This editorial was published by the Lewiston Tribune and written by Tribune Opinion page editor Marty Trillhaase.
For a politician who relishes the idea of draining the swamp, Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador is wading waist deep in it.
The latest example: How did one of Labrador’s campaign contributors walk away with nearly $16,000 in overtime pay he wasn’t entitled to?
As the Idaho Statesman’s Ryan Suppe detailed last week, former state Sen. Mitch Toryanski, R-Boise, signed on as a temporary deputy in Labrador’s office for about four months earlier this year. For representing Labrador’s office with the Legislature, Toryanski was paid an hourly rate of $78.62 — which, if annualized, would come to about $163,000. That’s more than Gov. Brad Little’s salary of $151,400 or the $146,730 Labrador earns.
As a professional attorney, Toryanski was not supposed to collect his time-and-a-half overtime compensation unless the Board of Examiners — consisting of Little, Labrador and Secretary of State Phil McGrane and state Controller Brandon Woolf — concluded “unusual or emergency situations” warranted it.
No such decision was made.
Instead, the attorney general’s office coded Toryanksi in such a way that he was entitled to 119 overtime hours.
For that to happen, however, a series of internal controls were ignored or overridden, including:
A “warning” code pops up when a professional employee is reclassified.
An automatic state Controller’s office report should have been issued to the attorney general.
The person reviewing Toryanski’s time sheet should have recognized that as a professional attorney, Toryanski was not entitled to overtime.
Likewise, the people handling fiscal matters for the attorney general’s office should have noticed the overtime pay and the lack of authorization from the Board of Examiners.
Toryanski was no neophyte. He worked as a deputy attorney general for five years, served one term as a state senator and was assigned as an attorney for the Idaho Department of Occupational and Professional Licensing. Why didn’t he recognize the contradiction between the law and his compensation?
Willful violation of this law is a misdemeanor and the man who brought the matter to light, state Sen. Geoff Schroeder, R-Mountain Home, doesn’t sound like he’s going to drop it.
“I am concerned that this mistake was not recognized at the time by either the paying agency or the recipient, particularly given the very large amount involved and again, that it was made by an agency charged with advising the rest of our state government on the legality of their expenditures,” Schroeder wrote. “I would like this payment, which I believe is contrary to statute, to be investigated and recouped if necessary.”
But as Woolf’s office notes, Toryanski worked the hours, so it’s going to be “difficult” to recoup the money.
What’s shaping up here is a pattern.
A political ally of the attorney general, Toryanski contributed $250 to Labrador’s campaign Oct. 31, 2022.
Likewise, shortly before and soon after he took office, Labrador was meddling around in a child protection case involving the grandson of Diego Rodriguez, an associate of professional insurrectionist Ammon Bundy. Rodriguez contributed $1,000 to Labrador in 2013, when the Idaho Republican was serving in Congress.
And finally, Labrador was in office less than a week when he dismissed a trespassing charge brought against political ally Sara Walton Brady.
She was such a big fan of Labrador that Walton Brady wore a strapless dress emblazoned with Labrador’s campaign logo at both the GOP primary and general election victory celebrations.
Both the mayor and police chief of Meridian blasted Labrador’s decision.
While the state Controller’s review concluded “good practices in reviewing (Toryanski’s) timesheet perhaps could have discovered the error earlier than it was,” it accepted Labrador’s argument that the payout was a mistake and “not the result of any fraud, waste or abuse.”
Maybe it wasn’t cronyism.
Maybe it was merely carelessness.
But this is, after all, the same attorney general who has disregarded the findings of his own deputy by suing the State Board of Education, alleging it violated Idaho’s Open Meeting Law when it met in private to consider the University of Idaho’s acquisition of the University of Phoenix earlier this year. So far, the State Board has spent $81,000 in attorney’s fees to defend itself.
This is also the same attorney general who has gone to court against the Department of Health and Welfare, contending the state agency illegally distributed federal American Rescue Plan Act funds to 80 community organizations — even though a deputy attorney general told Health and Welfare it was acting within the law.
When is Labrador going to devote more of his energy getting his own house in order? — M.T.
