The inside story of Elections Fraud and The Port of Coos Bay

The inside story of the Port of Coos Bay’s ELECTION FRAUD
By Wim de Vriend

On the website of The World (a five-day-a-week daily still being published in Coos Bay), an individual who calls himself Spitler posted this comment about my book “The JOB Messiahs,” which documents the sordid history of the Port of Coos Bay:

“I don’t have an opinion one way or another about the performance of the port committee. But I do have an opinion of the author of this book, which is: What a gutless turd. I am so tired of people who stand back and bitch about what they see but do NOT THING ONE to make a positive contribution and actually change the wrongs they see. Mr. de Vriend, if you don’t like the way the Port of Coos Bay is run, show some true guts and run for the committee yourself!”.

Well, Mr. Spitler – may I call you Adolf? For some reason that sounds right, Adolf Spitler – anyway, as a famous German writer observed long ago, ignorance in action is a terrible thing to watch. And it’s even more terrible when you, Adolf, expose your ignorance with scatological passion. If you had read my book, you would know that for the last twenty-five years, ever since the Port of Coos Bay committed blatant election fraud in 1987, nobody has been able to heed your heated advice and “run for the committee.” That’s because said election fraud destroyed the local voters’ right to elect and recall what’s officially called the Coos Bay Port Commission. And as a result, the voters have been unable to change their Port’s destructive policies. And very destructive they have been.

For the benefit of Adolf Spitler and his fellow stormturders, whose ranks may fill many a privy, but also for the more thoughtful members of the public, I thought I should present the story of that political atrocity, more details of which can be found in chapter 9 of “The JOB Messiahs.” But first, we need a bit of background.

The Port loses its way

Things started going wrong with the Port of Coos Bay back in 1974, when some noisy local activists forced it to stray far beyond what had been its chief assignment for nearly seventy years: making sure that the harbor was dredged, so the local mills could ship out their products. I should perhaps make clear that, even though many people think otherwise, public Port Districts do not necessarily manage local harbor installations, although some do. The Port of Coos Bay never had run shipping docks or towboats or railroads or shipyards. In Coos Bay private enterprise took care of all those things, while from time to time the Port saw to it that the harbor was dredged or deepened. Aside from this, the only businesslike activity of the port commission and its small, low-paid staff was the management of its property in Charleston, which included moorage for the fishing fleet and some commercial land. This simple arrangement had worked out well for the port, for the lumber shippers, and for the taxpayers of the district.

But by 1974, mooring fishing boats and keeping the harbor deep enough would no longer do; fervent local believers in the universal competence of government were getting on their hind legs, braying that the port MUST branch out into creating “economic development” and JOBS – because Coos Bay needed more of both. This mania was fed by the Oregon legislature, which the year before had created the Oregon Economic Development Department, and given it money to lend. Now local port districts had a new source of loans on easy terms, for getting into dubious business ventures.

To make them feel good about that the legislature had described the state’s 23 port districts as “engines of economic development.” Exactly HOW port districts were to turn themselves into engines of economic development, nobody knew; but like all undefined concepts, it was a risky one. An engine is an active contraption, usually the part that moves a vehicle or some other piece of equipment. Until then, rather than trying to be the engine that moved the local economy, the port had merely made sure the road ahead was paved; and that had proved to be a sound way of achieving economic development.

All this talk about turning port districts into engines overlooked that an economy works best when the government does NOT try to run all kinds of businesses, and by businesses I don’t mean monopolies immune to market forces, such as public utilities. Government-run enterprises that ARE subject to market forces almost always fail, the taxpayers do not deserve to pay for the losses, and the wrecks of failed government ventures often block real economic progress. Hence the best way for government to spur development and create jobs is to clear the road by removing impediments – like a harbor that is too shallow, or officials who are too meddlesome. Then entrepreneurs will spot opportunities, invest in businesses, and create development and JOBS into the bargain.

Certainly, many of those will fail too; but not at taxpayers’ expense. If you ignore the lessons of history and do it the other way, with the politically-motivated hand of government picking economic winners and losers while covering the losses from the public treasury, after a while your economy starts looking like the one in the late, unlamented Soviet Union, where the government ran the entire economy, with grinding poverty the end result. While we’re not quite there, we’ve been headed that way for some time in Coos Bay.

When you look at economic and population statistics for western Oregon during these last three decades, you will see a stagnant economic backwater surrounded by growth and prosperity. That backwater is Coos county, the lone freak among all the counties west of the Cascades. During 29 years of healthy growth all around it, Coos county (except Bandon) lost population and remained mired in poverty. And much of the blame for that can be laid at the feet of the Port of Coos Bay.

But the activists in 1974 were convinced that it was the other way around. For mysterious reasons they thought that the port had vast expertise in economic matters, but had kept it a secret. The port commissioners knew they had no such expertise, so they responded by doing what politicians do when they feel out of their depth: hire a manager, in this case a Port Manager. Until then the port had been run by a Harbor Master, a modestly paid official with modest aspirations and no illusions about Coos Bay’s economic potential.

