News

The bulletin boards inside a staff entrance to the St. Charles Bend hospital tell a story of a workplace divided.
Some flyers scream out “Vote No” in bold red letters, others appeal for a “yes” on bright canary yellow paper.
They all refer to an upcoming vote to determine whether employees, including certified nursing assistants, housekeepers and dietary department employees, should remain in the 600-member service employees international union, or SEIU, they formed last January.
It was a close vote then with union supporters winning by just a handful of ayes, a result that was unsuccessfully challenged by the hospital's administration. In the year since, union leaders and management have wrangled over a contract. They’ve had 30 work sessions and are still only about halfway through the items they must negotiate. That impasse has opened the door for a rare “decertification” vote that allows employees to reconsider whether they want a union at all.

A state criminal investigation into Deschutes County District Attorney Patrick Flaherty that turned up no evidence of wrongdoing came via a tip from Sheriff Larry Blanton.
Attorney General John Kroger's spokesman Tony Green said in an interview that his office took up the case against Flaherty after getting a complaint from the Deschutes County sheriff.
The complaint turned into a multi-month investigation involving the Oregon State Police, the governor's office and the Washington County District Attorney's office, which reviewed the case against Flaherty and formally cleared him of any wrongdoing last week over allegations that he had misused his authority in a grand jury proceeding.