Reuter running on common sense leadership

SANDPOINT — John Reuter has a simple way of summarizing his run for the Republican nomination for the District 1 seat on the Bonner County commission.

“This is a job interview with 40,000 potential employers,” Reuter said.

Reuter, a Sandpoint resident, is challenging Cornel Rasor of Sagle for the GOP nod. The winner of the contest advances to the general election to face incumbent Democrat Todd Crossett, who is unopposed in his party’s nomination.

Reuter is campaigning on better collaboration with cities in Bonner County, protecting its rural atmosphere and providing essential public services without soaking taxpayers in the process.

Reuter publishes Sandpoint’s weekly alternative newspaper, The Reader, which might cause some to question his GOP bona fides. Reuter readily admits the paper’s content tends to lean to the left, but quickly adds that the copy he writes does not.

“People who question me as a liberal haven’t read what I’ve written,” said Reuter, a fourth-generation Idahoan who has an affinity for bedrock GOP values such as fiscal conservatism, local control and preserving quality of life.

Both Reuter and Rasor pledge to bring zero-based budgeting to the county’s $47 million spending plan. Unlike traditional incremental budgeting where departments justify annual increases, zero-based budgeting sets aside the previous bottom lines and comprehensively examines the expenditures themselves.

Reuter has a more tolerant view of land use regulation in the county than his primary rival. Land use laws are often portrayed as a threat to private property rights, but Reuter points out that the regulations are also what protect those rights from haphazard and cut-and-run development.

However, Reuter believes the land use rules have become too costly and too cumbersome for landowners in some respects.

“It should be very easy and not expensive,” Reuter said of the land use code.

Reuter supports the county’s role in Emergency Medical Services and a proposal to construct a new 32-bed juvenile detention center using fees the facility would charge inmates. However, he said he’s not convinced of the need for a 60-bed work release center.

Although it’s his first foray into public office, Reuter said he comes from a politically active family and he is politically active in the community. He presides over the Downtown Sandpoint Business Association and also serves as vice president of the Panida Theater and secretary for the Arts Alliance.

At 24, Reuter is the most youthful candidate in the county’s election and the only one to have a page on the social networking Web site MySpace. But Reuter sees his age as an asset instead of a liability.

“I think I have the passion of youth combined with the sense for the need for common sense solutions,” he said.

? More information about Reuter and his candidacy can be found on the Web (www.johntreuter.com).