OFF PAGE ONE
STANDOFF: Used explosives to blow door open
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East Oregonian
Continued from 1A
warning the onlookers they
were in danger.
Police in an armored
vehicle rolled to the hotel’s
north side just before 8 p.m.
“The ultimate goal of
having Abernathy come out
of his motel room peacefully
ended at 8:06 p.m. when nego-
tiators heard what sounded
like a muffled report from a
firearm,” Roberts reported.
Police at least twice
used a megaphone to try to
communicate with Aber-
nathy, but the attempt went
unanswered. Moments later
an explosion emanated from
the back of the hotel.
Roberts reported the
explosion
was
police
breaching the locked hotel
room, blowing it off its
hinges. Officers entered and
found Abernathy dead.
Detectives from Pendleton
and state police in coopera-
tion with the Oregon Medical
Examiner’s Office and Mason
County Sheriff’s Office
processed the motel room.
According
to
The
Olympian, Abernathy was
suspected in the deaths of Tara
M. Abernathy and Kenneth E.
Koonrad, who were found
dead Tuesday. Both appeared
to have died gunshot wounds,
according to the paper.
THEFT: Lost her teaching
job after embezzling $9K
from Morrow County district
Continued from 1A
Staff photos by E.J. Harris
ABOVE: State police ar-
mored vehicles stage on
the back side of the Motel
6 after police stormed the
room of an alleged homi-
cide suspect Wednesday
in Pendleton.
LEFT: Police officers in
tactical gear stage on a
balcony of the Motel 6
during a standoff with a
man wanted in connec-
tion with a double ho-
micide out of Shelton,
Wash., on Wednesday in
Pendleton.
CATTLE: Processed 185 cows, death toll at 17
Continued from 1A
for tagging and immuniza-
tions. A local veterinarian
was also on hand to assess
each animal’s body condi-
tion.
By day’s end, Rowan said
they processed 185 cattle
with another eight still to
go. The death toll, which
had been 14 animals, is now
17, including a two-year-old
heifer found dead early
Wednesday morning. A
necropsy determined the
heifer, which was seven and
a half months pregnant, had
suffered from a bacterial
disease and congestive heart
failure.
“She had a rough life,”
said Brent Barton, veter-
inarian with the Oregon
Trail Veterinary Clinic in
Hermiston.
Upon
investigation,
Rowan said it appears the
cattle were neglected over
an extended period of time.
There was no hay when offi-
cers first showed up weeks
earlier, and water troughs
had frozen over with 6-8
inches of ice.
“We have some really
malnourished animals we’ve
been contending with,”
Rowan said.
Rowan said they expect to
file multiple charges of first-
and second-degree animal
neglect against Hockensmith
in the coming days. Jake
Kamins, Oregon’s deputy
district attorney dedicated
solely to animal cases, has
been brought on as a special
prosecutor.
Hockensmith has not
returned multiple calls by
the East Oregonian for
comment.
The sheriff’s office has
already spent several thou-
sand dollars caring for the
cattle, Rowan said. It also
takes time and manpower to
make sure the animals are
properly fed, and to break
through ice in the water
troughs.
“It always stretches your
resources,” Rowan said. “At
the same time, it’s worth-
while. You hate to see the
animals neglected.”
Their goal Wednesday
was to tag each of the cattle
and give them much-needed
vaccines, such as de-wormer
and multi-mineral injection
to boost their immune
system. To do that, students
from Matt Liscom’s beef
production class at BMCC
joined the team to round up
reluctant cattle and run them
through the loading chutes.
From there, the animals
were ushered one by one
into a metal squeeze chute
designed to hold them still,
where Barton could perform
his assessment. Some cattle
thrashed, struggled and even
fell down inside the contrap-
tion, getting themselves
stuck in the process.
“They’re not used to
people handling them,”
Barton said. “Essentially,
they’re pretty tender crea-
tures right now. They’ve
Thursday, January 26, 2017
gree theft applies to values
of less than $100, second-de-
gree theft is for $100-$999,
and first-degree theft covers
values of at least $1,000.
Court records show
Hutchinson-Talaski has an
arraignment Monday in
Hermiston circuit court to
face charges.
