From Spokane Public Radio, it’s SPR News Today
I’m Ember Braun. It’s Veterans Day 2026.
Lands Commissioner Dave Upthegrove asks the state to fully fund wildfire prevention
There’s a new trail near Mirabeau Point Park.
And the author of the popular comic strip “Pearls Before Swine” is coming to Spokane.
Those stories and more, coming up on SPR News Today.
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Idaho State Police and the Idaho Department of Correction cannot withhold certain employment records from the public about officers accused of sexual misconduct. James Dawson from Boise State Public Radio reports on the new court decision.
InvestigateWest sued Idaho State Police and the Department of Corrections in June after the agencies rejected public records requests for officers’ employment information.
ISP and IDOC previously gave InvestigateWest this information, which the news organization used in a series detailing how many officers were allowed to resign after facing sexual misconduct allegations.
The agencies reversed their previous policy of disclosing those records after the investigation was published. They said prior releases violated the state’s public records law because it exempts the disclosure of certain personnel information.
Ada County Judge Patrick Miller didn’t buy that argument, saying Idaho law requires certain employment information to be released, including a person’s pay, status and length of service.
Miller also said public entities must still release this information even if it’s located within an exempt record. He ordered the information produced within 30 days.
An IDOC spokesperson declined to comment on the ruling. A representative for ISP didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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The Pinecroft Natural Area Preserve trail is now open at Mirabeau Point Park in Spokane Valley. It’s a 1.5-mile trail that winds through ponderosa pine and is home to owls and songbirds.
The Washington state Department of Natural Resources opened it up to the public on Tuesday.
DNR spokesman Connor Nikkola says people have previously used the site as a spot for encampments and dumping – but believes this trail will help stop that.
NIKKOLA: “We’ll be checking on it periodically as well, but having more folks in here and those eyes, we’re hoping that we’ll kind of get away from some of those negative activities that do happen out here and just get more folks to be out here and enjoy it.”
Nikkola says his team is now looking for volunteers to join the DNR’s Site Steward program. Volunteers will visit the trail monthly to look for signs of human-caused damage. The trail is open to hikers from dawn till dusk.
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Election workers conducted a full recount of ballots Tuesday in Moscow.
Latah County Clerk Julie Fry says the votes were counted on election night, but a memory stick with 2,300 votes didn’t upload correctly. For transparency's sake, all the votes in Latah were recounted.
The recount was live-streamed by the county clerk’s office.
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Officials braved pouring rain just north of Spokane on Tuesday and urged Washington’s state government to fully fund wildfire prevention.
Lands Commissioner Dave Upthegrove says this summer’s fire season was the most destructive in recorded history.
DAVE UPTHEGROVE: We saw more than 1,500 fires ignited and nearly 1 million acres burned across the state of Washington. At our peak, we had more than 8,500 people fighting fires at one moment in time this summer, from 27 states and four nations.
Upthegrove wants next year’s legislature to put $60 million toward wildfires. He says his agency, the Department of Natural Resources, would use about half the money for firefighting equipment, training and supplies. The remaining half would be split between maintaining forest health and improving community resilience.
In 2021, the Washington legislature committed $500 million over eight years toward wildfire prevention and suppression. Lawmakers have largely kept up that funding year to year.
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An earthquake shook Wallowa County in northeast Oregon shortly before midnight Tuesday. The U.S. Geological Survey reports the temblor registered 4.3 on the Richter scale.
Its epicenter was in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, about 12 miles southeast of Joseph.
The agency reports several dozen calls from people who felt it, but no damage or injuries are reported. It says people in the area can expect to feel a few small aftershocks over the next week.
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Stephan Pastis is the creator of “Pearls Before Swine,” a satirical comic strip that’s run in American newspapers for 25 years. He’ll be in Spokane this Saturday to celebrate his new book. It’s an anniversary compilation called “Pearls Jubilee: The Best, Worst and Most Angrifying Pearls Before Swine Comic Strips.”
SPR’s Audrey Nelson called Pastis ahead of his appearance in Spokane.
Stephan Pastis can attribute his entire comics career to hating the law.
STEPHAN PASTIS: “Yeah, I was a lawyer for almost 10 years in San Francisco, all litigation for defending insurance companies, which is bad enough. I just hated it.”
To get some relief, Pastis would draw comics at night and on the weekends. He’d always loved the genre.
SP: “From the very beginning, being five years old, being at my aunt's house, Christmas Eve, discovering the shelf of Fawcett paperbacks that contained Snoopy and Charlie Brown and the whole gang, and just opening them up. And I don't even think I could fully read everything. I was too young, but I just loved the world.”
Pastis wanted to get his strips syndicated — or picked up by a company that would publish them in newspapers.
SP: “And it didn't happen. I mean, it just got rejected for years and years and years.”
Then, his luck turned. One day, he sent in a strip featuring two original characters: self-centered Rat and his naive roommate Pig.
SP: “I remember I was eating takeout Chinese food at my desk, sitting there, and I got a letter from United Media, which at the time was the company that syndicated Peanuts and Dilbert and a whole bunch of others. And I think it said, ‘I just want to let you know I got your submission and it's a lot funnier than the vast majority of submissions I receive.’ And I was like, ‘Holy smokes, this is amazing.’”
Pastis quit his job and took up cartooning full time.
Twenty-five years later, Rat and Pig still anchor “Pearls Before Swine.” The strip itself changes with the news cycle, offering Pastis’s trademark biting commentary on the events of the day.
Pastis’s creative process has evolved along with his comics.
SP: “You recognize early the signs that you're not going to be funny that day, and you give up at a two-hour mark as opposed to the early days when you will lose the whole day.”
Pastis’s new book, “Pearls Jubilee,” is a collection of significant “Pearls Before Swine” comics from the past 25 years. At first, he wanted to put together a book that ranked his best strips.
SP: “So that would have been hard enough. But then I had this further crazy idea. What if you did a list of the worst in order? And what if you did a list of the riskiest ones, or the spiciest ones, or the ones that got the biggest reaction, or the ones that drew the most complaints, or the ones that got the attention of famous people, or — on and on?”
It was … a challenge, to say the least.
SP: “You got to categorize every single one of your strips, and there have been 10,000 strips. So that definitely took a while.”
In the end, though, Pastis says he’s proud of the book he created.
And he’s excited, as always, for the tour — a chance to take his comics off the page.
SP: “Every time I sit there and there's anybody in the crowd, it's just this amazing wonder. Because, you know, we're not stand-up comics that perform live on stage to a group of people. We're people who are in a spare bedroom in our house drawing. In theory, there's an audience out there, but you don't see them. You don't hear them laugh. And then you go to something like a book tour and they're there. And it's like a sense of just wonder, like, oh my gosh, people actually read it. It's pretty cool.”
Pastis will speak at the Garland Theater Saturday at 3 p.m. It’s part of the Spokesman-Review’s Northwest Passages Program.
I’m Audrey Nelson, reporting.
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SPR News Today is produced at Spokane Public Radio. Today’s contributors are James Dawson, Audrey Nelson, Doug Nadvornick, today’s host is me, Ember Braun and today’s producer is Lisa Leinberger.
[Web support by Anna Gyure Havlek.]
Thanks for joining us. This is SPR News.
