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CapitalPress.com
July 22, 2016
Editorials are written by or
approved by members of the
Capital Press Editorial Board.
All other commentary pieces are
the opinions of the authors but
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Opinion
Editorial Board
Publisher
Editor
Managing Editor
Mike O’Brien
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com Online: www.capitalpress.com/opinion
O UR V IEW
Incoming Portland mayor offers hope for rural Oregon
P
ortland Mayor-elect Ted
Wheeler could be one of
agriculture’s best friends
in a city that has over-sized
infl uence on Oregon’s vast rural
expanses.
We’ve written often on the
divide between urban and rural
America. The divide between
Portland and rural Oregon is a
chasm.
Farmers and ranchers may
not fully appreciate Portland’s
importance as a market and a hub
of vital services. But there’s no
mistaking Portland’s willingness
to push its agenda on farming
practices, labor, economic
development and the environment
on its rural neighbors.
It’s a problem.
“What can agriculture do,” the
Oregon Farm
Bureau’s Dave
Dillon asks, “to
better connect
with city
government and
thought leaders
who seem to
have insularity
and sometimes
Ted Wheeler
utopian
vision of food
production that does not match
the marketplace and the demands
of a growing world population?”
In Wheeler rural Oregon may
have a partner in Portland. His
family made its money in the
timber industry. He appreciates
the urban-rural divide and urban-
rural interdependence.
“You can’t talk about success
in the agricultural industry
without talking about the role
urban areas play,” he said.
“Urban communities in America
are increasingly clueless about
the challenges facing rural
communities.”
And though Wheeler is sincere
and earnest on the subject of the
urban-rural divide, it’s not the
biggest problem he faces. Not by
a long shot.
The police bureau is in turmoil
— chronically understaffed,
mistrusted by many residents,
plagued by poor morale. There
are miles of city streets that are
still unpaved, and many more
miles of paved streets that need
repair.
As people fl ock to Portland
in costume and in character to
become part of the city’s quirky,
offbeat fabric, they fi nd rents are
sky high and vacant housing hard
to come by. Any development not
nixed outright by strict land-use
policies will almost certainly be
opposed by vocal activists.
Then there are the homeless
— 4,000 largely substance-addled
or mentally ill souls who have
overwhelmed both the services
available to help them and the
patience of a town that prides
itself on tolerance. Their situation
is desperate and tragic.
Portland’s situation is made
more diffi cult because solutions
to these and a host of lesser
problems must be crafted, spun,
bent and twisted — perhaps
beyond recognition — with
care so as not to offend the
O UR V IEW
Oregon forest land trust timeline
1929 — Until 1929, tax-foreclosure
lands (typically harvested forest-
lands) were passed on to the
counties, rendering them
untaxable and resulting in a
financial crisis for counties.
1929-39 — Laws passed to allow
conveyance of land to state in
exchange for management and
distribution of revenues.
• Additionally, legislature modified
tax laws for forestlands.
1939-51 — State promotes
conveyance of cutover land to be
managed in trust for the counties.
• Current state forestland base
conveyed to state.
1986 — Tillamook 1: Court case
establishes that a protractable
interest exists between the state
and the forest trust counties and
that counties have enforceable
rights related to land manage-
ment.
1994-2001 — State hosts public
meetings to explain how forests
will be managed and considers
strategies for management.
1998 — Board of Forestry
establishes that state forests don’t
need to be managed primarilly for
revenue, creates a new statutory
definition for “greatest permanent
value” (GPV) to guide all future
management activities.
2001 —
Northwest
State Forest
Management
Plan adopted.
Within months
Oregon Depart-
ment of Forestry identified that its
faulty modeling data would result
in a 50 percent reduction in actual
versus projected harvest levels.
State decides to implement
anyway, resulting in the counties
being deprived of at least $35
million due each year from
2001-15.
exists between state and forest
trust counties and that state has
contractual responsibilities to
counties.
Today — Both counties and ODF
are losing money on state forest
management and the situation is
projected to get worse over time.
Source: Linn County, Ore.
2005 — Tillamook II:
Court case affirms
that a contract
Alan Kenaga/Capital Press
State of Oregon owes counties
A
cross the West, rural
counties, school districts and
local governments that once
depended on natural resources such
as timber have been slowly sinking
into a sea of red ink.
