Illinois Valley news. (Cave City, Oregon) 1937-current, June 23, 2010, Image 1

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    Inside:
Summer reads
Library group
offers program
Page 5
Sex charges filed
Info sought about
valley resident’s
alleged offenses
Page 7
Gettin’ fresh
Seasonal produce
stands opening soon
Page 11
Girl power
Roller derby revival
slams SW Oregon
Page 12
Oregon
Gov’s race
heats up
By SCOTT JORGENSEN
IVN Staff Writer
During most election
years, candidates ramp up for
the May primary election;
step back slightly during the
warmer summer months; and
begin campaigning aggres-
sively in the fall.
But Oregon’s gubernato-
rial election looks to be an
exception, with many recent
developments in that race.
Chris Dudley, the Re-
publican nominee for the
state’s highest office, has
started running television
commercials discussing the
obstacles he has overcome in
his life. Dudley was diag-
nosed with diabetes as a teen-
ager, but went on to attend
Yale and play professional
basketball for such teams as
the Portland Trailblazers.
Spokesman Leroy Cole-
man claims that the message
appears to be “resonating”
with voters statewide.
“We’re reintroducing
Oregonians to who Chris is,
the kind of person he is and
the character he has,” Cole-
man said.
Derek Humphrey, cam-
paign manager for John Kitz-
haber, Democratic nominee
and former governor, said
that camp was a “little sur-
prised” to see Dudley airing
TV ads this far before the
Nov. 2 general election.
But Humphrey added
that the Kitzhaber campaign
does not plan to do the same
at this point.
“We’re not going to
change our campaign strategy
around to match his,” Hum-
phrey said. “Maybe an early
investment in TV makes
more sense for his campaign
than ours.”
A pair of recent polls
also has produced some posi-
tive headlines for the Dudley
campaign.
A May 24 poll by Ras-
mussen showed Dudley lead-
ing Kitzhaber 45 to 44 per-
cent. Those figures improved
in a June 10 SurveyUSA poll,
which put Dudley at 47 per-
cent and Kitzhaber at 40.
The June poll showed
the candidates tied among
women voters, and Dudley
beating Kitzhaber among
independents by 6 percent.
Humphrey said that the
polls simply reinforce the
hotly contested nature of the
campaign.
“We always expected an
incredibly competitive race,
and we still do,” Humphrey
said. “There will be a lot of
polls between now and the
(Continued on page 6)
Slow recovery seen
by market expert
By SCOTT JORGENSEN
IVN Staff Writer
A snapshot of current
and future economic trends
was provided by market
strategist Fred Dickson on the
Wednesday, June 16 Radio
KAJO talk show, based in
Grants Pass.
Dickson’s 44-year career
included 38 years working on
Wall Street for such firms as
Goldman Sachs. He is a fre-
quent guest commentator on
the CNBC and Bloomberg
television networks, and has
been a faculty member at the
New York Institute of Fi-
nance and an adjunct profes-
sor of finance at the Univer-
sity of Richmond.
Currently, Dickson is the
senior vice president and di-
rector-chief marketing strate-
gist for D.A. Davidson Com-
panies in Lake Oswego.
Dickson graduated from Penn
State University and earned
an MBA from the University
at Buffalo.
The stock market just
had its worst decade since
1830, Dickson said. It has
showed a negative return for
only two decades since then,
with the other being the Great
Depression era of the 1930s.
Despite that, Dickson
observed, the market was up
six of the last 10 years, and
bond portfolios posted their
best returns in 30 years.
“It will stand in history
as one of the decades where
we had a lot of turmoil and a
lot of problems,” he said.
The Sept. 11, 2001 ter-
rorist attacks in New York
City and Washington, D.C.;
Hurricane Katrina; and the
collapse of the housing mar-
ket in 2007 helped shape the
market during the past dec-
ade, Dickson said.
In 2000, the Fed lowered
bond ratings, Dickson said.
Bond values rose as interest
rates went down, which en-
abled people to finance or re-
finance their houses at lower
rates, but also contributed to
the housing bubble, he added.
New technologies drove
most of the economic growth
from 2000 to 2009, he said,
with social networking, inter-
net cell phones and the use of
(Continued on page 6)
Interior Dept: PILT
coming, but little late
Oregon counties will
receive their “Payments in
Lieu of Taxes” (PILT) mon-
ies a bit later than usual this
year, but all is well, stated the
U.S. Dept. of the Interior.
PILT comprises funding
to local governments that
help offset losses in property
taxes due to nontaxable fed-
eral land within their bounda-
ries. Some 68 percent of Jose-
phine County consists of fed-
erally owned land.
An announcement re-
lated that, “The Dept. of the
Interior will issue the fiscal
year 2010 PILT allocations
not later than July 15. We
regret the delay in payments
and we are moving as quickly
as possible to get funding to
counties.
“We are proud of our
efforts to make these pay-
ments timely, and for the past
five years we have been able
to make the payments to
counties in June, ahead of
most counties’ fiscal years.
Historically, payments were
made late in the fiscal year,
and beginning in 2005 the
program moved the payment
to June.
“The 2010 payment
amounts were delayed be-
cause of late reporting by
some entities and the com-
plexity of evaluating prior
year payment amounts au-
thorized by the Mineral Leas-
ing Act and the Secure Rural
Schools and Roads Act.
“Each of these statutes
and the PILT statute include
requirements that affect the
development of county pay-
ment amounts using a multi-
factor formula. We strive to
be accurate and these efforts
require our due diligence and
sometimes additional time.
“We understand how
important it is to provide
these payments to counties.”
Eberlien welcomed to
Rogue-Siskiyou unit
Jennifer Eberlien was
welcomed Monday, June 21
as the new U.S. Forest Ser-
vice (USFS) deputy forest
supervisor for Rogue River-
Siskiyou National Forest.
