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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2017
Timber: Up to
150 local taxing
districts could be
eligible to join suit
Linn County is the lead
plaintiff in the lawsuit but
its boundaries contain far
fewer acres of state forest-
land than Tillamook, Clatsop
and Washington counties, he
said.
“If some of the bigger
counties opt out, the merits
of the case are then suspect,”
said Smith.
The Clatsop County
Board of Commissioners is
scheduled to discuss whether
to participate in the lawsuit at
a meeting Wednesday night.
‘Half-baked strategy’
Pressure to settle
Smith, of the North Coast
State Forest Coalition, coun-
tered that counties and other
entities that opt out of the
case will reduce the state’s
possible liability and thus the
pressure to settle.
“They haven’t won the
case yet and I’m not at all
sure they will,” he said.
Opting out also rein-
forces Oregon’s argument
that state forests are valu-
able for multiple purposes,
including water quality and
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
Fifteen
counties
and
roughly 130 tax districts
are being pressured by
environmental and fish-
ing groups to opt out of
a $1.4 billion lawsuit that
accuses Oregon’s gov-
ernment of insufficiently
logging state forests.
recreation, Smith said.
While Tillamook County
has decided not to exit the
litigation, the coalition still
hopes to sway other enti-
ties, he said. “We’re trying to
make the case and our sup-
porters are talking to their
(county) commissioners.”
Linn County filed the law-
suit earlier this year on behalf
of itself and 14 other counties
that donated roughly 650,000
acres to the state.
Since then, the complaint
has survived the state gov-
ernment’s motion to dismiss
and has been certified by
Linn County Circuit Judge
Daniel Murphy as a class
action, which means other
counties and tax districts
are included in the litigation
unless they object.
The lawsuit claims Ore-
gon breached its contract
with counties in 1998 when
it emphasized environmental
and recreational goals as the
“greatest permanent values”
of state forests, rather than
maximizing revenues.
Up to 150 local taxing
districts that receive timber
sales receipts from harvests
from the Oregon Forest Trust
Lands contract could be eli-
gible to join the suit. That
includes schools, libraries,
public safety agencies and
other districts.
The other counties that
benefit from the trust are
Benton, Clackamas, Colum-
bia, Coos, Douglas, Jose-
phine, Klamath, Lane, Lin-
coln, Marion and Polk.
The Capital Bureau is a
collaboration between EO
Media Group and Pamplin
Media Group.
Balzer: Will not be returning
to fire district as an employee
Continued from Page 1A
Balzer, who served as
fire chief from January 2012
until he was fired, claimed
the fire district’s board retal-
iated against him because of
critical comments made by
his wife, Colleen, on social
media. According to the law-
suit, directors Sharon Clyde,
Linda Beck-Sweeney and
Garry Smith “chastised” Bal-
zer for “allowing his spouse
to express her criticism of
board members on social
media websites and in her
speech.”
Balzer alleged that the
district and board violated
his free association rights, in
that Balzer’s “intimate asso-
ciation with his wife” is enti-
tled to protection under the
First Amendment.
Balzer stated in his com-
plaint that the board’s actions
led to damages to his reputa-
tion and standing in the com-
munity. He sought compen-
sation of almost $678,000
and reinstatement of his
duties and benefits.
The three directors
named in the lawsuit pre-
vailed in a special recall
election in April 2016. After
Continued from Page 1A
Simon’s
ruling
has
renewed a push to remove the
dams, seen as an impediment
to healthier salmon runs by
some and an economic lifeline
by others.
Freeing the Snake
Continued from Page 1A
John DiLorenzo, the
attorney representing Linn
County, said the groups
within the coalition have
nothing to lose with their
request, but counties and tax
districts will suffer remorse if
they opt out.
“It’s a half-baked strat-
egy,” DiLorenzo said.
The lawsuit simply aims
to recoup revenues lost by
the counties when the state
changed forest policies in
1998 to focus on the environ-
ment and recreation instead
of maximizing logging, he
said.
By making that decision,
Oregon breached its contract
with counties, which turned
over their forestlands in the
early 20th century in return
for a portion of timber reve-
nues, DiLorenzo said.
Counties and tax districts
that exclude themselves from
the lawsuit won’t impact for-
est policy because the case is
purely about financial dam-
ages, he said.
