‘I’m not going to dignify misrepresentation’: City Council Elect reacts to report

POCATELLO, Idaho (KIFI/KIDK) - On Wednesday, the office of the Bannock County Commissioners sent out a media release stating that Mike Larkin and Pocatello City Council Elect Chris Stevens had to be court marshaled during a Nov. 20 meeting.

According to a written account in the release, "it occurred to me that she didn’t come in to have a civil conversation. Ms. Stevens did not want to
talk. She lobbied complaint after complaint without giving me a chance to speak ... I pushed the Court Marshals panic button in an effort for them to respond immediately. The Court Marshals responded and requested Ms. Stevens and Mr. Larkin leave the Courthouse. I heard the Court Marshals ask Ms. Stevens to leave twice before she and Mr. Larkin left the Courthouse.”

In a statement Wednesday, Stevens said: "Everybody knows from turning on the news at night that politicians do and say all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons, and I'm not going to dignify misrepresentation with a rebuttal of any sort."

"I do think it's sad that the commissioners would put a staff person whose job relies largely on complying with their wishes and desires in the middle of this publicly, but I'm just far too experienced to get sucked into any kind of a public spat," she added.

Mike Larkin, the other person involved, says the whole issue stems from both him and Stevens trying to bring attention to the fact that private landowners are closing off public roads.

"A lot of them are being gated off and posted with no trespassing signs and it's just a bad deal for the public," Larkin said. "We just want to see it addressed."