COAST WEEKEND: THREE DECADES OF CONSERVATION INSIDE
144TH YEAR, NO. 35
DailyAstorian.com // THURSDAY, AUGUST 18, 2016
ONE DOLLAR
Guilty plea in child murder case
Smith faces life in
prison but avoids
death penalty
By KYLE SPURR
The Daily Astorian
Jessica Smith will face life in prison
after she pleaded guilty Wednesday
to drowning her toddler daughter and
slashing her teenager in a Cannon
Beach resort in July 2014.
Smith, 42, of Vancouver, Washing-
ton, entered Alford pleas to aggravated
murder and attempted aggravated mur-
der following two days of settlement
talks in Circuit Court. An Alford plea
is a guilty plea from a defendant who
proclaims their innocence, but admits
the prosecution has enough evidence to
prove they are guilty.
Smith remained seated in court, kept
her head down and spoke quietly as she
answered for her crimes. In a written
plea petition, she accepted the evidence
against her, “wishing to avoid additional
stress and harm” to her surviving daugh-
ter, Alana Smith, her family and herself.
Last week, Judge Cindee Matyas
allowed a video confession to be played
at trial. The video was seen as a inal
blow to Smith’s defense.
Jessica Smith
pleaded guilty
Wednesday in
Clatsop County
Circuit Court
to aggravated
murder and at-
tempted aggra-
vated murder of
her children.
Danny Miller
The Daily Astorian
See SMITH, Page 3A
State school
board leaders
adopt lead
testing rule
Local districts need
a plan by October
By PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
Photos by Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Christian Saputo, center, and Sam Long made nametags and put the finishing touches on a bench for Saputo’s cat, who Long
said is drawn to metallic smells. More photos online at DailyAstorian.com
High-school
students perfect
welding at college
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
O
On the last day of class at Clatosp Commu-
nity College, Warrenton High School stu-
dent Brayden Chase cut out his grandfa-
ther’s nickname for him in metal, inserting
it into Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.
n the last day of class, Sam Long
and Christian Saputo put the inish-
ing touches on a bench for Saputo’s
cat. Brayden Chase inished cutting
out his grandfather’s nickname for him, forged
from a steel plate and inserted into Albert Ein-
stein’s theory of relativity. Patrick McCargish
inished fashioning a metal mask modeled
from his left hand.
Hoping to learn welding skills for the
future, 14 Warrenton High School stu-
dents on Monday completed an eight-week
course at Clatsop Community College’s
career-technical campus under Harley Bris-
tol, former director of the college’s weld-
ing program.
See WELDING, Page 10A
SILVERTON — The Oregon Board of
Education adopted a new rule Wednesday that
for the irst time requires school districts to
test for lead in water at district-owned build-
ings and report those results to the public.
The board in June agreed to fast-track
adoption of the new rule at the request of
Gov. Kate Brown, after widespread media
coverage of a scandal in Portland Pub-
lic Schools over lead in drinking water that
went unreported.
The rule requires school districts to sub-
mit a preliminary plan for testing for both
lead and radon by October, with a inal plan
due by January. While the rule gives no spe-
ciic deadline for testing for lead, it does
require districts to report results to the pub-
lic within ive business days and to send out
an annual report.
“What we like about this plan is that part
of what we saw in Portland was the com-
munity didn’t have access to information,
and in fact, when you have large institutions
information can get lost over the years,” said
Emily Nazarov, operations policy analyst
with the Oregon Department of Education,
who headed up the rulemaking.
“By creating a plan you have one place
that community members and parents can
look to ind out how does the school district
address radon, how does the school district
plan to address water.”
The Board of Education pushed ahead
with the rule despite protests from school
advocates who said the timeline was too
tight and expressed worry about where to
ind money to address the cost of testing and
mitigation.
“You are setting up a framework by
which we have assurances at the state level
that our schools are taking action in a com-
prehensive way toward health and safety,”
said Oregon Chief Education Oficer Lind-
sey Capps. “It’s an imperative that every stu-
dent should be entitled to.”
Additional costs
Warrenton High School students got to
play around with plasma cutters Mon-
day at Clatsop Community College’s ca-
reer-technical campus, after passing an
eight-week introductory course.
The requirement will entail hun-
dreds of millions of dollars in additional
costs to schools in the form of testing,
See LEAD, Page 7A
State, Linn County spar over timber lawsuit
State attorneys
ight class
action claim
By MATEUSZ
PERKOWSKI
Capital Bureau
ALBANY — Linn County
shouldn’t be allowed to repre-
sent other counties in a law-
suit seeking $1.4 billion from
Oregon over its forest man-
agement practices, according
to the state’s attorneys.
It’s also impractical for
the case to proceed as a class
action due to the different
forest circumstances in each
county, the state’s attorneys
claimed during oral argu-
ments Wednesday in Albany.
The county iled a lawsuit
against the state earlier this
year, arguing that insuficient
logging had cost 15 counties
— including Clatsop County
— more than $1.4 billion.
The complaint claims
these counties turned over
ownership of forestlands to
Oregon in the early 20th cen-
tury with the expectation the
state would maximize timber
revenues, but since 1998, for-
est managers have instead pri-
oritized wildlife habitat, water
quality and recreation values.
More than 650,000 acres
were donated to Oregon by
Benton, Clackamas, Clatsop,
Columbia, Coos, Douglas,
Josephine, Klamath, Lane,
Lincoln, Linn, Marion, Polk,
Tillamook, and Washington
counties.
Linn County is seeking
class action status for the law-
suit, permitting it to represent
the other counties in the case.
Scott Kaplan, an attorney
for the state, said the prob-
lems in managing the case
as a class action would be
“enormous.”
The counties donated 183
separate parcels of land to the
state, each of which contains
different slopes, tree types,
See TIMBER, Page 7A
EO Media Group/File Photo
Linn County is suing the state over how it manages Or-
egon Forest Trust Lands. The suit, filed on behalf of 15
counties that donated timber land to the state, seeks $1.4
billion in lost revenues.