Proud pains in political butts. Avid protectors of the interests of taxpayers. Online opinion-shapers.

Canyon County watchdog bloggers Deloris Cram and Paul Alldredge are all of the above.

Gary Deulen, chief deputy for the Canyon County Sheriff's Office, calls them "CAVE people: Citizens Against Virtually Everything." County officials even blocked access to Cram's site by the county's computer system so employees cannot read it on the job.

Through their blogs and through the courts, Alldredge and Cram have fought the county's chosen approaches to gaining more jail space. Both raise questions and send flurries of public information requests to get answers on various public plans and expenditures.

The two longtime Canyon residents - Cram in Nampa, Alldredge in Caldwell - are retirees who never pictured themselves as tech-savvy but took to the Internet as a natural outlet.

Cram, 67, started Canyon County Watch - "The People's Voice" - in 2002 as an outgrowth of her efforts with Canyon County Citizens for Responsible Government.

Alldredge, 61, launched his Caldwell Guardian in March 2007, in part to fill a void left when Cram took a hiatus from blogging because of health problems. His blog shares a name, outlook and often specific information with the 3-year-old blog of Boise Guardian Dave Frazier, who gained widespread local notice by taking Boise officials to task and to court for pursuing big-ticket projects without seeking a vote of the people.

Jasper LiCalzi, chairman of the political economy department at The College of Idaho in Caldwell, said the bloggers' skepticism toward government resonates with people in Canyon County more than it might in some areas.

"They tap into this libertarian ideology, which is quite strong in Canyon County: limited government, individual freedom," LiCalzi said.

They're also part of a much broader phenomenon, said Boise State University political science professor Gary Moncrief.

"Blogging has changed the whole dynamic of the way information is being passed around," Moncrief said. It harkens back a couple of centuries, to when early Americans advanced their political viewpoints by distributing pamphlets and broadsheets. "They were like paper bloggers," he said.

Then as now, he said, the quality of the discourse varied widely, from thoughtful journalistic examination of issues to wildly partisan, ideological screeds.

"In the large sense, it's really a good thing," Moncrief said. "The more light that's shed, the better, overall."

'I KNEW I WAS GETTING TO 'EM'

Cram's site was apparently the first local-government watchdog blog in the Treasure Valley. It wasn't long, she says, before it became clear that this newfound tool for her activism was getting under her targets' skin.

At the Republican Roundup, the big annual gathering for the Canyon County GOP, then-Sheriff George Nourse had a message for Cram when he took to the stage with his country band.

"He got up there and sang, 'Take Your Web Site and Shove It,'" said Cram, a frequent critic of Nourse. "When I heard that, I knew I was getting to 'em."

She's taken a lot of criticism and jabs from officials, especially in the early years, she said.

"We're a pain in the butt," she said cheerfully. "Everybody would like to do their job without dealing with that."

The point, she said, is to hold elected officials accountable to the people who elect them and fuel their projects with tax dollars.

"'Who the hell do you think you are?' That's how they treated me," Cram said. "So you tell them who you are: You're their boss."

PRESSING FOR ANSWERS

A former sixth-grade teacher, Cram keeps county salary statistics, budgets and meeting transcripts that go back a decade. She often provides documentation to help others support their arguments. One notable example: Her record of a prosecutor's comments at a budget discussion with county commissioners helped advance a successful lawsuit against the prosecutor by the family of domestic violence murder victim Angie Leon.

"She's a very thorough person," said Kathy Alder, a co-founder of Canyon County Citizens for Responsible Government. "I think she's amazing, how hard she works and how willing she is to help people."

Even frequent targets of Cram's criticism credit her for painstaking research.

"Deloris generally doesn't repeat it unless she's confirmed it," Canyon County Commission Chairman David Ferdinand said.

The problem for county leaders isn't the bloggers' research, it's "their interpretation of that research," county spokeswoman Angie Sillonis said.

"For the most part we don't find either one of these sites credible, and we hope people take them for what they're worth," Sillonis said.

Caldwell Mayor Garret Nancolas, whose budget and projects have been criticized by the Caldwell Guardian recently, said he doesn't mind the scrutiny but believes quick postings of questions and concerns can create an unfair appearance of impropriety.

This month, Alldredge has taken a look at the Caldwell urban renewal plan to partner with a developer to provide a campus for the Oregon-based Treasure Valley Community College, asking for draft agreements that Nancolas says the city and its renewal district just don't have yet.

Scrutinizing how government spends money is Alldredge's prime focus.

"I've led my life in a manner that's fiscally responsible, and I expect no less of elected officials," said Alldredge, a submarine-crew veteran from the Vietnam war.

He grew up in California, where "my parents instilled in me this hideous fear of going broke," he said. He invested in rental properties shortly after moving to Canyon County three decades ago, and he retired from full-time employment at age 50.

"I've got 10 rental units. That's my bread and butter - the county's, too," he said with a laugh. "My biggest expense is property taxes."

FREEDOM FROM ATTRIBUTION

Most of Alldredge's watchdog efforts center on his belief, shared by mentor Frazier, that county and city governments are constantly trying to skirt constitutional provisions requiring a popular vote to approve public debt that goes beyond one year. He said he enjoys "scratching below the surface."

"He has very good reporter and news instincts," Frazier said.

Frazier is critical of the mainstream media, saying they fail as watchdogs of local government. But, he notes, it's much easier for bloggers to put information out there because they don't need to say where it came from.

"Without attribution, there's much more freedom," he said, and sources are more likely to come forward.

There's a flip side to that freedom, Moncrief said: Anonymous comments can get ugly with impunity.

Both Cram and Alldredge say they are careful to check the accuracy of what they post.

"The people who tell me things, a lot of them work for the county," Cram said.

Information about when the county blocked Cram's site was not available, but Deulen said it happened before Sheriff Chris Smith was elected in 2004. Sillonis said she was told the blog was blocked at county managers' request because some employees reportedly were spending too much time checking the site instead of working. The county uses software that blocks gambling sites - including lottery numbers - and sexually explicit sites, she said, but managers also can ask to block specific sites they find problematic.

Alldredge's site is not blocked. He, too, has sources within the courthouse, relationships he developed when he worked for the Sheriff's Office - first as a deputy in the jail for a year, then for nine years providing security at the courthouse entrance part time.

Alldredge said he was fired from that job in 2005, shortly after he made then-Commissioner Robert Vasquez go through the security checkpoint after he tried to enter the courthouse without the county ID that lets employees bypass it. Alldredge said he was following policy, and he was not given a specific reason for his dismissal.

TRAGEDY AND REMEDY

Cram's passion for pursuing change was forged in 1999 when a little girl died in her front yard after a horrific traffic accident. The fatality crystallized Cram's long-held belief that the intersection by her house was too dangerous, and she pushed the Nampa Highway District for a four-way stop at that intersection for more than a year.

Since the stop signs went in, she said, "there's been not even a fender-bender. Before, we always had at least three bad (crashes) a year."

"We did find out that if you stick to something long enough and you're right, you can change things," she said.

"If you watch government, you can always catch 'em making mistakes.

Kristin Rodine: 377-6447