Speech: Dedication of a fire station

Remarks At the Dedication of The Juniper Canyon Fire Station
By Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper, March 1, 2003


Fire stations have unique place in American history. They are an essential part of American “community building, dating back to before the American Revolution.”

Benjamin Franklin created the first firefighting company in the United States in 1736.

On a visit to Boston, he noticed that that city was much better organized to protect itself against fire than his own Philadelphia. Although not formalized, Boston had a rough plan for strategically placing fire fighting equipment around the city and regulating activity that might lead to disastrous fires.

Franklin thought he could do better. He discussed it with friends. They thought so, too. He stirred up a political outcry by writing an anonymous letter to his own newspaper suggesting that the Philadelphia wasn’t keeping up. Then, when people began demanding solutions, he stepped forward and offered to fix the problem.

Franklin’s ideas caught on because they made sense. He organized companies of firefighters who brought their own equipment and trained together regularly. They also quickly found out that the firefighting is a fraternity--as much social as it is professional. Before too long, Philadephia became one of the world’s safest cities.

Pardon the pun, but Franklin’s ideas were so successful that they spread like wildfire.

Founding fathers George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Paul Revere were all firefighters. For all we know, it was in a fire hall that the idea of Independence was born.

In time, women too joined the firefighting movement. In 1820, Maria Betts became a volunteer firefighter in Pittsburgh. She claimed she never missed a fire in 10 years. She was famous for dumping buckets of water on the heads of male bystanders who refused to help fight the blaze.

In San Francisco, three engines pulled by firemen were racing to a fire in 1851. The Knickerbocker Company didn’t have a full complement to pull its fire wagon, and it was soon passed by the jeering Manhattan and Howard engines. Fifteen-year-old socialite Lillie Hitchcock ran to the undermanned engine, started pulling and yelled for the men in the crowd to grab hold. That was the start of her involvement. When she died, her estate provided the funds that built the national volunteer firefighters monument.

The spirit of competition that led Franklin to believe that Philadephia was no less worthy than Boston, and the inspiration to perform a civic duty that led Lillie Hitchcock to grab a wagon handle lives on today in Juniper Canyon. When you decided you were no less worthy of fire protection than the residents of Prineville or Powell Butte, you did something about it. We’re standing in that something today.

This building is a great testament to the strength of a good idea and the strength of a few committed volunteers. Ours is a “can-do” kind of community. Unlike some other places in the region, where any great idea requires the formation of a planning committees and quarter-million dollar feasibility plan before the first brick is laid, that’s not the way we do it in Crook County. We see problems; we build solutions. We see the results today, and behalf of all the citizens of Crook County, I congratulate you on a job well done.

Speech: Why Reading Matters

Remarks to the student body, Crooked River Elementary
in conjunction with the the occasion of Dr. Seuss' birthday
delivered by Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper, March 3, 2003

Good morning. I’m here this morning to talk about the importance of reading.

Reading is important. If you can’t read, you can’t tell when there’s no school. You don’t know when its time for your parents to come to school for conference. You can’t find out what’s for lunch in the cafeteria. You might not know what bus to get on to go home. You can’t read a list of who’s in your classroom. When you grow up, you won’t be able to get a drivers license. You may not even be able to get a job! Reading is important, because it helps you be a better grown up.

Reading is fun, and reading is interesting. Here are a few things I read just this weekend:

· Elephant’s can’t jump.
· Yaks have pink milk.
· A Persian King once defeated an Egyptian army by throwing dead cats at them!
· Giraffes and mice have the same number of bones in their necks.
· Hippomatami have lips two feet wide.
· Porcupines have orange teeth.
· The first chickens in America were brought by Christopher Columbus.
· Cows sweat through their noses.
· Rats can go longer without water than camels
· The man who brought the potato chip to America was President Thomas Jefferson.
· The oldest letter in the alphabet is “O”
· All polar bears are left-handed.
· The White House (where the President lives) used to be called The Grey House.
· Elephants aren’t really afraid of mice, but they are scared of little dogs, especially dachsunds.

My little girl who is two likes me to read Dr. Seuss to her. Dr. Suess thinks reading is very important, and he thinks you should read. In fact, Dr. Suess wrote something called the reader’s oath.

An oath is a very serious thing. People must take oaths when they come to Court. When you take an oath, you are promising to tell the truth, and only the truth. It is a very serious thing to take an oath and then not do it.

Are you willing to take an oath to be a good reader? If you are, please stand up and put your right hand in the air. Let’s say the Dr. Seuss oath together. Let’s practice. I’ll say the first sentence, and then you repeat it. Are you ready to try?

“I, Scott Cooper”

Now you repeat and say your name: “I, xxx.”

