Eric Flowers

Embattled District Attorney Patrick Flaherty got more bad news this week in the form of a formal criminal investigation into allegations that he abused the grand jury process and wrongfully terminated a long-time investigator in his office.
Flaherty announced via press release on Monday evening that Oregon State Police are investigating his office at the behest of Attorney General John Kroger. According to Flaherty, OSP is looking into the grand jury proceeding that Flaherty called last year during a dispute with county attorney Mark Pilliod whom Flaherty had accused of leaking sensitive material to the media. The matter was eventually settled when Pilliod agreed to issue a statement of apology.
The issue was one of several flashpoints between Flaherty and Deschutes County brass who have fought Flaherty's attempts to assert more independent control of the district attorney’s office. The issue came to a head early in Flaherty's tenure when employees in his office sought the county's help in forming a union after Flaherty made known his intention to dismiss nearly half a dozen of Dugan's former staffers.

Given the dismal housing market, it could be years before the next destination resort breaks ground in Central Oregon. However, Deschutes County commissioners have set the stage for the next wave of construction if it ever arrives.
Meeting before the Thanksgiving holiday, commissioners voted to pare down the total number of acres available to prospective resort developers, trimming the county's official resort map from 112,000 acres to a little more than 20,000 acres.
The original map, which dates back more than two decades, determines which lands are eligible for resort development and which are off-limits. Commissioners had sought to adopt a map that more closely reflected which lands were actually viable for development.

The engineering firm heading up Bend's controversial surface water upgrade is already cashing on in its lucrative contract with the city.
According to the city's financial records, it has already cut a pair of checks to Omaha-based HDR, Inc. totaling more than a $1 million for design work on the project that will replace the city's aging surface water system. All told, the city expects to spend more than $68 million on the project that also includes a new federally mandated treatment system and a potentially lucrative hydropower plant.
However, the project has come under fire from a broad coalition of critics, including almost half a dozen former mayors.
On Monday night, opponents packed the Bend Planning Commission meeting in an effort to lobby the city's planning commissioners to omit the project from the city's official public works planning documents. Moey Newbold, who is helping to coordinate some of the organized opposition through Central Oregon Landwatch, a Bend-based environmental group, estimated that roughly 75 people showed up at city hall to listen and testify.

At thirty four, Katie Patterson is getting tired of waiting for the mainstream sports world to figure out what her and a generation of kids figured out long before ESPN launched the X Games: skateboarding is cooler than soccer.
Patterson grew up in another mountain town that's nearly synonymous with sports, the Front Range city of Colorado Springs, home of the U.S. Olympic Training Center. But when it came to skateboarding, her best option was the drainage ditch near her home where she skated with friends in her free time.
Fast forward 20 years and Patterson finds herself in another mountain town where the options for park riding are as scarce as a fresh line on a Saturday afternoon at Mt. Bachelor.
Like other Bend skateboarders, a demographic anomaly that includes tweens just taking up the sport to two-car garage parents who just can't give it up, Patterson has essentially given up on the idea of a publicly funded skatepark in Bend. It's particularly frustrating for skaters given that dozens of other Oregon cities, including towns like Madras, Redmond and Pendleton have been able to build modern parks.