District Attorney Dan
Primus said he had been in
meetings much of the day
and needed to look at the
case file before commenting.
The chamber is a
charitable nonprofit, and
its tax returns are available
from Guidestar.org, which
specializes in gathering and
providing data on nonprofits.
The chamber’s tax forms
shows it lost $25,221 in
2012, lost $27,677 in 2013
and lost $40,139 in 2014.
The Umatilla County
Board of Commissioners
on Dec. 22, 2015, gave
the chamber and its visitor
center $10,000 — $5,000
from community develop-
ment funds and $5,000 from
tourism dollars. The county
gave the chamber the same
amounts in 2014, according
to meeting minutes.
Commissioner
Bill
Elfering, who heads up
economic and community
development for the county,
said
Hutchinson-Talaski
was the chamber director
at that time and he never
suspected her of anything
dishonest.
“I had no clue,” he said.
“All of a sudden she just
wasn’t with the chamber
any more ... I finally got to
the bottom of it that she had
been accused of taking some
money.”
Those accusations, he
said, were rumors and not as
firm as an indictment.
Elfering said he didn’t
know if county funds were
involved in any theft. The
county at the time did not
track what organizations
did with financial awards.
Elfering revamped the coun-
ty’s giving process to make
it more formal and build in
some accountability.
The Umatilla chamber
was the target of a break-in
and theft in January 2015,
which Hutchinson-Talaski
reported. Umatilla police Lt.
Keith Kennedy said as fas as
he knew the two cases are
not related.
Hutchinson-Talaski was
a reporter in 2008 for the
Hermiston Herald, the EO’s
sister publication. And from
August 1992 until October
1998 she taught for the
Morrow County School
District. Records from the
Oregon Teacher Standards
and Practices Commission
show she lost the job after
embezzling approximately
$9,000 from the district.
Hutchinson-Talaski
signed an order from the
commission in May 1999
in which she agreed to
surrender her Oregon
teaching license and admit
to the theft. The order also
states a Morrow County
grand jury indited her on
Dec. 14, 1998, on multiple
counts of theft, and she
pleaded guilty to first-degree
theft. She avoided jail, had
to pay back the $9,000 and
served two tears of proba-
tion.
OREGON: House Minority
Leader wants taxes more
consistent for business owners
Continued from 1A
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
A newborn calf sits on a pile of alfalfa as older calves eat the alfalfa from under it
Wednesday outside of Hermiston.
“It always
stretches your
resources. At
the same time,
it’s worthwhile.
You hate to see
the animals
neglected.”
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
A black angus cow is trapped in a squeeze chute while
undergoing a veterinary check on Wednesday outside
of Hermiston.
— Terry Rowan,
Umatilla County Sheriff
BMCC students
Trevor Meyer, left,
and Jackson Wall
sort out one of
the smaller black
angus cattle from
a group of cattle
waiting for a vet-
erinarian to check
the animals on
Wednesday east
of Hermiston. The
animals are part
of a herd of more
than 200 animals
that were confis-
cated for animal
neglect.
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
already been through
quite a cold spell.”
Liscom, who works as an
agriculture science instructor
at BMCC, said they were
contacted by the sheriff’s
office last week to lend
a hand, and he decided it
would be a valuable educa-
tional opportunity for his
beef production students.
“We had a lab day anyway,
so it worked out well that we
could help out the county as
well as learn,” Liscom said.
Liscom said the class was
not there to pass any judg-
ment, or to determine who is
right and who is wrong in the
case.
“We’re just here to help
care for these animals as best
we can,” he said.
When it comes to cattle
care, providing enough
food and water is critical
to the animals’ survival.
Chris Schachtschneider, a
professor of livestock and
rangeland with Oregon
State University Extension
Service, said cows need to
eat at least 2.5 percent of
its body weight in dry feed
every day.
O t h e r w i s e ,
Schachtschneider
said
the animals lose their fat
reserves and the body essen-
tially begins to eat away at
muscles and other internal
organs. Once that happens, it
can be hard to reverse.
“If they’re too far down
that road, successful recovery
is very unlikely,” he said.
