10A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 2016
Forum: Ability to take care of yourself, neighbors is vital
Continued from Page 1A
Tyree Wilde, warning coor-
dination meteorologist at the
National Oceanic and Atmo-
spheric Administration, advised
the crowd to visit the agency’s
website to track the expected
levels of rainfall, the height of
rivers and the impact of season-
able weather as it unfolds.
Wildland ires — the ones
that reach the interface between
the urban and forested environ-
ments — are also worrisome.
In 2014, two wildland ires
sparked by slash burns and high
winds torched several hundred
acres in the Arch Cape area. Last
year, ires in Eastern Oregon
destroyed thousands of acres
and dozens of homes.
“Astoria actually has a very
high risk” for wildland interface
ires, said Neal Bond, protection
unity forester for the Oregon
Department of Forestry’s Asto-
ria district.
But here, too, property own-
ers have some control.
It isn’t the lame front they
need to worry about but the
embers that travel half a mile
to a mile and alight on dry nee-
dles and leaves in gutters, and
on wood piles beneath decks or
porches.
The solution is to clean gut-
ters regularly and remove any-
thing from around the home that
functions as kindling.
Homeowners are encour-
aged to clear away lamma-
ble plants from the property,
use ire-resistant vegetation for
landscaping, keep lawns mowed
and yard debris disposed of.
In addition, people should
maintain an obstruction-free
driveway so ire trucks can use it
to defend the home in case of ire.
“The clearer you can make
your driveway, the wider you
can make your driveway, the
better off everyone’s going to
be,” Bond said.
“If we can’t get in there
safely, and we can’t get out
safely, to be brutally honest with
you, we’re probably not going
to put a whole lot of effort into
your home,” he added. “We
have got to take care of our-
selves. We’ve got to take care of
everyone else as well.”
Self-empowerment
Coming full circle, Patrick
Corcoran, coastal natural haz-
ards specialist with Oregon State
University, pointed out how dif-
icult it is to physically prepare
for Cascadia until one has psy-
chologically prepared for it.
Humans, he said, are not
hardwired to brace for events
of such low frequency and high
magnitude.
However, “what to do
becomes a very easy set of tasks
once you actually expect it to
happen,” said Corcoran, who
visited Japan shortly after the
2011 earthquake and tsunami.
He reminded the audi-
ence that strengthening social
bonds is a form of self-resil-
ience. Because local emergency
responders will not be able to
respond immediately after Cas-
cadia, the ability to take care of
yourself and your neighbors is
vital.
“It will be such a big systems
failure that there is nobody com-
ing to help you in particular, that
we need to empower ourselves
to be our own emergency man-
ager,” he said, adding, “It’s a
matter of lovingly nudging our-
selves and our neighbors to pay
attention to this.”
Lobbying: Oregon has no contribution limits Developer: His
to report that information.
“Umatilla Electric has long
advocated for the interests of
our 10,000 members and the
surrounding region, on issues
that include energy, salmon
restoration, water conserva-
tion and rural economic devel-
opment,” Meyers wrote in an
email. “UEC will continue to
advocate for our members and
constituents on these import-
ant issues.”
Continued from Page 1A
modernize vehicle registration,
I think, will be an essential ser-
vice for Oregonians through-
out the state.”
For the Motor Vehicle
Software Corp., the gover-
nor’s attendance at the ofice
opening followed two years
of investments in lobbying
and political contributions in
Oregon.
The company reported
spending $108,000 on lobby-
ing from 2014 through March,
and contributed $107,500 to
local and state politicians’
campaigns since 2013. This
included $20,000 in contribu-
tions to Brown’s campaign,
with the latest contribution in
early May, according to state
campaign inance records.
Common practice
The combination of spend-
ing on lobbying and campaign
contributions is common prac-
tice for many companies and
interest groups in Oregon,
which has no limits on the size
of political contributions and
expenditures. However, it is
dificult for the public to track
the connection because the
state uses separate systems to
record political campaign and
lobbying spending. The state
also does not require lobbyists
to disclose if they play a role in
raising political donations.
As for the Motor Vehi-
cle Software Corp. spending,
it is dwarfed by the millions
invested by the state’s top lob-
bying and political spenders.
For example, the Oregon
Nurses Association reported
spending $2.3 million to lobby
lawmakers and other state
oficials from 2007 through
2015. It was the second largest
amount spent on lobbying by
any private sector group during
that time period, according to
analysis of state records by
the EO Media Group/Pamplin
Media Group Capital Bureau.
Since 2008, the nurses’ politi-
cal action committee also con-
tributed more than $1.5 million
to a long list of state oficials
and lawmakers, including
co-chairs of the Legislature’s
budget writing Joint Commit-
tee on Ways and Means.
Kevin Mealy, a spokesman
No contribution limit
Government agencies and
associations were also among
the top spenders on lobby-
ing in recent years, but they
cannot contribute to political
campaigns.
