Someone probably associated with the local fringe focus group known as the Bay Area Chamber of Commerce is trying to define and thereby restrict the scope of “county business” conducted by the board of commissioners. To this end the local newspaper was tasked with and dutifully produced an editorial meant to discourage the public from expecting elected officials to represent or address local concerns over federal policy, namely opposition to the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act). According to The World editors and at least two thirds of the Coos County Commission this is not a county issue even though the paper concedes the NDAA and other expansions of federal authority “should trouble everyone”.

Who decides what is and isn’t the business of the county commission? Is it commission business to write a letter in support of the Port of Coos Bay obtaining another federal TIGER grant for the Coos Bay Rail Link? Is it appropriate for the commission to adopt a resolution opposing the expansion of federal lands along the Bandon Marsh? Should the commission be lobbying Congress to turn over management of federal timber lands to the Coquille Tribe? Does a county commission have any business asking Congress to increase logging on federally owned Oregon & California Railroad lands?

This board and preceding boards has made all these and many more federal matters county business yet now balks at declaring a position on the NDAA. The paper writes the board has “no legitimate role in national security policy” even after explaining that under the act American citizens, including those living in Coos County, can be indefinitely detained without charge or trial or even evidence. Adopting a resolution may be a symbolic act, much like the resolution opposing expansion of the Bandon Marsh, but when federal policy effects local law enforcement how will this commission explain its refusal to represent the will of the people?

The answer to why the board, or at least John Sweet and Melissa Cribbins, are digging in their heels may lie within the last paragraphs of the editorial. They simply don’t like the people raising the issue.

The commissioners also need to be careful about lending their official credibility to organizations with dubious pedigrees. One of the two groups pressing for county action, the Oath Keepers, is a thinly repackaged revival of ultra-right radicalism. It springs from the same network of discontent that gave us the Posse Comitatus, the survivalists and the militia movement. The other group, People Against NDAA (PANDA for short), is an unlikely combination of political bedfellows, stretching from the Occupy movement to the tea party and beyond.

There you have it, the paper plainly concedes there is broad support for making this matter county business. Right wing extremists along with Occupy, the tea party and “beyond” or, in other words, EVERYONE ELSE want the board to lend its official credibility for purposes of encouraging state and federal legislators to uphold our civil liberties. Think of it as the civil rights movement of fifty years ago. But, perhaps because EVERYONE doesn’t include the hundred or so people setting policy in Coos County the board doesn’t want to be seen as aligned with the other 63,000 residents. You know, the fringe majority.

Speaking of groups with dubious pedigrees, are Cribbins and Sweet waiting for the local chamber of commerce to give them the okay before considering whether civil rights and due process constitute county business? Who decides what is county business? Shouldn’t the people decide?

Bob Main

(541) 396-7540

email Bob Main

John Sweet

(541) 396-7541

email John Sweet

Melissa Cribbins

(541) 396-7539

email Melissa Cribbins