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E O
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143rd year, No. 184
REGONIAN
TUESDAy, JULy 2, 2019
$1.50
WINNER OF THE 2018 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
LEXINGTON
CLOSED FOR BUSINESS
Wyden talks
about drones and
foreign policy in
Pendleton
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
Photo courtesy of the Heppner Gazette-Times
Curtis Thompson, left, is sworn into office by Lexington town recorder Dawn Greisen, while mayor Marcia Kemp and council
members Marcia Sticka, Bobbi Gordon and Bill Beard look on.
Rural Morrow County
community closed
after city council fails
to pass budget
See Town Hall, Page A7
By JADE MCDOWELL
East Oregonian
L
EXINGTON — The recorded
message greeting callers to
Lexington City Hall on Mon-
day was brief and to the point:
“The town of Lexington is closed
until further notice,” a woman’s voice
said. “Thank you.”
Roads and businesses in the town of
238 people, nestled in the wheat-cov-
ered hills just north of Heppner, are still
open. But city government is closed and
its two employees laid off after the city
council failed to pass a 2019-20 budget
before the start of the fiscal year.
The closure follows months of con-
tention at city hall between Mayor Mar-
cia Kemp and city councilors over an
empty seat on the council, resulting in
several full and “verbally rowdy” city
council meetings, according to cover-
age by the Heppner Gazette-Times.
Kemp said she doesn’t know why
three of the four city councilors failed to
show up to a budget hearing scheduled
for Thursday evening, but their absence
cost the city the quorum it needed to
pass a budget.
“(The Oregon Department of Rev-
enue) advised me since the town did
not approve the town’s budget by June
30, 2019, the town does not have any
authority to spend money as of July 1,
2019,” she wrote in an email to the East
Oregonian.
Kemp closed city hall, collected all
keys to the building and let the city
recorder and maintenance employee
know they were out of a job until the
problem was resolved. She has sched-
uled a public meeting for next Monday
at 7 p.m. at city hall to discuss the issue,
but said the League of Oregon Cities
PENDLETON — A self-described “pri-
vacy hawk,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon,
spent much of the morning praising the
manufacturer of a drone called Resolute
Eagle.
If anyone noticed the raptor connection,
it went by unremarked at a tour of the PAE
ISR facility at the Pendleton airport.
Wyden did spend time explaining his
work trying to protect American citizens’
privacy and his support for Pendleton’s
unmanned aerial systems industry.
“What you’re doing shows that you
should never freeze innovation,” he said.
“What you should be asking is how the
innovation is being used.”
He noted the potential economic impact
the drone industry could have on rural Ore-
gon, pointing to an article in The Oregonian
that showed jobs in technology had an aver-
age annual salary of $115,000 compared to
the $53,000 state average.
At the end of his tour of the World War
II-era hangar that now acts as PAE’s West
Coast operations facility, Wyden met with
PAE employees.
After telling the group that Congress had
extended the UAS test ranges to 2023, he
asked how he could help PAE from Wash-
ington, D.C.
EO File Photo
The town of Lexington sits nestled in the Willow Creek Valley surrounded by the
rolling foothills of the Blue Mountains.
advised her that councilors wouldn’t
be able to vote on a budget that night if
they showed up.
“I am awaiting further clarification
and still plan on having a community
meeting,” she said.
Councilor Bill Beard declined to
answer questions about why he hadn’t
shown up to the budget meeting last
week or whether he had known about it
ahead of time.
“I’m not going to comment because
there doesn’t seem to be any commu-
nication when it comes to [the mayor],”
he said.
Marcia Sticka, the lone councilor at
Thursday’s meeting, along with coun-
cilors Curtis Thompson and Bobbi Gor-
don, couldn’t be reached Monday.
Thompson was appointed to the
council June 11 over the objections of
Kemp and Sticka. According to the
Heppner Gazette-Times, they alleged
Thompson shouldn’t be on the council
because he cursed at and was “verbally
abusive” toward the city clerk after his
water was shut off for nonpayment.
