GO! EASTERN OREGON MAGAZINE | INSIDE Wednesday, January 5, 2022 154th Year • No. 1 • 18 Pages • $1.50 MyEagleNews.com Talks on police funding begin By BENNETT HALL Blue Mountain Eagle According to the proposed legis- lation, the declarations cannot exceed increments of 30 days. After 30 days, the decision to extend a state of emer- gency would go to a local govern- ing body for a vote. County and city governing bodies could then create a hybrid of emergency restrictions if they choose to do so regarding such measures as masking, school closures and vaccine requirements, Owens explained in an interview. Additionally, the legislative concept states that a governor may not retaliate against a county whose governing body has determined not to fully continue a declaration of emergency beyond the initial 30 days of the order. Owens said this includes threats to pull state fund- ing, fi nes against local businesses and other types of state sanctions. Under current Oregon law, the JOHN DAY — After a two- month stalemate, discussions have fi nally begun between city and county offi cials about how to fi ll the void left by the shut- down of the John Day Police Department in mid-October. A day after the City Coun- cil’s Oct. 12 vote to suspend operations of the fi nancially strapped police department, City Manager Nick Green went to a session of the Grant County Court to pro- pose a fund exchange: The city would give the county $300,000 a year from its general Todd fund for law McKinley enforcement services if the county would give the city an equal amount from its road fund for street improvements Sam in John Day. Palmer To date, there has been no formal response from the county, while the Grant County Sheriff ’s Offi ce Gregg bears the bur- Haberly den of policing John Day with no budget sup- port to hire additional staff . Meanwhile, the issue of law enforcement funding has continued to fester. It came up again at the Dec. 14 meet- ing of the City Council, which must decide whether to accept a $375,000 federal policing grant and reconstitute the city’s police force or, if the grant terms allow, pass the money on to the Sher- iff ’s Offi ce. A number of councilors voiced their frustration with the county’s silence on the fund exchange proposal, while Sheriff Todd McKinley urged both sides to come to the table and discuss how to pay for law enforcement services going forward. “I think these two bodies are going to have to solve it,” McKinley told the council, “and that’s what they were elected to do.” Shortly after the meeting, the sheriff reached out to the coun- ty’s elected leadership. “I sent an email to the com- missioners and the judge and just said, ‘Come on, guys, we’ve got to get moving on this,’” McKinley told the Eagle. Some city and county offi - cials, it appears, were already thinking along the same lines. The day after the Dec. 14 council meeting, County Com- missioner Sam Palmer had a conversation with his old friend Gregg Haberly, a city councilor. “(Haberly) said, ‘Look, we’ve got to do something,’” Palmer recalled. That got the ball rolling. At Palmer’s request, McKin- ley put together a preliminary funding plan to provide law enforcement services to the city of John Day in addition to patrolling the rest of Grant County – a 4,500-square-mile area that the Sheriff ’s Offi ce covers with just four patrol deputies. See Owens, Page A18 See Funding, Page A18 Richard Hanners/Blue Mountain Eagle, File Raw logs ready to be milled at Iron Triangle’s post and pole plant in Seneca. The plant is one example of investments made by the company to carry out its 10-year stewardship contract with the Malheur National Forest. STEWARDS LAND OF THE With a long-term stewardship contract set to expire next year, Malheur National Forest offi cials are weighing what comes next STEWARDSHIP BY THE NUMBERS By STEVEN MITCHELL Blue Mountain Eagle T he 10-year stewardship contract between the Mal- heur National Forest and Iron Triangle is widely credited with saving John Day’s last surviving lumber mill, creat- ing hundreds of jobs and improving for- est health. But it has also prompted criticism from some who feel the John Day- based logging company has profi ted at the expense of smaller rivals. Now, with the contract set to expire early next year, federal forest manag- ers are trying to decide what form stew- ardship contracting on the forest should take in the future. A diff erent approach Stewardship contracts are funda- mentally diff erent from traditional tim- ber sale contracts. According to Roy Walker, a pro- gram manager with the Forest Service, the federal agency awards timber con- tracts by identifying an area with com- mercially marketable trees, marking the boundaries of the proposed timber sale and estimating the amount of merchant- able wood in the sale area. Then, he said, the agency evaluates the fair market value of the timber and opens up a bidding process to compa- nies that can meet bonding and other requirements. Since winning a 10- year contract with the Malheur National For- est in 2013, Iron Tri- angle has completed stewardship projects on more than 150,000 acres of forest lands. The work includes: Richard Hanners/Blue Mountain Eagle, File Finished product ready to be shipped at Iron Triangle’s post and pole plant in Seneca. As the Forest Service expanded its forest restoration, fuels reduction and thinning activities, Walker said, it melded forest management work, which often lacks commercial value, with timber sales. Stewardship brings the two together, allowing the Forest Service to award the commercial value that loggers would ordinarily bid on to fi nance restoration work on national forest land. In 2013, faced with the imminent closure of Malheur Lumber, Grant County’s lone sawmill and largest pri- vate employer, due to an inconsistent and unreliable supply of timber, Mal- heur National Forest offi cials decided to award a long-term stewardship con- tract to a single operator in a bid to sta- bilize the situation. The 10-year, $69 million contract went to Iron Triangle, the winner in a competitive bidding process. The contract, which was signifi - cantly more long-term and broader in scope than most stewardship deals, accelerated timber sales and increased the pace of restoration work on the Malheur. Universally regarded as a success in stabilizing the local economy, the unusual contract has won praise at the national level. Its overarching goals were to promote ecological restoration and reduce wildfi re risk on 180,000 to 500,000 acres of forest land while improving economic vitality in Grant and Harney counties. See Land, Page A18 • 12,000 acres of pre-commercial thin- ning • 10,000 acres of slash piled • 1,000 acres of aspen treatment • 2,000 acres of soil stability treatment • 3,000 acres of mastication, a fuel reduction process to reduce the risk of wildfi re • 1,100 miles of road maintenance • 1.2 million tons of total biomass re- moved Owens bill limits emergency powers By STEVEN MITCHELL Blue Mountain Eagle CRANE — A state lawmaker from Eastern Oregon will look to trim the powers of state government during an emergency when the Legislature meets for a short session next month. A bill written by Rep. Mark Owens, R-Crane, would amend Oregon’s Con- stitution to spell out when governors can declare emergencies, what pow- ers they can exercise and, more impor- tantly, how long they can unilaterally keep them in place. Oregon has been under a state of emergency since March 8, 2020, when Gov. Kate Brown declared her inten- tion to take extraordinary measures to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Brown has extended the state of emer- gency several times since then. Under Owens’ proposal, known as Legislative Concept No. 49 until it is Blue Mountain Eagle, File State Rep. Mark Owens, R-Crane, speaks during a meet-and-greet with constituents on Nov. 10, 2021, at the Squeeze-In Restaurant and Deck in John Day. assigned a bill number, the governor, when making a declaration of emer- gency, must specify each county where the emergency exists and list reasons why local jurisdictions should be under a state of emergency.