From Records Request to News Article

Every lesson in this module follows one story. The county, the people, the road and the gravel company are invented. The statutes are real Idaho law, and the craft is the same whatever state you live in.

The story

Fennick County has three commissioners and about 21,000 residents. On June 9, 2026, the commission declared an emergency on Cutler Bench Road and, in the same consent-agenda vote, awarded a $418,600 road contract to Ames Grade and Gravel LLC. No other company was asked to bid. The vote was 3 to 0.

Rae Dunmore runs a small independent news site called the Fennick Ledger. A reader emailed her one line: "Curtis Ames is Dale Trowbridge's brother-in-law. Look at the road contract."

Dale Trowbridge is the District 2 commissioner. Cutler Bench Road is in District 2.

A tip is a rumor with an email address. Rae's first job is to find out which parts of it are on paper.

Step one: read the law before you ask for anything

Rae spent twenty minutes on the Idaho Legislature's website before she wrote a single request. These statutes shaped everything that followed.

• Idaho Code 67-2805 says a county public works construction job over $250,000 goes through competitive sealed bidding, awarded to the lowest responsive bidder that meets any prequalifications. Jobs from $100,000 to $250,000 need written solicitations to at least three licensed public works contractors.
• Idaho Code 67-2808 lets a governing board skip formal bidding when it declares an emergency: a great public calamity such as an extraordinary fire, flood or storm, or work needed to safeguard life, health or property.
• Idaho Code 74-403 defines a conflict of interest as an official act that brings private financial gain to the official, a member of the household or a business the official is associated with. Members of a household means the spouse, dependent children and anyone the official is legally obligated to support. A brother-in-law is not on the list. Idaho Code 74-404 then requires an official with a conflict to disclose it before acting; for an elected county official, that means disclosing it and following the board's rules.

That last one matters. Rae's tipster thinks the family tie is the scandal. The law says a brother-in-law alone does not make a statutory conflict. So the real question for the records is the emergency. Was there one big enough to justify a $418,600 no-bid contract?

Step two: the records request

Rae used the Idaho FOIA / Public Records Letter Generator to draft the letter, then edited the list of records by hand. A request that names documents gets filled. A request for "everything" gets a fee estimate and a phone call.

Under Idaho Code 74-103, the county had three working days to answer. It sent a written notice that it needed more time, which the statute allows, up to ten working days. Residents pay nothing for the first two hours of labor or the first 100 pages under 74-102. Rae's request came in under both. If the county had gone silent past the deadline, the law would treat the request as denied, and Rae could appeal.

Step three: the evidence table

The records arrived on day eight. Rae built her table before writing anything. Every fact she might publish gets a row. Anything without a row stays out of the story.

Look at rows 2, 3 and 5 together. The washout was real, but it was about 400 feet and priced at $41,200. The other $377,400 rebuilds a road the county's own staff rated "fair" two months earlier. And the contractor's estimate is dated twelve days before the emergency was declared. That gap is the story. The family tie is context.

Step four: the article

Rae asked all three commissioners for comment by email on June 30 with a July 3 deadline. Trowbridge called back. Commissioner Marisa Kettle, the chair, sent a written reply. Owen Pruitt did not respond.

Notice what the article does not say. It never claims Trowbridge broke the ethics law, because the records do not show he did. It never guesses why the estimate came early. It reports the date and lets readers do the arithmetic. The SPJ Code of Ethics asks reporters to give subjects a chance to respond to criticism. Trowbridge's best line, about the danger, sits right under the nut graf, where readers will see it.

Step five: the package

The finished article carries five more parts, all inside the same file, after the body and before the byline. The module on How to Write an Article covers each one in full. Here is a slice of each from Rae's piece.