Good, now let’s try and again and say the rest of the oath. I’ll start, and then you repeat, and then we’ll say the whole oath. Is everybody ready? OK, here we go…I, (say your name):
Promise to read*
Each day and each night*
I know it’s key*
To growing up right*
I’ll read to myself*
I’ll read to a crowd*
It makes no difference*
If silent or loud.*
I’ll read at my desk*
At home and at school*
On my bean bag or bed*
By the fire or pool*
Each book that I read*
Puts smarts in the my head,*
Cause brains grow more thoughts*
The more they are fed.*
So I take this oath*
To make reading my way*
Of feeding my brain*
What it needs every day.*

You may be seated. You’ve taken the oath to be serious readers. Good luck in your task. Thank you for letting me be here today.

Salem: No Parties, No Progress

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
published in the Central Oregonian, March 2003

Few Oregonians would disagree: the situation in Salem is a mess.

To date, the legislature has managed to balance the 2001-2003 budget by spending all its savings accounts and mortgaging future revenues. The leadership pink-slipped one-third of the state cops—and then put them back to work again. In two months, the Legislature has managed to identify $12 million in cuts to balance the budget, but faced with too much voter outcry, it added $15 million in restored services. Work on the 2003-05 budget hasn’t yet begun.

The culprit, say some, is an excess of partisanship.

In November, voters came close to eliminating partisanship in the statehouse with as an equitable a distribution of powers between the parties as possible. We put a Democratic Governor in one of the most closely divided gubernatorial elections in state history, gave the Republicans control of the House with the barest of majorities and equally divided the Senate between the two parties. Checks and balances, some called it. Disaster waiting to happen, said others.

Increasingly, the events seem to favor the latter conclusion. Salem seems to be more gridlocked than ever by indecision and unable to move without taking poll. Key party leaders seem more concerned about whether each and every vote will translate into a majority down the road than they are about solving our pressing political problems.

Given this scenario, perhaps it’s time to ask ourselves if we prefer this “balanced” scenario to one where somebody’s in charge. Partisanship isn’t always pretty, but it is an historic and effective way to keep an agenda moving, which is why its been with us since our nation’s earliest days.

Remember your U.S. history? Before the Constitution was ever ratified, factions formed known as Federalists and Anti-Federalists. With great leaders such as Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, the Federalists made their case for a strong central government. Meanwhile, the anti-federalists, led by equally strong leaders such as Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, pushed just as hard for a decentralized system. Their arguments were incredibly complex and take up volumes of political theory. Most federalists and anti-federalists of the time neither read nor understood them, but few in that day and age failed to identify themselves with one school of thought or the other.

Likewise, in the years before the Civil War, leaders such as Lincoln and Douglas represented opposite sides of the slavery question. Underlying issues such as tariff schedules and constitutional nullification were never well understood, but a voter could tell you pretty quickly if he were a Republican or a Democrat, simply based on his views on the slavery question.

These were enormous issues in their day, the outcomes of which presented real challenges to a nation ill equipped, either politically or socially, to confront them. The two-party system gave each side the discipline to it needed to distill the many points of view about these issues into a single and competing set of coherent philosophies, which eventually came to represent significant policy choices. Americans then, like Americans now, didn’t understand the complexity of the issues involved with these choices. But they did have a vague sense that the positions of one side or the other simply felt better, and they affiliated themselves accordingly with the political parties whose views were the best fit with their own.

Partisanship along these lines is a good thing. It helps transform a muddle of information into sharp, focused choices for policymakers and voters. Once a choice was made, action followed.

Today, it’s fashionable to bash partisanship. “Republican” and “Democrat” are just labels. A good chunk of us choose not to affiliate with either of the major parties and register as “non-affiliated” or “independent” voters. We like to say we “vote for the person, not the party.” Candidates like to promise that they’ll work in a “bipartisan” fashion with “both sides of the aisle.”

That’s fine rhetoric, but the fact is partisanship offers a form of political discipline that has served our country and other established democracies well. Without partisanship to act as a filter, there is no clear set of competing choices. There is only a daunting array of options, which have no philosophical continuity and an undisciplined political system where no one’s in charge, no philosophy prevails and nothing is ever finished.

Sounds a lot like Salem these days. Perhaps we ought to be careful what we ask for in the future. We just might be getting it.

What’s Up In Crook County?

By Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper
Published in the Powell Butte View, March 2003

I received an excellent response to last month’s column, which featured a series of short, newsy, “what’s-going-on” items in place of an essay on a single subject. In political life, there’s no substitute for success, so I’ll try again this month!

