Kootenai County, ID Building Safety: Electrical Permits (2026)

201 of the Kootenai County Code adopts the 2018 International Building Code, International Residential Code and six companion International Codes as the county's construction standards, but every one of those adoption clauses (subsections A through I) carries the identical carve-out: each code is adopted excluding any incorporated references to the NEC Electrical Code, the International Plumbing Code, and the International Zoning Code. In practice that means Kootenai County Community Development, the department that issues building, mechanical and fire-related permits for the unincorporated county, has no adopted electrical code of its own and does not run the electrical permitting or inspection program.

That function sits with the state instead. 2, the certificate-of-occupancy provision, to require that before the building official issues a certificate of occupancy the project must show evidence of final approval from all relevant agencies with jurisdiction, and it names the Idaho State Electrical Inspector alongside the fire district, highway district, Idaho Transportation Department, Panhandle Health District, sewer districts, and the Idaho State Plumbing Inspector. So a homeowner or contractor doing wiring in unincorporated Kootenai County pulls the county's building permit for structural work through Community Development, but pulls the electrical permit and schedules the electrical inspection through the state's electrical inspection program, and the county will withhold final occupancy sign-off until that state approval is on file.