As I have been railing for years now, importing essential services like energy and food exports dollars. Once those dollars leave the county they are no longer available to reinvest in sustainable jobs and local infrastructure. Sadly, not many of our civic leaders understand this well known economic dynamic and The World editorial staff don’t either. Consider this graf from a March 26, 2010 editorial supporting privatizing public minerals. (my thanks to whomever typed this because it isn’t available online)
Oregon Resources has begun building a $45 million plant to extract chromite and other minerals from ancient sand dunes. It has its permits, and it has several mining sites. It wants to explore an additional 6,000 county-owned acres, with the prospect of paying millions in royalties.
Main has speculated publicly that the county might conduct its own mineral exploration and mining, but the idea is fantasy. Would the county rehire its laid-off road workers to drive loaders and backhoes, expecting them to mine more efficiently than private enterprise? Would the county build a processing plant in competition with Oregon Resources, expecting two local plants to be more profitable than one?
Coos County taxpayers don’t belong in the mining business. Instead, our chronically underfunded county needs to make the best deal it can with the one company proposing to pay royalties.
Especially take note of the phrase questioning whether county workers can possibly be more efficient than private enterprise. Guess what! Study after study shows that when managing public resources, public management is, in fact, more efficient. Read one here Does it Matter Who Owns the Wind in Big Stone Montana? Since I have written about this before and quite recently look here.
Check out the comparison of publicly managed wind farm compared to allowing a private corporation to come in and manage wind energy for a mere royalty from the study above. Community owned wind shows higher rates of return to the taxpayer on every level. Not shown in this graf is the efficiency of the wind farm is higher also.
The World editorial staff are not alone holding these archaic views of private enterprise being more efficient but statistical and empirical evidence simply doesn’t support it. When you factor profit into any equation services are sacrificed. With today’s Wall Street model quarterly returns are critical to ratings affecting borrowing capacity for private entities. As such, quality and maintenance and long term impacts are sacrificed in order to make quarterly margins. For essential services like power, health, road maintenance and public safety and management of community resources the for profit model is a disaster for the consumer.
In the March 15, 2010 edition of The New Yorker in a well written article by George Packer about Martinsville, VA once booming until NAFTA sent all the textile jobs overseas. Martinsville is an area very much like Coos County and sports a 20% unemployment rate. The article notes some harsh statistics. Ninety cents of every dollar spent on gas leaves the county. Eighty six cents of every dollar spent at a big box store like Walmart or Staples, leaves the county. Now The World is mocking Commissioner Bob Main for attempting prudence and they are advocating to have 97 cents of every dollar earned off public resources LEAVE THE COUNTY!
Who actually wrote the editorial? Clearly they haven’t done an economic impact analysis either. Whoever they are they need to rethink their allegiance to Reaganomics and take Economics 101. If that doesn’t work, just look around you – the evidence is overwhelming and right before your eyes.
The New Yorker article is really about decentralization, one of my favorite topics and about rural America going back to its roots, taking care of itself and once again being independent of corporate influence. Local entrepreneurs in Martinsville are creating bio-diesel and reinvesting local money back into the local economy. What a concept! Let me repeat, Coos County can make more money simply by importing less electricity and thereby exporting fewer dollars than they will ever earn handing off a mineral lease to an Australian mining company who will likely just flip the deal once they sign a lease anyway. Coos County would do well to grow its own food too…
OK. Then maybe next question is has the County explored other uses/enterprises that the County land might be leased for? Recreational uses such as a mountain biking race course? ATV park? Hunting? Agricultural? Archery range? Paintball? Any other ideas out there?
These uses would generate income, bring people from outside the County, be a nice amenity to County residents, etc, etc, etc,. The first step is to PUBLICIZE THE FACT THAT THE COUNTY WOULD CONSIDER LEASING ITS LAND! Get the word out and see what happens. Maybe nobody shows up and mining is the only way to generate income from the County land. We won’t know until we ASK!
The main point here is the Commissioners are REACTIVE, not PRO-ACTIVE. They have no incentive to explore new ideas for fear of being criticized. So they just plod along and handle whatever is thrown on their desk. This is no way to run a business – oops – a County….
My understanding is that no other mining companies have come knocking. Lacking a strong mineral mining expert the County is relying in part upon ORC’s assertions for a frame of reference.
The financial model used by ORC is typical of many other companies entering rural communities, offering jobs and extracting resources. Wind farms are one example – 3.5% for leasing the land to site turbines and a handful of jobs. Nestle is looking to extract spring water from Cascade Locks on the Columbia Gorge, 3% and a handful of jobs.
ORC – 3% and a handful of jobs. All are planning to avail themselves of tax exemptions, credits, and subsidies… go figure.
Has anyone at the County talked to other mining companies to see if they are interested in leasing the County land? Wouldn’t it be prudent to send out a public RFP to see if anyone else is willing to submit another proposal for the County to compare with ORC’s offer?
I believe an anonn. poster named Kay posted that letter to the editor on the Forum, the Editorial Board of The World chose not to. At least the online version.
It is online (Richard’s Letter) at “The World”. And I am one of those who think $80,000 is a waste of taxpayer resources.
If the county signs a bad deal with ORC it will be in no small part due to commission by omission of The World and their full court press to sell the public on ORC while not reporting all the facts. They don’t look like they are going to bother to inform readers about the tax inequities recently pointed out by David Cay Johnston as well.
Unfortunately for most this World article is at best, is misleading. It may be accurate in fact and content, but misleading in substance.
ORS has always been willing to share with Coos County the information on content of its core samples from exploration on County Forest land. But, But, ONLY, after the exploration and mining lease agreement is SIGNED.
By then the County has struck the deal and it makes little difference what those results of core samples provide as far as the County’s percentage for allowing the removal of product, the contracts will be done.
They could be used to supervise and verify content in relation amounts of end product sold, and the County’s cut, maybe?
The intent and purpose to find out what you have, before you set a price on it still holds, any other way is a sell out.
http://www.theworldlink.com/articles/2010/03/27/news/doc4bada484e61e1388251431.txt
Personally I did not hear Main suggest this but I don’t believe it would be inconceivable to manage the minerals similarly to how we manage the forests. We hire logging firms to cut county timber and transport it we could hire miners to extract chromite. This may be what Main is suggesting and it could be done on a more reasonable extraction rate than proposed by ORC, as in leaving some for future generations.
Additionally, if ORC an under-capitalized corporation wherein their own auditor questions their relevance to continue as an entity, can finance a plant, so could Coos County.
I would be happy to print Richard’s letter, just want his permission first.
“Main has speculated publicly that the county might conduct its own mineral exploration and mining, but the idea is fantasy.” who’s opinion is that Clark?
Bob did nothing more than call for a complete analysis of this project, am I not right on that M?
Why would The World twist his words to imply he wanted to build plants, etc. What rubbish, and they know it. Very skillfull with the words there , too bad they are a distortion of what he really said. Correct me if I’m wrong M, but I personally never heard Bob Main say any of those things. Just rightly so, calling for action to identify what is on sight before they sign any contracts.
The Editorial Board would seem to be advocating signing legal documents before knowing what you are signing away.
Do the Editorial Board members advocate selling resources without a current appraisal? Do they buy property that way? A home? A car?
but gold and platinum? Naw, go ahead and give it to the foreigners.
Geesh.
Coos Bay Water Dist. is also outsourced, anyone know anything about that? I’ve asked but no answers yet.
Thank you M for putting effort into educating the population. The role of a newspaper, but we see how that is going here in Coos County.
Richard Knoblins’ Letter to the Editor wasn’t printed online, that’s a shame. Can you print it here?