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HURRICANE/7A
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64/51
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2016
140th Year, No. 254
One dollar
WINNER OF THE 2016 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
HERMISTON
Five guys vie for four council seats
Will take office in
Jan. for four year term
Mark Gomolski
By JADE MCDOWELL
East Oregonian
Hermiston voters will be
faced with fi ve choices for
city council on the November
ballot, but there are only four
seats available.
Incumbents
Manuel
Gutierrez, Rod Hardin, John
Kirwan and Doug Primmer,
Gomolski
Gutierrez
and
challenger
Mark
Gomolski, are all running
against each other for the four
Hardin
Kirwan
open at-large council seats.
The top four vote-getters will
take offi ce in January for a
Primmer
four year term.
Here are the candidates, in
alphabetical order:
Gomolski retired to
Hermiston from Chicago
about a year and a half ago
and said he is anxious to get
involved in the community in
a more offi cial capacity.
In Chicago he worked
in various positions in city
and county government.
In Hermiston he managed
Umatilla County Commis-
sioner Bill Elfering’s re-elec-
tion campaign in the spring.
Author Roland Smith speaks at Armand Larive Middle School
Gomolski said as a city
councilor he would work to
increase the city’s communi-
cation with citizens. He said
often Hermiston residents
don’t even know who their
city councilors are, and he
would like to change that.
He also had ideas for
attracting tourism, including
pursuing grants to expand
the Maxwell Siding train
museum, starting a hot air
See COUNCIL/8A
Hash oil
labs pose
explosive
danger
Creating, possessing potent
pot product against the law
By PHIL WRIGHT
East Oregonian
certain corporations’ Oregon sales
exceeding $25 million.
The tax would bring in an esti-
mated $3 billion per year in new
revenue, representing the largest
sales tax in the state’s history and
boosting the state’s general fund by
25 percent.
Union-backed Our Oregon
placed the measure on the ballot
through the state’s initiative peti-
tion process. Supporters say the
new money would help provide
more sustainable and adequate
funding for education, health care
and senior services. Meanwhile,
opponents point to estimates by
Police in Umatilla County in recent
months discovered home labs built to
extract oils from marijuana. The police
chiefs for Pendleton and Hermiston
stressed the butane hash oil opera-
tions come with serious public safety
concerns.
“We’re not just talking about mari-
juana here, people,” Hermiston Police
Chief Jason Edmiston said. “This is
dangerous.”
Pendleton police found one lab when
responding to an explosion the night of
July 23 at a home on the north end of
Southwest 12th Street off Nye Avenue.
Pendleton
Police
Chief
“We’re not
Stuart Roberts
just talking
said two people
suffered burns
about mari-
when the oven
juana here,
they were using
exploded.
And Herm- people. This is
iston
police
dangerous.”
in
August
happened upon — Jason Edmiston,
Hermiston police chief
a neighborhood
lab using more
than 17 pounds of marijuana stems and
leaves to create the oil.
“Just like we used to do the meth labs,”
Edmiston said, “we had to call clean-up
folks.” The Blue Mountain Enforcement
Narcotics Team also responded.
Roberts is the chairman of the drug
team’s board. Even though marijuana is
legal, creating and possessing hash oil is
against the law, he said, and the team has
serious investigations underway to crack
down on producers selling pounds of the
substance on the black market.
A market, that, in effect, is evolving
out of states legalizing the growing of
marijuana.
The production of hash oil involves
fi lling a canister with marijuana — often
the leftover parts of the plant — then
soaking it with a solvent such as butane,
which leaches the oils containing the
intoxicating chemicals. The solvent
must then be burned off to create the oil.
Roberts said that is what makes the labs
“so stinking volatile.”
The remaining substance, though, is a
purer form of marijuana, which, he said
“is the obvious selling point.”
Hash oil also has street names of
honey oil or dabs, and looks like brown
or honey-colored glass candy. Roberts
said part of the allure is lay folks would
not recognize the drug. But instructional
videos for making hash oil abound
online.
Roberts said the labs are a statewide
problem and a common talking point
among police administrators. Edmiston
See TAX/8A
See OIL/8A
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Oregon author Roland Smith signs a copy of his new novel “Above” for Micah Wattenburger, 6, on Wednesday at Armand Larive
Middle School in Hermiston.
Oregon author details real-life adventures behind novels
By JADE MCDOWELL
East Oregonian
When author Roland Smith
was in fourth grade, he decided he
was going to catch Bigfoot.
It felt like there were stories in
the newspaper about Sasquatch
sightings every day, he said, so
it seemed perfectly logical to his
little boy mind that if he just dug a
hole in the back yard of his parents’
“When my new book comes out, you’ll know
some of it was written right here in Hermiston.”
— Roland Smith, author, on writing everyday
Portland home and covered it with
newspapers, Bigfoot would fall in.
Instead one morning as he ate
his cereal he watched his mother
abruptly disappear from view.
“I said, ‘It works!’” he told
an audience at Armand Larive
Middle School on Wednesday.
“When she got out of the hospital
— it was just a broken femur, but
apparently that hurts — I was
grounded forever.”
It’s only fi tting that one of
the Oregon author’s young adult
novels is titled Sasquatch.
Most of Smith’s books relay
fantastical adventures, but each
of them have some roots in his
life. Smith started working at the
Oregon Zoo at age 18 and later
became a wildlife biologist, so
scenes in his books featuring
See AUTHOR/8A
Measure 97 foes raise $16.8M
to fi ght corporate sales tax
By PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
SALEM — Opponents of a
controversial corporate sales tax
measure on the November ballot
have reported raising $16.8 million
to quash the proposal.
Two political action committees
supporting Measure 97 have raised
more than $7 million and spent
nearly $3 million, according to the
Secretary of State’s Offi ce. The
committees seeking to defeat the
measure reported spending $11.6
million. Both sides fi led a required
campaign fi nance report by a late
Tuesday deadline.
The Measure 97 appears to be
on track to set a record for the most
raised for a ballot measure contest,
said Jim Moore, political science
professor and director of the Tom
McCall Center for Policy Innova-
tion at Pacifi c University.
Opponents and supporters are
“still sitting on piles of money to
use to defeat or pass this thing,”
Moore said.
The current record was set by
Measure 92 in 2014, a proposal
to require labeling of genetically
modifi ed foods. Opponents of
that measure raised more than $20
million, while supporters raised $8
million.
Measure 97 would levy a 2.5
percent “gross receipts “tax on