The port’s harbor master in 1974 was Ernie Payne. He had been on the job for 17 years, following a career in the Coast Guard. But he was retiring, so the activists and the port commissioners and The World and the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce and all the other wishful thinkers projected their hopes on the new port manager who would replace Payne, and finally set the port on its rightful way to Greatness.

Felkins’ Follies

Payne retired, the Port Commissioners gave him a watch, and as their new port manager they appointed a brassy character by the name of Steve Felkins. True to expectations, Felkins proposed a series of business ventures for the port to get into. But they all bombed.

Much of the wreckage left by Felkins can still be seen. Looking across from Empire toward the North Spit you can spot the port’s T-Dock, built in 1980 for between $1.5 and $2.5 million. It was supposed to attract fish processing ompanies, but none came and the dock was never used.

In Charleston the port still owns a big, empty building that once held a stinking fish waste reduction plant that went broke. The Alaskan tenants, who were crooked or incompetent or both, took the port for a financial ride.

Another fish plant, the one now owned by Pacific Seafood, went through two previous tenants of the same description, who took the port (and some other economic development agencies including the State EDC) for a financial ride as well.

And although it’s gone now, for many years the remains of Felkins’ very first “development” project, the one called Felkins’ Folly that set the pattern for the others, could also be seen in Charleston. Felkins’ Folly consisted of an old, unseaworthy ferry boat, the Crosline, that the port bought and was going to rent to some retail businesses that never showed up. Emery Hanson finally took the Crosline off the Port’s chest for ten cents on the dollar, and for years the ferry’s superstructure served as a storage shed in his muddy junk yard.

But the port’s problem – and Felkins’ problem – went beyond the embarrassment of having collected a herd of white elephants. Most of the white elephants had been bought with other people’s money. And when they failed to yield a return, the port couldn’t make the loan payments. The only thing that kept the Port of Coos Bay from being forced into bankruptcy was the leniency of the State of Oregon, which had provided many of the loans.

It is probably for such reasons that port managers and other development dignitaries, of whom we have an unusually large number in Coos Bay, are a lot like fish that have sat around too long; they start to stink. And this explains why a typical port manager’s tenure is about five years; then he goes on to his next job while the port commissioners and the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club and The World and the other wishful thinkers sit around saying that he will be sorely missed, but no doubt before long his valiant efforts will as yet bear fruit in the form of Economic Development and JOBS. Then the next port manager gets hired with identical results, and the next. It’s why the famous comic Will Rogers concluded: “The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.” Even more helpfully, he recommended: “If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging.”

Unfortunately the port didn’t take any of Will Rogers’ advice. It kept digging, and not just figuratively. One of its digs can be found a few hundred yards north of the TDock, and it’s called the Barge Slip. It was dug for $1.5 million in 1985, again purely on spec, in the expectation that it would be used by fabricators of big steel equipment for the Alaskan oil fields. Those pieces of equipment, assembled by highly-paid metal workers, would be hauled to Alaska by barges moored in the barge slip, but none of that happened either. And, of course, the barge slip put the port even further in debt.

Frank G. Martin Jr. arrives

The one who had promoted the port’s barge slip was port manager #4, who came on board in 1983. An even brassier character than Felkins, manager #4 went by the name of Frank G. Martin Jr. If Martin’s post-script “Jr.” meant that he was a chip off the old block, we should be grateful that the port never hired Martin Senior. During Martin Jr.’s tenure the port’s record went from bad to disastrous, although his supporters made heroic efforts to conceal that truth.

Martin was brought here from that pit of graft and corruption known as Chicago, by those who fancy themselves local dynasties. While the Founders of such dynasties made their fortunes as local entrepreneurs by starting a lumber mill or a dock or some other useful venture, the second or third generation usually had different ideas. Thanks to their indoctrination at expensive colleges and/or their desire to be important, they turned to politics, becoming converts to the idea that nothing much can happen in the economy without guidance by all knowing government officials, including themselves. At the national level the Kennedy’s have set the pattern, but we have our own Kennedy’s in Coos Bay. Thanks to their protection – or their ignorance – Frank Martin was able to conceal that he knew nothing about economics or shipping or business or money, except how to find and spend it. The only thing Frank Martin knew a lot about was crooked politics. Hence the best thing we can say about Frank G. Martin Jr. is that he was an above-average con man. Even a former port attorney agrees with that assessment, although I should qualify that statement by observing that all economic development dignitaries are con men. If they have any intelligence at all, they know that the job they have been given – creating JOBS – is not real. In places with more favorable conditions than Coos Bay, new industry and JOBS may well arrive during their tenure, although seldom because of anything they have done.

But like all political animals, development dignitaries are very good at taking credit. In Coos Bay very little ever happens so they rarely get the chance to grab even undeserved credit. Hence the best they can do is dream up ingenious excuses for their failures, while putting on a good show to confuse the public. Frank Martin’s mastery of both skills was impressive, because he was an gifted, highly industrious, utterly shameless liar. The devotion heaped on Martin by his worshippers amazes me to this day; even the passage of time has failed to lift the veil off his catastrophic tenure. But then, it takes astuteness as well as honesty to recognize that your ship is headed nowhere, and to set a different course. Instead our port’s leaders applied the standard maneuver of political hacks: if we haven’t arrived yet, we just need to keep going in the same direction, forever.

