A18
NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Land
Continued from Page A1
Current contract
The Iron Triangle contract
expires in March 2023, and,
just like last time, any new con-
tract will be awarded through a
competitive bidding process
open to all qualifi ed operators.
But even though a deci-
sion is still a year out, Malheur
National Forest Supervisor
Craig Trulock said he’s already
contemplating some changes
in the next stewardship deal.
While he is leaning toward
awarding another long-term
contract, there will be less tim-
ber to go around this time. The
agency expects a lower annual
timber harvest target — down
from 75 million board feet to
between 50 and 55 million
board feet per year.
Trulock said the next stew-
ardship contract will likely
have a lower percentage of
the Malheur National For-
est’s commercial timber vol-
ume. Instead of the current
guaranteed 70%, he expects to
decrease the share to between
30 and 50%, with allowances
for annual adjustments.
Iron Triangle to invest in infra-
structure, equipment and work
force development.
That benefi ts the company
in obvious ways, but it also
provides assurance to Forest
Service offi cials that the com-
pany will be able to fulfi ll its
contractual obligations to meet
stewardship goals such as
reducing fuel loads in the for-
est, preventing soil erosion and
maintaining roads.
When the Forest Service
put the 10-year stewardship
contract out for bid in 2013, it
was looking for something it
couldn’t get out of an old-fash-
ioned, straightforward timber
sale contract: It was looking for
a partner that could get the cut
out, do the stewardship work
and deliver a steady stream of
logs to Malheur Lumber.
Zach Williams of King Inc.,
a subcontractor of Iron Trian-
gle who works in operations,
summed up the situation this
way:
“The government said, ‘We
want to induce investment,’”
Williams said. “There was a
reason for that, and that hasn’t
changed. They’ve made timber
sales (the old-fashioned way) for
100 years, and that’s why Mal-
heur was going to close down.”
Pros and cons
Iron Triangle’s current deal
is what’s known as an inte-
grated resource service con-
tract, a mechanism that Tru-
lock said has both pluses and
minuses.
For instance, Trulock said,
the Malheur is required to
commit appropriated dollars
up front at the appraised price
of timber for the duration of the
contract.
With 70% of the total vol-
ume of timber sales off the
Malheur going to the program,
Trulock said, that provides a
high level of predictability for
the contractor while also guar-
anteeing a steady supply of
logs for Malheur Lumber’s
John Day sawmill.
But it could also create
a problem for Malheur offi -
cials. With so much of their
discretionary timber revenue
committed to the steward-
ship contract, they could fi nd
themselves strapped for funds
if unexpected circumstances
arose, such as congressional
budget cuts.
The contract’s long time
span and fi nancial guarantees
have also made it possible for
Perception of monopoly
There is a social dynamic
that goes along with the long-
term contract, one that has cre-
ated the perception of winners
and losers.
While he was not the super-
visor when Iron Triangle won
the contract, Trulock said peo-
ple occasionally tell him that
the Forest Service created a
monopoly in the community
with the deal — even though
the bidding process was open
to anyone who met the criteria.
And Iron Triangle is not the
only company making money
on the Malheur National
Forest.
Since September 2013,
Williams noted, the forest has
sold 405 million board feet of
timber. Of that total, 231 mil-
lion board feet was sold to Iron
Triangle through the steward-
ship contract, and the remain-
ing 174 million board feet sold
on the open market.
Dave Hannibal with Gray-
back, a subcontractor on the
stewardship contract, said Iron
Triangle won the contract fair
and square. The complaints
about a monopoly, he feels, are
just sour grapes.
“People will always shoot
at those on top,” Hannibal
said. “The 10-year stewardship
(contract) was issued in fair
competition. Whoever won it
would have been shot at.”
Still, some smaller opera-
tors in the area say they would
like a bigger share of the tim-
ber coming off the Malheur.
Tim Rude, the owner of
John Day-based Rude Log-
ging, was one of the contrac-
tors on the original stewardship
proposal to work with Iron Tri-
angle but now operates his own
timber sales and others for var-
ious logging companies, such
as Boise Cascade and Wood
Grain.
Some of those sales are on
the Malheur, but he and his
22 local employees follow the
work, whether it be in Western
Oregon or Washington state.
“We go where we have to
to stay busy,” Rude said, “but
it would be nice to have local
work.”
Rude said multiple logging
contractors in Grant, Harney
and Baker counties are work-
ing out of the area but would
like to work locally.
“(Traveling for work)
takes our people out of the
area,” Rude said, “and it takes
our people away from their
families.”
