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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 11, 2016)
10-YEAR-OLD RETURNS LOST MONEY PENDLETON TAKES TO THE RINK REGION/3A 52/40 HOCKEY/1B THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2016 140th Year, No. 84 One dollar WINNER OF THE 2015 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD HARNEY COUNTY STANDOFF: DAY 40 PENDLETON FBI closes in on refuge SeaPort stays afloat By ANTONIO SIERRA East Oregonian Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian via AP Lights are seen from the Narrows roadblock near Burns as FBI agents surrounded the remaining four occupiers at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Wednesday. The four are the last remnants of an armed group that seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Jan. 2 to oppose federal land-use policies. Last holdouts say they will turn themselves in “You’re going to hell. Kill me. Get it over with. We’re innocent people camping at a public facility, and you’re going to murder us.” By REBECCA BOONE and LISA BAUMANN Associated Press BURNS — The FBI surrounded the last four occupiers of a wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon as they yelled at law enforcement of¿ cers in armored vehicles to back off, prayed with supporters over an open phone line, and said later they would turn themselves in Thursday morning The tense standoff between law enforcement of¿ cers and the four occupiers played out on the Internet beginning Wednesday night via a phone line being livestreamed by an acquaintance of occupier David Fry. Fry, 27, of Blanchester, Ohio, sounded increasingly unraveled as he continually yelled, at times hysterically, at what he said was an FBI negotiator. “You’re going to hell. Kill me. Get it over with,” he said. “We’re innocent people — David Fry, refuge occupier More inside Last holdouts come from diverse backgrounds See page 7A AP Photo/Cathleen Allison, File Nevada Assemblywoman Michelle Fiore, R-Las Vegas, spoke Wednesday to some of the four occupiers of a nation- al wildlife refuge in Oregon. camping at a public facility, and you’re going to murder us.” “The only way we’re leaving here is dead or without charges,” Fry said, who told the FBI to “get the hell out of Oregon.” Fry and the three others are the last remnants of an armed group that seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Jan. 2 to oppose federal land-use policies. The three others are Jeff Banta, 46, of Elko, Nevada; and married couple Sean Anderson, 48, and Sandy Anderson, 47, of Riggins, Idaho Fry said Wednesday the group was surrounded by armored vehicles. A Nevada legislator, Michele Fiore, called in to try to get the occupiers to calm down. Fiore said she could help them only if they stayed alive. “I need you guys alive,” said the Republican member of the Nevada Assembly who was in Portland earlier in the day to show support for Ammon Bundy, the jailed leader of the occupation. Fiore told occupiers Wednesday night she was driving to the refuge to try to help negotiate their exit from the refuge. The occupiers prayed with Fiore and others as the situation dragged on for hours Wednesday night. Local police, ¿ re and ambu- lance agencies now have an idea of what they will pay for Umatilla County dispatch services. The advisory committee for the dispatch center has more than a dozen members that haggled for almost seven months on how to charge for services. Tuesday they reached a consensus. Police agencies will pay based on the county’s assessed values of their respective communities at a rate of 28.61 cents per $1,000, and ¿ re and ambulance services will pay $15 per Elfering call. Quick response teams, which are not full ambu- lance services, will pay $7.50 per call. Umatilla County Commis- sioner Bill Elfering said there is no fair way to distribute the costs, but this was the most equitable and perhaps simplest tax to pay for a vital public safety service. The police departments of Pendleton, Hermiston, Umatilla, Stan¿ eld and Echo, Pilot Rock and the county sheriff’s of¿ ce rely on the dispatch center to handle 9-1-1 and non-emergency calls. The center also ¿ elds calls for the Pendleton ¿ re department, the ¿ re districts of Hermiston, Stan¿ eld, Pilot Rock and Umatilla, along See SEAPORT/8A PERS fund dH¿ FLW JURZV 20 SHUFHnW By TED SICKINGER The Oregonian with most ambulance services in the county. Representatives from several agencies and cities serve on the committee. Milton-Freewater, the Confed- erated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and Oregon State Police handle their own dispatch services. The dispatch center has a budget shy of $2.17 million, according to the county. State and federal sources cover about PORTLAND — Oregon Treasurer and Portland mayoral candidate Ted Wheeler issued a statement last week noting that the state pension fund’s investment returns were 2.1 percent in 2015. That beat the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, and topped the performance of 88 percent of comparable institutional investment funds. What Wheel- er’s statement didn’t mention was that invest- ment returns for More inside the year still fell Oregon 5.6 percentage economy on points below the slow rebound system’s 7.75 See page 2A percent assumed rate of return for 2015. That’s terrible news for public employers and taxpayers. It means the pension system’s unfunded liability just increased by another See DISPATCH/8A See PERS/8A See STANDOFF/8A Umatilla County ¿ nds formula to pay for dispatch By PHIL WRIGHT East Oregonian SeaPort Airlines is trying to bounce back from Chapter 11 bank- ruptcy and wants Pendleton to stay in its longterm plans. In the short term, SeaPort continues to shrink. The Port- land-based airline announced Feb. 3 that it would cease service between Portland and North Bend, meaning its Pendleton-Portland route is its only air service in the Western United States. A handful of recent À ight cancellations at the Eastern Oregon Regional Airport, combined with the news of the bankruptcy ¿ ling, didn’t look like a good sign for SeaPort’s future in Pendleton. But Tim Sieber, SeaPort’s newly installed president, said the company has no intention of leaving the Round-Up City. µAFFHOHUDWHd UHVWRUDWLRn¶ SURSRVHd Rn 120 DFUHV Project crafted over three national forests By GEORGE PLAVEN East Oregonian AP i le photo The Blue Creek fi re in the Blue Mountains glows in this view south of Walla Walla on July 20, 2015. An interdisciplinary team of scientists has crafted an ambitious proposal to do “accelerated restoration” on 1.27 million acres of federal forests in the Blue Mountains. The Forest Resiliency Project calls for a whopping 610,000 acres of tree thin- ning and prescribed burns to lower the risk of wild- ¿ res within the Umatilla, Wallowa-Whitman and Ochoco national forests. The Forest Service esti- mates more than 2.3 million acres of dry forests across the Blues are overgrown and vulnerable to insects, disease and ¿ re. It would take at least 30 years for the agency to catch up on the backlog, working at its current pace. In response, the Eastside Restoration Strategy was launched in 2013 to accel- erate the pace and scale of active forest management. Bill Aney, of Pendleton, was appointed program coordinator and hired a team of specialists to start identifying bigger, broader projects. See FORESTS/8A
