FROM PAGE ONE
Thursday, January 13, 2022
ThE OBsErVEr — A5
ELGIN
Continued from Page A1
drive-by shootings. We
don’t have a lot of this
stuff that the larger towns
have,” she said. “I walk a
lot, at night sometimes.”
Union County Sheriff
Cody Bowen stated there
is no recent criminal
activity that would give
credence to a specific ref-
CATTLE
Continued from Page A1
nick smith/Contributed Photo, File
Andy Geissler, federal timber program director for the American Forest Resource Council, straddles a
dry creek in Southern Oregon. The creek is one of many nominated as a Wild and Scenic River under
the federal River Democracy Act. Rep. Cliff Bentz spoke in opposition to the 2021 bill on the House floor
Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022.
BENTZ
Continued from Page A1
threat of fires.
“I cannot emphasize
enough how dangerous it is
to use prescribed burns in
overgrown, densely packed,
dry forests without thinning
the forest first,” he said.
“Prescribed burning before
thinning puts at extreme
risk the very rivers and
watersheds the designation
is supposed to protect. It is
like dropping a match in a
tinderbox. It is impossible
to contain these types of
fires once they start.
“The River Democ-
racy Act, if passed, would
threaten watersheds, homes,
businesses, farms, ranches,
livestock and, most impor-
tantly, human lives.”
Bentz also denounced
the bill for not containing
“explicit protections” for
uses of the land, including,
“sustainable timber har-
vests, hunting, grazing,
fishing and mining.”
“Regardless of legisla-
tive intent, the applicable
agencies will have broad
authority to restrict these
activities,” he said.
Plenty of disapproval
The RDA, introduced
last year by Sen. Ron
Wyden and backed by Sen.
Jeff Merkley, both Oregon
CHURCH
Continued from Page A1
voting in the first presi-
dential election open to
18-year-olds following the
1971 passage of the 26th
Amendment, which low-
ered the voting age of 21 by
three years, Church said she
was so excited to be casting
a ballot and little did she
know what the future would
hold for her.
“I had never given that
possibility any consid-
eration,” she said of her
eventual career. “It had
never crossed my mind.”
Still, she is looking for-
ward to retirement because
of the opportunity it will
provide her to see more of
the United States and the
world.
“I have a bucket list
of places I want to visit,”
Church said.
John Howard, a former
member of the Board of
the Union County Com-
missioners, said he has
long been impressed with
the job Church does.
“She never missed a
beat. Every count was
done on time,” he said,
adding that Church has
assembled a good staff.
Union County Com-
missioner Donna Bev-
erage also speaks highly of
Church.
“She has a passion for
doing everything correctly
Democrats, has been con-
demned by several county
commissioners in Eastern
Oregon. Union County
commissioners voted in
October 2021 to send a
letter to Wyden asking him
to remove the roughly 135
miles of waterways in their
county from the act. Part of
their issue with the RDA,
they claimed, was that
methods in place for des-
ignating rivers as Wild and
Scenic were not adhered to.
“This failure to follow
the guidelines that have
been in place since 1968
as a well-vetted system for
designation is resulting in
waterways that do not meet
the criteria, spirit, intent
or letter of the Wild and
Scenic Act,” according to
the letter sent to Wyden.
Wallowa County com-
missioners have opposed
the RDA on multiple occa-
sions, and have said about
404 miles in their county
would fall under the new
designation.
They also wrote an
October letter to Wyden
voicing their disapproval
of a lack of detailed maps
outlying the affected
waterways.
“The maps your office
provided were not clear
so the county went to the
expense of having maps
made that included half-
mile buffers,” they wrote.
“These maps gave a visual
of the buffers, affecting
economic viability for our
timber and grazing econ-
omies, public access and
forest management on an
estimated 240,000 acres
of public lands and 16,000
acres of adjacent private
land in Wallowa County.”
Grant County commis-
sioners have also sought out
of the RDA.
“Prohibiting access to
minerals that are necessary
for creating green energy
runs counter to the princi-
ples of conservation,” they
wrote in a November letter
opposing the RDA. “In this
respect, Senator Wyden’s
proposal is fundamentally
anti-environmental.”
