader effort by council to balance property rights and public safety.

He then addressed ALPRs.

“Our discussion tonight regarding ALPRs is to acknowledge their presence, to note that no government ALPRs exist in Hayden, and that we are not debating whether to install them, nor do we have any projects planned for them,” Davis said.

He told those who had come to oppose the technology that they would be “singing to the choir.”

The clarification was important.

So was what followed.

Several residents were not simply asking the current council to reject ALPRs.

They were asking what would happen when the current council was gone.

Hayden resident Michelle Davis asked what protections would exist if a future administration took a different position.

Eric Cely suggested the council consider some form of resolution stating the city’s position for future officeholders.

Amy McCamly said that was also the point she had been trying to make publicly.

“You may not have the intention of doing it, and I appreciate that,” she told the council. “It’d be great to have policy placed in the future so this doesn’t happen.”

The distinction was significant.

Residents were not necessarily questioning what the mayor and council said they intended to do.

They were questioning whether government policy should depend upon who happens to occupy those seats.

By the end of the council’s own discussion, some council members were asking essentially the same question.

McCamly’s comments also exposed another tension — this one involving the relationship between some residents and members of the council itself.

During public comment, McCamly said she had blocked Council President Ed DePriest on Facebook because she considered her interactions with him “super toxic.”

Davis immediately interrupted.

“Amy, I can’t have you attack staff or council,” he said.

McCamly rephrased her statement.

“I blocked him because I feel that he’s toxic to me,” she said.

She then described public Facebook exchanges involving DePriest and Councilman Matt Roetter and argued that elected officials themselves were contributing to some of the divisiveness being attributed to residents.

The exchanges she referenced are publicly documented.

Screenshots reviewed by Hayden Reporter show members of the council directly engaging residents in sometimes lengthy and increasingly personal disputes over city policy.

Under Hayden Reporter’s recent “Civic Relief” post about competing property rights, DePriest initially engaged the policy question directly, asking where one homeowner’s rights end when the condition of that property affects another homeowner.

A resident challenged whether government should become involved.

The exchange later deteriorated.

The resident called DePriest a “liberal,” a “hypocrite” and an “embarrassment.”

DePriest responded by telling the resident to “run for office,” questioning whether he lived in Hayden, pointing to his own reelection with more than 60% of the vote and characterizing the resident’s arguments as a “zealot mantra” and “zealot baloney.”

Both men contributed to the escalation.

But one of them was participating as an elected city official.

A separate exchange reviewed by Hayden Reporter involved Roetter and residents critical of the city’s nuisance-code proposal.

After resident Janet Polk criticized council members’ reliance on city staff and legal counsel, Roetter responded by questioning how long she had lived in Hayden.

“You moved here from California and brought your California attitude,” Roetter wrote.

Later, responding to both Polk and McCamly, Roetter wrote, “Get your facts right ladies,” and added that McCamly also was from California “not that long ago.”

McCamly subsequently asked him how her having come from California affected the substance of the discussion.

These exchanges do not establish that the entire council conducts itself this way.

They do establish that concerns raised Tuesday about the tone of interactions involving the mayor, some council members and residents predated that evening’s meeting.

Later in Tuesday’s meeting, after a contentious discussion involving the Hayden Area Regional Sewer Board budget, Davis remarked on the difficulty of serving on the council.

“Being a councilman is honestly — it is very hard work,” Davis said.

He started to say council members are not always appreciated, then added that people may see that differently.

The observation was human.

Local elected officials make difficult decisions, absorb criticism and spend significant time doing work much of the public never sees.

But public office creates an unusual relationship between authority and respect.

An election confers governmental authority.

Whether it confers public trust is another question.

Citizens may be wrong, unfair, abrasive or even insulting in their criticism. Elected officials remain free to defend themselves and their policies.

But the relationship is not entirely symmetrical.

A resident arguing on Facebook possesses an opinion.

An elected official possesses an opinion and governmental authority.

That difference is one reason the conduct of elected representatives matters even when the disagreement occurs outside City Hall.

Public office does not confer agreement, admiration or immunity from criticism.

Trust must be earned separately.

The most serious issue raised Tuesday involved language no elected official should be expected to ignore.

During the ALPR discussion, DePriest read a social-media comment calling for politicians eventually to be “physically and violently” removed from office at gunpoint and stating that “bullets” were the only thing that would get their attention.

DePriest said he had looked up the person on a publicly available voter-registration roll.