After he applied for a seat vacated
in 2018 Kemp stated that the city char-
ter’s language about the “full city coun-
cil” voting on an appointment included
allowing the mayor to vote, even though
HB 2020 widens
urban-rural
divide
The impacts of the fight
over doomed House Bill
2020 aren’t fully clear yet
the mayor would normally only vote in
the event of a tie. After months of dis-
agreement, Beard and Gordon outvoted
Sticka last month to first clarify that the
city charter meant only councilors, not
the mayor, then voted Thompson into
office.
Former city councilor Sheila Miller,
who is still listed on the city’s website
as its emergency contact, said the meet-
ing was so heated it was no wonder
city councilors didn’t take note of the
special budget meeting that had been
announced. She said the mayor didn’t
do “due diligence” by making sure they
got a reminder.
“The last meeting was so stressful
and out of hand that they didn’t realize
it had been scheduled,” she said.
Eddie Dickenson, who has handled
maintenance for the city of Lexington
for a little over two years, had a differ-
ent take, saying it was suspicious that
three councilors “couldn’t be both-
ered to show up” after feuding with the
mayor. He said he normally enjoyed
his job, but had walked out of a cou-
ple of city council meetings to take a
break from listening to people “literally
screaming at each other.”
SALEM — The debate on climate
change appears to have deepened the gap
between the liberal politics of Portland and
Eugene and the conservative politics of
rural areas with natural resource and agri-
cultural economies.
The impacts of the fight over doomed
House Bill 2020 aren’t fully clear yet. Leg-
islators finished their work Sunday and
will head home to constituents with deeply
divergent views of whether Oregon ought to
limit carbon emissions.
Cap-and-trade advocates said the cli-
mate issue turned into a lightning rod.
One of HB 2020’s chief architects, Sen.
Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, said he
tried to mitigate rural concerns.
“Great care has been put into shielding
rural Oregonians from negative impacts
from the bill, while creating investments that
will breathe new life into their local econ-
omies,” Dembrow said. “The opposition
See Lexington, Page A7
See Climate, Page A7
By AUBREY WIEBER, CLAIRE
WITHYCOMBE AND MARK
MILLER
Oregon Capital Bureau
Destination Pendleton: Dutch couple travels
overseas to visit the Round-Up Arena
By BRETT KANE
East Oregonian
PENDLETON — “Wie is de
Mol?” might not mean much to
anyone stateside, but it’s a question
that drove a Dutch couple overseas
and all the way to Pendleton.
Rob Spelier and Maria van
Klooster of the Netherlands are
big fans of the Dutch reality tele-
vision show “Wie is de Mol?” or
“Who is the Mole?” in English.
Now in its 19th season, the
hit show pits 10 Dutch celebri-
ties together who must complete
certain tasks to earn money. The
catch is, one of them is secretly a
mole intent on keeping the money
earned as low as possible, leav-
ing it up to the other contestants to
unmask him or her.
Spelier, who works in financ-
ing, and van Klooster, a restau-
rateur, have been together for 14
years. They’ve been traveling
together ever since.
“I met him and I said, ‘If you’re
going to be with me, you don’t
have a choice (but to travel),’” van
Klooster said.
It was an ultimatum that was
fine by Spelier.
“I got hooked on the traveling
bug,” he said with a laugh.
Their current trek spans across
Oregon — they began in Port-
land and have a list of destina-
tions along the way, including the
Columbia River Gorge and the
Painted Hills near Mitchell.
Because they are such avid fans
of “Wie is de Mol?”, they had to
make time for a stop at the Pend-
leton Round-Up Arena, which
hosted an episode of its 17th sea-
son back in 2017.
The couple spent Saturday
morning at the historic rodeo sta-
dium where they watched vari-
ous cowgirls compete in the Green
Mile Barrel Race. But the arena
is but a pitstop along the way as
they take in the natural beauty of
Oregon, which they both agree is
vastly different from their home
Staff photo by Kathy Aney
country.
“It’s so beautiful here,” van Maria van Klooster and Rob Spelier of the Neth-
erlands found their way to Pendleton by way of
See Tourists, Page A7 the Dutch reality television show “Wie is de Mol?”