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.