He then expressed concern about what he described as a growing segment of the community using political labels and increasingly extreme rhetoric.

“What has happened to this community?” DePriest asked.

The violent language deserves to be taken seriously.

Its origin deserves equal precision.

Screenshots reviewed by Hayden Reporter show that the violent comment appeared beneath a post on The Idaho Sheriff, a Facebook page associated with a former candidate for Kootenai County sheriff. It did not appear beneath McCamly’s post inviting residents to attend the Hayden City Council meeting and weigh in on surveillance.

Before Tuesday’s meeting, DePriest referenced McCamly’s ALPR invitation in a Facebook post and, in that same post, shared a screenshot of the violent comment from The Idaho Sheriff page.

He later went to The Idaho Sheriff page looking for the original comment, asked what had happened to it, said he retained a screenshot and wrote that he intended to file a report.

When Hayden Reporter subsequently checked the discussion, the comment was no longer visible.

The available screenshots do not establish why the comment was no longer visible.

There is no evidence reviewed by Hayden Reporter connecting McCamly to the violent statement.

That distinction matters.

A legitimate concern about threatening political speech should stand on its own facts.

It does not need to be rhetorically attached to someone who did not make the statement.

There is an uncomfortable juxtaposition in what happened Tuesday.

Residents came to City Hall concerned about surveillance and the future ability of government to track citizens.

During that discussion, a council member disclosed that he had used a public voter-registration record while looking into a person whose speech concerned him.

Accessing a public record is not the same thing as automated government surveillance.

Hayden Reporter is not suggesting that it is.

Nor does the episode demonstrate that DePriest, Davis, Roetter or any other Hayden official intends to misuse governmental authority.

But the juxtaposition helps explain why some residents are asking for institutional safeguards rather than relying solely on assurances from current officeholders.

Government power is rarely debated in a vacuum.

It is filtered through citizens’ experiences with the people exercising that power.

And Tuesday’s meeting demonstrated that, for at least some Hayden residents, trust in local government is already strained.

That question could become increasingly important as Hayden considers the future of its law-enforcement services.

Matrix Consulting Group is expected to complete its final law-enforcement report by the end of August.

At the close of Tuesday’s meeting, council members confirmed that Hayden’s Public Safety Commission is expected to review the completed report and provide feedback to the council.

Any future discussion about whether Hayden should continue contracting with the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office or pursue another law-enforcement model will necessarily involve staffing, cost, response times and service levels.

But those are not the only questions.

If Hayden were ever to create a police department under city authority, questions of oversight would matter too.

Who controls the department?

What surveillance technologies may it use?

Who can access collected information?

How are complaints investigated?

What protects law enforcement decisions from political pressure?

What protections remain when elected leadership changes?

For residents who trust current city officials, those questions may appear overly cautious.

For residents who do not, they may be central to whether additional governmental authority should be created at all.

Neither position requires assuming that current officials intend to abuse their power.

That is the point of institutional restraints.

They are built not merely to protect citizens from officials believed to be untrustworthy.

They are designed so the functioning of government does not depend upon every future officeholder being trustworthy.

Tuesday’s meeting also demonstrated the other half of Madison’s argument.

Government has responsibilities.

The nuisance-code debate asks what happens when one property owner’s choices affect another owner’s health, safety or ability to use and enjoy property.

ALPR technology can provide law enforcement with investigative tools.

A locally controlled law-enforcement agency could potentially offer Hayden different service levels or priorities than a contracted model.

Government cannot simply withdraw from every difficult dispute.

Madison’s challenge was not to eliminate government power.

It was to give government sufficient power to perform its responsibilities while creating structures that constrain the people exercising that power.

That may ultimately be the larger story to emerge from Hayden’s Aug. 11 meeting.

Hayden’s current elected officials say they do not want government ALPR cameras.

Some residents believe them.

Others want protections that do not require belief.

And after residents raised that concern Tuesday, members of the council began asking whether the city’s opposition to surveillance should be expressed in something more durable than the intentions of the people currently in office.

Meanwhile, the same meeting exposed an existing fracture between some residents and some of their elected representatives — one that has played out both at the public microphone and on social media.

That does not prove governmental power has been abused.

It does demonstrate why the question of governmental restraint is not theoretical.

The challenge facing Hayden is not simply whether citizens should trust this mayor or this council.

It is whether sound local government should require that much trust in the first place.