LOCAL
Wallowa.com
Wednesday, March 9, 2022
A11
Commissioners fl ustered with Legislature
Disappointed
at getting
short end of
the stick
By BILL BRADSHAW
Wallowa County Chieftain
ENTERPRISE — Dis-
appointment over Oregon’s
rural-urban divide was the
order of the day Wednesday,
March 2, as the Wallowa
County Board of Commis-
sioners reviewed the legis-
lative session that was about
to conclude last week.
“Well, the (legislative)
session’s winding down and,
as usual, we lost just about
everything we were going
for strongly,” Commissioner
Todd Nash said in a review
largely for the audience.
Ag overtime
In noting the impending
passage of the ag overtime
bill, he commended state
Rep. Bobby Levy for her
eff orts to see it stopped.
“Rep. (Bobby) Levy gave
one of the top three impas-
sioned eff orts to sway the
overtime (bill), but failed
in that,” Nash said. “We
have pushed really hard to
get an exemption for live-
stock. Livestock don’t know
the constraints of time and
the industry, in general, has
some extremely long hours,
but in a lot of cases it’s a life-
style rather than a job. It’s
very hard to convey that to
people who don’t understand
the industry and don’t under-
stand that recreation and
family and everything else
overlaps and the amount of
money that’s actually avail-
able for employment and
the compensation, whether
it’s through a half a beef or
allowing them to keep their
dogs or horses there or pay
their vet bills or sometimes
gasoline or sometimes hous-
ing doesn’t comport with
them. They don’t under-
stand. It didn’t matter that
the competitive nature of
trying to maintain and retain
employees is extremely
Bill Bradshaw/Wallowa County Chieftain
From left, Wallowa County Commissioners John Hillock and Susan Roberts listen as Todd Nash
speaks Wednesday, March 2, 2022, during their regular meeting. The commissioners were
disappointed in the Oregon Legislature’s actions that were detrimental to rural counties.
hard. So that’s going to go
through and it’s just more of
a detachment in the rural-ur-
ban divide. It’s very disap-
pointing for a lot of folks.”
Commission
Chair-
woman Susan Roberts
agreed.
“The sad thing is in lis-
tening to the testimony, you
have lots of producers who
hire these folks that will,
those folks depend on that
overtime to make up that
income,” she said. “They’re
OK with six days a week or
so. Now we’re going to limit
them to 40 hours and that’s
all you get. It’s going to
harden their lives.”
“And it causes people to,
rather than getting an hourly
wage or a salary, it causes
them to start another enter-
prise, so they’re hiring them
on the hay side or on the
fencing side,” Nash said. “It
puts people in a position of
doing things they wouldn’t
have done otherwise to try to
accommodate some of that.
There’s ways to get around
it.”
Wolf compensation
Nash noted another loss
for rural communities — a
bill aimed at compensating
livestock producers for wolf
predation.
“The wolf compensa-
tion, we lost on as well,”
he said. “Millions of dollars
were distributed throughout
the state. We had substan-
tial losses this year, more
than ever across the state,
and Wallowa County was no
exception. The really illegit-
imate environmental com-
munity that has no impact
whatsoever stood up once
again and opposed this and
our liberal, downtown Port-
land legislators bought into
it and opposed it and at the
end of the day we didn’t get
funded on that.”
Nash saw that as a prime
example of the rural-urban
divide.
“Wolf compensation was
one of those that a Demo-
crat from Portland said, ‘No,
I don’t want that.’ And it got
taken off ,” he said.
Roberts said those kinds
of things happen because
the Democrats — the largely
urban party — dominate the
Legislature and thus hold
the chairmanships on most
committees.
“If they don’t want to
hear it, they don’t,” she said.
“It’s statewide and it’s very
frustrating. They live on the
other side of the state and
they think that we’re stupid
because we choose to live
out here in the sticks, even
though we try and impress
upon them we’re not as stu-
pid as they might think. We
like it out here in the sticks.
We could go on forever.”
Commissioner John Hill-
ock agreed.
“Even though in Portland
they talk about the urban-ru-
ral divide, it’s a bigger deal
than what you might think,”
he said. “We were at one
meeting when I was going
to commissioners’ college
and one lady asked if we had
libraries out here. I had to
go cool off a commissioner
from one county because he
was about to blow a cork.
That’s the mentality you get.
… My response to her was,
‘And guess what, we have
internet, too.’ She didn’t
think we had internet.”
“And dishwashers, occa-
sionally,” Roberts laughed.
“The bottom line is that it’s
sad that our body politic that
our Founding Fathers set up
for us has devolved to this
what it is today.”
Other business
In other business, the
commissioners:
• Scheduled two pub-
lic hearings on road vaca-
tions at Wallowa Lake for
April 6. At 10 a.m. will be
a hearing for the vacation of
a portion of Pollock Road
requested by Dale Mam-
mon. At 10:30 a.m. will be
a hearing for the vacation
of a portion of Hamilton
Road requested by David
Graham.
• Accepted the retire-
ment and rehired on an
hourly basis Grants Man-
ager Chrystal Allen. Rob-
erts said Allen retired Feb.
28 and will be available to
help train her replacement.
• Hired Harold D. Black
in the Planning Department
on an on-call basis. He pre-
viously had been a part-
time employee.
• Approved resolutions
appointing Brenda Micka
as budget offi cer for the
county and for the Wal-
lowa Lake County Service
District.
• Appointed three mem-
bers to the county Compen-
sation Board.
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