Commissioners at the Port of Coos Bay continue to demonstrate their undying faith in the judgment of CEO Jeff Bishop by authorizing him to work deals without first taking them before the board. The commission, of course, never do any due diligence of their own anyway, so it probably doesn’t matter.

Commission approval of Resolution No. FY11/12 – 2 authorizing the Port’s Chief Executive Officer, or designee, to negotiate exclusively with a particular selected party (or parties) for the lease or sale of Port property for a period not to exceed six (6) months without prior Commission approval.

In addition to increasing Bishop’s check signing authority the commission has regularly resolved to allow Bishop to sign contracts and agreements with private companies and the State of Oregon. The consequence of this action is that the executed agreement is never brought before the public for evaluation and is never presented to the commissioners. To view these contracts the public must make a public records request and then only see them after the fact. Examples would be many executed terms for receiving state lottery funds, Connect Oregon and TIGER II grants.

The commissioners may trust Bishop’s word and judgment but now that we know the Port exaggerated its claims of an emergency and that we were misled regarding confidentiality agreements with Roseburg Forest Products, we the public do not share this faith. In fact, we don’t trust the judgment of the commissioners or the CEO.

Bishop will now entertain coal export terminal operators in a desperate bid to meet the requirements of the $5 million lottery fund grant distribution from the Channel Deepening and Widening project before it converts to a loan that must be repaid. In my opinion, this is the real emergency.