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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (May 16, 2018)
REGION Wednesday, May 16, 2018 East Oregonian Page 3A Umatilla County paying $43,000 for May election County outsourced mailing to private business to cut down on errors By PHIL WRIGHT East Oregonian Ballots, envelopes and postage for Tuesday’s elec- tion cost Umatilla County almost $43,000. Most of that money was split between private businesses and the United States Postal Service. The county owes: $17,379 to Ryder Election Services, Bend, for printing 53,557 ballots for the elec- tion; $5,521 to BMS Tech- nologies, Bend, for print- ing, filling and delivering envelopes for the election; and $20,000 to the United States Postal Service. The elections division used to handle this work in-house, said Dan Lonai, administrative services director for the county. “And no matter what, I always ended up with errors,” he said, “... stuffing errors, human errors. That was a big part of it. We want to make sure the right bal- lots are stuffed in.” Even a 1 percent error rate with 30,000 ballots means there can be 300 errors. And the state’s voter motor registration law boosted the county’s voter total to more than 40,000. As of April, the county had 42,519 voters, about 2,400 more than the same time last year. All told, the county owes $42,901. That includes $5,570 to Elections Sys- tems & Software, Chicago, for maintenance of the bal- lot reader. The costs are in the county’s 2017-18 budget and are about the same as what the county allocated for a part-time surveyor or improvements to the Staf- ford Hansell Government Center, Hermiston. The county board of commis- sioners plans to approve the payments during its meet- ing Wednesday morning HERMISTON starting at 9 at the county courthouse, 216 S.E. Fourth St., Pendleton. It wasn’t just a concern for accuracy that caused the county to outsource the work — the election costs began mounting for the county a few years back. First the Postal Service stopped using Pendleton as a distribution center, which for a long time allowed the county to receive a discount. “If I want to drive my ballots down to Portland, I can get still get a good dis- count,” Lonai quipped. And the county no lon- ger has its own print shop. So the county pays Ryder Election to handle the pre- cise printing on card stock that ballots require. Lonai said Ryder also services the county’s election machines. Ryder also is “right next door to Bend Mail Ser- vices,” he said, which prints the envelopes and makes sure the right ballots go inside. “That’s still a bit more than in-house,” Lonai said, “but everybody gets the right ballot.” Well, almost everybody. Some voters move and don’t update their registration, he said, and the ballot goes to the address the county has. That’s most common when someone moves out of a family home, he said. The county in those cases can mail a second bal- lot. Lonai explained serial numbers on the envelopes allow the county to keep track and make sure some- one does not vote twice. He said keeping this all under the county’s roof would be nice, but Eastern Oregon lacks the volume to make that work. The county also used its new elections machines. The first batch of results went online soon after the polls closed at 8 p.m., and late collections meant the final results weren’t avail- able until about 11 p.m. Elections volunteers and staff still must verify those later ballots, he said, and that alone can take a couple of hours. UNDERGROUND ROYALTY Woman faces 174 counts of theft, fraud, bail set at $100,000 By PHIL WRIGHT East Oregonian Claudia Renee Dugan of Hermiston pleaded not guilty Monday to 174 counts of fraud and theft. Umatilla County sheriff’s detective Kacey Ward inves- tigated the case and said Dugan is prison-bound. Ward said there are about 15 victims in the case and Dugan’s thefts totaled almost $6,000. He said his investigation covered from August 2016 to August 2017, then discovered her crimes stretched into late 2017. Dugan worked for sev- eral employers, most in elderly care, he said, and if she lost one job she moved to another. She used her cell- phone to take photos of the front and back of credit cards belonging to the residents, he said, and that gave her all the information she needed to use the cards to put funds onto the accounts of inmates at the Umatilla County Jail and in state prisons. The Oregon Depart- ment of Correc- tions caught on to her scheme, he said, and banned her from its facili- ties. She then tried clear her name using fake court documents. “She actually Dugan forged a judge’s signature,” Ward said. “That compounded things a bit.” Dugan copied the elec- tronic signature of a judge from legitimate court docu- ments onto her fake one, he said, a move that amounted to a felony in Oregon. Court records show Cir- cuit Judge Dan hill recused himself from the case due to a conflict. Records also show Dugan faced 25 counts of theft and fraud in August 2017. Ward said he asked the state to dismiss that case when he found a greater number of crimes. He also said police departments in Hermiston and Pendleton investigated Dugan, and he brought those cases in with his under one large umbrella. Ward said the investigation took months and required multi- ple subpoena and search warrants for financial