Coeur d'Alene City Council voted 6-0 Tuesday night to pass Council Bill 26-1011, now Ordinance No. 3777, an amendment to the city's fireworks code that lets police cite property owners and tenants for illegal fireworks even if no officer ever saw who lit them. Mayor Dan Gookin signed it the same night. Councilmember Christie Wood said it herself on the record: "It's a little half-baked, but it's better than nothing."

What "Suspension of Rules" Actually Means

The bill was passed "under suspension of rules." City ordinances normally have to be read and voted on at two separate meetings before they become law, with the full text published in between so the public has a chance to see it and react. That two-reading rule is the basic check built into local lawmaking, so a new law doesn't get sprung on residents overnight. Suspending the rules means skipping that second reading and passing the whole thing in one sitting.

Why the rush? Coeur d'Alene's council meets only twice a month, on the first and third Tuesday. The next meeting after June 16 wasn't until July 7, three days after the Fourth of July. If the council wanted anything on the books before the holiday, June 16 was the only meeting that worked, and a normal two-reading bill couldn't get there in time. So they skipped the second reading. The "half-baked" amendment got the full treatment of normal lawmaking, just compressed into one night, because of a calendar problem, not because anyone thought the draft was ready.

What the Ordinance Actually Does

The staff report behind the bill, dated June 16, 2026, was submitted jointly by City Attorney Randy Adams and Police Capt. Dave Hagar. It told the council there would be "no anticipated financial impact to the City" from this change.

Coeur d'Alene's existing fireworks code, Section 8.12.020 of the Municipal Code, already made it illegal for a property owner or tenant to "knowingly allow another to possess or use" illegal fireworks on their property. That much isn't new. What the amendment adds is two things quickly duct-taped onto that existing rule:

• A new sentence in subsection B: when illegal fireworks, "whether used or unused," are found on a property, that fact alone "shall be evidence that the owner of the property, and any tenant in possession of said property, knowingly allowed" them.
• An entirely new subsection C, applying the same rule to the public right-of-way bordering private property: fireworks found there are evidence the abutting property owner or tenant knowingly allowed them.

Before this amendment, police had to show a property owner actually knew about and allowed illegal fireworks. Now, finding fireworks on or near the property counts as evidence of that knowledge, by law. The burden shifts to the property owner to prove a negative.

Read that closely and the problem gets worse, not better. This isn't just citing someone for what they did. It's citing someone for what police believe they probably let happen, based on debris alone. And subsection C means it isn't even limited to your own property. If a neighbor sets off illegal fireworks and the spent shells drift onto your lawn or into the right-of-way next to it, the ordinance treats that as evidence against you. You did nothing but live next door.

Council Knew It Was Unfinished

Despite voting unanimously to approve it, councilmembers acknowledged on the record that the bill has problems still unresolved:

• Whether fireworks count as seized property and how police would handle confiscation
• How liability should be split between owners and tenants
• General "verbiage" concerns with the drafted language

Wood's reasoning for pushing it through anyway was timing, not confidence in the draft: this was the council's "only shot" to get something in place before July 4th. Capt. Hagar said the department's near-term plan is "education and prevention." Councilmember Kenny Gabriel backed the bill in similar terms, framing it as giving police "some tools," not a polished law.

At the June 13 preview discussion, Councilmember Dan English raised a concern that went unanswered with any data: would the change generate more calls to police and stretch department resources? Capt. Hagar's response was a statement of belief, not a number: "I didn't believe that would be a problem." English also said the ordinance's success would depend on "lots of publicity." Neither the resource question nor the publicity commitment was revisited with specifics at the June 16 vote.

A Felony Admission and a City Attorney's Warning, Both Unreported Until Now

Draft minutes of the June 16 meeting, obtained by Idaho Ledger through a public records request, contain two exchanges that never appeared in any published coverage of this vote.

Councilmember Dan Sheckler asked Capt. Hagar directly what charge would apply if someone lost a finger or a fire started as a result of illegal fireworks covered by the new ordinance. Hagar's answer, according to the minutes: it could be a felony.

Separately, Deputy City Attorney Ryan Hunter, not City Attorney Randy Adams who co-authored the staff report, raised the concern a courtroom would likely raise. On the question of seizing fireworks as property, Hunter told council "anytime you take property it would be better to have a clear statement." When Wood asked about adding more language to the ordinance that same night, Hunter separately warned about making "substantive changes without public notice." The city's own attorney flagged a due-process concern live in the meeting about the same draft, and the council passed it anyway.

