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Let us consider Branta Canadensis, the Canada goose. In many ways it is a noble bird.
In an intervention, the friends and family of somebody who's addicted to booze, drugs, gambling or whatever get him in a room and grill him intensively to persuade him to clean up his act.
Last week, Gov. Ted Kulongoski's office staged an intervention with the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. It was long overdue. And we sure as hell hope it works.
What prompted the intervention was a history of serious friction, going back years, between local bar, restaurant and event managers and OLCC Bend Regional Manager Jason Evers. The liquor dispensers accused Evers of acting like a banana republic dictator, enforcing OLCC rules arbitrarily, irrationally, inconsistently and in some cases vindictively.
We won't go so far as to predict that it's the start of a trend, but the Bend City Council made a startling move last week: It voted for the public interest over the interest of a few well-connected local businessmen.
The issue was a loophole written into the city's transient room tax law six years ago that allowed hoteliers to take a $10-per-person exemption if they offered complimentary breakfasts to guests. There was no rational reason for the exemption; the argument that it made Bend hotels more competitive was patently ridiculous: The "savings" to a guest was, on average, 90 cents a night - if the guest even got it.
The vote to repeal the exemption should have been 7-0. Instead, it was a squeaker - 4-3. Loyally sticking with the handful of good old hotel owners who wanted the exemption were Councilors Oran Teater, Tom Greene and Jeff Eager. Breaking ranks with the GOB faction was Mayor Kathie Eckman, joined by Councilors Jodie Barram, Jim Clinton and Mark Capell.
Teater, Greene and Eager offered a "compromise": Instead of $10 per person, make the breakfast exemption $10 per room. But even at that rate the loophole would have cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in room tax revenue.
Using a razor-thin majority, Oregon House Democrats pushed through the cornerstone of their effort to protect the Metolius River basin from destination resort development. With a bare minimum 31 votes, Dems, under the leadership of Brian Clem (D-Salem), rallied after a narrow defeat last week to pass the HB 3298, which designates the Metolius basin as an "Area of Critical Concern." The move puts the area around the revered river effectively off-limits to destination resorts, including a pair that had been endorsed by Jefferson County, the local planning authority in the basin.
"This is such a momentous vote. It was such a complex issue…we're thrilled to see this pass," said Erik Kancler, executive director at Central Oregon Landwatch, which lobbied aggressively in favor of the bill.
The vote was a dramatic reversal from last week when House Democrats were unable to find the critical 31st vote to pass the bill. Rather than let the bill die, Clem orchestrated a second vote on Monday while the party leadership lobbied some of its members who had initially voted against the bill, including House Speaker Dave Hunt. They found the vote in Rep. Larry Galizio (D-Tigard) who said he was convinced to change his vote after getting a phone call from the bill's architect, Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who ironically squelched a similar protection bill sponsored by Ben Westlund in 2007, but then had his own change of heart.
The Metolius Basin protection bill arose from the dead last week, and everybody in Oregon who cares about the irreplaceable treasure that is the Metolius River should give thanks for its resurrection.
The bill, HB 3298, designates the Metolius Basin and an adjacent three-mile buffer zone as an "Area of Critical Statewide Concern," protecting it from major development - including two destination resorts that had been proposed there.
A week ago HB 3298 was all but buried after it failed to gain the necessary majority of votes in the Oregon House. In a tactical move its supporters "put it on the table," delaying further action in the hope of switching over at least one of the five Democrats who had voted against it.
It worked. On Monday, June 22, the bill was brought to the floor again. This time Rep. Larry Galizio of Tigard changed his mind, and the measure passed by a vote of 31-28.
Skyline Forest from Bend German statesman Otto von Bismarck defined politics as "the art of the possible." American economist John Kenneth Galbraith disagreed. "Politics is not the art of the possible," he said. "It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."
Considering the fate of Skyline Forest, the Oregon House faced a choice between the disastrous - doing nothing and potentially allowing the almost 33,000-acre tract to be clear-cut or chopped up - and the unpalatable - passing a bill that would allow development of part of the forest in exchange for protecting the rest. Wisely, it chose the second option.
For years, the Deschutes Land Trust has been trying to acquire Skyline Forest - less picturesquely known as the Bull Springs Tree Farm - to preserve it for its recreation and scenic values. The land, owned by Fidelity National Timber Resources, is zoned for exclusive forest use, preventing its development. But it could be carved up into small private parcels, restricting public access. Or Fidelity or some future owner could simply bring in the bulldozers and chainsaws.
John Kroger, Oregon's attorney general, doesn't fit the super-hero mold. There's no cape, no rippling muscles, no rugged, square-jawed face. (To tell the truth, the man looks a bit like a grown-up Howdy Doody.)
But beneath that mild-manner…ed mien and modest lawyer's attire there is one seriously bad-ass dude. Just ask the people who run OppenheimerFunds Inc.
Thoreau didn't say, "In wilderness is the preservation of the world;" what he really said was, "In wildness is the preservation of the world." Either way, though, the point is true: For the survival of our souls and our sanity, we need places where we can get away from the roar and rush, the clash and clamor of our "civilized" world.
On Monday, President Obama signed into law a piece of legislation that will protect one of those precious wild places - the Badlands wilderness area, about 15 miles east of Bend.
The signature was the final victory in a political battle that had gone on literally for decades, since the federal Bureau of Land Management first proposed that the 30,000-acre swath of high desert was special enough to deserve protection from the assaults of development, mining, grazing, and the howl of the infernal combustion engine. That victory was the result of the patient labor of dozens of people both in Congress and outside of it, notably Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and the Oregon Natural Desert Association.
A decent roof over your head is something everybody needs in the
best of times. For low-income people in these worst of times, it can be
a matter of simple survival.
That's why HB 2436 - the Housing Opportunity Bill - was a good thing, and why we're glad the Oregon Legislature has passed it.
HB
2436 raises the state fee for recording the first page of real estate
title documents to $26 from $11. That $15 increase doesn't look like
much, but it's expected to add up to more than $19 million over the
next biennium.
The money will go to the Oregon Department of
Housing and Community Services, which will use it to help provide
affordable housing options. The bulk of the money will go toward
building and repairing rental housing for low-income working families,
seniors and people with disabilities. Another 14% will go for
homeownership and foreclosure prevention counseling, and 10% for
efforts to prevent and decrease homelessness by helping people meet
their rent or mortgage payments.
Back in the spring of 2007, alarmed at the prospect of two destination resorts being built near the Metolius River, then-state Sen. Ben Westlund and other lawmakers sponsored legislation to protect one of the state's great scenic and recreational resources.
Their bill died when Gov. Ted Kulongoski told them to back off, saying he wanted state agencies to study the best way to protect the Metolius and other special natural resources.
Now the studying is done, and the state Land Conservation and Development Commission has come up with a Metolius protection plan that's even tighter - and better - than the original. It would ban resorts inside the Metolius Basin and restrict them within 10 miles of it.
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