Speech To The Democratic Central Committee

Speech to the Democratic Central Committee
Delivered By Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper
April 3, 2003, Sandwich Factory, Prineville, Oregon

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the Crook County Democratic Central Committee. It seems somewhat odd to be here, given my own long-time affiliation with the Republican, but at the same time I am glad for the opportunity because I believe strongly in the value of a partisan system, and I the people are best served when both parties are well-organized. It is through strong party voices that we ensure that opposing views and options are clearly laid out for the electorate. That’s how we make elections meaningful for all citizens, regardless of which party ultimately prevails.
Thank you, too, for being here tonight. The job of a party organizer is not one of the preferred jobs in the county. It’s very hard work to run a good campaign, and your willingness to help ensure someone’s election speaks highly of your commitment to your community. Without volunteers such as yourselves, elections would not be possible. With good volunteers, anything is possible. Now, with kudos handed out, let’s turn our attention to the state of the party in Crook County, such as it is.

In the 2002 General Election in November:

47 percent of voters were Republican
37 percent were Democrat
15 percent belonged to another party or were not affiliated with any party.

About 70 percent of voters of all parties cast ballots in the last election.

In terms of registration, there are 4,518 Republican voters in Crook County, compared to 3652 Democrats and 2,280 other.

In percentage terms, the county has:

A slightly Republican majority, with 43 percent
Followed closely by Democrats with 35 percent of registered voters
And 22 percent of voters not affiliated with a major party.

The vast majority of voters in other parties is accounted for by Independents., who account for 1905 or 84 percent of the 2280 voters not registered in one of the mainstream parties. Independents are notable chiefly because in Oregon they do not automatically receive a primary ballot and therefore they have little influence over primary elections.

In terms of which parties members are most likely to vote, the last election indicates that Democrats and Republicans are equally likely to turn out and vote. Nearly 76 percent of Republicans turned out, compared to 75 percent of Democrats in the November election. Non-affiliated voters lagged far behind at approximately 53 percent.

By not returning ballots, Republican voters left 1,100 votes on the table, while Democrats left 923 votes uncast. By not showing up at the polls, non-affiliated voters threw away almost as many votes as the Republicans, with 1024.

Could a “get out the vote campaign” have made a difference? Maybe. In the race for state representative between Karole Stockton and George Gilman, Stockton missed the opportunity to win the general election in Crook County by a mere 386 votes. While that would not have been a sufficient number to carry the race for her districtwide, it certainly would have been nice to see Karole carry her home county.

So where are these Crook County Democrats?

A quick look at the precinct map reveals a fascinating division.

Prineville itself has a sort of North-South thing going on. Essentially, the county’s majority-Democrat precincts can be found south of Laughlin Road to the county border, taking in most of the city limits and the county’s largest precinct, which extends from Lynn Blvd. south between Main Street and Juniper Canyon to the border.

43 percent of the county’s Democrats live in these seven precincts, with the rest scattered throughout the county.

There is an obvious advantage to Democrats of this make-up. Because the Democratic stronghold precincts are mainly in the city limits, with most households placed on the city’s old street grid, canvassing from household to household is a very effective strategy for you. Basically, the Democrat that wants to find the majority of his party needs only to take a couple of weekends and walk Prineville with brochures and lawn signs. And, Democratic households dominate all the main transportation routes which pass through the city, especially the all-important highway 26, meaning that in a battle of campaign signs, Democrats have the advantage.

All of this strategizing, of course, is based on the assumption that voters favor their party’s candidates and vote for them. But is that really true?

To find out, I ran an analysis on three races in the general election. I compared the number of registered voters in the Republican and Democratic parties in each precinct with the number of vote cast for the individual parties’ candidates in three tight contested races.

I chose the governor’s race, pitting Kevin Mannix against Ted Kulongoski, the U.S. Senate race, pitting Gordon Smith against Bill Bradbury and the Oregon House race, pitting George Gilman against Karole Stockton. I did not run the numbers on the House of Representatives race pitting Greg Walden against Peter Buckly, because Walden’s victory was so lopsided he might as well have been running unopposed.

After crunching the numbers, I developed a ratio of votes over registered voters of the candidate’s party. In order to earn a score of at least 1.0, a candidate had to either pull all of his or her parties votes in a given precinct or pull enough votes from independents and Democacts to make up the loss of any votes from his or her own party.

This analysis tells me two things: which precincts are likely to demonstrate the most party loyalty and which candidates are most attractive to Crook County voters.

As they did statewide, Democrats weren’t particularly kind to their own candidates. Karole Stockton was the only candidate in Crook County to make any inroads with the opposite party, probably reflecting the advantages of being local. In terms of precinct loyalty, Democrats lost votes to Republicans almost everywhere. The only place they held on to their own, appears to have been Ochoco Heights, and since the Republican “loyalty ratio” is about the same as the Democrats, I am assuming the swing comes mostly from Independent voters. The chart makes it pretty obvious that the Democrats need to work on hanging on to their own.

