Opinion
4A
Thursday, May 6, 2021
My Voice
The hard reality
of Greater Idaho
T
he devil is in the details. The devil is also
in hard realities. Veteran Mike McCarter,
president of Move Oregon’s Border, wrote
an opinion piece in local papers supporting MOB,
which wants to force 850,000 Oregonians to become
Idahoans and force 75% of the land in Oregon into
Idaho.
This fellow
veteran looks
at just eight
CHARLES
of a thousand
JONES
devilish details
LA GRANDE
and realities
that would
result from MOB’s plan.
1. Snowplows. Those plows that keep our high-
ways and freeways open are owned by Oregon.
Will Oregon donate millions of dollars of plows to
another state? Is Idaho going to spend millions to
buy plows and pay drivers to service nearly all the
snow country of Oregon, which is now largely paid
for by western Oregon gas taxes? Who will keep our
highways clear? MOB volunteers?
2. Prisons and criminals. Several state prisons
are in MOB’s targeted counties. Snake River Cor-
rectional Institution, near Ontario, was first built in
1991. The 1994 addition alone cost $175 million (not
corrected for inflation), the largest Oregon general
fund expenditure ever, even to this day. You think
Idaho is going to buy? What happens when they
don’t? Also, there are nearly 3,000 prisoners in that
one prison. They are charged with Oregon crimes.
They are not guilty of Idaho crimes. Will people vol-
unteer to move the prison structures and infrastruc-
ture to Western Oregon?
3. Ontario and Malheur counties. In 2020,
Ontario recreational marijuana dispensaries did over
$91 million in sales. Ontario received over $1.85
million in marijuana taxes in fiscal year 2019-20.
Most sales were to people coming from Idaho. Addi-
tionally, a huge part of Ontario’s retail and most of
business growth has been along the border, where
Idahoans shop to avoid sales tax on furniture, lawn
mowers, clothing and many durable goods. Does
MOB hope Ontario (most of the population of Mal-
heur County) will kill their golden-egg goose by
becoming Idaho? Not a surprise that almost no one
attended the recent MOB rally in Ontario.
4. Buildings. Oregon owns hundreds of million
dollars of buildings throughout the MOB targeted
counties. As a tiny example, in La Grande alone the
building values are staggering. Tens of millions of
dollars just at Eastern Oregon University. Then there
are Oregon Department of Transportation facilities,
Oregon State Police, state forestry, and on and on.
MOB leaders may be spending too much time at the
Ontario dispensaries if they think Oregon will give
that all away.
5. Land. Besides the aforementioned real estate,
consider the thousands of acres of state forest in the
targeted counties. All the thousands of miles of state
highways. All the state parks. Consider the tiniest
fraction of these holdings — Wallowa Lake State
Park. How many millions is that incredible chunk of
land worth? If you owned it, would you just give it
to your neighbor? And don’t forget the state coast-
line of Southern Oregon. Talk about pricey real
estate!
6. Bonds. Oregon owns hundreds of million dol-
lars in bonds issued to service debt on construc-
tion in targeted counties. Will Idaho happily take
over those bond payments? And who will be paying
the accountants and lawyers for incredibly complex
transfers?
7. Retirement accounts. Oregon holds retire-
ment accounts for not just state employees, but also
for nearly all police officers, firefighters, teachers ...
the list goes on. Courts have consistently ruled those
retirement contracts are legal and binding. So Idaho
will merrily pick up a few billion of debt? Think
there might years of paperwork and millions of
lawyer fees involved?
8. Licensing. What about our elected judges? Do
teachers go back to college to take courses required
for Idaho certification? Will nurses, doctors, thera-
pists, counselors, contractors and nearly all profes-
sions descend on Idaho for licensing and bonding?
Will we hold new elections for our officials (commis-
sioners, mayors, sheriffs, etc.) elected under Oregon
law? How many years will we pay for court cases on
these issues?
And this is only the tip of that devilish iceberg
— that devilish reality of our complicated lives,
economy and citizenship in the year 2021.
———
Charles Jones, a retired navy commander and
science teacher, is a fourth generation Eastern Ore-
gonian living in La Grande. His grandfather, as
1920 Ontario’s mayor, paved the town’s first streets.
Writers on the Range
We blame the trees, but whose fault is it?
PEPPER
TRAIL
CONSERVATION BIOLOGIST
J
ust like you, I live with the fear
of wildfire. My Southern Oregon
town of Ashland nestles against
the foothills of the Siskiyou Moun-
tains, whose forests become tinder in
our hot, dry summers. One lightning
strike or tossed cigarette on the wrong
windy day, and Ashland could be
destroyed as completely as the town of
Paradise, California, in 2018.
This reality was brought home
with terrifying force last September,
when a wind-driven wildfire roared
through the nearby towns of Talent
and Phoenix, destroying over 2,500
residences in a matter of hours. Ash-
land was largely spared, but only
because the wind pushed the fire in
another direction. Over the past sev-
eral years, the city has implemented
the ambitious “Ashland Forest Resil-
iency” project to reduce flammable
fuels on thousands of acres of public
lands. Tools in the Ashland Water-
shed include thinning and controlled
burns. The project is considered to be
a model ecological approach, not mere
window-dressing to justify commer-
cial timber harvest as is true of many
“forest health” projects. As a home-
owner, I’ve supported the project, and
as a conservation biologist, I’ve been
impressed with how it’s been carried
out.
