When our commissioners make false or misleading public statements it is hard to know whether they are being deliberately dishonest or are simply passing on bad information they believe to be true, it nevertheless calls their judgment into question. For example, at the recent chamber luncheon Bob Main commented that the federal government is expanding while proudly announcing the county government had shrunk by half in the last twelve years. While it isn’t a major gaff, rather than expanding as Main suggests, the federal government workforce has been declining steadily the last several decades. Then there is Main’s claim that thousands of acres of timber on the CBWR are not available for logging under federal management rules because of 800′ stream buffers. Yes, there are stream buffers and they are there for good reason, but they don’t prohibit logging or thinning, just no clear cutting.

Then we have Cam Parry talking about how hugely expensive public health is for the county and yet of an approximately $3 million budget 99.5% is paid for from state and federal sources, grants and client fees. Parry also repeats that the Coquille Tribe doesn’t need the county to take over management from the BLM of the CBWR land. Technically that may be correct but practically it is highly unlikely that Congress would give away federal property owned by all US citizens to a tiny tribe without a really compelling reason and support from the local governments.

Fred Messerle tells the audience at the chamber luncheon that the county cannot tax its way out of the projected budget deficit yet one report indicates we are only using 32% of our available tax capacity and we could recover 90% of the lost federal forest payments. A special assessment of only $1.50 per $1,000 would generate $3.5 million in revenue, the low end of Main’s earnings guestimate from the Wagon Road.

Taken individually these recent examples may seem like nitpicking but when you start witnessing dozens of these errors, omissions and hyperbole in the aggregate they start to add up to some serious distortion. Deliberate or not, it is imprudent for the public to assume this commission is making good and thoughtful decisions without doing our own careful research and demanding that we have a say in the process.

Rather than working on real, tangible solutions to the county’s problems in the three years since the Governor’s Task Force on Federal Forest Payments and County Services was sent to the commissioners in January 2009 this commission without ever bringing the report to the public’s attention has made an ideological decision not to consider any of the recommendations at all. Instead they are chasing carbon credits and water banking and a sliver of federal timber property that even if Congress let’s them cut it all down is still subject to market vagaries well beyond local control. This county, like all the O&C counties has been living off the federal taxpayer for decades whereas if they really wanted local control they would ask large landowners to pay at least as much in property tax as you and I do.

Instead of fixing the internal problems at the courthouse they have brought in a divisive collection of self important, anti-government “experts” with a clear bias towards cost reduction rather than revenue generation to really shake the place up. Personally, I wish these guys would keep their so called business practices out of my government.

The structure and governance committees are really just window dressing while at least two and probably three commissioners try to move for a quick political coup driven by select members of the chamber. They want to hire an executive to manage the county probably by year’s end and while that ultimately might be a good thing the public and county staff really aren’t being offered much of a chance to be a part of this process. Neither Parry nor Messerle have a mandate from the voters to make such sweeping changes and none of the commissioners are competent, in my opinion, to choose a public administrator. Hell, they can’t even get their facts straight or tell the difference between a slice of the pie, i.e. property tax equity and pie in the sky, i.e. carbon credits and water banking and acts of Congress.