“Opting out is a use-
less gesture that amounts
to turning down money,”
DiLorenzo said. “They will
have a lot of explaining to do
the next time they ask voters
for more money.”
Entities that exit the liti-
gation also won’t have any
influence if Oregon does
decide to enter settlement
negotiations, he said. “You
have to be at the table to have
a judge listen to you.”
Dams: Salmon canning projects ‘decimated’
interim Chiefs Jim Stearns
and Frank Swedenborg, Matt
Benedict was hired and has
served as the fire chief since
June.
Motion to dismiss
Both parties were able to
get the case resolved follow-
ing U.S. District Court depo-
sitions in October.
The motion to dismiss
the case was submitted by
Ronald Downs, representing
the fire district and board of
directors.
Charges in the case that
the directors had violated
Balzer’s due process and free
association rights were not
addressed in the court rul-
ing. The decision also did
not address claims that the
district had muzzled com-
ments of Balzer’s wife on
Facebook.
Balzer will not be return-
ing to the fire district as an
employee, his attorney said.
“That ship has sailed,”
Snyder said. “I would say
that Mr. Balzer is pleased
with the resolution. He is
pleased that he engaged
in this process and that it
resulted in a satisfactory out-
come for him.”
“Since the erection of the
Snake River dams, I have wit-
nessed the end of … com-
mercial canning in Astoria,”
Dioniscio Y. Abing, a self-de-
scribed adopted member of
the Chinook Nation who
worked in the former Bumble
Bee Cannery on Pier 39, said
during the rally at Suomi Hall.
Abing said the removal
of two dams on the Olym-
pic Peninsula’s Elwha River
showed the benefits, soon to
be followed by the removal
of several dams on the Klam-
ath River in Oregon and Cal-
ifornia. He said those opposed
to dam removal should look to
develop better rail connections
to move cargo.
“Astoria is symbolic of
the non-native demographic
groups that have lost the most
in the headlong rush of the fed-
eral government into hydro-
power development of the
Columbia River Basin,” said
Hobe Kytr of Salmon for All,
a local group supporting com-
mercial gillnetters.
Kytr said the previously
flourishing salmon canning
industry has been decimated by
projects like the Grand Coulee
Dam, which cut off the upper
third of the Columbia from
fish passage, and the dams on
the Snake River, while com-
mercial fishermen have been
unfairly scapegoated.
Dan Serres, the conserva-
tion director of environmental
group Columbia Riverkeeper,
said his group had monitored
temperatures in the reservoirs
behind each Snake River dam
in 2015. “The river tempera-
ture steps up with each dam,
and it’s obvious why,” he said.
He and Kytr both pointed
to 2015, when nearly all Snake
River sockeye salmon counted
Photos by Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
Interested community members sit on a presentation about dam removal organized by
the group Save Our Wild Salmon Monday at Suomi Hall in Astoria.
Astoria resident Patty Larsen looks at information during
a public scoping meeting presenting information about
dams along the Snake River Monday in Astoria.
at the Bonneville Dam died
amid warm water temperatures
before they reached Idaho.
Feeling disenfranchised
Joseph Bogaard, execu-
tive director of Save Our Wild
Salmon, said part of the reason
for the rally before the scop-
ing meeting was the disenfran-
chising nature of the federal
agencies’ collection of public
comment.
Instead of impassioned
public comment in front of a
crowd, visitors to the scoping
meeting walked into The Loft
at the Red Building filled with
posters displaying information
about the hydroelectric dam
system and scoping process.
Staffers from the federal agen-
cies stood by to help answer
questions. Public comment
was taken one-on-one through
a stenographer, or by writing.
Rebecca Weiss, a program
coordinator with the Army
Corps, said the format of the
meeting was meant to allow
more of a two-way dialogue
between visitors and staffers.
She said the agencies expect
about 50,000 public comments
from the scoping period, most
of them standardized form let-
ters created by various groups
and signed by supporters,
from as close as Astoria to as
far away as Sweden. “They’re
all weighed the same as far as
scoping,” she said.
Bogaard argued the format
allowed the agencies to con-
trol the information being pre-
sented — information based
on salmon recovery plans that
have been struck down by a
federal judge.
“It’s a dog-and-pony show;
that’s what it is,” Kytr said.
