Yes, you could call me a Hillbilly, an Oregon Hillbilly, and I won’t take offense. Some of my best friends are also Hillbillies. That does not make us stupid, just country folk that like to live very rural, far away from the big cities. That’s been a way of life here along the Oregon coast for generations. That’s all about to change if Governor Kitzhaber and his chief of staff get what they want.
Here’s their plan, Appoint a group of like minded business leaders to the Port of Coos Bay, park your chief of staff there with a tax paid salary of $7,500.00 a month, give him no duties to perform, no results of his work are expected or required while he is working for the government to lobby the government. He needs help so lets hire the former Senator Messerle to assist him with no performance required, and pay him $2,500.00 a month. While we’re at it lets get the Senator’s brother appointed to a Coos County Commissioners position, (not elected). Might as well give that guys wife the top position on a local development council (SCDC), who’s only job is to sell the proposed Jordan Cove Liquefied Natural Gas Terminal, to the local populace. The SCDC collects dues from its members and gets tax dollars as a non-profit. Lets put our people at every local position we can think of. The North Bend Airport is right across the bay from the proposed LNG terminal, so lets get our people elected there, to make sure no objections come from the Airport. The top airport board member (Jon Barton), was an appointed commissioner of the port of Coos bay, and is the only other paid employee of the tax collecting SCDC.but now he is more useful as the top airport board member, His buddy and former Coos Bay mayor is the other airport board member. Now absolutely no objections will be coming from the airport for safety reasons. Two elected county commissioners died, so now we get to have two appointed county commissioners, lets change the rules of this county and privatize as much of the county government as we can get away with, lets make a bunch of committees and staff them with our chamber of commerce and SCDC buddies, then we will hire a county administrator, and rule by committee. We need to buy the broken down railroad to ship the tanks of by-product gas that we can’t release in the air ( propane,butane, ect.) to Eugene where it can get shipped elsewhere. Lets buy the railroad, and get the tax payers to pay for it, ( Congressman Defazio’s job at the federal level ) and to fix it, Lets get their state representative ( Arnie Roblan) to work tirelessly at acquiring millions of state tax dollars to fix the railroad.Lets tell the public its to ship logs, lumber, and wood chips to market. Lets keep it a class 1 railroad, that will only be approved for 10 miles an hour, that way the federal government won’t look at us or require any up-grades, and no passengers will be allowed or want to ride it. We will pass legislation that gives the port of Coos Bay complete control of our railroad and give them the power to make their own rules, and increase their tax base along the entire 133 mile track to Eugene. Its OK that the top port commissioner (Jeffery Bishop) is allowed to give no-bid contracts for any repairs he feels are necessary, just tell people you have a customer that’s needs it right away, then when it is exposed that there is no order for Roseburg Lumber’s chips, we say we thought there was. Lets get senator Joanne Verger to procure 60 million dollars to dredge the bay so the deep draft LNG ships can get into the too small Coos Bay, lets tell the people its for a container terminal that Oregon doesn’t need. lets make sure the local democratic party only backs incumbents, that way we don’t have to bring in any new players. We need a new land use law that will allow anyone to get a dredge and fill permit to cross private land owners property without their knowledge or permission. We will sell it as a jobs bill, everyone will want it. Lets see 16.5 million to buy the railroad (tax dollars), 6 million and counting to make repairs,(reports of 1/4″ steel that looks like Swiss cheese on the bridges over three lakes), tracks that were slated for demo by the previous owner, tunnels that need more repairs. Total these millions and you will find we have the most expensive logs and wood chips in the world. Astoria just got done with their fight against LNG, and won. It has been said that the plan was to put forward 3 LNG terminals and one would surely get built, the one in Coos Bay. Don’t forget we need to use eminent domain land seizure laws to build a 200 plus mile pipeline across the state of Oregon to send the gas to California, with no tap for Oregon. California won’t let LNG come ashore for safety reasons. It only has to stay an import terminal to use the eminent domain laws, then we can change it to an export terminal and sell America’s 100 year gas supply overseas. Lets give the developers a tax free status, we don’t want to tax our Canadian friends.
Am I convinced that fraud and corruption are rampant in Coos County, absolutely. Is the governor and his staff involved, absolutely. Will the rest of the state pay for their plans, absolutely.
what they should be doing is scrap the old rails, and get on board with the Obama plan to build high speed rail from northern Washington state to Eugene, and make a connecting spur to Coos Bay, people and freight could get here, our economy would boom, we could transform our economy and energy needs to renewable, and not spend the next 100 years in a gas fueled economy, which is their plan. Even in the city, you will be paying for this plan of theirs right along side us. if we get the two 40 million gallon LNG tanks and the 39 full time jobs they promise, I doubt any of you would want to come here as a tourist, twice.
Not one elected official of ours has stood up and said no to LNG.
Now you know their plan. We didn’t have to worry about the Republicans, These elected Reps are all democrats.
Gene Jennings
Coos Bay, Oregon