The River Democracy
Act also came under criti-
cism in June for including
waterways that were “com-
pletely dry upon inspec-
tion.” The American Forest
Resources Council, which
represents the timber
industry, said just 15% of
the waterways are desig-
nated as rivers.
Senate Bill 192, which
was introduced Feb. 3,
2021, has been before the
Committee on Energy and
Natural Resources Subcom-
mittee on National Parks,
according to congress.gov.
It has yet to receive a vote
on the House or Senate
floor.
and honestly. She has done
a great job and I have
really enjoyed working
with her,” she said.
Church’s successor will
be elected later this year
in a nonpartisan election.
To date, one candidate has
filed to run, Lisa Feik, the
chief deputy of the Union
County clerk’s office. Feik
has worked in the clerk’s
office for about 11 years.
amount of work,” she said.
Church said three
people were needed to
work election day at each
of Union County’s more
than 50 polling places,
and were paid minimum
wage. They were expected
to work from 6 a.m. until
past 8 p.m. when the polls
closed. Church said it was
extremely difficult to get
the necessary number of
people needed to work at
polling places.
Running vote-by-mail
elections, however, does
pose a different set of chal-
lenges. One of the biggest
involves making sure the
signatures on the enve-
lopes match those the
county clerk’s office has
on file. This was once a
very time-consuming and
tedious task because all
signatures on file had to
be pulled out by hand and
then compared to the ones
on envelopes.
The process became
much easier after a com-
puter database of all the
signatures of registered
voters in Union County
was created by Richard
Chaves, of Baker City.
This has streamlined the
voter signatures verifica-
tion process tremendously.
“Verifying signatures
became so much easier,”
she said. “That was
exciting.”
Computers have been
a godsend to the vote-
A fan of vote by mail
A lot has changed on the
county election front since
Church joined the Union
County clerk’s office. The
biggest was the switch to
vote-by-mail elections. All
elections in Union County
and Oregon have been
vote by mail since 1998
following the passage of
a measure in a statewide
election.
Church credits vote by
mail with being a great
service to voters because
of the convenience it offers
as opposed to poll booth
elections.
“You get to vote while
drinking coffee in the
comfort of your home,
while others are standing
outside in the heat, wind
and rain waiting to vote,”
she said.
The county clerk said
that running vote-by-mail
elections is far easier than
the traditional poll booth
elections.
“They were a huge
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The Deans also own
ranches in Colorado and
New Mexico. Dean said
one of their wranglers from
New Mexico visited the
Oregon ranch to see what
was happening. She said
the wrangler said ranchers
normally round up their
cattle, take them to a pen
and put them aboard a
truck to ship to market.
“He said they don’t do
that (in Wallowa County),”
Dean said. “They let (the
cattle) find their own way
down.”
Dean emphasized that
was why they hire locals
wranglers to do the job.
“My husband doesn’t
physically do the cattle
work,” she said. “He pays
B.J. to wrangle the cows.
We’re relying on people
who live there that they
would do the job.”
Despite Dean Oregon
Ranches being the owners
of the land and livestock,
Karen Dean holds the War-
nocks responsible.
“We called him every
other day to get him to
bring those cattle down,”
she said.
Dean added the War-
nocks signed releases as
property managers for the
Deans.
“Those cows were his
responsibility,” she said.
But B.J. Warnock dis-
agreed with Dean on the
nature of their business
relationship.
“Mrs. Dean is not our
employer and she is mis-
informed,” Warnock said
in an email. “Typically,
in a situation like this, the
owner blames the manager,
who blames the crew, and
so on. We are not going to
do that. Unfortunately, I
counting process, but they
have also taken away a
bit of the charm of elec-
tion night. Church said
that years ago the county
clerk’s office and the
hallway outside it would
be filled with candidates,
community members and
journalists waiting for the
releases of the latest vote
counts on election night.
Today, few if any of these
people are in the county
clerk’s office on election
night because they can get
the latest updates online.
“I miss that part. It
was fun,” she said of the
crowded election nights.
Other duties
The county clerk’s office
is involved in many other
things in addition to elec-
tions, including weddings.
The clerk’s office sells
marriage licenses, and the
county clerk is authorized
to officiate at weddings. As
county clerk, Church has
found herself at a number
of weddings serving in an
official capacity.
“I liked seeing people
on what may have been the
happiest day of their lives,”
she said.
