IT’S ABOUT TIME
NEWS
BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN
COUNTY COMMISSION TARGETS
CITIZEN INITIATIVES
BY D AV I D WA G N E R
O
PIPSISSIWA,
CHIMAPHILA
UMBELLATA
B
y July, gardens are burgeoning with flowers and
vegetables. They will thrive through the summer
only if we pay diligent attention to adequate
watering. Digital hose timers are great for extended
trips out of town. We also have to deal with
combatting weeds and pests. I wrestle with use of poisons.
Slug bait offends my organic sensibilities but it seems the
only effective way to keep snails away from our hostas and
lilies.
Is it really necessary to use strictly organic fertilizers?
Lawn grass can’t tell the difference between one source of
nitrate or another; fixed nitrogen is fixed nitrogen to a plant.
What about the commercial fertilizer additives? Horse
manure seems pretty noble at the end of these ruminations.
July is a squirrelly month for Willamette Valley urbanites.
Can we trap and eliminate fox squirrels humanely? It is not
legal to catch and release these arboreal rats to another
neighborhood.
The harsh realities of nature show up if we keep eyes open
when taking our neighborhood walks. A bushtit nest on the
ground reveals predators at work. The little hatchlings don’t
have a chance once discovered. Crows and jays don’t survive
on bugs, nuts and berries. A dried and flattened garter snake
shows roadkill isn’t just a country highway sight.
Escape to the mountains is always good for keeping
mental balance with nature. Flower diversity is amazing in the
forests and ridgetop meadows. Day hikes are best as high
country camping is generally made intolerable by mosquitoes
until late August.
n June 28, the Lane County Board of Com-
missioners discussed giving themselves
the power to block certain citizen-powered
ballot measures the board deems not of
“county concern” before those measures
are voted on.
Commissioner Pete Sorenson was the lone dis-
senting voice on the agenda item labeled “Potential
Changes to Lane County Initiative and Referendum
Process.”
Sorenson tells EW while no actual vote was tak-
en, the “dominant flavor” was to move ahead with
an ordinance. He says were the commission to move
ahead, he has two questions that he would like an-
swered. First, “Is there a problem?” Sorenson says
he doesn’t think Lane County has had a lot of prob-
lematic local measures.
During the meeting, Josephine County’s 2014
ban on growing genetically modified crops that was
struck down because it conflicted with Oregon law
was pointed out as an example.
Second, Sorenson says there is already a system
in place for dealing with local ballot measures that
are passed by citizen votes but might have por-
tions of them that are unlawful on a state level or
are beyond the scope of the county, and that process
throws out nonlegal portions of measures. He calls
the proposed ordinance a “solution in search of a
problem.”
The Josephine County ban was still developing
support when, in 2013, the Oregon Legislature es-
sentially banned all GMO bans when it made the
state the sole regulator of seeds.
The Josephine County GMO ban passed but
was struck down thanks to the state law. If the Lane
County Commission succeeds in pushing through
this ordinance while local group Community Rights
David Wagner is a botanist who works in Eugene. He teaches moss classes,
leads nature walks and makes nature calendars. Contact him directly at fern-
zenmosses@me.com.
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Lane County is working on two initiatives — one
to ban aerial spraying of herbicides and another ad-
dressing the community right to self-government
— it too will ban a local rights effort while it is still
developing.
Sorenson says the ordinance could “suppress
rights people currently enjoy,” and to change rules
on a process that is already under way, such as the
Community Rights initiatives, is “frowned upon.”
Ann Kneeland, attorney with Community Rights
Lane County, says an ironic aspect of the proposed
ordinance is that the county commission is target-
ing Community Rights initiatives that seek to create
greater legal authority for citizens to protect them-
selves from corporate harms.
Kneeland says that “local government is trying
to stop the people from engaging in this lawmaking
at the behest of corporate interest.” She adds, “Here
you now have the Lane County Commission doing
precisely what the initiatives are trying to prevent.”
The initiatives are trying to resurrect the people’s
authority to protect themselves, Kneeland says. The
initiatives are “calling out that government and in-
dustry are in bed together.”
Kneeland says that the discussion was not an ar-
bitrary act of the board being concerned about the
cost of the election. That, she says, is a red herring.
“The elephant in our collective room is the govern-
ment operating at the behest of corporations and not
to the benefit of the planet.”
Sorenson says if the proposed ordinance goes
forward, there would be a public meeting.
Community Rights Lane County meets 8 pm on
the first Monday of each month, at the First United
Methodist Church, 1376 Olive Street. More infor-
mation about CRLC can be found at Community-
RightsLaneCounty.org.
@EUGENEWEEKLY
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