The problem: State and federal
land managers have unilaterally
changed the rules of how natural
resources are managed. The result
has been less economic activity
such as logging, leading to ever-
tighter local budgets. Those local
governments and school districts
once shared the revenue from
timber cut on public lands. Now
they receive only a small fraction of
what they previously received.
Those who defend the change
in resource management say those
counties and school districts should
just pass special tax levies to cover
the shortfalls. Such statements
reflect their ignorance about the
economy of the rural West. If
logging is the primary economic
activity and it is curtailed, then a
tax levy will not cover the shortfall.
People collecting unemployment
insurance cannot afford higher tax
bills.
This argument is playing out in
a courtroom in Albany, Ore., where
Linn County officials are suing the
state for $1.4 billion they and 14
other counties have been shorted
since 1998.
According to Linn County’s
lawyers, that’s the year the state
changed the way it manages Forest
Trust Lands. The counties gave
those timber lands to the state to
manage on their behalf.
Under the change, instead of
managing the timber to produce
revenue, the state decided to
manage it for other objectives —
without the counties’ consent.
During a hearing last week, the
state’s lawyers essentially tried
to duck the question of whether
the state owes the counties any
money. They talked about “greatest
permanent value” — whatever
that means — and that the
statute doesn’t require “revenue
maximization.”
What they didn’t argue is
whether the state has a moral and
ethical obligation to manage those
lands in a way that doesn’t leave the
counties and school districts broke.
It should be noted that across the
West, the federal government has
also done its best to squeeze natural
resource companies out of business.
In many rural areas, where once a
thriving timber industry existed,
there remains only abandoned mills
or a mill operating at a fraction of
its capacity. The only mills that
remain profitable are those that own
timber and don’t depend entirely on
government timber sales.
This is a direct result of federal
managers — Uncle Sam owns most
of the land in the West — deciding
to shut down or vastly reduce
logging in many areas.
With the state of Oregon
managing timber land for “greatest
permanent value” and the federal
managers tightening the timber
supply, rural counties and school
districts have suffered financially.
Instead of ducking this lawsuit,
we’d like to see the state’s
lawyers argue in open court that
precious few bigwigs in state
government care one bit about
rural communities. We want
them to argue that the trees — a
renewable resource — are more
precious than rural economies. We
want them to tell the judge that
it’s more important to the state of
Oregon to protect as many trees as
its managers see fit, no matter the
impact on rural Oregonians.
Of course, they won’t say that
outright, but that’s what they mean.
Readers’ views
Verner backed
for public lands
commissioner
Commissioner of public
lands elections typically re-
ceive little attention. Yet the
actions of the commissioner
of public lands dramatically
impacts our lives every sum-
mer during fi re season.
Mary Verner is the former
mayor of Spokane. She is the
only candidate for commis-
sioner of public lands with
executive branch experience.
Furthermore, Mary has
served as deputy for wild-
fi re and administration with
the Department of Natural
Resources for the last three
years. She will not need two
or three years of on-the-job
training. Mary would be
ready to hit the ground run-
ning the day she is sworn in.
Washington has suffered
back-to-back record fi re sea-
sons due to exceptionally
hot and dry summers. Mary
Verner has worked tirelessly
with fi re chiefs and other of-
fi cials to address the daunt-
ing challenges faced by the
fi re service and those affect-
ed by wildfi re.
She has earned the respect
of fi re service professionals
around Washington. She has
solid roots in rural Washing-
ton. Mary Verner is the only
candidate with experience
who understands our needs
fi rst-hand.
Please join me and fi re
service professionals around
Washington, and vote for
Mary Verner, commissioner
of public lands.
Thomas R. McGarry
Commissioner,
Spokane County Fire
Protection District No. 9
Spokane, Wash.
sensibilities of a wide variety of
progressive interests that will
take to the streets at the drop of
a hat.
Wheeler’s plate is full. If he
could get more of Portland’s
activist class to focus on the city’s
problems instead of exporting
their agenda to rural Oregon
everyone would be better off.