Yet even as the city and its partners
are diligently reducing forest fuels,
more and more homes are being built
in every nook and cranny of private
land abutting the watershed. Many are
Letters deadline for May 18 elections
The Observer does not run endorse-
ments of more than 400 words.
The Observer will institute a dead-
line for letters to the editor, so we can
be fair with all the letters we receive
and allow for responses before Elec-
tion Day, if necessary.
We run local letters of endorsement
on a first-come, first-served basis.
Please submit your endorsement
letters to the editor by 5 p.m. Friday,
May 7.
You can email them to letters@
lagrandeobserver.com, or mail them
to The Observer, c/o Phil Wright, 911
Jefferson Ave., La Grande OR 97850.
We will publish our last letters
on Saturday, May 15. Any letters
received after the deadline will not
run.
Election Day is May 18.
McMansions commanding expansive
views of the valley below. All these
homes are at extreme risk of wildfire.
As if the sense of crisis surrounding
fuels reduction wasn’t enough, this
adds another crisis, one we’ve made
ourselves.
Recently, I took a favorite trail
leading from the edge of town into
the watershed. I always look for-
ward to walking through an avenue
of small manzanita trees. In spring,
their pink urn-like blossoms are
mobbed by bumble bees and hum-
mingbirds. In fall and winter, their
berries — the “little apples” that
give these shrubs their Spanish name
— feed robins, thrushes and bears.
Winter storms turn these groves
into an enchanted labyrinth of green
leaves, red bark and white snow.
Not this year. Not again in my life-
time. I found that this once intact
and healthy wildlife habitat had been
reduced to “defensible space.” The
manzanitas had been harshly hacked
back; those that had been spared
stood isolated in a barren expanse of
blood-red stumps. I counted the rings
on one of the stumps, revealing that
it had been at least 55 years old when
we decided it was too dangerous to
live.
The Forest Resiliency Project con-
sidered these manzanitas a threat
because they were close to the city
limits — and even closer to the big
new homes being built outside the city
limits.
They were sacrificed to increase
our sense of security, and for no other
reason. They were mostly healthy and
important for wildlife. They shaded
the soil and hosted mycorrhizal fungi
integral to the nutrient cycles of the
forest.
Yes, someday a wildfire would
have burned here. But without our
presence, that fire would not have been
a tragedy, merely an episode in the
long life of the land, and an opportu-
nity for renewal. Manzanitas are well-
adapted to fire; some species actually
require fire for seed germination.
Oregonians take pride in being
environmentally aware. Yet we accept
the ecological destruction of the “fuels
reduction” paradigm, rather than put-
ting limits on our relentless expan-
sion into the rural landscape. Perhaps
my town is becoming safer than it was
before. But it’s questionable that any
amount of “thinning” could protect
Ashland from a wind-driven firestorm
coming out of the watershed.
The fire that destroyed much of
Talent and Phoenix, Oregon, like
many of last summer’s devastating
California wildfires, did not start on
heavily forested public land.
Instead, it ignited and roared
through a typical valley mosaic of
creekside woodlands, orchards and
residential neighborhoods. The hard
truth is that for Ashland and many
other towns around the West, avoiding
catastrophic wildfire is as much a
matter of luck as preparedness.
Still, we have to try, right? That
means some degree of fuels reduction.
But we must acknowledge the losses
to the ecological integrity, the habitat
value, and the beauty of this land that
we love so much.
———
Pepper Trail is a contributor
to Writers on the Range,
writersontherange.org, an indepen-
dent nonprofit dedicated to spurring
lively conversation about the West. He
is a conservation biologist and
writer in Ashland.
Contact your representatives
UNITED STATES
OFFICIALS
President Joseph Biden
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.,
Washington, D.C. 20500
Comments: 202-456-1111
www.whitehouse.gov/contact
Sen. Ron Wyden
221 Dirksen Senate Office
Building, Washington, D.C.,
20510;202-224-5244
La Grande office: 541-962-7691
Sen. Jeff Merkley
313 Hart Senate Office Building,
Washington, D.C., 20510;
202-224-3753;
Pendleton office: 541-278-1129
Rep. Cliff Bentz
1239 Longworth House Office
Building
Washington, D.C., 20515;
202-225-6730
Medford office: 541-776-4646
STATE OFFICIALS
Gov. Kate Brown
900 Court Street N.E., Suite 254
Salem, OR 97301-4047
503-378-4582
Sen. Bill Hansell, District 29
900 Court St. N.E., S-423
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1729
Sen.BillHansell@
oregonlegislature.gov
Rep. Bobby Levy, District 58
900 Court St. N.E., H-376,
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1458
Rep.BobbyLevy@
oregonlegislature.gov