To all those potential District 1 house candidates it looks like Lucy has pulled the football once again. Despite all the wishful rumors about Wayne Krieger finally retiring, (for real this time), he has signed up to run yet again. Like most incumbents he is dug in like a tic and nothing short of kerosine and a pair of tweezers will get rid of him. As with all town hall meetings held by the duo of Krieger and Senator Jeff Kruse it became a pulpit to allow the pair to degrade the democratic majority, the democratic governor, the federal government and, of course, President Obama and his “unconstitutional” Obamacare and the “unmitigated disaster” that is Covered Oregon.

All that aside, there were some interesting discussions including one very agitated gentleman who was appalled, absolutely APPALLED that he is required by law to obtain a permit costing tens, hundreds or possibly even thousands of dollars before he may dredge a stream in search of heavy metals and pollute his downstream neighbors. Krieger was sympathetic.

Tom McKirgan admonished the pair for not keeping a promise they made at a March meeting that they would sponsor a bill opposing state law enforcement from supporting sections 1021 and 1022 of the 2012 NDAA. There was a lengthy exchange but in the end, IMAG1033Krieger blames the democratic senate leader for their inaction because they know a controversial bill would not be allowed on the agenda.

Phil Thompson jumped on them for not doing something to correct the tax inequity between large tract timber properties and everyone else and for doing away with the severance tax. Krieger claimed ignorance, as did Kruse, that industrial timberland pays no severance tax and pays less than $4 per acre per year in property tax and even argued that big timber did pay severance tax. Commissioner Bob Main confirmed that no severance tax is paid on large tract timber property. Krieger then gave a detail of his own recent timber sale of forty year old trees on ten acres and roughly 400,000 board feet and the state and federal income taxes he had to pay and how unfair it was that he had paid property taxes for forty years. Adding up the property taxes and the income taxes Krieger “barely made any profit”, he said.

If Krieger’s property was taxed at the same rate as the large tract timber lands in Coos County he would have paid a total of $154.00 per acre over forty years or roughly $1,540.00 in deductible property taxes for the ten acres involved in his timber sale. Krieger was also of the opinion that someone in Salem had done the math and the special assessed values placed on timber property were the fair and just amount to justify doing away with the severance tax which he had minutes earlier insisted was still being paid.