Who Holds What: A Map of Idaho's Records

A good request sent to the wrong office is a slow request. Idaho's law requires agencies to designate custodians and route requests, but the custodian in the commissioners' office may not know what the assessor keeps, and a request that bounces between desks can lose a week. This lesson is a map. It follows a record to the office that made it, and then asks the second question every requester should ask: is it still there? For how local government is organized in the first place, see Who Governs What.

Counties

Idaho Code 31-2001 lists the officers of every Idaho county: a sheriff; a clerk of the district court, who is ex officio auditor, recorder and clerk of the board of county commissioners; an assessor; a prosecuting attorney; a treasurer, who is ex officio public administrator and tax collector; a coroner; and three county commissioners. Each is elected and each keeps its own records. Most counties also have appointed departments, such as planning and zoning, road and bridge, solid waste, emergency management and human resources, whose records are county records too.

The clerk's four hats

• Clerk of the board. Agendas, minutes, resolutions, ordinances, signed contracts, bid openings and the record of board decisions. Minutes are permanent records.
• Auditor. Claims, warrants, the budget, the general ledger and payment records. This is where you find who the county paid and how much. The Budget Cycle shows how those documents fit together.
• Recorder. Deeds, liens, plats, easements and other recorded documents affecting land. Recording and copy fees are often set by other statutes, which 74-102(10)(a) preserves.
• Clerk of the district court. Court case files. These follow Idaho Court Administrative Rule 32, not Title 74, and most are searchable through the state court system's iCourt portal. Lesson 8 covers them.

The other county offices

• Assessor: parcel records, property characteristics, valuation notices, and the assessment roll that comes before the board of equalization. Assessment and Ratio Studies explains what assessors produce.
• Treasurer: tax collection records, delinquency lists, investment reports and tax deed proceedings.
• Commissioners: correspondence, calendars, emails, and the files behind decisions. Commissioners adopt the county budget and convene as the board of equalization to hear assessment appeals (Idaho Code 63-501).
• Sheriff: incident and arrest records, jail booking and rosters, dispatch logs, civil process, concealed weapons licensing and video. Investigatory records follow 74-124 (lesson 8).
• Prosecuting attorney: criminal case files, civil legal work for the county and, under the Attorney General's manual, the duty to encourage compliance with the public records law by local officials. Many prosecution files are exempt while a case is active.
• Coroner: death investigation records and autopsy reports. Expect privacy and investigation exemptions; the definition of unwarranted invasion of privacy in 74-101(17) says the name, age, sex and hometown of a deceased person must be released after next of kin are notified, unless otherwise exempt.
• Planning and zoning: applications, staff reports, notices, hearing recordings and decisions. Land use hearings must have a transcribable verbatim record; Hearings and Due Process covers that rule.

Cities

City records follow the same pattern. The city clerk keeps council minutes, ordinances, resolutions, contracts, election filings and often the city's custodian role. The police department keeps incident reports, calls for service, use-of-force reports, body camera video and policies. Utilities (water, sewer, trash, sometimes power) keep rate studies, capital plans, billing system data and customer accounts; expect personal information to be redacted from customer records. Planning keeps land use files like the county's. The finance or treasurer's office keeps check registers and audits. Cities that contract with the county sheriff for policing get law enforcement records from the sheriff.

Some city functions are run by separate legal bodies. An urban renewal agency is its own public body created under the urban renewal law, and Idaho Code 50-2006(6) says it must comply with the public records law, the open meetings law, the ethics in government law and the competitive bidding statutes. Its custodian may be a city employee or a contractor, but the agency is the one that must answer. Open Government and the Money covers what to ask an urban renewal agency for.

School districts

A school district is a local agency under 74-101(8). Board agendas, minutes, budgets, contracts, curriculum adoption records, bond and levy materials, facility studies, superintendent contracts, policy manuals and district emails are all public unless an exemption applies. Public charter schools keep their own records. Student and personnel rules change what you can get.

Student records

The federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, 20 U.S.C. 1232g, withholds federal funds from a school that has a policy or practice of releasing education records without parent consent, outside listed exceptions. "Education records" are records directly related to a student and kept by the school or someone acting for it. Records a school's own law enforcement unit creates for law enforcement purposes are not education records. FERPA lets a school release "directory information" such as name, address, phone listing, date and place of birth, and participation in activities and sports, after giving parents a chance to opt out. Because 74-104(1)(a) exempts records closed by federal law, FERPA is enforced through the Idaho Act.