In fairness, I should add that Frank G. Martin Jr.’s method included the constant, deliberate befuddling of his supporters. He never let them catch their breath to ponder what was going on. And he did this by relentlessly burying them under as much irrelevant information and as many nutty ideas for new “initiatives” as he could pick up in barroom conversations, all of which were financed by his generous expense account. Those initiatives followed one another so quickly that nobody in a position to intervene – the port commissioners in particular – ever paused to wonder why none brought any results. There was always another sensational plan, waiting in the wings to be revealed.

Coos Bay’s Nonexistent Potential

Having said all that, I don’t want to leave the impression that Frank Martin meant for everything to go wrong. He needed a job, he knew that he was ill-prepared for it, and so, using all the sleazy political tricks he had learned in his native Chicago, he did the best he knew, while keeping a sharp eye for a better job opportunity. Besides, a con man will always find people who want to be conned. Frank Martin’s supporters became his willing victims because of their childlike faith in the unlimited economic potential of the Coos Bay harbor. And Frank Martin never disparaged that faith. In fact, much evidence suggests that he was ignorant enough to be a believer himself.

When you travel through western Europe, a part of the world that has benefited enormously from waterborne shipping since it’s always been the cheapest way to move merchandise, you will come across many quaint little towns, on the coasts, on the rivers and on the canals, with antique harbor facilities that obviously haven’t been used for decades, often for a century or so. Changes in shipping – ever-larger vessels, ever-more expensive loading facilities, shifting trade patterns – have made those harbors obsolete, but many are pleasant enough places to sightsee or ride boats or have coffee and cake on a quiet, sun-drenched terrace. Seen against this backdrop, the decline of the port of Coos Bay looks like merely one tiny part of a global trend which favors the growth of great big mega-harbors at the expense of the smaller ones. Coos Bay’s situation is not much different from that of Oregon ports like Newport and Astoria, Eureka in California, or Grays Harbor in Washington. All are isolated harbors with poor inland connections, which have purely local industries to thank for their now-imperiled existence. During Frank Martin’s tenure already, a state study found that many more of Oregon’s 23 port districts besides Coos Bay suffered from declining shipping and outdated facilities, and were hopelessly in debt. But instead of facing the possibility that many of those 23 ports were losing their usefulness, the authors called for more government subsidies.

The same applied to Coos Bay’s potential for attracting new industries besides shipping and timber. Ever since 1974, the local activists had been calling for the port to “recruit” such new industries to replace the local lumber mills, which everyone knew were declining. But almost every other fading industrial town in this country had a similar wish. And the competition for new industries was too stiff to be met by Coos Bay, a place separated from the mainstream of commerce and industry by geography, i.e. the Coast Range, which offers no navigable rivers and no terrain that could enable the construction of large canals, superhighways or first-class railroads, some of which a shipping hub and an industrial center must have. Moreover, nobody seemed to consider the reason why nearly all the freighters picking up logs and lumber and chips in Coos Bay arrived with empty holds. Running empty cargo vessels is an expensive proposition, and you can bet good money that many a ship owner had pondered and investigated ways of making that trip to Coos Bay pay both ways, by importing something. But – with negligible exceptions – they never found anything to import.

The Preservation of the Public Peace

But none of that gave pause to Frank G. Martin Jr. In an torrent of boastful interviews and press releases, he announced plans to improve the railroad, build a brand new cargo dock, import unspecified stuff, mine the sea floor to bring ore into Coos Bay, promote ship repair, build new moorage for the Coast Guard, build a new superhighway to the interior, create storage for oil drilling platforms, attract fabricators of oil field equipment, attract cruise ships, and Navy ships too; ship government surplus food through the port; go on trade missions to the Far East; develop a “marketing” program and hire a “marketing director,” go to all kinds of trade shows and conventions, even when there was no conceivable point to it; advertise the port (but primarily to the locals, to keep their support); develop the port so it could replace Portland in case Mount St. Helens blew up again as it had in 1980; form a Foreign Trade Zone, an Enterprise Zone, and an Urban Renewal District on the North Spit, and build a road there too; subsidize the building of a chromium smelter on the Spit; develop the Eastside Airport; form a transportation alliance with the Eugene airport – and almost every one of those plans was presented as an escape from annihilation, because without it Coos Bay might cease to exist.

But even this long list does not come close to the number of topics that might be on the port commissioners’ next meeting agenda, which could easily exceed three dozen. It’s enough to make you feel sorry for the commissioners, but they had brought it on themselves, and they never wavered in their praise for Frank Martin – until well after he had left, and even then not in public. While he was here they kept giving him raises. Back in the early seventies Ernie Payne had been making about $10,000 a year, but in 1983 Frank Martin was hired at $48,000 plus extremely generous perks. By the time he left in 1988 he was making $59,000, and that was considered low pay in the economic development trade. Or so the commissioners said. Martin wholeheartedly agreed that he was underpaid, so right before he left he arranged a couple of improper going-away presents for himself, amounting to $20,000.

