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About The Blue Mountain eagle. (John Day, Or.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 18, 2015)
A8 Blue Mountain Eagle ROADS failure to take the order to the &RXUWDQGVKHULII¿UVWPDGHWKH closures illegal. Sproul questioned what sup- Continued from Page A1 port the Court has found for the that National Environmental closures, noting the opponents Policy Act reviews either were were evident, right there in the QRWGRQHGLGQRWVSHFL¿FDOO\FLWH room. the roads to be closed, or lacked Commissioner Boyd Britton, the required public notice. while lauding the committee for Geiger and others in the doing a great job, said he be- group pressed the Court to send lieves Beverlin will review the a letter – a draft was submitted road orders and report back to to the Court earlier – to declare the Court. the Forest Service in violation. The meeting included some They want the agency to rescind verbal sparring over who was in the order for all Grant County charge, the Court or the board, roads. and the Court cautioned one The Court resisted that member who interrupted Bever- move, with County Judge Scott lin with a loud aside about get- Myers calling it “premature.” ting a shovel. “I’m not willing to sign a let- Commissioner Chris Labhart ter at this point,” Myers said. said he’d like to have a separate He said the Court is await- meeting to focus on the issues, ing a report from Beverlin on and review maps of the area. the order, how the agency will “This isn’t working,” he proceed with the closures, and said of including the issue on whether the roads were legally the regular agenda. “We’re closed. trying to work together on Board members said the this, and keep it civil.” News BROWN Continued from Page A1 The governor’s fall After a tumultuous week, Kitzhaber, 67, an- nounced his resignation in a news release. In his statement, he was critical of the news media and legislative leaders who had called publicly for his resignation. “I must also say that it is deeply troubling to me to realize that we have come to a place in the his- tory of this great state of ours where a person can be charged, tried, convicted and sentenced by the media with no due process and no independent verification of the allegations involved,” he said. “But even more troubling – and on a very personal level as someone who has given 35 years of Wednesday, February 18, 2015 public service to Oregon – is that so many of my for- mer allies in common cause have been willing to simply accept this judgment at its face value. “It is something that is hard for me to comprehend – something we might ex- pect in Washington, D.C., but surely not in Oregon.” Since Oct. 8, when Willamette Week first re- ported Hayes’ efforts to use her position as hon- orary first lady on behalf of her private consulting business, there has been a steady stream of new disclosures. They were not enough to deter Kitzhaber’s re-elec- tion Nov. 4, although his once-commanding lead over Republican Dennis Richardson, a conserva- tive state representative from Southern Oregon, had dropped sharply. The course of events changed with a Jan. 27 sto- ry by the EO Media Group/ Pamplin Media Group Cap- ital Bureau about $118,000 that Hayes received for consulting work that she would not discuss. Other MILL Continued from Page A1 47 The Dodge family owns Blue Mountain Lum- ber Products at Reith and Boardman Chip Co., as well as logging and cattle operations in Northeastern Oregon. Porter said the company seems to be moving right along with permits and oth- er preliminary work. Even with the opening date un- certain, the company has The investigations Kitzhaber and Hayes face an investigation by Oregon Attorney Gener- al Ellen Rosenblum and a possible probe by the Ore- gon Ethics Commission. In his statement Fri- day, Kitzhaber said they would cooperate with those probes. Rosenblum issued her own statement, saying the resignation would not af- fect the ongoing criminal investigation. “Oregonians deserve nothing less than a full and fair investigation of all the facts, as well as the oppor- tunity to reach a resolution that will truly allow our state to move forward,” she said. The pressure intensified further last week as offi- cials confirmed that the U.S attorney for Oregon has subpoenaed emails and oth- er documents of Kitzhaber, Hayes and several organi- zations that paid Hayes for consulting services. The subpoena also covers re- cords relating to 15 other state employees, across 11 state agencies. The Oregon Department of Administrative Services received a subpoena for the records just hours af- ter Kitzhaber announced his plan to resign, agency spokesman Matt Shelby wrote in an email. The subpoena is a pre- liminary step toward a meeting of a federal grand jury, which wants the mate- rials by March 10. The list of subpoenaed records is lengthy, but they focus on dealings that Hayes and her consulting firm had with the state go- ing back to Jan. 1, 2009, more than two years before Kitzhaber took office for a third term in 2011. put two local people to work on the set-up, he said. Just seeing activity at the industrial site is a boost for the town, Porter said. “If you had asked me back at Thanksgiving about the prospects for the in- dustry returning to Long Creek, I would have said not good,” he said. Porter said when he be- came mayor about nine years ago, Long Creek’s business future looked dire. “No restaurant, no store, no gas, nothing,” he said. “We didn’t even have a vending machine in town – you couldn’t buy a Coke.” Today, the town – popu- lation 190 – has two stores, a restaurant, and a gas sta- tion, in addition to the mo- tel, a longtime landmark. Leslie Barnett, owner of the Long Creek Lodge, said people are feeling re- ally positive about the mill plan. Even a few jobs can have a big impact in Long Creek, she noted. Barnett said the motel already has seen a bene- fit as workers have stayed there this winter. “They’ve been great – they seem like real- ly good neighbors,” she said. The new mill opportu- nity comes on top of other jobs gained when the Grant County Road Department reopened its shop in Long Creek, and the North Fork John Day Watershed Coun- cil established its head- quarters there. The development of the plant coincides with in- creasing activity on the Malheur National Forest, which launched a 10-year stewardship plan and ac- celerated restoration work last year. The forest staff is rolling out new land- scape-scale projects that are expected to produce abundant small-wood ma- terials. news organizations then reported that Hayes ap- parently did not report that income on tax returns that had been released to them. Kitzhaber then declared at a Jan. 30 news confer- ence that Hayes would no longer have a policy or po- litical role in his adminis- tration. But his appearance and responses raised more questions. FACEBOOKERS: Become an Eagle fan today! Go to: facebook.com/MyEagleNews )DPLO\SKDUPDFLHVVHUYLQJ(DVWHUQ2UHJRQRYHU\HDUV Heppner and Condon, Oregon /HWRXUIDPLO\RISKDUPDFLVWVVHUYH\RX :HDUHKDSS\WRWUDQVIHUDQGPDLOSUHVFULSWLRQVDQGZRXOG ZHOFRPHWKHRSSRUWXQLW\WRYLVLWZLWK\RXDERXWRXUVHUYLFHV 541-676-9158 We Gladly Accept Visa or MasterCard CRAB FEED March 14, 2015 • 6PM Fresh Crab in the Shell, Prime Rib, all the sides and fixings $30 /PLATE $50 /COUPLE OPEN TO THE PUBLIC 6pm • JD Golf Course Limited to 75 plates. CALL 541-575-0170 FOR TICKETS. 7