records, particularly from Telmate, the com- pany that pro- vides phone com- munications to inmates at the jail and state prisons. Telmate proved difficult to work with, he said, some- times sending information in a minuscule font or without any context, which required more follow-up. The Umatilla County District Attorney’s Office charged Dugan with doz- ens of counts each for theft, identity theft, fraudulent use of a credit card and unlaw- ful credit card payments, according to the 39-page indictment. Circuit Judge Eva Tem- ple set Dugan’s bail at $100,000. Her next court hearing is June 11 at the Stafford Hansell Govern- ment Building, Hermiston. Certifications on the hook for local corrections officers By PHIL WRIGHT East Oregonian Two corrections officers in two local state prisons are facing the revocation of their state public safety certifications. The Corrections Pol- icy Committee of the Ore- gon Department of Public Safety Standards and Train- ing in February voted 10-0 to recommend that Hec- tor Torres and Robert Nun- garay lose their correc- tions certifications for life. The recommendations went up the chain to the Board on Public Safety Stan- dards and Training, which on April 26 approved the recommendations. Eriks Gabliks is the director of Public Safety Standards and Training. He said the policy commit- tee shoulders the work of reviewing cases, and while the board here agreed with the committee, the officers have not lost their certifi- cations. Rather, the depart- ment issued notice to the officers of their rights to request a hearing to contest the board’s decision. They have 60 days to make that request. “This is in essence a peer review,” Gabliks said, that involves representatives for the officer and the state and culminates with an admin- istrative law judge deciding the case. If an officer does not ask for the review, the depart- ment instead issues its final notice and yanks the certification. Torres in November 1999 started working as an officer for Two Rivers Cor- rectional Institution, Uma- tilla, and resigned in Sep- tember 2015, according the online Oregon Criminal Jus- tice Information Records Inquiry System. Nungarary was an officer at Eastern Oregon Correctional Insti- tution, Pendleton, from July 2015 until he resigned in April 2017. Torres “failed to super- vise an inmate work crew allowing additional felony crimes to be committed,” according to the minutes of the Feb. 13 Corrections Policy Committee meeting. That amounted to “gross misconduct,” the committee found, but Torres’ actions also involved the “misuse of authority” and dishon- esty for changing the time on logs to try to cover up his failure, only to later admit to the falsifications. The department in April found Torres resigned in lieu of termination. TRCI spokesperson Sherry Iles confirmed Torres’ dates of employment but did not have information about his case. Nungaray of Ontario in 2016 pleaded guilty in Malheur County to driv- ing under the influence of intoxicants, according to the committee meeting minutes and state court records, and entered into a diversion pro- gram. But he was arrested on July 5, 2017, for DUII. The court revoked his diver- sion and he pleaded guilty to the two DUIIs. The Cor- rections Policy Committee found he committed gross misconduct for the offenses and “when he failed to take a breathalyzer test and when he switched vehicle license plates.” The Corrections Policy Committee at its meeting May 8 looked at two more corrections officers at the Pendleton prison. Gabliks said the committee wants more information before taking action on Mario Lagao, and the committee voted to recommend deny- ing Tyler Beers’ certification for ten years for gross mis- conduct. State court records show Lagao in October pleaded guilty in Umatilla County to driving while sus- pended or revoked, but state courts show no criminal cases for Beers. Gabliks said the meeting minutes detail- ing their cases soon would be public. He also said the depart- ment is serious about hold- ing officers accountable. The state has about 8,000 public safety officers, he said, and fewer than 1 percent face this kind of discipline. 5/16 Cineplex Show Times $5 Classic Movie • Today • 12:00 PM Hang ‘em High LIFE OF THE PARTY (PG13) 4:50 7:10 9:30 OVERBOARD (PG13) 4:40 7:20 9:50 AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR (PG13) 6:30 7:00 9:40 3D 3:50* 10:10 I FEEL PRETTY (PG13) 7:30 RAMPAGE (PG13) 5:00 10:00 BAD SAMARITAN (R) 4:00 * Matinee Pricing wildhorseresort.com • 541-966-1850 Pendleton, OR I-84 - Exit 216 Staff photo by E.J. Harris Tour guide Cindy Iverson points toward the ceiling while talking about the construction of a service tunnel to a group of Pendleton Round-Up, Happy Canyon, and Portland Rose Festival princesses Tuesday during a tour of the Pendleton Underground. Pendleton’s underground ‘Comes to Life’ M ore than 75 actors will bring the Pendleton Underground Tours to life this weekend. Card players, dancers, Chinese workers and merchants from the past are all there to greet people. Pendleton Underground Tours “Comes to Life” is Saturday with 2 hour tours from 9:15 a.m. to 7:15 p.m. at 31 S.W. Emigrant Ave. Reservations are required for the special 21-and-older tours. Tickets are $50 per person. For more information, call 541-276-0730 or visit www. pendletonundergroundtours.org.
