Great article in the post register dated April 14th, 2013.  It is good to see the public and media agree with our postion and presure city officials to do the same.

Idaho Falls' new city attorney, Randy Fife, has been on the job a couple of weeks. By now, the Skyline High School graduate and former Moscow city attorney must understand he's coming in at a politically unstable time with elections looming and a lame duck mayor at the helm. He also knows why he's here -- the abrupt resignation of his predecessor, Dale Storer.
Before things get hot and heavy and Fife finds himself immersed in equal rights ordinances, airport hangar contracts and transmission line lawsuits, allow us to humbly offer a little advice, five points that could ensure a long and successful tenure:
1. Encourage transparency
Idaho Falls city government has an abysmal record in this area. There was an open meeting violation in 2006 and another last year for an impromptu gathering in the hallway during a budget hearing. Nobody should forget the effort to hide the investigation of a former library director 10 years ago or that Storer somehow determined that certain council members could attend only certain public meetings.
Idaho Falls city government views transparency as a necessary evil rather than the foundation of representative government. Our new city attorney needs to be willing to speak up when his clients stray from either the letter or spirit of Idaho's Sunshine Laws.
2. Relationships matter
Storer poisoned an already tenuous relationship between Idaho Falls and Bonneville County by helping Rep. Tom Loertscher, R-Bone, and former state Sen. Stan Hawkins sue the county in a road dispute.
Bonneville County and Ammon are not Idaho Falls' adversaries, Mr. Fife, no matter what you might hear at City Hall.
3. Know your stuff.
Idaho Falls Power officials moved forward on the North Loop transmission project with one certainty in their back pockets: If all else failed, they could condemn the county land needed to complete the project.
As it turns out, a federal judge disagreed with that legal advice and now the city finds itself out hundreds of thousands of dollars, dealing with angry landowners, pursuing a fruitless appeal and no closer to increasing the city's power supply.
4. Don't stray.
Unlike Storer, Fife is an in-house attorney. But things change. If ever he gets tempted to bring in a few extra bucks by taking on outside clients, Fife should remember how Storer's side jobs went wrong -- from suing some of the very people who paid his six-figure salary to representing a Blackfoot School District that showed contempt for its constituents and the rule of law.
5. Remember who you work for.
Storer became known to insiders as the seventh city councilman, a man so confident in his unelected position that he criticized one of his bosses, Councilwoman Sharon Parry, on this page.
The city attorney should take his orders from the elected officials hired by taxpayers to administer city government. That chain of command has been distorted in a city where power has long flowed down from unelected division directors and the former city attorney.
We're counting on you, Mr. Fife, to help restore a balance lost long ago.
Welcome home, and good luck.
Corey Taule