She arrives from a posi-
tion as the natural resource
adviser to the Bureau of Land
Management’s state director
for Oregon and Washington.
“I am thrilled with the
opportunity to work with the
employees of the Rogue
River-Siskiyou National For-
est, and look forward to en-
gaging with Southwestern
Oregon’s communities, or-
ganizations, and businesses,”
stated Eberlien.
She added, “The forest
covers a remarkably beautiful
and complex landscape, and
the staff is recognized for
their innovative approaches to
managing that landscape.
This is also a wonderful op-
portunity for me to work with
great partners and communi-
ties knowledgeable and car-
ing of their public land.”
Originally from Eau
Claire, Wis., Eberlien’s aca-
demic background is in an-
thropology. She received a
bachelor-of-arts degree from
the University of Minnesota,
and a master’s degree from
Northern Arizona University.
She began her USFS
career as a seasonal archeo-
logical technician at
Chequamegon-Nicolet Na-
tional Forest in Wisconsin in
1992. After stints as an arche-
ologist on the Lolo and Wa-
satch-Cache National forests
from 1998-2004, she served
as the national recreation fee
program coordinator in
Washington, D.C., with the
task of implementing the
Recreation Enhancement Act.
In 2007 she took a job
with BLM as the national
interagency Service First co-
ordinator for BLM and
USFS.
She noted that she and
her husband, Matt Thomas,
“are looking forward to S.W.
Oregon’s tremendous hiking
and outdoor opportunities.
“We love exploring, and
enjoy that experience any-
where from our own back-
yard to the corners of the
world,” she said.
Leo Goodman AKA ’Spaceman’ among the vinyl stacks at the Hope Mountain studio.
(Photo by Scott Jorgensen, Illinois Valley News )
Hope Mountain Radio broadcasts
sounds of freedom into cyberspace
By SCOTT JORGENSEN
IVN Staff Writer
It’s a typically quiet Fri-
day time in Takilma, as the
sun went down quite some
time ago: But inside the
makeshift studio of Hope
Mountain Radio, Leo Good-
man is just getting started for
the evening.
With a pair of head-
phones on, Goodman peruses
vinyl records as he prepares
to take to the airwaves. Post-
ers with figures as diverse as
Argentine Marxist revolution-
ary Che Guevara, the Dali
Lama and punk rock legends
The Ramones are juxtaposed
on the walls.
And somehow, it all
makes perfect sense.
A song by the 1980s su-
per group, the Traveling
Wilburys, plays with Roy
Orbison’s distinctive voice
reverberating through the
small room. As 9 o’clock
rolls around, Goodman’s on-
air partner, Bari Wyte, shows
up.
Goodman spins Fleet-
wood Mac’s “Sands of Time”
and prepares a pre-taped dis-
cussion about the Gulf of
Mexico oil disaster.
After playing selections
by former Dire Straits singer
Mark Knopfler and Carol
King, Goodman cues up his
“Spaceman” theme song and
turns on the microphones for
a free-form discussion on
current events.
For Goodman, the on-air
routine is a situation he has
sought to perfect since Hope
Mountain Radio’s current
incarnation began in summer
2006. Prior to that, it had op-
erated as a sort of pirate radio
station, but repeated raids by
federal agents forced it online
to the wide-open terrain of
the Internet.
That frees Hope Moun-
tain Radio from the slew of
regulations that the Federal
Communications Commis-
sion imposes on traditional
broadcasters. It also opens the
station to a much wider audi-
ence than it would have had
otherwise.
“This goes way past
Hayes Hill,” Goodman said.
He noted that the station gets
calls from people throughout
the world. He adds that truck
drivers even pick it up on
their cell phones.
Disc jockeys at Hope
Mountain Radio are all vol-
unteers, who produce their
own shows and even help pay
for some of the expenses of
keeping the station going.
(Continued on page 6)
Maurer reflects on statewide race
By SCOTT JORGENSEN
IVN Staff Writer
After nearly a month of
uncertainty surrounding the
statewide, nonpartisan race for
Oregon superintendent of pub-
lic instruction, challenger Rep.
Ron Maurer (R-Grants Pass)
has conceded defeat to incum-
bent Susan Castillo.
For Maurer, the campaign
leading to the May 18 primary
election and the subsequent
doubts about its results have
consumed much of his daily
life during the past several
weeks.
Maurer said that he first
considered the race during
October 2009, when a policy
adviser for Gov. Kulongoski
suggested that he throw his hat
in the ring.
“It took a couple of
months for me to do my due
diligence and decide whether I
thought it was possible,”
Maurer said. “I was going
through personal exploration
with my family, knowing that
the reality was that I was go-
ing into a race that was a seri-
ous uphill climb.”
In February, Maurer was
in Salem during the 2010 leg-
islative session when he pub-
licly announced his intention
to seek the superintendent
seat. Maurer said he knew
right away that fund-raising
would present a significant
obstacle in the race.
“As a conservative Re-
publican from Southern Ore-
gon, it was a monumental
challenge to get my name
out,” he said. “In order to run
a credible campaign, I thought
I needed to raise about
$300,000.”
Maurer had received the
endorsements of the Oregon
Education Association (OEA)
and the Portland-based advo-
cacy group, Stand for Chil-
dren, in his 2008 legislative
race. But he said that he
wasn’t counting on their sup-
port this time around.
“I know that was essen-
tially a token endorsement,”
Maurer said. “I was one of a
handful of Republicans they
supported.”
Another issue, Maurer
said, is the fact that he op-
posed ballot measures 66 and
67 earlier this year. OEA and
other education groups
strongly supported those tax-
(Continued on page 6)
Rep. Ron Maurer at home on election night, May 18. ( IVN photo)