Attorney from Idaho AG office resigns

An attorney who oversaw issuing a January opinion that affirmed the legality of a health department grant program at the center of an audit and investigation by the attorney general has resigned.

Division Chief Chelsea Kidney, an attorney general’s office employee who worked with the health department, resigned March 24. After her resignation, a phone that the attorney was issued by the office was reset to factory settings, Associate Attorney General Mitch Toryanski said in a statement, which went against the office’s instructions to preserve its data. A spokesperson from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare said this is standard procedure and the records were retained.

A March 27 court filing from Lincoln Wilson, chief of the civil and constitutional defense division in the attorney general’s office, said that he instructed a deputy attorney general to ensure no data was removed from the phone.

Wilson said in his statement that the attorney general’s office employee, upon request, gave the phone to the health director’s executive assistant on March 25. On Monday, a staffer was sent to the health department to retrieve the phone.

“When the Department returned the Attorney General work phone, it had been wiped of all data and restored to its factory settings,” the court document states.

Health and Welfare spokesperson Niki Forbing-Orr said in an emailed statement, “It’s standard procedure to wipe the business phones of state employees who no longer work for the department. DHW’s IT division handles that. DHW has a lot of confidential information and is legally and ethically responsible for protecting that information. The department has imaged the phone, and the records from the phone were retained. The data belongs to the department, and since the AG’s office has created a conflict by taking an action against the department, they are not entitled to the data from the phone.”

The opinion that led to the resignation of Kidney was issued Jan. 25 and cited in a court filing by Idaho Health and Welfare Director Dave Jeppesen and other employees against the attorney general’s office, challenging the authority to serve the health agency employees with civil investigative demands. Attorney General Raúl Labrador said he was unaware of the opinion and his office called it “legally deficient.”

“The AG’s office issued CID’s to various entities to ensure relevant information and any important data was preserved and not destroyed in this investigation,” Toryanski wrote in an emailed statement.

The CIDs, which are similar to a civil subpoena, were issued in an investigation into “the possible misappropriation of public monies in violation of the Idaho Charitable Assets Protection Act and Idaho Charitable Solicitation Act,” according to the office.

This investigation centers around the health department’s Community Grant program, which used federal funds for after-school programs. The state’s appropriation bill giving the agency authority to use the funds required that they go to programs serving school-aged children aged 5 to 13. Lawmakers and Labrador have questioned if the funds went to programs serving younger children and if that was a violation of the state law.

The funds were distributed to around 80 organizations in 2021 and 2022; more than 30 of the organizations that applied for and received funds were also served with CIDs and filed for an injunction on the civil demands.

The program is also being audited, after the budget-writing Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee on Feb. 27 directed the Legislative Audits Division to look into the program, citing concerns that funds went to ineligible organizations, as previously reported.

In March, the attorney general’s office announced it would begin serving the investigative demands to look into the use of funds. The move was criticized by the subjects receiving them and former attorney general Jim Jones as unnecessary and an overreach by the office. Jones supported Labrador’s opposition in last year’s election, Democrat Tom Arkoosh.

The office has responded that the move was a necessary tool to preserve and gather information.

Guido covers Idaho politics for the Lewiston Tribune, Moscow-Pullman Daily News and Idaho Press of Nampa. She may be contacted at lguido@idahopress.com and can be found on Twitter @EyeOnBoiseGuido.