Wednesday, June 1, 2016
OFF PAGE ONE
FIRE: Training begins June 13 CLOUT: Umatilla Electric Co-op is the
Page 8A
East Oregonian
Continued from 1A
schedule.
“If this trend doesn’t change,
we’ll start to have discussions (about
entering ire season) this week, I’m
sure,” he said.
For now, the ire danger remains
low. The National Interagency Fire
Center in Boise issued a report that
says large ires will be more likely
in July and August, “but at this point
there is no reason to believe that the
risk of them is above normal.”
The ODF Northeast Oregon
District is responsible for protecting
nearly 2 million acres of private
forestland in mostly Umatilla, Union,
Baker and Wallowa counties. Hessel
said they work cooperatively with
other agencies and neighboring juris-
dictions, including the U.S. Forest
Service.
Brian Goff, ire staff oficer on the
Umatilla National Forest, said they
received several good storms at higher
elevations in May that have kept
things in fairly good shape. Lightning
did spark one small wildire on the
North Fork John Day Ranger District
about seven miles from Granite, but it
was contained.
Even with an average ire season,
Goff said that doesn’t mean there
won’t be any ires during the summer.
“It dries out in July and August,
and we will have ires,” he said.
“People being ire safe is just always
very important.”
Multiple agencies will send their
seasonal ireighters to a week-long
ire school beginning June 13 in La
Grande for training. ODF will also
contract two single-engine air tankers
for the district, as well as a Type 2
helicopter that will be stationed in
Pendleton.
Meanwhile, members of Congress
have their sights set on changing the
way the federal government pays for
ighting increasingly large and costly
wildires. For the fourth straight year,
the House has passed a bill known
as the Resilient Federal Forests
Act, which would allow the Federal
Emergency Management Agency to
transfer disaster funding to the Forest
Service and Bureau of Land Manage-
ment when they have exhausted their
ireighting budgets.
As it stands, the agencies are
forced to take additional funding
for ighting wildires from other
non-ire programs — a practice
known as “ire-borrowing.” The
Resilient Federal Forests Act would
also expedite thinning projects up to
15,000 acres, if they are the result of
collaboration.
Rep. Greg Walden, R-Oregon, has
been a vocal supporter of the bill.
“Our rural forested communities
have waited long enough,” Walden
said in a recent testimony. “They
have choked on smoke summer after
summer long enough. They’ve seen
their watersheds get destroyed by
catastrophic ire. It’s time to ix the
problem.”
On the Senate side, Oregon
Democrat Ron Wyden, along with
Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Maria
Cantwell, D-Washington and Mike
Crapo, R-Idaho, recently released
draft legislation that also targets
ire-borrowing and accelerating
forest restoration.
“This draft legislation is not
an end-all solution to the growing
problem of ire borrowing from
prevention and restoration funds
but it’s a step in the right direction,”
Wyden said.
Representatives for both Walden
and Wyden said any differences
between the bills will be addressed
in a conference committee in order to
reach a middle ground.
———
Contact George Plaven at
gplaven@eastoregonian.com
or
top private spender in Oregon lobbying
Continued from 1A
Ways and Means.
Kevin Mealy, a spokesman for
the Oregon Nurses Association,
said during this time period the
group advocated for legislation
that ultimately increased school
nurse stafing and “improved
stafing” at hospitals. “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 lobbying
over the last nine years was
Umatilla Electric Cooperative
in Hermiston, at $2.7 million.
The cooperative spent a much
smaller amount — approxi-
mately $170,000 — on political
donations since 2006, mostly to
political action committees that
contribute to individual state
lawmakers’ campaigns.
Steve
Meyers,
member
services administrator for the
cooperative, declined to cite any
speciic legislation or outcome
the cooperative hoped to achieve
through its lobbying and political
spending, and the state does not
require entities 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 resto-
ration, water conservation and
rural economic development,”
Meyers wrote in an email. “UEC
will continue to advocate for our
members and constituents on
these important issues.”
Government agencies and
associations were also among
the top spenders on lobbying
“Lobbyists are
only as effective
as the campaign
contributions they
can deliver.”
— Dan Meek,
co-chair of Independent Party
of Oregon
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
Oregon’s lack of campaign
contribution limits.
“Lobbying expenses and
reporting is overshadowed by
campaign contributions,” Meek
said. “I also think lobbyists 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 spokes-
woman for Brown’s gubernatorial
campaign, wrote in an email that
the governor’s decision to speak
at Vitu’s ofice opening was unre-
lated to the software provider’s
campaign contribution.
Bill Cross, a lobbyist whose
clients do not include the nurses,
electric cooperative or software
company, disagreed with Meek’s
claim that delivering campaign
contributions is a key measure of
lobbyists’ success.
“Some of us I think are good
lobbyists and we don’t have big
PAC’s,” Cross said. “Money
doesn’t drive everything, but I
recognize it is a big factor. But
I don’t think it’s necessarily the
role of a lobbyist 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.”
As it turns out, vehicle elec-
tronic registration and titling is
just the start of the services Vitu
hopes to eventually provide in
Oregon. The software company
already provides software that
allows governments to track
transactions from vehicle sales to
salvage, “so basically the birth to
death of a car,” said John Brueg-
geman, Motor Vehicle Software
Corporation’s Vitu Division
president.
The company lobbied in the
last couple of years for legislation
to allow the Oregon DMV to
accept more electronic transac-
tions in the future. “We had a
bill last year and the year before
cleaning up some of this stuff,”
Brueggeman said.
Brueggeman said the company
has been lobbying Oregon
lawmakers and oficials in
support of legislation that would
allow the company to continue
expending the services it offers.
“As we’re bringing these
types of services into areas, a lot
of times the law didn’t foresee
what technology made possible,”
Brueggeman said.
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