He and other locals took
umbrage at only one of the
16 meetings being held on
the coast, arguing that salmon
migrate out of the Columbia as
far as Alaska, affecting much
of the coastline.
Sonja Kokos, an envi-
ronmental compliance offi-
cer with the Bureau of Recla-
mation, said the 16 meetings
were sited based on the loca-
tion of projects and multi-
ple benefits they provide to
society. “Those are all on the
same playing field, just like the
fish,” she said.
Nulph: Decision could take several weeks
Continued from Page 1A
From The Daily Astorian,
April 8, 1976:
George William Nulph,
a 24-year-old ex-Marine
arrested for murder and kid-
napping charges Wednesday
morning was arraigned on the
charges in Clatsop District
County Wednesday afternoon.
He entered no plea. …
Nulph was arrested at his
residence at 165 S.W. Cedar,
Warrenton, accused of abduct-
ing 51-year-old Frances Ann
Christians April 2 from Silver
Point and taking her to a log-
ging road and shooting her.
Ms. Christians died of
three gunshot wounds in the
chest by a .22-caliber weapon
after being sexually assaulted.
Police say they haven’t deter-
mined the motive in the slay-
ing. …”
Nulph was given a life
sentence for the crimes that
shocked Clatsop County.
“Less than 10 years later,
the Department of Corrections
gave him a, quote, temporary
leave and simply let him out
of prison,” said Josh Marquis,
the Clatsop County district
attorney.
The second case
Weeks after he was let out of
prison on a “temporary leave”
in 1986, he raped women in
Multnomah County. Nulph
went to prison in 1987 for the
sex crimes and was sentenced
as a dangerous offender.
“The reason Measure 11
passed, the reason we devel-
oped even moderately tough-
on-crime laws in the 1990s was
because of cases like Nulph’s,”
Marquis said.
“One could make the argu-
ment, I suppose, that the man
has done 30 years in prison for
the rapes, which was the mini-
mum he was sentenced,” Mar-
quis said. “Why not give him
a chance, you know, to show
that he’s, in fact, rehabilitated
himself.”
The parole fight
Nulph was sentenced for
the sex crimes as a dangerous
offender. Judge Stephen Herrell
Submitted Photo
George Nulph in his 1976 booking photo from Clatsop County.
Submitted Photo
ONLINE
George Nulph sentencing appeals — background:
http://bit.ly/2iYgCr9
sentenced him to a minimum
of 80 years. After 80 years, he
could be considered for parole.
Later that year, the parole
board reviewed his sentence,
deemed it excessive and
reduced it, making him eligible
for parole now.
According to court docu-
ments, part of Nulph’s fight to
get a parole hearing is his claim
the anti-social personality dis-
order that made him dangerous
is in remission.
Marquis doesn’t believe
that.
“I can’t at this point share
the psychological reports, but I
can say that they are among the
scariest I’ve ever read and I’ve
handled over two dozen murder
cases,” he said.
Nulph’s good behavior,
Marquis said is “because he’s
in a facility (prison.) It’s sort of
a Catch-22.”
Marquis argues that not
only is Nulph still dangerous,
he was never held accountable
for committing the sex crimes
during his murder release
“because it (the murder) was
lost by the institutional mem-
ory of the state of Oregon.”
Marquis admitted, though,
Nulph was punished for the sex
crimes in 1986.
“In fairness, he was pun-
ished for the crimes of rape and
sodomy by Multnomah County
and the judges that had author-
ity over that. And in fairness the
parole board that exists today
bears no relationship either to
the institution or the people that
existed back in the ’70s and
’80s.”
But his concern is based on
the law.
“As bizarre as this sounds,”
Marquis said, “the parole board
is obligated to impose the rule
of law that existed when he
Frances Christians, seen
in an undated photo, was
killed in April 1976 by
George Nulph.
committed the crime, which is
essentially 1976.”
If his full sentence had
remained in place, he would not
have been eligible for parole
until around 2062. But now,
for the first time, Nulph gets a
parole hearing this morning at
the Oregon State Correctional
Institution in Salem. A decision
could take several weeks.
T HE D AILY A STORIAN ’ S
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January 1st &
December 31st , 2016 ,
between
you can submit your
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or drop by one of our offi ces in Astoria or
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on January 31st.
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