The most obvious precincts to work on, other than the Heights include 1 (Central City), 4 (Lone Pine), 7 (NE County), and 11 (east county). Obviously, with the exception of 7, which has only 33 registered Democrats, efforts should likely be made in any future election to strengthen Democratic turnout in these key precincts.

The bad news is that even if you held on to every Democrat in a majority-Democrat precinct and you achieved 100 percent turnout, you would still have only have only 1283 votes. If every Democractic voter in the county had voted a straight ticket in the General Election in November, you would have had 2729. In order to win any two-candidate election in November 2002, a candidate needed 3674 votes, so you’re at least 1,000 votes short.

That’s about how many non-affiliated voters cast ballots in the November Election. In order to win future elections in Crook County, Democrats must do three things:

Strengthen loyalty to you own party;
Reach out to non-affiliated voters; and
Somehow, appeal to enough Republican voters to cross party lines and vote for attractive Democratic candidates.
To do this is going to require some serious thinking by Democrats about how best to position themselves. Given the need to pull Republican votes and given Republican values, extremist candidates are not likely to win. Moderates and centrists who can appeal to Republicans uncomfortable with their party’s social agenda and can appeal to Independents by taking more conservative fiscal approaches probably have the best chance of prevailing in a Crook County election.

You also need to think about get-out-the vote efforts, possibly opening your primary to Independents, and registration drives.

Strategies such as these are time honored, and present the best opportunity to ensure the continuation of balanced political representation in Crook County. Good luck to you.

Crook County Plans More With Less

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
Published in the Central Oregonian, April 2003

As the county moves toward finalizing its 2003-04 budget, a number of initiatives are in the wings which have the potential to affect citizens countywide. This month’s column focuses on a few of those initiatives.

First, the budget: although the final numbers won’t be known until the legislature adjourns, Crook County is already projecting a leaner government next year. This is in large part due to an anticipated shortfall of $1.7 million in state and federal funding, which includes support for everything from jail beds to mental health funding to alcohol and drug treatment to public health services.

Crook County’s response to this funding drought has been to tighten its belt. The budget for 2003-2004 proposes to continue most services important to our citizens, but to do so with fewer resources. In other words, we are going to do more with less.

Part of the equation is a reduction in staff. Three department-head level positions funded in the 2002-03 budget have not been refunded in 2003-04. Some full-time employees have been replaced with part-time and temporary help to reduce salary and benefits costs. No new positions are proposed, and the capital improvements budget, which provides upkeep for the county’s nine facilities, has been slashed nearly in half. Employee compensation increases are proposed at a modest 3 percent, or close to the rate of inflation, and the county’s 401K program is likewise slated to go up 3 percent. Medical benefits for employees continue at the present rate.

The county is able to continue this level of service to citizens for a couple of reasons. A primary contributor is the fact that the county, except for law enforcement personnel, does not participate in the PERS retirement system and has therefore not experienced the tremendous increases that plague other counties. In addition, county employees have done an outstanding job of managing medical expenses chargeable against the county’s insurance plan, resulting in a reasonable increase in medical insurance premium. Finally, the county has been putting aside funds and slowing the pace of government growth in anticipation of this day for the past two years.

Among the most pressing needs addressed in next year’s budget is the urgent requirement for additional jail beds. The number of prisoners released by the county due to lack of jail space has grown steadily since December 2002. Currently, an average of 9 prisoners each week are being released. Factors behind this include the pressures of continuing high unemployment and lack of state funding to cover prescription drugs used to treat mental illness. Further aggravating the problem is a potential reduction in community corrections funding from the state of Oregon next year, which will decrease the ability of the county to monitor parole and probation violators.

Anticipating that this problem is not going away, next year’s budget proposes renting an additional 8 jail beds from Jefferson County at a cost of $56 per day or $204,400 next year. That amount represents nearly one-third of the county’s total anticipated increase in property taxes next year, but the cost of jail beds is a bargain considering the social costs of allowing criminals to run loose throughout the county, and I believe the investment will pay for itself in turns of a safer community for all of us.

Another major initiative proposed in 2003-04 is the completion of the Millican-West Butte Road connection between highway 126 and highway 20 east of Bend. Last year, the county successfully approached Congress about a grant of right-of-way for this corridor. Now we need to finish it. Construction is expected to start in fall of 2003 and be complete by spring of 2004. Deschutes County commissioners have agreed informally to pay half the estimated $4 million cost of the project. Crook County’s share of this project will largely come from the proceeds of its annual federal payment in lieu of timber taxes—about $2.3 million—meaning that the entire enhancement to the transportation system can be built without impacting the balance of the county’s road fund.

A third project of significance proposed for funding in the upcoming budget is the planned opening of Tom McCall industrial park in fall 2004. Located at the corner of Tom McCall Road and Houston Lake Road, this county-owned property will offer businesses interested in relocating to Prineville an attractive location serviced by water, sewer, natural gas, fiber optic cable and an existing road system opportunity to purchase properties of 2.5-5 acres in size. The park has the added advantage of being in the county/city enterprise zone, giving would-be occupants potential property tax benefits. Selected companies may also be eligible for income tax waivers from the state of Oregon. Managed and marketed properly, the parcel should help diversify the local economy and bring badly needed jobs to the community.