Malheur Lumber General
Manager Bruce Daucsavage,
who helped broker the contract
in 2013, said the gripes Trulock
hears in the community are
understandable. But he added
that, once people look closer
at the commitment required of
larger contractors such as Iron
Triangle — the investments,
expansions, risks, and capac-
ity necessary to implement the
scope and scale of work — the
arrangement begins to make
sense.
One of the things that came
up in the contract negotiations,
Daucsavage recalled, was that
Malheur Lumber would need
to spend $5 million to upgrade
the sawmill but would need
to see a return on that invest-
ment within a limited window
of time.
Iron Triangle and its sub-
contractors, he said, had the
technical expertise, the capac-
ity, and the equipment to carry
out the work that would ensure
the reliable timber supply the
mill needed to survive.
That is not to say a smaller
Wednesday, January 5, 2022
company could not have ful-
fi lled the criteria to get the con-
tract, Daucsavage added, but it
would have been a stretch.
In fact, it was a stretch for
Iron Triangle at the time.
Owner Russ Young said the
projects included in the con-
tract were beyond the scope
of anything the company had
done in the past and required
reliable equipment that would
allow them to ramp up and
produce on landscapes where
the harvest was upwards of 7
million board feet of timber on
a single task order with hard
deadlines.
“We were on the hook
from day one that says if you
shall not perform, you will be
in breach of contract,” Young
said.
Iron Triangle declined to
disclose how much money it
has spent to fulfi ll the terms of
the 10-year stewardship con-
tract, but some of its invest-
ments are on full display. One
recent example is the compa-
ny’s post and pole plant in Sen-
eca, built to process small-di-
ameter logs cut to reduce fuel
loads on the forest. The plant
has 25 full-time employees.
Altogether, according to
information from the Malheur
National Forest, the steward-
ship contract has created or
sustained a total of 268 jobs at
Iron Triangle, its subcontrac-
tors and the national forest.
What now?
In Trulock’s view, the
10-year stewardship con-
tract has achieved the objec-
tives it strived for by all met-
rics that the Forest Service has
reviewed over the past eight
years. But that doesn’t mean
the next stewardship contract
has to be a carbon copy.
“We stabilized the commu-
nity, stabilized the mill,” Tru-
lock said. “I can’t think of any
way that I would say this was
not a success. Would you repeat
that, if the intent is to grow a
community? Would you do it
exactly the same way to grow
a community, and grow new
businesses? I don’t know. But
I think that’s the conversation
we need to be having.”
Malheur National Forest
offi cials plan to hold an infor-
mational meeting sometime in
the next few months to explain
how stewardship works and
discuss ideas for future stew-
ardship contracts.
MEET OREGON’S NEXT GOVERNOR
DR. BUD PIERCE
Owens
Continued from Page A1
governor must review and
reevaluate emergency orders
every 60 days to determine
whether those orders should
be continued, modifi ed or
rescinded.
Local control emerged as
a signifi cant issue for Grant
County residents in August
after Gov. Kate Brown
reversed course on her June
30 executive order handing
over public health decisions to
counties amid a resurgence of
COVID-19.
While the swiftly spread-
ing delta variant sent COVID
case counts soaring, Brown
issued a barrage of new exec-
utive orders mandating masks
in K-12 schools, inside state
buildings and, fi nally, in all
public indoor spaces in the
state. Those actions drew the
ire of Grant County leaders.
Parents asked for the
county court’s support in get-
ting decision-making back
to the districts and out of the
hands of the state.
County Judge Scott Myers
told parents that the county
does not have the power to
take back local control of its
school districts from the state.
However, the county signed
a letter from the Eastern Ore-
gon Counties Association ask-
ing for local control of school
districts.
“Some people might be
mistaken in thinking that the
county has power beyond a
voice,” Myers said. “We don’t
have the power to make those
things happen.”
In a Dec. 21 press release,
Brown extended the COVID-
19 state of emergency through
June, saying scientists believed
the state was just weeks away
from a new wave of hospital-
izations due to an anticipated
surge of the rapidly spreading
omicron variant.
Oregon Health and Sci-
ence University lead data sci-
entist Dr. Peter Graven pre-
dicted that the omicron variant
could surpass the delta variant
in the number of cases due to
its extreme transmissibility.
Brown’s offi ce said in the
press release that the emer-
gency declaration provides the
necessary framework to access
resources in response to the
pandemic, which includes the
deployment of medical pro-
viders to hospitals, fl exibil-
ity around professional health
licensing, and access to fed-
eral disaster relief funds.
“As Oregon prepares for
what could be our worst surge
in hospitalizations during this
pandemic, I know that this is
not the beginning of the new
year any of us had hoped for,”
Brown said.