In the meantime the port’s financial condition, already bad at Martin’s arrival, only got worse. To cover its many overdue loan payments the port had quietly been selling “Emergency Bonds,” which were basically additional property tax levies, approved by the commissioners but without bothering to let the taxpayers vote on them. There were legal limits on E-Bonds, however; the port could only sell $100,000 a year, and no more than $150,000 of E-Bonds could be outstanding at any one time. One more legal obstacle, albeit not to the port, was that E-Bonds could only be sold if the port commission declared an emergency “for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health and safety.” I am not aware of any other port district that had the nerve to invoke the public peace, health and safety simply to cover past-due bills; the Port of Coos Bay seems to have been a lone pioneer. Still, even these machinations were insufficient to get the port out of the red; soon it was taking out “tax anticipation loans,” to be repaid by future E-Bonds. It was the port’s version of a payday loan, a financial habit of low income people that our enlightened legislature saw fit to outlaw years ago.

Great News, Just in Time

Happily for the port, Frank Martin’s political skills included a knack for finding taxpayers’ money, federal, state and local. Unhappily, he also excelled at spending it or, more accurately, wasting it. The year he arrived, he asked the voters to approve a special $485,000 levy. This was to supplement the port’s “tax base,” the amount of property taxes it was allowed to levy annually, which then stood at “only” $148,000 and was allowed to grow by 6% a year.

Passage of this levy, ostensibly intended to improve the port’s fortunes by launching Martin’s multiple “initiatives”, took two tries. The first try was supported by a big campaign by all the usual suspects, which included The World. Two weeks before the election, The World announced that the port was selling a one-year lease-option on 15 acres of its North Spit land to a steel fabricator, the Guy Atkinson Company, which wanted to use the land to construct oil field equipment for Alaska, thus bringing 400 new jobs. At a time when the Port sold one-year lease-options for about $100 an acre this was small potatoes, and Atkinson had no signed contract for such a venture. Still, it was presented – and taken – as sensational news. The Port’s measure failed, but only by 94 votes.

The World urged a second vote, and the port, after reducing the proposed levy by a token $30,000, scheduled another election five weeks later. Two days before that second vote The World filled its front page with big, fawning articles about the port, one of which announced the arrival of another 1,000 new jobs. These would be the same kinds of jobs that the Guy Atkinson Company had promised to bring, but you had to read the fine print to discover that this second steel-fabrication venture had nothing to do with the port because the new company, called Pa-Con, planned to use North Spit land belonging to Weyerhaeuser. Besides, Pa-Con had no signed fabrication contract, either. No matter; on the same page Frank Martin predicted that because of all this growth the port would soon be financially independent of the taxpayers, and The World insinuated that the voters had better seize this chance “to make a positive statement” that would mean “economic recovery”, “jobs” and “many years of prosperity”. This time the levy passed by a thousand votes.

But none of the thrilling news that fed the voters’ euphoria became reality. Not even Frank Martin’s promise that very soon the port would no longer need the taxpayers’ money. One explanation is that much of the new levy’s proceeds was used for past-due bills, with the remainder converted into near-unlimited expense accounts for the port staff. Pretty soon their opulent lifestyle raised a lot of eyebrows.

So it should not have been surprising that, early the next year, Martin proposed thatthe port ask the taxpayers to more than triple the Port’s permanent tax base, from thethen-allowable annual levy of $148,000 to 498,000. Moreover, the new tax base of almost half a million would allow an automatic increase of almost $30,000 the following year, the legally permitted 6% growth, and another 6% the year after that, and so on. All this raised some hackles since Frank Martin had promised he wouldn’t ask for any more money, but another campaign committee gallantly sprang to life. Calling themselves the “Advocates” of the Port, they ran a big campaign announcing: “12 Months of Progress – Let’s Continue!” They claimed that the Port had a BARE-BONES BUDGET, and that its new request was substantially REDUCED from last year’s (in fact, it amounted to a 9% increase). Most striking, they chose as their slogan: THESE LEADERS CAN’T BE WRONG!, thus bringing human infallibility to Coos Bay at last. A few skeptics like my late friend Lorance Eickworth tried to stop the tsunami of civic insanity, but they were outgunned. The measure passed, and it is only thanks to the Oregon property tax limitation, Measure 5, which passed statewide six years later, that the port’s present tax levy is “only” $1.5 million. But all of that is taxation without presentation, a subject wewill turn to now.

The State Port Gimmick

Despite the taxpayers’ repeated generosity, Frank Martin was making a complete hash of the Port’sfinances. He always found excuses to keep the portcommissioners in the dark, but finally even selling EBondsand taking tax-anticipation loans no longer helped; the port was running out ofways to meet its crushing financial obligations, and Martin had to beg the state for whathe called a “Moritorium” on loan payments.