All this is in addition to continuing to provide regular and expected services to Crook County citizens. Times are tough and financial management is trickier than it was even one year ago, but I’m proud to report that your county government is and intends to continue managing within its resources, however scarce. We have a job to do, and somehow, we are going to do it.

What’s Up In Crook County?

By Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper
Originally published in the Powell Butte View, April 2003

As you might imagine, much of the attention of county officials is currently focused on Salem. The county is tracking a number of initiatives of concern.

Oregon Health Plan Funding
A plan was unveiled last week to fund the Oregon Health Plan at approximately $500 million. That’s enough to provide basic healthcare coverage at the federal Medicare/Medicaid minimum for the state’s most needy services. Programs such as eyeglass purchase for children and most mental health coverage would be eliminated. The latter has county officials concerned. While almost everyone agrees that the Health Plan must be trimmed in order to balance the budget, the elimination of mental health benefits, particularly $150 million in prescription drug coverage, has serious cost implications for counties. Many individuals in the mental health system who function normally when provided with expensive prescription drugs pose a risk to themselves and to society when those drugs are not available. The result is an increase in incarceration and institutionalization, which costs many times more than the prescription drug coverage and for which there is no state subsidy. Therefore, the Crook County Court supports continuation of prescription drug coverage through the Oregon Health Plan.

Parole and Probation Funding
In 1999, the state entered into a partnership with counties to transfer parole and probation services operations to local government. The reasoning behind this move was that it was generally agreed that counties could operate parole and probation less expensively than the state and could house parole and probation violators serving less than 12-month sentences less expensively than the state. In addition, it was assumed that with parole officers in individual communities would have closer ties with law enforcement and more knowledge of their communities and therefore could probably provide better supervision of the parole and probation population. Counties were initially resistant to this idea, fearing that the state would provide up-front funding and later renege. They eventually agreed, when the state wrote into law a provision that the state would provide 100 percent funding for parole and probation services, including an annual adjustment for inflation. Unfortunately, the counties did not get written into law a definition of “inflation.” The state has now decided to define “inflation” as “whatever the state decides it can afford.” As a result, the state is proposing a $40 million across-the-board-cut to counties for funding of parole and probation in the next biennium, and rumors are that the cut will increase. The Crook County Court, along with all other counties in the state, is opposed to any reduction in corrections funding which violates a good-faith agreement and transfers a financial burden from state to local government.

Transient Lodging Taxes
The proposed destination resort in western Powell Butte could provide substantial revenue to Crook County if it were approved and if voters were to implement a transient lodging tax hotel rooms at the resort. Currently, although there is a lodging tax within the city limits, there is no lodging tax in the county because there has never been a substantial enough presence of hotels and motels to justify one. Unfortunately, a bill in the legislature would add 1 percent to existing lodging taxes statewide to support the Oregon Tourism Division. In exchange, hotel/motel operators would be guaranteed that no new lodging taxes could be implemented and any future increases in lodging tax would have to be used exclusively for tourism promotion. The Crook County Court is opposed to this legislation on the theory that a county should not be penalized for not previously imposing taxes when it had no reason to do so and because any measure which reduces local ability to direct revenues where they are most needed makes no sense in these tight fiscal times.

“Son of Measure 7” legislation
Some 53 percent of voters passed Measure 7 in 2000, which provided that a landowner whose property lost its value as a result of a zoning decision or other land-use action by state or local government would be entitled to some level of compensation. The Oregon Supreme Court promptly threw the measure out on technical grounds, but most legislators recognized a message in the voters’ action. As a result, it is widely expected that some sort of restriction on the ability of government to take action which drastically reduces property values will be passed by this Legislature. Whether the governor will sign such legislation probably depends on how it looks in final form. The Crook County Court cautiously supports this legislative concept, reserving the right to change its position based on how the final bill looks, of course. Oregon law delegates a great deal of authority to local government. It’s important to build important checks and balances into the system to make that authority is used wisely.

Bridge Repair Funding Package
The state of Oregon faces a crisis. Its bridges, largely built between 1947 and 1961, are literally cracking and falling apart statewide as they reach the end of their lifespan. At least 66 bridges on Interstate 84 alone have been identified as requiring repair or replacement, in addition to hundreds more on Interstate 5 and elsewhere around the state. By year’s end, 20 percent of state-owned bridges will require weight limits and truck detours. Nearly $5 billion is needed immediately to prevent bridge closures and load postings which would hamper freight movement, increase the cost of transporting goods and goods and services, increase truck traffic with associated congestion and wear and tear on state and local highways and reduce incentives for businesses to come to Oregon. Leaving aside the fact that somebody should have sent his coming and started planning for bridge replacement a long time ago, the fact is, we can’t put the “fix” off any longer and still look for much-needed economic recovery. Thus, the Crook County Court reluctantly supports a bridge-repair bonding package, backed by an increase in vehicle registration and title fees.

Crook County residents with strong feelings about these or other issues are urged to contact Sen. Steve Harper or Rep. George Gilman and make their views known.