Constitutional
framework
Jim Moore, a professor
of political science at Pacifi c
University in Forest Grove,
said Oregon’s Constitution
defi nes the governor’s emer-
gency powers and what types
of “catastrophic disasters” can
allow them to be used.
The Constitution puts acts
of terrorism at the top of the
list, along with earthquakes,
fl oods and public health
emergencies.
Moore said that the
catastrophes spelled out within
the Constitution are assumed
to be relatively short-lived.
“The problem we have
right now is that it’s going on
long term,” Moore said. “And
so Republicans have decided
that is an abuse of emergency
power.”
Indeed, Moore said, every-
one has a partisan take on the
debate.
“Republicans say, ‘We
need to change it.’ Why?
Because they don’t like what
Kate Brown is doing. Demo-
crats are saying, ‘No, we don’t
need to change it’ because they
do like what Kate Brown’s
doing.”
Since the pandemic’s
beginning, it’s become evident
that the federal government
has minimal power in this sit-
uation and that the ability to
deal with the pandemic rests
with the states, Moore said.
That limitation on federal
power, he said, is by design as
part of the U.S. Constitution.
For instance, he said, Oregon
was able to pass an assisted
suicide law because states
have the right and the front-
line duty to deal with public
health issues.
Almost from the pandem-
ic’s beginning, the question
of how to respond to the coro-
navirus has been a hot-button
political issue.
That said, Owens’ pro-
posed legislation is something
of a departure from recently
passed legislation in GOP
strongholds. For instance,
conservative legislators in
more than half of U.S. states,
spurred on by voters angry
about lockdowns and mask
mandates, have stripped local
offi cials of the power to pro-
tect the public against infec-
tious diseases.
Moore said that the conser-
vative ethos has long been that
more governing power should
be local. However, legislation
passed in red states like Flor-
ida runs counter to what has
traditionally been the GOP
ideology.
Thus, he said, this means
one’s political ideology shapes
one’s views on emergency
powers.
For his part, Owens said
his motives are not politically
driven.
“Honestly, it’s not about
partisanship,” Owens said. “I
by no means think the gover-
nor should not have the ability
to declare an emergency dec-
laration for 30 days, maybe
even longer,” Owens said.
“That’s reasonable.”
COME MEET AND TALK WITH BUD AT
THE FOLLOWING LOCATIONS ON
WEDNESDAY, JAN 12
Ontario John Day Baker City
8:00 AM
at the
Plaza Inn
Restaurant
11:00 AM
at Ogilvie
Field
6:00 PM
at the Baker
County
Conference &
Event Center
Steven Mitchell/Blue Mountain Eagle, File
A sign in John Day supports voting to approve a fi ve-year levy to
fund the John Day Police Department. The Aug. 17 ballot mea-
sure, which required a double majority, failed due to low turnout
even though it got more yes votes than no votes.
Funding
RSVP TODAY TO
INFO@BUDPIERCE.ORG
Continued from Page A1
“Please join us.
I would like to meet you
and hear your ideas
about Oregon’s future!”
—BUD PIERCE
Want to be on our mailing list? Send an email to
info@budpierce.org and we will sign you up!
PAID FOR BY BUD PIERCE FOR OREGON, PO BOX 2889, SALEM, OR 97308
S275268-1
McKinley declined to
disclose precise dollar fi g-
ures until the plan has been
reviewed by the county’s
attorney, but he said the pro-
posal involves the city trans-
ferring the federal policing
grant and providing enough
additional money to hire three
more deputies and one clerical
worker.
“Those three deputies
would be enough to cover
what needs covered,” he said.
While the discussions are
still in their infancy, Palmer
said he expects to have a num-
ber of meetings with Haberly,
McKinley and possibly a few
other people in an attempt to
come up with a proposal for
law enforcement funding that
both city and county leaders
could accept.
However, he said, the plan
isn’t likely to involve the
sort of fund exchange Green
proposed.
“The policing and roads
that Nick asked for are two
diff erent things, and we’re
going to keep them two diff er-
ent things,” Palmer said.
Asked why he and Haberly
took it upon themselves to ini-
tiate talks on the law enforce-
ment funding issue, Palmer
said they felt a responsibility
to the community.
“Gregg and I grew up
together,” he said. “We want
to see our town do better.”
McKinley said he’s just
looking for a solution that will
enable him and his deputies to
do their job the way it should
be done.
“I’m hoping to get the staff
to be able to adequately cover
the city and make the city feel
they are adequately covered,”
McKinley said.
“And I want to keep crime
down,” he added. “If we aren’t
out there, something will fi ll the
void.”