Idaho adds its own student data law, Idaho Code 33-133, which defines personally identifiable student data broadly and requires the State Board of Education to publish an inventory of the data elements in the state's student data system. That inventory is a public document and tells you what the state collects. Aggregate data, reported at the group or school level with no personally identifiable information, is the usual route to school performance, discipline and enrollment numbers.

School employee personnel files

For most public employees, 74-106(1) makes employment history, classification, pay grade and step, longevity, gross salary and salary history (including bonuses, severance and reimbursed expenses), status, workplace and employing agency public, and closes the rest of the personnel file. School districts have a stricter rule. Idaho Code 33-518 declares school district personnel files "confidential and excepted from public access" under any provision of the Idaho Code, including 74-102. The AG manual notes the conflict and says 33-518 contradicts the general personnel rule "to some extent." In practice, ask for pay and contract information from the district's payroll, budget and board records (board approval of contracts, salary schedules, settlement agreements presented to the board) instead of from the personnel file. Lesson 6 covers personnel exemptions in detail.

Special districts

Idaho has many special-purpose districts: highway, fire protection, library, cemetery, recreation, hospital, irrigation, flood control, sewer and water, mosquito abatement, ambulance and more. Each is a "district" and a local agency. They are often small, with a part-time clerk or secretary-treasurer acting as custodian. Expect slower answers; the obligations are the same. Their core records are the board's minutes, budget and audit, contracts and claims, and the files of their main job: road maintenance logs, fire incident reports, cemetery plot maps.

Library districts and city libraries carry one special rule. 74-108(4) exempts library records that would reveal the identity of a patron checking out, requesting or using an item. Library board minutes, budgets, collection policies and challenges to materials (with patron identities removed) are still public.

State agencies and universities

Every state department, board, commission, officer and committee is a state agency. Under 74-119, each state agency had to adopt guidelines by January 1, 2019 identifying the general subject matter of its records, its custodians and where the records are kept, and any agency with a website must post its custodian's contact information. Many now use web portals. These are the agencies residents ask most often, with the records page linked from each agency's home page as of October 2026:

• Idaho Transportation Department: highway projects, contracts and other department records, through a web portal.
• Idaho Department of Water Resources: water rights files, well records, adjudication and permit files.
• Department of Environmental Quality: air and water permits, inspections, enforcement and monitoring data. 74-114 adds a special access rule for air quality, water quality and hazardous waste records, with protection for trade secrets.
• Department of Health and Welfare: contracts, licensing records and program data. Many client records are confidential by statute.
• Idaho State Police: crash reports and records requests through its portal.
• Public Utilities Commission: case files and orders, much of it already online, with a records request form and guidelines posted.
• Secretary of State: campaign finance, lobbyist, election and business entity records, through a portal. Idaho Sunshine Reports shows what is already online.
• State Board of Education: board materials, policy, student data inventory and statewide education data.

Public universities and colleges (University of Idaho, Boise State, Idaho State and Lewis-Clark State) are state institutions under the State Board of Education, and they field many requests: contracts, athletics budgets, research agreements, emails. Student records follow FERPA. The AG manual lists a 1995 Fourth District case, Boise State University v. Smith, in which a court held a broad request still had to be filled.

Records at the State Records Center

Under Idaho Code 67-4126(7), the State Historical Society provides records management for state government, and records it manages for agencies are not covered by the archives exclusion in 74-101(16). The State Records Center says records stored there "are still in the custody of the originating agency" and may be recalled at any time. So an agency cannot say "those boxes are at the records center" as a reason to refuse; it can ask for retrieval time, which 74-103(2) allows.