From our distant vantage,
Wheeler seems the best choice
Portland has made in recent
years. He’s a smart guy, a sensible
choice for voters who often prefer
the unconventional.
Though we won’t know for
sure until he takes offi ce in
January, Wheeler seems like
someone agriculture can work
with to advance both rural and
urban interests.
The rest of the story of a
county’s threat to farmland
By BEN WILLIAMS
For the Capital Press
A
s a long-time subscrib-
er, I say “kudos” to the
Capital Press for pub-
lishing Eric Mortenson’s arti-
cle on farmland development
in Clackamas County (Con-
servation district fi ghts farm-
land development, July 8).
One county within Metro
Portland, Ore., is a small part
of the Capital Press’ publish-
ing coverage, but this a story
that merits consideration. Eric
captured the essence of the
matter: A local Soil & Water
Conservation District is ask-
ing, “What is going on?” And
their concern is loss of irre-
placeable farmland.
The devil is in the detail,
or as Paul Harvey used to say,
in “the rest of the story!” This
story has four or more chap-
ters, and the fi rst has to do with
campaign contributions — but
let’s skip the gory details for
now.
The second has to do with
the reference to “an eco-
nomic study by a consulting
fi rm, Johnson Economics and
Mackenzie, that said the coun-
ty is short between 329 and
934 acres of industrial land
and up to 246 acres of com-
mercial land, and there is an
overall shortage of up to 1,180
acres over the next 20 years.”
Guess who hired the con-
sulting fi rm and engaged them
to do the study: The Clacka-
mas County commissioners!
They got the results they were
looking for, and then they used
the results of the study to issue
a new county strategic plan in
late 2014 which defi ned the
need for employment lands
and other development, but
never involved any of the cit-
ies in the county or any of the
Community Planning Orga-
nizations within the county in
the process or in the roll out of
the new strategic plan.
Hire a consulting fi rm, get
a study, issue a new strategic
plan. Very effi cient, right?
As if that wasn’t enough,
one year later, after publicly
and privately playing a game
of chicken with Metro (metro
Portland’s tri-county planning
body) by holding up the fi -
nalization of the Urban/Rural
Reserves designations, they ap-
propriated almost half a million
dollars to “re-study” the Rural
Reserves.
This was presumably a set-
tled matter, but their argument
was that the county was short
of “employment lands,” and
the basis for the assertion? The
study they had commissioned a
year earlier.
To add insult to injury,
on the Monday, Tuesday and
Wednesday before the Fourth
of July holiday weekend they
held open houses on the ques-
tion of employment lands and
re-studying the Rural Reserves
to “seek public input.”
The shocker was that none
of the three cities within the
county in which the meetings
were held — Canby, Wilson-
ville and Estacada — were
Guest
comment
Ben Williams
given the courtesy of being no-
tifi ed of the meetings, nor was
there any normal public notice.
Only the property owners im-
mediately adjacent to the areas
of study received a notice.
The mayor of Canby attend-
ed the Wilsonville meeting on
Tuesday evening because he
didn’t fi nd out until Tuesday
morning about the meeting in
Canby on Monday evening.
What’s the fuss? If ag land
is rezoned for development and
the local cities have to provide
the infrastructure like water,
sewer and roads, what’s the big
deal?
The fact is that Metro and
others have put the “facts” on
the table. There is more than
enough “employment lands”
within Metro and within Clack-
amas County to meet the devel-
opment requirements of Ore-
gon’s land use laws (a 50-year
supply).
The problem is that those
employment lands aren’t where
Chair Ludlow and Commis-
sioner Smith want them. And,
those employment lands aren’t
owned by their major campaign
contributors. So, this is crony
capitalism at its best, com-
pounded by a blatant attempt
to avoid public involvement.
So then, the Soil and Water
Conservation District’s con-
cern is fi rst and foremost one
about what’s missing: trans-
parency and public account-
ability.
The consequence of that,
in this case, is the loss of ir-
replaceable farmland. And,
these kinds of shenanigans
probably aren’t just going on
in one Metro County in Ore-
gon.
Ben Williams of Aurora,
Ore., is president of Friends
of French Prairie, a land use
advocacy group in the north
Willamette Valley that works
to preserve farmland and
promote local farming.
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