The minutes also show the council didn't consider the bill finished. By a 5-1 vote, with Sheckler voting no, the council moved to bring back further amendments for the July 7, 2026 meeting. Those amendments would cover fireworks seizure procedure, how liability splits between adults and minors, and the "may" versus "shall" wording Wood had flagged. That date lands three days after the Fourth of July, meaning the council will revisit this ordinance with actual holiday enforcement data already in hand, rather than the guesswork it relied on June 16.

An Ordinance That Likely Couldn't Survive a Courtroom

The government has to prove guilt, it can't declare evidence of a violation into existence by definition. That's what subsections B and C do. They don't just lower the bar for police to investigate; they write the legal conclusion directly into the code, before any individual case is ever heard. A defense attorney would have an easy opening: the ordinance, on its face, shifts the burden of proof onto the property owner to disprove knowledge, rather than requiring the city to prove it. That is a real constitutional problem, not a technicality.

It's difficult to believe nobody on the council or in the city attorney's office understood that risk. Adams co-authored the staff report. He is a licensed attorney whose job is to flag exactly this kind of exposure before council votes on it. If the city ends up paying out a settlement over a fireworks ordinance rushed through to beat a holiday, residents will be footing the bill for something that looks more like an attempt to appear responsive than an actual workable law.

The Los Angeles Comparison

Los Angeles already ran the most extreme version of this experiment. In 2020, LA banned all consumer fireworks outright, driven in large part by COVID-era restrictions. Residents responded by setting off more fireworks than ever. That is not a uniquely Californian reaction to being told what to do.

• On July 4, 2020, LAPD publicly reported holding roughly 50 simultaneous 911 calls and over 170 on the non-emergency line due to fireworks complaint volume, and asked residents to stop calling 911 for fireworks unless someone was hurt.
• In 2021, LAPD detonated 16 tons of illegal fireworks seized from a South LA home; the botched detonation destroyed homes and injured 17 people. The city agreed to a $21 million settlement with affected families in 2024.
• A CBS News investigation found LAPD received more than 90 separate 911 calls about fireworks at one Los Angeles home before a fire broke out there. Complaint volume didn't translate into enforcement.
• LAPD's own position is that on July 4 itself, the department has resources only to respond to actual emergencies, not general fireworks complaints, ban or no ban.

The lesson isn't that Idaho is California. Coeur d'Alene residents tend to treat the Fourth of July as closer to a sacred patriotic duty than a municipal inconvenience. A tougher law on paper does not automatically mean tougher enforcement on the ground, especially against a holiday-driven surge in calls that already historically overwhelms police capacity. Coeur d'Alene's own staff report claimed this change would have "no anticipated financial impact." Los Angeles' experience suggests otherwise is far more likely.

The Council Already Had Doubts About Hagar's Word, and It Was in Writing

There is a piece of this story bigger than anything the local press touched, and it has nothing to do with fireworks directly. It has to do with who Dave Hagar is to several members of this council, and what they already knew about him when they let his unsupported assurance carry the entire fireworks ordinance.

Hagar was the interim police chief candidate the council passed over on April 21, 2026, in a 4-2 vote that installed an outside hire, Greg Yeager, instead. The police union backed Hagar with over 85 percent support, as did the outgoing chief and Mayor Dan Gookin. Idaho Ledger's investigation into that vote, published June 10, established why several council members had turned against Hagar well before that vote happened.

Council member Dan Sheckler spent weeks privately reviewing Brainard v. City of Coeur d'Alene, a federal whistleblower lawsuit, in which a federal magistrate judge found as fact that Hagar told a subordinate captain to lie about secretly recorded city meetings. Sheckler asked City Attorney Randy Adams directly: "The expert report opines that Hagar should be on the Brady list. Why is Hagar not on the Brady list?" A Brady list is the registry prosecutors use to track officers whose credibility has been formally called into question, because the law requires that history be disclosed to defense attorneys in any case where that officer testifies.

