letters
TO THE EDITOR
OPEN HOUSE
Kindergarten? First Grade? Public School?
actions were taken. Or how about on the
federal level of a recent president who
started a war based on lies; why was he
not impeached?
Wanting to hire assistants to help with a
heavy workload and talking about how to
make it happen doesn’t seem worthy of an
expensive and time consuming legal battle.
It seems to me the people who should be
ashamed are the ones who brought this
whole issue up in the fi rst place.
What an incredible distraction from
the work they need to focus on in helping
accommodate the needs of the citizens
for now and the future. Follow the money
to see why this was instigated in the fi rst
place. It won’t take long to fi gure out their
motives.
Thank you Commissioners Handy and
Sorenson for all your great work for Lane
County, and I am sorry you have been put
through this fi asco.
Pamela Driscoll
Dexter
ONLY LAWYERS WIN
Regarding Judge Gillespie’s opinion
against Lane County Commissioners
Rob Handy and Pete Sorenson on the
Oregon Open Meetings Law: It’s standard
procedure; lose at the trial level, and win
on appeal. And the lawyers get rich. Which
is the primary purpose of our legal system.
It doesn’t accomplish anything else.
Frank Skipton
Springfi eld
THE FINAL TALLY
Well then, is this the fi nal tally in the
Dumdi/Seneca-Jones Timber Company
lawsuit against the county?
1) Cost of 5 half-time administrative
assistants: $180,000; 2) cost of one jail bed:
$300,000; 3) cost of lawsuit: $1,500,000
($300,000 so far to the county); 4) public
meetings laws actually violated: 0.
So Dumdi/Seneca-Jones Timber have
hypocritically stuck the county (i.e. the
citizens of the county) with an unwarranted
fat bill to gain less than half a jail bed. Oh,
and by the way, possibly bankrupted two
honorable men in the process. Nice job!
Ramona McCall
Eugene
SOLID VERDICT
Where did you get that Judge
Gillespie’s verdict has anything to do with
two commissioners meeting circumventing
Oregon’s Public Open Meetings Law?
I read three county commissioners and
their three budget committee appointees,
along with appointed representatives
for certain county commissioners (i.e.
Phyllis Barkhurst) meeting without public
notifi cation and out of the public view,
with the clear intent to deliberate and
reach decisions regarding the spending
of the public’s funds before they were
supposed to in a public session. All with
the admitted intent of circumventing
Oregon’s Open Meetings Law (the
technical “quorum” defense?).
Did you actually read the verdict?
I remember you asking once for me to
provide you a transcript of a speech
that you could have easily pulled off
the internet yourself. Did you do the
same with the Gillespie verdict? Rely on
someone else’s interpretation? Oooh, an
opinion based upon someone else’s bad
opinion. Bad journalism!
Gillespie’s verdict is pretty solid.
I doubt the state Supreme Court will
overturn it. I also can’t help but wonder if
you would have been so defensive of their
illegal action if the commissioners who
were found guilty were named Stewart,
Bozeivich and Leiken.
Chris Matson
Eugene
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EDITOR’S NOTE: We read it all, and we read that while
they were not sued to begin with, Judge Gillespie named
Commissioners Stewart and Dwyer as having participated
in the “serial” email meetings as well.
A BAD JOKE
EW recently reported that The Nation
magazine considers Mayor Piercy the
country’s most valuable local public
offi cial.
In 2007, Piercy voted for the Regional
Transportation Plan highway expansions.
She supports the new Seneca Sawmill forest
incinerator even though it will increase
deforestation and air pollution. Claims that
Eugene is concerned about human rights
did not result in public explanations of why
police sheltered criminals on the force.
Perhaps EW could investigate the sales job
that resulted in The Nation’s award, since it
probably avoided these inconvenient truths.
Carbon credits for highway widening is
a bad joke.
I fi rst subscribed to The Nation in 1983.
I found it useful for understanding the
Reagan regime. They run some authors I
like, notably Jeremy Scahill and Michael
Klare. But I dropped my subscription
during Bill Clinton’s time since their
partisanship ignored the crimes of the
Democrats and worse, they attacked Oliver
Stone’s excellent fi lm JFK.
Sorry that I don’t trust “liberal”
magazines who side with Allen Dulles
and Gerald Ford in their promotion of the
offi cial story of the military coup of Nov.
22, 1963, even if some of their other views
are good. See www.oilempire.us/the-
nation.html for details.
I hope there will be at least one city in
the U.S. that drops highway plans due to
peak oil and climate chaos before gasoline
rationing starts, but it probably won’t be
Eugene.
The writer Ed Abbey said “Sentiment
without action is the ruin of the soul.”
Mark Robinowitz
Eugene
EMX SUPPORT
I am writing in support of building the
EmX in west Eugene. In 2001 the Eugene-
Springfi eld community adopted a regional
transportation plan and Bus Rapid Transit
(BRT) was selected as a key element of
the plan. This plan was updated in 2004
and 2007 and today BRT, or EmX as our
local system is called, remains a key to
our transportation future. The EmX will
provide accessible transportation, reduce
green house gases and reduce our reliance
on fossil fuels. It will also encourage
commercial and industrial development
along its corridors.
In the U.S., during the early 20th century
when streetcars were introduced (including
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EUGENE WEEKLY FEBRUARY 10, 2011 5