But by 1987 he had hit on yet another scheme to befuddle the unwary, and hold on to his job. Fulminating that it was unfair to expect Coos Bay to finance its own “port development,” he now advocated that the Port of Coos Bay become part of the a state government, so the State of Oregon would pay for its development instead. Well, he ADVOCATED that, but he didn’t really mean it. First of all, “port development” had always been the job of private enterprise: the lumber mill owners and other entrepreneurs who built the shipping docks had paid for it. The fact that by this time many had quit the upkeep of those docks didn’t seem to give anybody pause that “port development” might be a losing investment. But in reality all of Martin’s talk about “development” was a diversion, because he had a different, secret agenda. He had cooked up a scheme that would rob the port’s taxpayers of their voting rights while picking their pockets, all while giving the opposite impression.

Like the rest of Martin’s plans it was not original, although it may have seemed that way. In the past, for instance, proposals had been made to combine the Port of Astoria with the upriver Port of Portland. Like quite a few people in Coos Bay, Astorians believed that Portland’s success was due to its close connection with the state government, because the governor appointed Portland’s Port Commission. In all other Oregon port districts the voters elected their commissioners. Some people also thought that its relationship with the governor made the Port of Portland a state agency, which was not correct because in a classic example of taxation without representation, Portland’s taxpayers still had to fund their port commission. And they were not very enamored of the arrangement. As recently as 1985 they had tried to change it, but found they couldn’t, because it was part of the Oregon State Statutes, which could not be changed by local initiatives. Yet this may have been the very reason Frank Martin liked it. Where he came from, taxation without representation was a civic virtue. Chicago’s taxpayers didn’t elect their school board: Mayor Daley appointed it along with an army of Chicago officials, urban and suburban, all of whom had him to thank for their jobs. In any case, compared with other ports, Portland is a very minor player, handling only a few percentage points of west coast cargo. But to think that its link to the governor was the secret of its so-called success was a typical assumption of people who think politicians are the founts from which all blessings flow.

The plan now being hatched for Coos Bay consisted of lies, diversions and a great deal of obfuscation. If the voters gave the governor the power to appoint their port commissioners, they were told, that would make the port a “state port,” which would cause the state to send untold riches to the Port of Coos Bay, for “development”. In reality giving the governor that power would NOT make Coos Bay a state port, just like the Port of Portland was not a state port. Besides, nowhere in the bill written to implement this plan did it say that the Port of Coos Bay would become a state agency, and the same went for the funding from Salem; it was not in it. What the bill did include was a provision that would substantially raise the amount of money the port could raise locally by selling more E-Bonds. None of the propaganda talked about that, but it was vital to the port which (as mentioned) had been allowed to sell up to $100,000 of such bonds a year, with the upper limit on E-bonds outstanding at any time set at $150,000. The “State Port” bill would raise those limits to $500,000 in any calendar year, and for an aggregate amount outstanding of $1.5 million. In other words, the existing limits would be increased five and ten times respectively, and for a financial maneuver that legally should have been reserved for true emergencies, like a war or a major earthquake.

After the voters rewarded port commissioner Jim Whitty with a seat in the Oregon House, he and Frank Martin started
promoting the “State Port” idea. In the meantime, Jim Whitty’s brother John had become a Coos Bay port commissioner. The
Whitty’s, the Brunells (owners of now-gone Central Dock), Frank Martin and Bill Bradbury, the then local state senator,
promoted the “State Port” concept with the rest of the port commission, the governor and the legislature.

A Most Peculiar Plan

The mechanics of the State Port plan were as follows. Senator Bradbury introduced a bill into the legislature, SB (Senate Bill) 962, which would, among other things, terminate the electoral rights of the port’s voters. But the legislature, mindful of the people’s prerogatives, did not want to be blamed for that. So once it approved SB 962, it would pass it on to the port’s voters for final approval, as a referendum. Hence it could not become State Law without the local people’s vote and, like Pontius Pilate, the legislators could wash their hands of it. The contradictions between the written and spoken versions of this scheme, and the places where they were spoken, abundantly proved that its supporters were selling a pig in a poke, and the voters down the river to boot. But clearly those supporters were counting on those voters’ unawareness of what went on in Salem. You the reader may have signed contracts containing the clause that no verbal assurances, “express or implied”, should be relied upon that are not part of the printed version. In this case it was the other way around: the proponents of the State Port bill told the local voters that they could rely on purely verbal promises. Yet the state legislators had expressly denied such promises. I have spent many hours in the state archives, listening to the lying and scheming by Bradbury and his ilk, and transcribing it. In Coos Bay, Bradbury told the people that his bill would give the port a financial “partnership with the state”. In Salem he sang a different tune:

Rep. FAWBUSH: . . . I basically do not support the concept of adding this to the potential state obligations. . . .
BRADBURY: Madam Chair.
COHEN: Yes, Senator Bradbury.
BRADBURY: I mean, I wanna be very clear here in response to your question and in response to Representative Fawbush’s comment – there – I mean, there’s no – ah – there’s no commitment made by having the governor appoint the port commission, there is no commitment,no financial commitment ah made, there’s no deal that’s been cut. Essentially, what this represents, in my mind, is a recognition that when you have a deep-water asset, to the tune – that the port of Coos Bay has, you’ve got an asset that has a lot broader significance than just to the voters within that port district . . . I mean, you know – there’s no commitment. Ah – we would all wish that there was. But there is not, within this bill, that commitment . . .[. . .]
Rep FAWBUSH: . . . I guess my question as we go through this deliberation . . . If it’s such a good idea, why is it that with all the effort that’s been put into Coos Bay, the debts incurred, the money spent, that we haven’t reached a take-off point. . . I can understand why the half million a year without a vote would help but why the other – the – Governor’s appointments, why will that make such a major difference in the port of Coos Bay . . .?
BRADBURY: Ah, you know, all I can say really is that, ah, it’s very clear to me that the assets of the port of Coos Bay are a lot more important to this state than – than just to the people of that port district and the basic theory here is that the state should recognize the importance of both of their international ports, . . . [the other being] the port of Portland so that we do treat our deep-water international ports differently than the other Port Districts in the state. And the reason for that is that the state needs to be in a position as to pay attention to and feel comfortable supporting those international ports.”

It was gobbledygook. It was pure bovine excrement.

One of the pro-State Port witnesses was Bruce Laird, a former Coos Bay port commissioner who was now working for the Oregon Economic Development Department. He complained that the Port could not survive on a puny $450,000 community tax base. Three years earlier, the port’s voters had been persuaded that such a tax base (of $498,000, actually) would put Coos Bay on the map. Laird also seemed unaware that with the 6% automatic increases, it was now approaching $600,000. When asked what he thought “State Port” status would achieve for the port, Laird sounded clueless, talking about repairing railroad tunnels on the Southern Pacific’s Coos Bay line,and about making highway improvements. Finally, an audibly tired state representative sighed:

CAMPBELL: Let me ask one more question and then I’ll back away from this – If you were not going to get additional help from the state or financial assistance from the state, would you feel the same way about the control of the port?
LAIRD: Ah, I think so.

If that was true, there must have been some weighty reasons for these JOB Messiahs to go to all this trouble. We can guess what those were: the port commissioners would be able to pick their constituents’ pockets with bigger E-Bonds, and the victims wouldn’teven know it. But even if they knew, the commissioners would be able to do so with impunity, and more: in future years they could make all kinds of unpopular plans for Coos Bay without worrying about being re-elected. They could no longer be recalled, either. And, this is what happened.

After spending many hours in the state archives, I was left with no doubt about the reasons why the Oregon legislature passed this cockamamie bill. One was the absence of a state commitment to give more money to the port. The other was the assurance that they would not be blamed for the legislative atrocity. As one tired legislator put it, “the only satisfactory part of the bill is that the people of the district vote on this decision.”

But the local propaganda for SB 962 kept all this a deep secret; it only hinted of future torrents of money from Salem. Speaking to a skeptical gathering of the Coos Bay Shipping Club, port commissioner Joe Jakovac said: “I don’t think [Governor] Goldschmidt wants that authority without understanding that there is an obligation that comes along with it. I think this measure was approved by the state Legislature with the idea that we would get a lot more state support . . .
He realizes he has an obligation.” Obviously Jakovac had not attended the hearings in Salem, where Bradbury repeatedly tripped over himself to confirm that the state would have no such obligation.

The voters, in other words, were being sweet-talked into stealing from themselves.

“It would only take a local vote to dissolve”

It can be difficult to separate deviousness from stupidity. Like Frank Martin, Governor Goldschmidt seemed to think that no matter where it was located, the economic potential of a water-filled cavity was limitless: “I mean, if you lived any other place in the world and you had a deep water harbor, you’d use it,” he had told people in Astoria, a deep-water port that lost all overseas cargo shipping after Goldschmidt made that statement. Obviously Goldschmidt would have made a marvelous port manager. In his mind any fjord in Tierra del Fuego, where nobody lives and nothing is produced, was guaranteed to become a world port.

In June of 1987, SB 962 received final approval in Salem. So now the local campaign was on.

To sell SB 962 to the aborigines, the JOB Messiahs presented it – once again – as a matter of survival. Frank Martin and Bill Bradbury also insinuated that the proposal was seen as a threat by Coos Bay’s nemesis, the Port of Portland. Goldschmidt hinted darkly that “two and maybe three additional harbors in this state” might also covet State Port status.

Predictably, local arguments in favor of the measure centered on the many – but never specified – benefits to come from the state. Arguments in opposition mainly deplored the loss of local control. In hindsight, they should have emphasized the absence of the state’s monetary obligation, the sneaky part about the E-Bonds, and the port’s financial irresponsibility. Some opponents tried to do that, but it is doubtful that much of their audience knew what they were talking about.