Adams' written answer was unambiguous: "I had concluded that Captain Hagar did not tell me the truth about recordings of meetings with Tymesen about the Captains' MOU." No formal investigation was ever opened. The finding was never reported to Idaho POST. Adams acknowledged in writing that prosecutors might need to disclose his conclusion to defense counsel in any case where Hagar testified. The city's own attorney had flagged a live Brady/Giglio exposure problem, and the city did nothing with it.

Sheckler wasn't alone. Council president Amy Evans received the same material directly from Adams weeks before the April 21 vote and responded, "I appreciate this information." Kiki Miller, in private texts with Sheckler, wrote "They don't know what we know" and warned that going public could mean "we can't tell them. It's a personnel matter and involves pending litigation." Sheckler, Miller, and Evans all voted to pass the fireworks ordinance built entirely on Hagar's word, with no follow-up questions asked.

What the Records Show

The penalty: Violations of Chapter 8.12 are punishable under Section 1.28.010 of the city code, up to $1,000 and/or 180 days in jail, with court costs of approximately $56.50. The city's own records response confirmed Council Bill 26-1011 made no change to penalties. The ordinance expanded who can be cited and weakened the evidence standard. The punishment stayed identical.

The enforcement record:

Gookin knew. Records show Mayor Gookin emailed a constituent on November 4, 2025: "The issue with fireworks continues. I think the city can do more to be communicative about the events. And let's start writing some tickets, which would help tremendously." He identified the problem seven months before the ordinance. The answer the city chose was not to start writing tickets under the law that already existed. It was to change who could be cited.

The day after the vote: Records show Chief Yeager first flagged a specific address to Mayor Gookin on June 12, 2026, after a citizen complaint and an HOA president's email about a resident's unpermitted fireworks shows. Gookin replied June 17, 2026, the day after the vote, directing police and fire personnel to visit the resident at 6832 N. Downing Lane to "encourage him to present his fireworks celebration in a safe and legally permitted manner." Yeager delegated the visit to Fire Marshal Etherton's office; Capt. Hagar ultimately took the assignment personally, writing simply: "I'll take it." The new ordinance was invoked to direct a personal visit to a named private citizen within 24 hours of passage, framed as education.

Before July 4 arrived, a felony arrest had already happened under existing law. Records from the Fire Marshal's office and Police Department confirm that on June 25, 2026, 18-year-old Gavin M. Pannell was arrested for Felony Third-Degree Arson after fireworks he lit along the Prairie Trail ignited a grass fire. The Fire Marshal subsequently requested restitution figures. No new ordinance was needed for that arrest. Existing law already covered it.

The "education" effort: Records show Capt. Hagar personally arranged free digital billboard space through a Lamar Advertising sales representative the day after the vote, consistent with his own statement to the council that "education and prevention" would be the department's focus. Fire Marshal Etherton separately coordinated his own billboard messaging with Fire Chief Fugitt and the US Forest Service.

A Closing Question Worth Asking

The record assembled by Idaho Ledger through more than a dozen public records requests is not complicated: Coeur d'Alene had an existing fireworks ordinance with an existing penalty structure. Between 2023 and 2025, citation rates collapsed from eight citations to zero, not because the fireworks got quieter, but because enforcement stopped. The mayor himself knew it and said so in writing in November 2025. His response, seven months later, was not to direct the police department to resume writing tickets under the law that already existed. It was to push a new ordinance through in a single meeting under suspension of rules, drafted by the city attorney, warned against by the deputy city attorney, and built on a legal presumption the city's own captain admitted at the July 7 follow-up meeting he couldn't use in the field.

That ordinance sat on the books for three weeks before the council's own people told them it didn't work. The council has now sent it back for a rewrite that won't appear for up to four months. The existing penalty of up to $1,000 and 180 days was there the whole time.

So the questions worth asking publicly are these: What exactly motivated a mayor and six council members to rush through an ordinance their own city attorney flagged as problematic, their own deputy city attorney raised due-process alarms about in real time, and that their own police captain never once used during the holiday it was supposedly written for? Were they more afraid of constituent emails than of a constitutional challenge? Because the latter has a price tag. Any resident cited under subsections B and C of this ordinance, fined up to $1,000 or jailed up to 180 days on the basis of a legal presumption the council itself now admits needs to be rewritten, would have a viable due-process claim. Taxpayers would fund that defense.

This isn't a fireworks story. It's a story about what happens when elected officials put looking busy ahead of doing the job. Coeur d'Alene residents deserve a city government that can tell the difference.