Although some groups
spend as much on lobbying as
political donations, Dan Meek,
a public interest attorney and
co-chair of the Independent
Party of Oregon, said he is
more concerned about Ore-
gon’s lack of campaign contri-
bution limits.
“Lobbying expenses and
reporting is overshadowed
by campaign contributions,”
Meek said. “I also think lobby-
ists are only as effective as the
campaign contributions they
can deliver.”
Meek also downplayed the
importance of the software
company contributing $20,000
to the governor’s campaign.
“Twenty thousand dollars
would be signiicant in another
state,” Meek said. “In Oregon,
it’s trivial.”
Liz Accola Meunier, a
spokeswoman for Brown’s
gubernatorial campaign, wrote
in an email that the governor’s
decision to speak at Vitu’s
ofice opening was unrelated
to the software provider’s
campaign contribution.
Bill Cross, a lobbyist
whose clients do not include
the nurses, electric coopera-
tive or software company, dis-
agreed with Meek’s claim that
delivering campaign contribu-
tions is a key measure of lob-
byists’ success.
“Some of us I think are
good lobbyists and we don’t
have big PAC’s,” Cross said.
“Money doesn’t drive every-
thing, but I recognize it is a
big factor. But I don’t think it’s
necessarily the role of a lobby-
Courtesy of David Thalberg
Gov. Kate Brown spoke at
the May 18 opening of the
Portland office of the soft-
ware company Vitu, which
recently won a state con-
tract to provide electron-
ic registration and titling
services at car dealerships
in Oregon. Vitu’s parent
company spent more than
$200,000 on lobbying and
campaign contributions in
Oregon starting in late 2013,
including $20,000 in contri-
butions to Brown’s guber-
natorial election campaign.
for the Oregon Nurses Asso-
ciation, said during this time
period the group advocated
for legislation that ultimately
increased school nurse stafing
and improved stafing at hospi-
tals. “The nurses have always
been patients’ most important
advocates, and nurses don’t
think that stops at the patient’s
bedside,” Mealy said.
The private sector entity
that spent the most on lobby-
ing over the last nine years
was Umatilla Electric Coop-
erative in Hermiston, at $2.7
million. The cooperative spent
a much smaller amount —
approximately $170,000 — on
political donations since 2006,
mostly to political action com-
mittees that contribute to
individual state lawmakers’
campaigns.
Steve Meyers, member
services administrator for the
cooperative, declined to cite
any speciic legislation or out-
come the cooperative hoped to
achieve through its lobbying
and political spending, and the
state does not require entities
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ist and a measure of success as
to how much he can generate.
Because in some cases your
clients — it’s not going to be a
realistic strategy they can use.”
Expanding business
As it turns out, vehicle elec-
tronic registration and titling
is just the start of the services
Vitu hopes to eventually pro-
vide in Oregon. The software
company already provides
software that allows govern-
ments to track transactions
from vehicle sales to salvage,
“so basically the birth to death
of a car,” said John Bruegge-
man, the company’s Vitu divi-
sion president.
The company lobbied in
the last couple of years for leg-
islation to allow the Oregon
Department of Motor Vehi-
cles to accept more electronic
transactions in the future. “We
had a bill last year and the year
before cleaning up some of
this stuff,” Brueggeman said.
Brueggeman said the com-
pany has been lobbying Ore-
gon lawmakers and oficials
in support of legislation that
would allow the company to
continue expanding the ser-
vices it offers.
“As we’re bringing these
types of services into areas, a
lot of times the law didn’t fore-
see what technology made
possible,” Brueggeman said.
The Capital Bureau is a
collaboration between EO
Media Group and Pamplin
Media Group.
primary focus is on
the potential hotel
Continued from Page 1A
“I’m anxious to get roll-
ing there and study that proj-
ect,” Hollander said. “I’m
conident I’m going to land
something there.”
While his focus is primar-
ily on the potential hotel, he
said his strategy when enter-
ing a new town is to invest in
multiple properties for more
eficiency.
Historic boiler
On the river in front of
The Ship Inn is the boiler
from the former White Star
Cannery, which was desig-
nated historic last year by
city’s Historic Landmarks
Commission. Hollander’s
purchase comes with the
lease Stokeld pays to the
Department of State Lands
around the boiler to pro-
tect the restaurant’s view of
the bridge and the Columbia
River.
The city has limited
development around the
boiler to the height of the
riverbank. Any develop-
ment must also take the his-
toric nature of the boiler
and nearby piling ield and
ballast rock into consider-
ation, and must be approved
by the Historic Landmarks
Commission.
A long run
Stokeld, from Cornwall,
England, started The Ship
Inn in 1974 with her late
husband, Fenton, who was
from Yorkshire. She said the
two were driven to open the
pub and ish and chips place
after visiting on vacation and
noticing a lack of seafood
restaurants in the ishermen’s
town.
Fenton Stokeld, who had
wanted to develop a marina
near the restaurant, died in
2004. Since then, Stokeld
said, she’s been trying to
retire.
“I’m going to be here for
another year,” she said. “I
have no idea after the year.”
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