How Are State Budget Cuts Affecting County Services?
First, it’s important to distinguish between state-supported services and county services. There’s no question that times are hard for many people who depend on state support for public health care and mental-health assistance. That said, the worsening fiscal crunch at the state level has left services offered by Crook County agencies largely untouched so far. County offices continue to operate as normal without layoffs or shortened-work weeks. A few minor grant programs have bee cut back, and there are rumors of more cuts to come. The big cuts, if they come, will arrive in the next fiscal year and could include a loss of funding to rent jail beds to house state prisoners, loss of a substantial portion of the “safety net” programs backed by the Commission on Children and Families and a loss of positions in OSU-Crook County Extension. It also appears that the state-funded tobacco education and prevention program may be headed for the ash heap, along with funding for predator control, grants that support tax and assessment and video poker funding for counties.

Video Poker? How Does That Affect Me?
Video poker revenues are shared between the counties and the state. Although the revenue is insubstantial (about $64,000 per year) it goes a long way toward helping worthy non-profits in our community. Video poker funds economic development activities of the Chamber of Commerce and the county’s contribution to Economic Development for Central Oregon. It also funded planning and building permit fees for the Powell Butte Farmers Club Community Center, planning and building permit fees for the new 4-H building at the fairgrounds, a month’s food for the St. Vincent DePaul food bank, discretionary funds for local elementary schools to help purchase clothing supplies for needy children and the Leadership Prineville program, helping build the next generation of leaders in Crook County. These programs are all at risk if the video poker funds are withdrawn. On the other hand, anybody who reads the papers has to be somewhat sympathetic to the enormous task the Legislature faces in balancing the budget, and every penny counts.

How serious is the PERS problem in Crook County?
It’s not. Crook County does not offer retirement through the Public Employee Retirement System except to a handful of sheriff’s deputies (who are required by law to receive PERS retirement or better.) Instead, the county funds a 401K plan for employees that rises and falls depending on market conditions and the condition of the individual funds to which employees direct their investments. Only a few other counties in the state are not on PERS, but all of them are in better financial shape than their counterparts, many of which are experiencing 20-25 percent premium increases.

Has This Funding Crisis Affected The Passing Lanes?
No. Highway 126 is supposed to be widened this summer between Wiley Road and Tom McCall Road to a four-lane stretch. Since ODOT’s road-building receipts are from dedicated gas tax receipts, progress on this project should not be delayed by the state’s fiscal problems. A second set of passing lanes scheduled to be built roughly in front of West Powell Butte Estates is more dicey. These were to have been funded through an ODOT/County partnership, but it is looking increasingly likely that this project will not happen due to ODOT’s refusal to cap the county’s exposure.

Won’t the Destination Resort Provide More Funding For Services?
The County expects an application to build Crook County’s first destination to filed March 12. Planning Commission hearings are slated for April. If approved, the destination resort will take years to build out. The eventual property tax revenues from the resort could be in the $7 million to $8 million range annually, but the resort will likely be phased in. A more immediate impact for the local community could be the collection of room tax from the destination resort and other recreational properties. Currently, the county has no room tax. (There is a room tax in the city. The city’s room tax rate would not be affected by a county room tax, which would apply only outside city limits.) The Court is mulling whether to put this idea before voters at the next general election, and is also waiting to see what happens with legislation in Salem which would strip county’s of their ability to direct room-tax proceeds to those areas of county government where it is most needed.

Is The Enterprise Zone and Small-City Tax Exemption Improving the Economy?
The County currently has two tax-incentive programs to encourage businesses to choose Crook County. The enterprise zone program offers property tax to businesses that bring a minimum number of jobs to the county that pay certain wages. Several businesses are reported in the media as having come to the county to take advantage of this program, but none have been certified by the County Assessor for tax exemption. The Small City Tax exemption offers a 10-year income tax waiver to businesses which invest a minimum $25 million within the city limits and guarantee certain wages and benefits. However, the technical requirements of this program are so tight that no business in the state has yet taken advantage of this program. A bill to fix the problem has been proposed in the legislature and is awaiting action.

Is Anything Being Done For The Poor Farmers and Ranchers?
Good news on this front came last week. With the help of Congressman Walden, the county was able to lobby successfully for a federal drought-disaster declaration for 2002. Combine that with an effort to $3.1 billion to the just-passed federal budget for drought-relief, and the result is an $18 per head payment to livestock producers, feed-purchase assistance and certain income tax benefits. Farmers and ranchers should consult the USDA Farm Services Agency for more information about how to receive benefits. Frankly, it’s a minor miracle that we pulled this off, considering the comedy of errors that preceded it. First, the state missed a deadline for submitting Crook County’s request for drought assistance to USDA. Then, the Livestock Compensation Program sunset. Next the President announced his opposition to any drought relief outside the Farm Bill passed last year. All of this required legislative effort to turn around, and I am deeply grateful to Rep. Walden for his leadership which made the difference in getting help for our farmers and ranchers.