Fish, family and
the ties that bind
The reality of
America’s history
COAST WEEKEND
OPINION • 6A
143rd YEAR, No. 32
THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 2015
ONE DOLLAR
Somers resigns as Clatsop County manager
Heads east to
Maryland at end
of September
By KYLE SPURR
The Daily Astorian
Scott Somers, Clatsop County
manager since July 2012, resigned
Wednesday to accept a job offer in
Maryland.
He will become the city manager
of College Park, Md., a Washington,
D.C., suburb and home to the Uni-
versity of Maryland.
His last day with the county will
be on or before Sept. 30.
“The last three years that I have
worked for Clatsop County have
been the most challenging and re-
warding period of my career,”
Somers said in a statement. “The
county commissioners and excep-
tional staff at the county have taught
me a great deal; what’s more, I’ve
come to regard those I’ve worked
most closely with as friends and they
will be missed.”
Somers previously served as city
manager of Reedsport, as well as
with municipalities in Minnesota,
before being hired in Clatsop Coun-
ty.
Candidates had to apply for the
position in College Park, a city of
30,000, by May 31, according to
the Montgomery County Sentinel
newspaper. Somers will replace City
Manager Joe Nagro, who retired
after 25 years of service with Col-
lege Park, including as city manager
since 2005.
During his tenure, Somers helped
launch Clatsop Vision 2030 To-
gether, a visioning project to guide
long-range planning by the Board
of Commissioners and departments,
and gained state approval for a local
enterprise zone and designation of
the North Coast Business Park as a
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See SOMERS, Page 7A
Killing
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the birds
Audubon: Study
that found culling
cormorants to have
no impact ignored
By GOSIA WOZNIACKA
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Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
Clatsop County Sheriff Tom Bergin shows a radio room that had to be converted into a storage room because of the lack of space in the sheriff’s office.
Relocation could mean more beds in the county jail
By KYLE SPURR
The Daily Astorian
H
aving outgrown its location below
the county jail in Astoria, the Clatsop
County Sheriff’s Office is making
plans to relocate. The move could open up
space in the jail for 30 extra beds.
The estimated $1 million project will re-
locate the entire sheriff’s office into its pa-
role and probation building in Warrenton.
Construction will take six to nine months
to remodel the existing 9,500-square-foot
building and build a new 1,200-square-foot
modular building for housing evidence.
Sheriff Tom Bergin said the move is much
needed. Boxes and files are stacked up in
multiple rooms throughout the sheriff’s of-
fice, including in an old emergency dispatch
center.
Evidence is kept in a small locker, and the
rest is stored upstairs in the old jail, now the
Oregon Film Museum.
About 20 deputies often share the same
room to review cases and sort evidence.
See OFFICE, Page 10A
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
Clatsop County Sheriff Tom Bergin walks into the old Clatsop County Jail, the location of
the Oregon Film Museum. Because of confined space in the current sheriff’s office, some
evidence is stored in the old jail.
PORTLAND — Conservation
groups opposed to the ongoing kill-
ing of cormorants on the Columbia
River to protect steelhead and salm-
on say they have documents showing
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its own biologists that the measure
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The Audubon Society of Portland
and several other groups made the
documents public Wednesday. They
were obtained from the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service under a court order.
The groups had challenged the
killing in a federal lawsuit. In May,
a judge declined to block the plan to
shoot the cormorants, but the lawsuit
is ongoing.
One of the newly disclosed docu-
ments is an analysis by U.S. Fish and
Wildlife biologists concluding that
killing double-crested cormorants
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head — which are most affected by
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not eaten by the birds would be eaten
by other predators.
“As a consequence, efforts to re-
duce cormorant predation on steel-
head are expected to have no effect
on Snake River steelhead population
productivity or adult abundance,”
the analysis says. It adds that killing
cormorants is “similarly unlikely to
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salmonid populations.”
The second document, a timeline
written by Fish and Wildlife biol-
ogists, shows multiple staff at the
agency were aware of the analysis
and its conclusion. It also shows the
biologists were concerned that the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did
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Despite the analysis, earlier this
year U.S. Fish and Wildlife autho-
rized the Corps to kill about 11,000
cormorants — or 5,600 breeding
pairs — on East Sand Island at the
mouth of the Columbia between Or-
egon and Washington. The uninhab-
ited island is North America’s big-
gest cormorant nesting colony. The
agency also authorized the Corps to
oil 26,000 nests to prevent the eggs
inside them from hatching.
See CORMORANTS, Page 10A
Former trooper gets probation for child porn
By KYLE SPURR
The Daily Astorian
The former Oregon State Police
trooper who pleaded guilty in May
to child pornography charges was
sentenced Wednesday in Clatsop
County Circuit Court.
David Charles Corkett, 54, was
sentenced to two years probation
that includes registering as a sex
offender, completing a sex offender
evaluation and recommended treat-
ment.
He already began the sex offender
evaluation, according to his defense
lawyer Lisa Maxfield.
In addition, the sentence includes
Corkett forfeiting his Oregon De-
partment of Public Safety Standards
and Training license. He will not be
allowed to work in law enforcement
in Oregon.
Corkett, who served
child abuse, and the mate-
as a senior trooper in the
rial could only be lewd if
Astoria Area Command
the person possessing it is
Office until his resigna-
sexually aroused.
tion in January 2013, was
She specifically pointed
arrested in April 2014 on
to images from a Swedish
29 charges of second-de-
art film that won Swe-
gree encouraging child sex
den’s most prestigious film
abuse, a class C felony.
prize, the Guldbagge, and
As part of a plea agree-
was Sweden’s official se-
ment, he pleaded guilty to
lection for the 54th Acade-
David Charles
two counts of third-de-
my Awards in 1982. Other
Corkett
gree encouraging child sex
images were from nudist
abuse, a lesser misdemeanor charge. publications.
Corkett, who moved to Southern
In court Wednesday, Maxfield
California but is staying in Portland said she has never seen images like
to complete treatment, appeared in that be criminally charged. One rea-
court Wednesday. He declined to son she believed Corkett was able to
speak during the hearing.
plead to a lesser charge was because
Maxfield attempted multiple investigators could not confirm if
times to dismiss the case, claiming the children in the images were un-
the child pornography material was der 18.
a form of freedom of expression, not
Judge Paula Brownhill agreed
with Maxfield that the images were
not as extreme as other cases, but
were still illegal in Oregon.
“This is a different kind of case
than what we generally see with
child pornography,” Brownhill told
Corkett. “You have already given up
quite a bit before you are even sen-
tenced. You are no longer working
as a state police officer, and I would
imagine there are personal ramifica-
tions from that.”
However, the judge reminded
Corkett that child pornography is not
a victimless crime.
Corkett was wanted on the felo-
ny charges following an internation-
al child exploitation investigation,
“Operation Spade,” conducted by
the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
“It seems to me the resolution is
appropriate in this case,” Brownhill
said.