BLACKFOOT — Deliberations between the commissioners and coroner in Bingham County continued last week during a meeting where concerns were raised surrounding a lack of oversight and a need for modern updates in the coroner’s office.
Bingham County Coroner Jimmy Roberts presented a detailed PowerPoint on Aug. 12 to the board of commissioners which showcased a variety of data points and emphasized the importance of growing public trust, reducing liability and providing accurate and timely determinations regarding autopsies and deaths. Roberts has asked the commission for a budget increase of more than 70 percent.
"I wanted to do an assessment in the most basic terms of what it takes to appropriate legal death investigations based on not only Idaho code that involves the coroner's office, but also the guidelines set forth by the Idaho State Association of County Coroner's back in 2018 and the National Institute for Justice death investigation manual that was originally put out in 1999, updated in 2011 and then recently updated on July of this year,” Roberts said.
Rated on a scale from 0 to 20, the data points reflect how well the death investigations were evaluated and how appropriately the who, what, where, when, why and how were answered.
“Was a final determination of death reached?” Roberts said. “How was that documented and was next of kin notified of the death? Do we have contact information for that next of kin?
Concerns were raised by Roberts that in the previous years before he took charge of the coroner's office that robust evaluations of deaths were not up to strenuous standards of quality and that the relative part-time nature of the job was not fulfilling the necessary attention required for such an office.
“My concern is not just for the families of decedents and our community on a humanistic level, it's a concern on a statutory level and it's a concern on a liability level for the community that we have had elected officials that basically have not done what is required of them in their job,” Roberts said.
Roberts continued, “I'm interested in going forward and making sure that our citizens understand what they're entitled to and that any elected official that fills this role is actually doing their job. I was trying to get that across to the committee so that they could understand that this is not a part-time job. Every single coroner in the state of Idaho is on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days per year and they are responsible, regardless of whether they have a deputy coroner or not. Ultimately, that coroner, that elected official, is the responsible party to oversee all those investigations and signed death certificates that are within those investigations.”
This isn’t the first time the commissioners and the coroner’s office have been in contention. A previous meeting was held that discussed a budgetary increase to help modernize facilities, equipment and pay for the coroner's office, with concerns raised by the commissioners surrounding the county’s budget and why the position was suddenly deemed a full-time job when in previous years it was part time.
"Essentially, the coroner's office has been level funded since the late 1990s meaning that the coroners that were working part time in the coroner's office never really request anything, not only for their staff, but to be able to do their job,” Roberts said. “I would argue that most of those individuals had no idea the gravity of what the job entailed. It was really easy to rubber stamp things, so they never needed to ask for anything.”
Robert's budget would allocate funds for a variety of modern updates to the coroner’s office, including a capital improvement plan for $80,000 over the next three years to build a proper office for them to reside in that would better align with the standards and practices of other coroner offices across the state. Additional funds would also to improve the equipment and pay for employees of the coroner's office.
While no final determinations were made surrounding the proposed budget, further meetings will be held to evaluate what is being requested and whether Bingham County Commissioners will move forward in any capacity surrounding the increase in coroner’s office funding.
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