One critic, Jim Ellis, said he had confronted port commissioner Chris Short, a woodworkers’ union boss, about the question of local control. They spoke at a meeting of the Democrat Central Committee. Both Short and Allan Rumbaugh of the port assured Ellis that the port would “remain under local control.” After the meeting Short checked into the matter anyway and called Ellis, saying “My God, Mr. Ellis, I found out what you said was true.” But the old boys who could not be wrong went to work on him, and a few days later Short announced his readiness to re-join the campaign. Jim Ellis warned:

“If we lose control of our port, will we have a voice about the caliber of industry that goes in on the North Spit or any port property?”
That was a prophetic question, and it was at the heart of the pulp mill controversy that would erupt two years later.

Jim Ellis was not the first to discover a great truth of politics: people will vote for anything that promises a free lunch, even though masses of economists have concluded there is no such thing. M.J. Leonard of North Bend had also attended the Democrats’ meeting. He observed that people who questioned the State Port idea were “treated very rudely and shouted down.” He also concluded that a reversal of the measure would be next to impossible. Returning the voting privilege to the port’s taxpayers could only occur through the legislature or through a statewide ballot initiative. The latter was even more unlikely than the former: a statewide initiative would require petitions with more signatures than there were people in Coos County.

This issue – whether or not the governor’s authority to appoint port commissioners could be taken back later – was a critical one. While he was out stumping for approval of the State Port measure, Frank Martin was asked: Will a ‘yes’ vote mean the port district residents have no recourse should state agency status prove not to be beneficial?

“We checked with the attorney general and by state law it would (only) take a local vote to dissolve (our relationship to the state),” Martin said.

Three years later this very issue would come up. Outraged at the high-handed ways of the governor’s port commission, a Coos Bay group drafted an initiative to return the port commission to voter control. There is absolutely no doubt that it would have passed – had it made it to the ballot. But the attorney general’s office declared that reversing the law would have to be a statewide measure. The legal experts cited two precedents. One was a state Supreme Court decision from 1985, the other dated back all the way to 1917. Since this flatly contradicted what Frank Martin had said in 1987, I checked with the AG’s office to see if Martin had really consulted with them. They replied that there was no record of that. I would say the odds are excellent that he never contacted the AG in the first place.

“What about the Framers?

The proponents of the “State Port” measure called themselves the “Coos Comeback Coalition”. As usual, they raised a sizable campaign fund; in fact, they had more money than they knew what to do with. One of the largest contributors was John Stephens, an executive of Roseburg Lumber.

Like a hopeful David fighting Goliath, Lorance Eickworth ran a few small advertisements against the measure. He also ran radio spots, claiming that “special interest groups, self-styled coalitions and big business” wanted a free ride and were
railroading the public. The CCC outspent him by a hundred to one: “Vote YES for Progress, New Jobs, and
the Future of our Port!”

“This will be the one and only election to decide whether we accept the state’s offer of greater support for our port. Approval will send the message to Salem that we accept Governor Goldschmidt’s offer . . . to help develop the port
of Coos Bay to its full potential. A no vote says we reject that offer and don’t want to benefit from the Oregon Comeback.
. . . This is the first time in (the) history of Oregon that the governor and Legislature have recognized us as a valuable, world-class, state resource, in the same class as the port of Portland.”

Following standard Frank Martin procedure, great news broke a week before the election: Governor Goldschmidt came to Charleston to announce a half-million dollar state funding package for the port. (It arrived a year later.) In 1986 the port had purchased (on easy terms) Emery Hanson’s property, commonly known as Hanson’s Landing, located on South Slough in Charleston. Frank Martin wanted to build docks and boat repair shops on it, and the state money was essential to this project, which included the facilities of Giddings Boatworks. Mr. Giddings was a member of the CCC, and a contributor. A few years later he would contribute a larger amount to the unsuccessful attempt to reverse the election.

On September 15, 1987, port voters overwhelmingly approved the State Port measure that was not a State Port measure. 7,487 were in favor, and 2,985 opposed. According to Frank Martin, it was “a mandate to the governor that the community is serious about moving forward in reaching the potential that this port has as quickly as possible.” Martin also said he would immediately ask the state for money. There was much whooping and hollering in the press.

Lorance Eickworth and Jim Ellis didn’t find much to whoop about. Jim Ellis concluded that Coos Bay had just dumped on the Founding Fathers. “I wonder what the framers of our Constitution would say if they knew what we did to that great document Sept. 15. They sacrificed with their blood and life [to give us the] means whereby we could always protect our freedoms, the right to vote . . . I’ll bet if our forefathers could see what we are doing to our Constitution today, they would sit down and weep.”

We carry his mark

The new State Port law that was not a State Port law became effective on January 1, 1988. This meant that Governor Goldschmidt could now appoint an entire new Port Commission. His appointments included John Stephens as Port President.

But by October of that first “State Port” year, the Port of Coos Bay was in trouble again. Despite “aggressive marketing and major infrastructure improvements” (meaning the useless barge slip and a new road on the North Spit that would see no industrial use for ten years), the port was as broke as ever. And, it had already obligated its local taxpayers up to the new emergency bonding limit. President Stephens had to ask the Economic Development commission (EDC) for another moratorium on state loan payments.

