GRANT COUNTY HUNTING JOURNAL | INSIDE
GRANT COUNTY FAIR RESULTS | PAGES A6-A9
Wednesday, August 26, 2020
152nd Year • No. 35 • 18 Pages • $1.50
MyEagleNews.com
Meredith House breaks ground
Committee
declines
to open
investigation
into sheriff
By Sean Hart
Blue Mountain Eagle
The Eagle/Rudy Diaz
From left, leaders prepare to break ground on the Heart of Grant County’s new domestic violence trauama center, including Stacey Bailey, board member, Kirk
Borgerding from CB Construction Inc., Derek Howard from CB Construction Inc., Briana Manfrass from Pinnacle Architecture, Nancy Nickel, the chair of the
Heart of Grant County board, Grant County Judge Scott Myers, Rick Minster, board member, Beth Simonsen, the director, and Sandy Murray, a board member.
New domestic violence trauma center will have
improved privacy, capability to house 2-3 families
By Rudy Diaz
Blue Mountain Eagle
S
hoe on the shovel and dirt in the air
marked the groundbreaking of the
new facility for the Heart of Grant
County’s domestic trauma service
center in John Day.
The new center, the Meredith House, will
feature improved privacy to talk to victims, a
conference room to have more group activities
in a private settings and the capability to house
up to two to three families. Previously, they
could only house up to one person.
“There is a need here, and I know a lot of
people don’t want to recognize it, but some of
the stuff that goes on here, the domestic vio-
lence, the sexual assault and the human traf-
ficking is all here,” said Heart of Grant County
Director Beth Simonsen.
A goal of the organization is to educate
people about abuse and build healthier rela-
tionships to prevent it.
The Eagle/Rudy Diaz
See Center, Page A18
Nancy Nickel, the chair of the Heart of Grant County board, breaks ground on the nonprofit’s future
domestic trauma center as Beth Simonsen, the director, smiles behind.
Pandemic slows progress on forest planning
Blues Intergovernmental
Council continues to move
forward on forest plan
By Steven Mitchell
Blue Mountain Eagle
Despite the global pandemic, the
Blues Intergovernmental Council,
a collective of state, tribal, federal
and county representatives formed
to resolve long-standing conflicts
over the Umatilla, Wallowa-Whit-
man, and Malheur national forests,
have been meeting over the last
year.
BIC, formed in 2019 after the
Forest Service scrapped its Blue
Mountains Forest Plan revision in
March, has been meeting monthly
in subcommittee meetings that deal
with four different forest manage-
ment areas, including wildfire man-
agement, access, socioeconomic
assessment and grazing, according
to Forest Service Deputy Regional
Forester Lisa Northrop.
“Our first step as a subcommittee
is to define and agree on our desired
conditions,” Northrop said. “These
are complex issues, but we are com-
mitted to working together to meet
our goals.”
Northrop said BIC had just deter-
mined the focus of the subcommittees
before the pandemic hit.
Eagle file photo
See Plan, Page A18
A view of the Strawberry Mountains from Keeney Fork Road on the Malheur
National Forest in Grant County.
BIC access subcommittee off to ‘rocky’ start
Group determining why certain access
roads were closed to motorized vehicles
and by what authority they were closed
By Steven Mitchell
Blue Mountain Eagle
With the Blues Intergovernmental Council break-
ing out into subcommittees to drill down on the issues
that led to the Forest Service’s Blue Mountains Forest
Plan demise, the access group is working on identifying
which public roads are open or closed
and by which authority public roads
were closed.
Subcommittee member Rep. Mark
Owens, R-Crane, said access, one of
the most controversial subjects on the
Rep. Mark
previous forest plan, will probably
Owens, R-Crane remain a hot-button area as they move
forward.
“The access meetings have been a little bit rocky,”
See Start, Page A18
A theft complaint against Grant
County Sheriff Glenn Palmer has
been dismissed.
The Police Policy Committee
of the Department of Public Safety
Standards and Training, which
licenses police officers in Oregon,
unanimously voted Thursday to
administratively close a complaint
submitted by Gordon Larson that
Palmer knowingly possessed, or
knew the where-
abouts of, an
engraved fish-
ing pole Larson
lost and “failed
to take the eth-
ical and law-
ful appropriate
action of retriev- Grant County
ing and returning Sheriff Glenn
Palmer
the pole.”
The complaint
was submitted in 2019, and Palmer
said at the time the allegations
were false and he intended to fight
them. When asked for comment
about the dismissal, Palmer said he
had reached out to his attorney for
advice and had not heard back.
The Police Policy Committee
reviewed the complaint at its Febru-
ary meeting and requested DPSST
staff to request further informa-
tion from the Grant County Dis-
trict Attorney’s Office, the Oregon
Department of Justice and the Ore-
gon State Police. The committee did
not review the case at its last meet-
ing in September because it lacked
a quorum.
At the meeting Aug. 20, DPSST
staff reported that the DOJ declined
to investigate the missing fishing
pole, and OSP conducted an inves-
tigation and prepared an incident
report but did not uncover the loca-
tion of the fishing pole.
DPSST staff said Grant County
District Attorney Jim Carpenter
indicated “there were no concerns at
his office with the veracity of Sher-
iff Palmer.”
Committee Chair John Teague
from the Oregon Association of
Chiefs of Police said the outstand-
ing allegation of dishonesty is why
the committee asked DPSST staff
for more information, but the dis-
trict attorney “met and refuted” that
allegation.
“The district attorney came back
and said he never said that and does
not question Palmer’s honesty,”
Teague said. “I don’t think we have
enough here to investigate.”
Teague added that the DOJ
“saw no merit” in the fishing pole
complaint.
Larson, who retired from the
Oregon State Police in 2014, said in
the complaint the pole was a retire-
ment gift worth $500 without the
reel. He said he lost it in the John
Day River and later heard Palmer
had it.
Larson said Palmer told him he
did not have the pole but it was in the
possession of a friend from Spray.
Larson asked OSP to investigate.
Larson told the Eagle there were
several parts of his complaint that
were unanswered. He declined to
comment further until a complaint
he filed with the Oregon state bar
against Carpenter is resolved.
Palmer, who had announced
his pending resignation in 2019,
withdrew his plans to retire after
the complaint was filed, stating he
would continue through the end of
his term and continue to seek reelec-
tion “as long as this behavior contin-
ues.” He is running for reelection in
November against Todd McKinley,
the head of Grant County Commu-
nity Corrections.