Record keeping is
another task assigned to
the Union County Clerk’s
office, one which takes
up perhaps more time
than running elections.
The county clerk’s office
is responsible for storing
western Oregon since 2001
that included Clatsop, Til-
lamook, Columbia, Mult-
nomah and Washington
counties.
Johnson is aiming to be
the first independent can-
didate to become Oregon
governor since Julius
L. Meier did so in 1931.
She will need to collect
approximately 24,000 sig-
natures to make it on the
2022 November ballot.
was never officially named
or authorized to act as
manager, which left me
without decision-making
authority to act in crit-
ical situations. We had a
main crew of seven people
gathering Dean Oregon
Ranches cattle. We are
very proud of all of their
hard work and the fact that
they have stuck with the
job despite extenuating
circumstances.”
livestock were recov-
ered before the snows
made routes impassable.
Dean crews have worked
tirelessly to ensure the
care and feeding of the
remaining animals while
ongoing efforts are under-
taken to bring them back
down to the ranch,” he
said. “The Dean family is
truly grateful for the con-
tinued recovery efforts by
local ranchers, state and
county government offi-
cials, and volunteers. It is
hoped and prayed that the
continued search for the
remaining cows will be
successful, and we wish to
ensure the community that
rescue efforts will remain
unwavering.”
B.J. Warnock said on
Jan. 2 that when they
began gathering the
cattle in September, there
were 1,613 Dean Oregon
Ranches mother cows on
summer range. Of those,
10 were found unrecov-
erable and 1,548 Dean
Oregon Ranches mother
cows were successfully
gathered before the snows
of late December. Since
then, another 34 mother
cows were gathered in
joint efforts between the
ranch crew and the com-
munity. Warnock said
26 of those were Dean
Oregon Ranches cattle and
the others were owned by
neighboring ranches.
As of Monday, Jan. 10,
no updated figures on the
number of cattle lost or
saved were available.
As for the Deans’ trou-
bles over the nursing
homes, the Advocate of
Baton Rouge reported
that the Louisiana Depart-
ment of Health pulled the
licenses of seven nursing
homes owned by the
Deans in the wake of Hur-
ricane Ida.
Attorney involved
Chris Gramiccioni,
a South Carolina-based
attorney for the Deans in
their ongoing lawsuits over
handling of nursing home
evacuations last year at the
time of Hurricane Ida, said
the Deans and their attor-
neys were just learning
of the situation with the
cattle.
“My client is not happy
with what happened to
those cattle,” he said. “My
client had a team of people
who were supposed to
bring the cattle down from
the mountains.”
Gramiccioni, who said
the Deans have paid to fly
in hay and help rescue the
cattle, declined to com-
ment specifically if Dean
Oregon Ranches shared
responsibility for the fate
of the cows and their
calves.
“I have to be cautious
on answering that because
it could be the subject of
litigation,” he said. “Our
client is taking it very seri-
ously. It’s not something
he’s taking lightly.”
In an emailed state-
ment, Gramiccioni said
Dean Oregon Ranches
have historically entrusted
livestock management to a
local onsite expert familiar
with the land in Wallowa
County.
“Thankfully, most
the county’s permanent
records, including deeds,
mortgages and all of the
Union County Board of
Commissioner resolutions,
ordinances and minutes.
Her office, because it is
such a storehouse of infor-
mation, fields many inter-
esting requests.
“The other day we had
to find a cattle brand used
in 1905,” she said.
Church said the pro-
cess of record keeping has
become much more effi-
cient in the digital age.
Before advances in digita-
lization, four paper copies
of many documents had to
be made.
“Our copy machines
were running all the time,”
she said. “We were wearing
them out.”
The ever-buoyant
and upbeat Church, who
appears anything but worn
out after 30 years in the
Union County Clerk’s
office, said she feels blessed
when reflecting upon her
life and career.
“I have no regrets,” she
said. “There is not much in
my life I would do over.”
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unsafe city.
“I don’t know what
she would be referring to,
other than reaching out
to the furthest part of the
state,” he said.
Johnson, a former state
senator for District 16,
resigned Dec. 15 from
the Oregon Legislature
to focus full-time on her
statewide run. She repre-
sented a swath of North-
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