Everyone knows that public officials have a duty of care to perform their duties in such a way as to prevent physical or economic injury. Failure to act appropriately, for example, not putting up warning signs on a known flooded road that results in a drowning, is termed nonfeasance. Performing a legal act but doing it improperly such as putting up the road sign in such a way that it cannot be read properly would be regarded as misfeasance while deliberately directing traffic into a flood for some nefarious reason, in other words any illegal or wrongful act is malfeasance.

Sometimes nonfeasance can manifest as the negligent retention of unqualified administrative staff or appointed officials in a position of authority or responsibility after it becomes apparent that the individual was in fact misusing that authority or responsibility or unqualified to perform adequately. A local example might be the negligent retention for thirteen years of former Coquille police chief, Mike Reaves despite clear evidence he was not performing his duties properly. The recent Penn State scandal would be an example of negligent retention and malfeasance whereas retaining a bad police chief might also qualify as misfeasance.

Any act of nonfeasance, misfeasance or malfeasance rightly sets the agency or employer up for a tort claim. For example, if the commissioners choose to shut down the Beaver Hill Solid Waste facility based upon the structure committee’s purely subjective opinions and the consequence is millions in taxpayer closure costs and increased disposal rates to the citizens, in my opinion this would be misfeasance bordering upon malfeasance.

The excellent Dr Robert Fischer, Professor Emeritus Fresno State University was kind enough to analyze the so called “report” produced by the structure advisory committee and confirms my earlier opinion and says the report “…findings are all smoke, mirrors, generalities and business ideology.” The report offers no citation, no explanation of the methodology used to reach its conclusions and no access to the original data the report claims to derive its conclusions from ( a clear violation of ORS Oregon statutes 192.660 – 192.690 that says ““The Oregon form of government requires an informed public aware of the deliberations and decisions of governing bodies and the information upon which such decisions were made”). The report is not a report but a compilation of biased opinion and skirts proving its conclusions with the following claim. “A detailed discussion of each department would make this report far too lengthy to be meaningful to its readers.” In other words we are supposed to accept the word of a motorcycle mechanic and salesman and an unvetted retiree with a track record of making provably false statements or statements that simply cannot be proven because obviously, in their opinion, the commissioners and the public couldn’t understand it anyway…

Somewhere I heard that Pettit is working toward his masters degree and I will guarantee you if he turned in a thesis that began with “the details would render my report meaningless, just trust my conclusions” he would deservedly receive and F. The lack of detail actually renders the report worthless so it is a wonder that The World newspaper has so completely failed its duty of care to provide readers with quality news. Has the paper actually read the report? If they have and they continue to give the report the kind of gravitas four recent articles and editorials suggest then they are complicit and providing free promotion for concepts that have the potential to damage 63,000 citizens. Let me use this opportunity to explain that this blog is my avocation not my profession, in fact my profession sometimes gets in the way of my advocacy, but I will state that if The World and other local media did their job properly, in my opinion, I would not likely be blogging at all, at least not about local matters.

If it could be determined that members of the committee handpicked data to support an existing bias while ignoring data to the contrary and that their recommendations caused harm to taxpayers or public employees then this would qualify as malfeasance. Should the commissioners negligently retain these appointed officials and further accept the recommendations at face value then we are all victims of misfeasance and in at least one instance, in my opinion, malfeasance.

Finally, the structure committee bylaws are at last available and I would like to point out that these are not very well written. One example, under SECTION 3: TERMS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS / DISSOLUTION OF COMMITTEE there is a clause that should a committee member be removed the board shall appoint a replacement.

Upon the effective date of the Order appointing the Committee member(s), each member shall serve for a term of two (2) years. If a member is removed by the Board or resigns, the Board shall appoint a replacement member to serve the remainder of the term.

Unfortunately, nowhere in the bylaws is there an explanation of under what conditions a member may be “removed”. That is quite an omission and again supports my opinion that the board has selected inexperienced counsel and that it is only a matter of time before a huge liability suit befalls the county.