This year’s unusually
intense winter has caused
some issues for local
ranchers, Schachtschneider
said, especially for those
cows that have already begun
calving. Schachtschneider
said he’s seen instances
where ranchers are bringing
calves inside and using hair-
dryers to keep them warm.
But as long as the animals
have good feed and good
water, Schachtschneider said
they tend to withstand cold
fairly well.
“The animals are really
resilient to (the weather) if
they have proper nutrition,”
he said.
Dave Grimes, lab techni-
cian for BMCC’s agriculture
department, worked on a
ranch in Athena for 32 years
and said inclement weather
definitely makes things more
challenging in the fields.
However, ranchers should
have an obligation to their
animals.
“No matter what, they’ve
got to be worked,” Grimes
said. “They’ve got to be
taken care of.”
———
Contact George Plaven
at gplaven@eastoregonian.
com or 541-966-0825.
stitutional by the Oregon
Supreme Court in 2015.
Future obligations are at
least $22 billion more than
the system can pay.
Regular
increases
in employee costs and
benefits are a significant
factor in driving up the
state’s expenses every year,
according to a 2010 “reset
report” on the state’s budget
authored during former
Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s
administration.
That report explained,
among other phenomena,
how the state’s revenue
structure leads to revenue
instability.
Both Democratic and
Republican lawmakers have
echoed this observation.
The state’s general fund
relies largely on income
taxes, which can fluctuate
wildly with swings in the
economy.
Couple that with the fact
that Oregon’s economy is
typically more extreme than
the overall economy —
dipping lower in recessions
and rising higher in times
of prosperity or recovery
— and you get a pattern
resembling the Swiss Alps,
as state economists have
pointed out.
Bentz says that the cost
discussion has to start with
public employee unions.
Should they agree to cut
back, Bentz thinks three
kinds of a consumption
tax could be among the
possibilities: a gross receipts
tax, a value-added tax, and a
commercial activity tax.
Each type, says Bentz,
would ideally be broad-
er-based than Measure 97,
which would have imposed
a 2.5 percent gross receipt
tax on certain C-corpora-
tions with more than $25
million in annual sales.
Whichever type leaders
propose, it would ideally in
turn be complemented by
reductions in income taxes,
Bentz said.
House Minority Leader
Mike McLane, R-Powell
Butte, described his two
conditions for agreeing
to revenue changes: first,
making the tax atmopshere
more consistent for business
owners; second, addressing
costs, including PERS.
McLane argues busi-
nesses are asking them-
selves, “When does it end?
If we make this investment
in Oregon, how do we know
the tax structure in Oregon
just doesn’t change?”
He pointed to Measure
97 as an example of what
he characterized as the
prevailing political attitude
toward business. Both
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown
and Oregon Speaker of the
House Tina Kotek advo-
cated for the measure.
The proposal also mobi-
lized the business lobby,
which fought tooth and nail
— and paid mightily — to
defeat it at the ballot box.
According to Ferrioli,
the starting point for negoti-
ations on McLane’s second
condition — addressing
costs, including PERS — is
a list of possible changes to
PERS that’s been the focal
point of a legislative work
group led by Sens. Betsy
Johnson, D-Scappoose, and
Tim Knopp, R-Bend.
Two bills were intro-
duced in the Oregon Senate
this month reflecting some
of those ideas, including
changes to how benefits
are calculated. They have
faced preliminary vetting by
Legislative Counsel.
Unions said back in
September
that
those
potential changes that
are now bills would not
significantly reduce the
system’s unfunded liability
because,
legally,
any
changes lawmakers make
can’t touch benefits already
accrued.
Kotek, Oregon’s Speaker
of the House, said Monday
that while PERS has been
the focus of the business
community, it is not the only
driver of state costs.
“I think there is a
relatively
simplistic
understanding
among
some folks in the business
community that there is
only one problem and that
cost driver is PERS,” Kotek
said Monday at a meeting of
the Pamplin Media Group’s
Editorial Board. “I don’t
agree with that. I think it’s
a cost driver, but you have
to remember the ballot
measures that the voters
passed in November, have,
practically, an equal amount
of additional expense on
the state budget, over $300
million. So there are a
variety of things that people
want us to do, and trying to
figure all that out remains to
be seen.”