Earlier this year, Coos County judge Michael Gillespie found that Lane County commissioners violated public meeting laws when they effectively polled one another outside of the public view. While the new advisory committees, including committees for governance and structure, are not voting on policy the appointed committees are subject to Oregon public meetings law none of their deliberations qualify for exemption from the public.

“The evidence did not show that any three commissioners were ever in the same room at the same time talking about this matter,” Gillespie wrote. “That does not mean that the continuing multiple conversations were not a deliberation. All involved knew that a quorum of the board was working toward a final decision outside of the public meeting context.

“In effect, the public meeting vote on December 9 was a sham,” the judge wrote. “It was orchestrated down to the timing and manner of the vote as as to avoid any public discussion,” The defendants’ purpose in that regard was clear – to avoid adverse public comment or criticism as that appears to be how a quorum of the Board viewed The Register-Guard’s reporting on the subject.”

The structure advisory committee appointed to try and make the county run more efficiently held its second meeting last Thursday. Members include Sheriff Craig Zanni, Daniela Kellum, Alan Pettit, Jon Barton, Timm Slater, JJ McLeod and Laird Bryan with Fred Messerle as commission liaison. The meeting is now available at Coos Media Center and can be viewed online.

After approving the minutes of the previous meeting Messerle at 1:56 minutes into the meeting begins by saying, “We have had a busy week, there has been a lot of discussion back and forth.” The “back and forth” discussion has obviously occurred outside of the public view and there also appears to be electronic file sharing taking place because Messerle continues by asking if everyone was able to access the ‘drop box’, a restricted electronic repository accessible only by password. Jon Barton rudely informed questioner Phil Thompson that only people with the password could view the contents of the drop box.

There are several instances during the meeting referencing shared files and spreadsheets including one on home rule and at 1:47:00 Messerle mentions that after the committee has disseminated the results of their research and it has been “boiled down” then they may want to make the chosen material being considered accessible to the general public.

Jon Barton,by the way, was terrible disrespectful to a community volunteer filming the proceedings, made it clear that he viewed the committee’s job as a fact finding and evaluating job which would later be shared with the public in the form of recommendations to the BOC and that they were not empaneled to answer questions from the public or share materials. To their credit other committee members, including Pettit and Slater appeared to be more willing to field questions and called for more transparency throughout the process.

Messerle’s appointment of Barton to the committee may be a conflict of interest. Barton is Sandy Messerle’s boss, Sandy is Fred Messerle’s spouse.

Bob Main has frequently claimed that he doesn’t want people with agendas on these committees, however, it is clear from this committee and especially from Messerle himself, the committee intends to reduce services to the minimum level mandated by the State. The topic of increasing revenues to fund services was never brought to the table. This committee, at least, has a typical, old school republican agenda to cut services to the public and make government smaller.

During the debt ceiling crisis, increasing tax revenue especially in the form of restoring Clinton era income tax rates to billionaires, despite being favored by 63% of Americans, was never on the table. Congressman John Boehner refers to tax equity as ‘job killing tax hikes’ and prefers to cut entitlements to seniors and veterans. When George Bush took office, January 2001 before he implemented the infamous Bush tax cuts the national unemployment rate was 4.2%. After eight years of “job stimulating” Bush tax cuts Obama inherited a 7.8% unemployment rate and since extending those cuts is now presiding over a 9.1% rate as of July. The evidence indicates that tax cuts actually kill jobs.

We have a similar problem in Coos County with property taxes because not everyone is taxed equally. The effective property tax rate for most us is 1.42% while companies like Northwest Natural and Plum Creek and Menasha are benefiting from a lower taxation rate average of .68%. The Bandon Dunes benefited from an extremely low .29% property tax rate in 2009-2010.

The worst part of this is that the timber companies like Weyerhaueser and Roseburg Forest Products have not chosen to reinvest their tax savings in Coos County to create jobs and instead have laid off hundreds of workers while at the same time exporting raw logs, chips and jobs to Asia. If the top ten property taxpayers in the spreadsheet were assessed the same as the rest of us it would provide an additional $4.5 million in property tax revenue annually. Just taxing the industrial timber land at a reasonable rate would bring an extra $1.8 million.

The county has known for ten years that the O&C federal timber payments would end and could, like all the non O&C counties do already, have increased property tax rates by 3% per year to prepare for this day or at the very least begun a process to properly tax industrial timber property which makes up 900,000 of the more than 1 million acres of Coos County land. Instead, Coos County property taxation appears to have gone in reverse.

The county share of property tax revenue is just 11% but 42% would go toward schools and isn’t education and investing in our kids future why we justify clear cutting the Elliott State Forest?

Another 5% or $3.1 million in 2010-2011 is allocated for urban renewal. Like the tax breaks to the timber companies urban renewal shows no positive return on investment for the taxpayer. Just abolishing urban renewal and fairly taxing commercial timberland would help solve our budgetary woes.

If Coos County can’t afford a juvenile detention facility then it surely cannot afford to provide enterprise zone tax exemptions especially since there is zero empirical evidence they create jobs.

Getting back to these committees, it appears that the commissioners have created a bureaucratic nightmare and are presently operating without any guidance from counsel. If they haven’t violated public meeting laws already, which I believe they have, they are clearly treading on very thin ice. Messerle has told the committee they may not meet together in groups greater than three but as the Gillespie ruling indicates, deliberations don’t have to be in person or occur simultaneously to constitute an illegal quorum. After the recent dust ups with Main and Parry violating Oregon statutes I would expect them to be extra judicious rather than this careless.

Well meaning or not, I am afraid these committees are a bureaucratic nightmare in the making.