Common records and where to ask

Record	Usually held by	Notes
County commission minutes and resolutions	County clerk (clerk of the board)	Permanent records under 31-871
County checks, claims and vendor payments	County clerk (auditor)	Ask for a check register by date range and vendor
Deeds, liens, plats	County recorder (the clerk)	Often searchable online; fees set by other law
Parcel values and property characteristics	County assessor	Bulk data may be sold as a product; ask for the cost
Property tax payments and delinquencies	County treasurer	Public, with personal identifiers redacted as needed
Incident reports, jail roster, dispatch logs	Sheriff or city police	74-124 limits active investigations; basic facts stay public
Court case files	Clerk of the district court	I.C.A.R. 32, not Title 74
Land use applications and hearing recordings	County or city planning and zoning	Transcribable record required for land use hearings
City council minutes, ordinances, contracts	City clerk	Minutes and ordinances permanent under 50-907
Utility rate studies and capital plans	City utility or public works	Customer account details usually redacted
School board minutes, budgets, superintendent contract	School district office (board clerk)	Student records and personnel files closed
Urban renewal plans, budgets and agreements	Urban renewal agency	Covered by 50-2006(6)
Highway project files and contracts	Idaho Transportation Department or local highway district	Check which road system the road belongs to
Water rights and well records	Idaho Department of Water Resources	Many records searchable online
Environmental permits and inspections	Department of Environmental Quality	Trade secret claims possible under 74-114
Campaign finance and lobbyist reports	Secretary of State; county clerk for many local races	Much already online

Retention: is the record still there?

A public record that was lawfully destroyed cannot be produced, and the Act does not require an agency to keep or recreate it. Retention laws set the minimum time records must be kept, so they tell you how far back a request can reasonably reach. The AG manual notes that counties and cities have statutes defining classification, retention and destruction, while state agencies follow records policies.

Counties

Idaho Code 31-871 sorts county records into classes and sets minimums.

Class	Examples in the statute	Minimum retention
Permanent	Commission proceedings, ordinances, resolutions, commercial and government building plans, bond and warrant registers, budget records, general ledger, records affecting title to real property	Not less than 10 years
Semipermanent	Claims, contracts, canceled checks, warrants, license applications, departmental reports, purchase orders, vouchers, financial records	Not less than 5 years after issuance or completion
Temporary	Correspondence not otherwise classified, noncommercial building files after final inspection, cash receipts subject to audit	Not less than 2 years
Law enforcement video with evidentiary value	Recordings relevant to use of force, an arrest or citation, a crime, a complaint, or a valid public records request by a person recorded	Not less than 200 days
Law enforcement video, no evidentiary value, mobile equipment	Body and dash camera video not tied to any of the above	Not less than 60 days
Law enforcement video, no evidentiary value, fixed to a building	Jail and building cameras	Not less than 14 days

County records may be destroyed only by commission resolution, after audit and on the prosecutor's advice, and the resolution must list in detail what is destroyed. Law enforcement video is the exception: it may be destroyed without a resolution once its time runs. Those destruction resolutions are themselves public records and tell you what is gone. One detail matters for anyone who appears in police video: under 31-871(3), a valid public records request from the person recorded, or that person's representative, gives the recording evidentiary value and moves it to the 200-day minimum. The rule covers county law enforcement agencies, including private contractors providing those services to a county.

Cities

Idaho Code 50-907 sets the city rules. City permanent records (adopted minutes of the council and city boards, ordinances and resolutions, year-end financial reports, records affecting land title, cemetery records, and election records such as campaign finance reports and declarations of candidacy) are kept in perpetuity or transferred to the State Historical Society's repository. Semipermanent records, including claims, contracts, utility and financial records and departmental reports, are kept at least five years after issuance or completion. Temporary records are kept at least two years, and financial records not until the city's audit is complete. Each city council must adopt a retention schedule by resolution. Ask for it.

State agencies and school districts

State agencies build their own schedules from the State of Idaho General Records Retention Schedule, published by the State Records Center, and the State of Idaho Records Manual describes how agencies should manage and dispose of records. School districts usually adopt retention schedules as board policy; ask the district office for its current policy and schedule.

Retention and a pending request

Once a request is denied, 74-115(2) requires the agency to keep the records in question until the 180-day appeal period ends or a court rules, whichever is longer. Before that point, the statutes set minimums only. Many agencies' own policies tell staff to stop routine destruction of records covered by a pending request or likely litigation, but that comes from policy; Title 74 has no such rule. The practical answer is speed: ask early, and ask for short-lived records like video first.