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About The Blue Mountain eagle. (John Day, Or.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 15, 2020)
PRAIRIE CITY BOYS WIN NINE STRAIGHT | Page A10 The Blue Mountain EAGLE Grant County’s newspaper since 1868 Wednesday, January 15, 2020 152nd Year • No. 3 • 16 Pages • $1.50 MyEagleNews.com Grant County discharges Deputy Tyler Smith Sheriff’s office administrative leave costs county more than $75,000 By Sean Hart Blue Mountain Eagle Grant County has discharged the sheriff’s office deputy awaiting trial on attempted rape and other charges. Tyler Smith was discharged by Grant County Sheriff’s Office Dec. 17, and he is no longer an active law enforcement officer, accord- ing to the Oregon Criminal Jus- tice Information Records Inquiry System maintained by the state’s police licensing agency. Grant County Tyler Smith Human Resources Manager Laurie Wright confirmed Smith no longer works for the county but said the reason he is not employed is condi- tionally exempt from public disclo- sure under an Oregon law shield- ing personnel discipline actions. Because it is a conditional exemp- tion, the records are not exempt if the public interest requires their disclosure. A Sept. 27 grand jury indictment filed in Grant County Circuit Court accuses Smith, 33, of John Day of first-degree attempted rape, a class B felony, and attempted first-de- gree sex abuse and fourth-de- gree assault, class C felonies — all constituting domestic violence. The indictment accuses Smith of attempting to engage in sex- ual intercourse with his spouse on Aug. 31, 2018, “by forcible com- pulsion” and while knowing she was pregnant. He also faces four class A mis- demeanor charges of second-de- gree child neglect, accused of leav- ing two children under the age of 10 unattended at a John Day resi- dence “for such a period of time as was likely to endanger the health or welfare” of the children on Sept. 4 and Sept. 5, according to infor- mation filed in court Sept. 10 by Grant County Special Deputy Dis- trict Attorney Gretchen M. Ladd Dobler. Smith filed a motion in court Dec. 11 to modify the conditions of his pretrial release “to allow him to possess firearms solely for See Smith, Page A16 GRANT UNION ECLIPSE DATA GETS PUBLISHED Contributed photo From right to left standing, Anthony Allen, Tom Schad from the National Solar Observatory and Gage Brandon on the day of the eclipse with Donavan Smith, left, and Declan Jensen, right, seated with the computers. By Rudy Diaz Blue Mountain Eagle W hile the eclipse in 2017 brought a spectacle for people in the path of totality, three Grant Union High School students and a teacher went beyond spectating and got pub- lished in a peer-reviewed science publication. Grant Union seniors Donavan Smith and Gage Brandon were shocked that the experiment they conducted more than two years ago has come up again, and now they are published. “Gage and I only found out that the work was published a week and a half ago, and it feels pretty good,” Donavan said. The data and research were cited in the arti- The Eagle/Rudy Diaz cle, “Acceleration of Coronal Mass Ejection Grant Union High School seniors Dona- Plasma in the Low Corona as Measured by the van Smith, left, and Gage Brandon Citizen CATE Experiment” and published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Smith and Brandon were freshmen when they participated in the Citizen Continental-Amer- ica Telescopic Eclipse experiment along with GUHS graduate Declan Jensen and her friend Anthony Allen, Rocklin, California, and science teacher Sonna Smith. The Citizen CATE exper- iment had 93 sites across the U.S. record the eclipse in its entirety. “At 6:30 in the morning, we started setting up a tent at Donavon’s house to keep the computer in, and then we set up the telescope, which was See Eclipse, Page A16 Timber Unity gears up for cap and trade, other issues By Sierra Dawn McClain EO Media Group The Oregon state legislature’s short session begins Feb. 3, with lawmakers planning to resurrect cli- mate legislation after last session’s controversial “cap-and-trade” pro- posal failed. And Timber Unity, the group heading protests last year, will be back. On Feb. 6, Timber Unity will organize a convoy of logging trucks to Salem and a rally on the Capitol steps. On the group’s Facebook event page, as of Jan. 7, 936 people have said they will go to the protest, more than 3,100 have marked themselves as interested and 97 have pledged to EO Media Group file photo Representatives of the Timber Unity movement organized massive pro- tests at the Oregon Capitol in Salem last year against climate legislation. The organization is planning to protest a new climate change proposal that will be considered during the upcoming legislative session. drive semi-trucks. “We want to stop cap and trade,” said Adam Lardy, a Timber Unity spokesman. “Politicians may want to run with a watered-down ver- sion this year. But once they get a foothold, why wouldn’t they run with it? So we can’t let them get a foothold.” Last year Timber Unity formed to protest House Bill 2020, last year’s cap-and-trade bill, which passed the Oregon House. The leg- islation was designed to cut carbon emissions, but it roused opposition from farmers, loggers and others who argued the bill would raise fuel and natural gas prices. The protests culminated with the walk-out of Senate Republicans, inflaming party tensions. The bill stalled in the Senate at the end of the session when it failed to gain ade- quate support. According to Harry Esteve, communications manager for the Oregon Department of Envi- ronmental Quality, it’s too early to know the specifics of a renewed cap-and-trade proposal. See Unity, Page A16