In the fall of that year Frank Martin left for another job, doing economic development for the State of Indiana port authority. It was not much of a raise – $65,000 a year, compared with his Coos Bay port salary of $59,000 – but, like Steve Felkins before him, he knew it was “time to do something else.” He added: “I feel I’ve accomplished a great deal here, and it’s been rewarding.” For whom he didn’t say.

In wistful retrospect The World said that, even if Martin’s torrent of initiatives had not created a lot of jobs, they had “. . . set the stage for the new jobs that will most certainly come to this community.” It was going to be tough to match Martin’s style, and “. . . the community owes Frank Martin a debt of gratitude. While Coos Bay is no longer in his future, our future will carry his mark for some time to come.”

There was widespread agreement that Martin had left his mark, although some people didn’t like the way that mark had been applied, nor its location on the public body. But not until several years later, Port Commission President John Stephens would declare under oath: “. . . when the governor-appointed [port] commission took over [in January 1988], the finances of the port were a shambles. There were GO [General obligation] bond projects open all the way back to 1980. . . . there was apparently no one person responsible for operations.”

Not many people heard that statement except a few attorneys involved in one of the port’s many lawsuits. And not many people seemed willing to recognize Martin’s glorious achievements as something different. His building projects merely added to the port’s herd of white elephants. His political manipulations merely boosted government power and taxes. And his 24-7 habit of lying led to the extinction of the truth – already endangered – in port dealings. Finally, there was a secret history of corruption I have not touched on. Only in some circles was it known that Martin had been defrauding the federal government. But that’s another story, found in chapter 13, the longest chapter in my book.

No Hope, No Change

In any case, having the governor appoint the Coos Bay port commission has been a disaster. Politicians, including governors, like to cater to conventional opinion; it’s safer. And conventional opinion in Coos Bay, among the kind of people who have always served as the Port’s cheerleaders, is that the Port of Coos Bay still has a fabulous future as a global shipping hub and an industrial center. We just need to keep doing the things we’ve been doing for nearly forty years, even if they have not achieved a thing, even if they drag the town down further, and on some glorious day the breakthrough will come. Chances that anybody except dimwitted retreads will serve on the port commission are negligible under the present arrangement; you need voters for that, preferably voters who’ve had it up to here with the status quo.

In April of 1991, I asked the Oregon Economic Development Department to tally what state funds had been given to the Port of Coos Bay since January 1988, the effective date of the State Port bill that was no State Port bill. The total, from then through March 31, 1991, came to $1,525,978. This included an amount of $445,798 as forgiveness of loans from the state’s Port Revolving Loan Fund.

A total of $1.5 million may seem like a good piece of change. But spread over 39 months it looks less imposing; and even less yet when compared to the time BEFORE the port’s phony state port status kicked in. In 1986 alone, the state had given the port $4 million to build a road on the North Spit. But the more pertinent comparison is between the state’s $1.5 mil and the port’s local property tax collections. During those same 39 months they amounted to almost $3 million, $2,886,627 to be exact. That was almost twice what the state had given the port.

But – we can’t say that the legislators had not warned the State Port promoters. It’s just that the information was never passed on to the voters in that faraway port with that huge, unfulfilled potential.

It is true that in the most recent decade, long after Frank Martin’s departure, the port has been given a great deal more money from government sources. It has received multiple millions from the state, and a great deal more yet from the feds. Most of the state money was from lottery funds, while most of the federal money consisted of earmarks, arranged by U.S. Rep. Peter de Fazio. The bulk of these funds were to finance the Port’s obsession with acquiring and repairing the decrepit railroad from Eugene to Coquille, a bottomless financial pit; even the Port itself has recently been quoted saying that it will be abandoned if carloads don’t increase, which makes you wonder why they were so determined to get it in the first place. A few millions of state lottery money have also been wasted on preparations for the Maersk container terminal that will never be built. But none of these funds, I am sure, were given because of the excitement generated by the port gaining fictitious “State Port” status, back in 1987.

And the fact that most of the recent money has been wasted doesn’t matter any more; de Fazio, for one, has demonstrated that he doesn’t even understand what good some of this spending would do. Clearly, his taxpayer-funded generosity is designed to gain favorable headlines in The World and votes from the local establishment that still believes in the Coos Bay harbor’s unlimited potential – despite all the contrary evidence.

And so this country spends, spends, spends, while rushing up the cliff with the inevitable financial abyss on the other side.

This article is based on Wim de Vriend’s recently published book “The JOB Messiahs – how government destroys our prosperity and our freedoms to create jobs.”
“The JOB Messiahs” is available for sale at the office of The Sentinel in Coquille, at the Blue Heron restaurant in Coos Bay, and at Books-by-the-Bay in North Bend. “The JOB Messiahs” (2nd edition) retails for $35. Needless to say, as a product of twenty years of writing and research it is worth a great deal more.