Speech: "Believe It Or Not"

Speech To The Prineville Kiwanis Club
Delivered by Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper, December 14, 2005
Meadowlakes Restaurant, Prineville, Oregon

Strange Things Happen In The Daily Course of Managing A County

Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting me to speak to the Prineville Kiwanis. I'm not sure Mary Thurman really knew what she was getting into when she asked me to share with you the most memorable and bizarre stories of my six years in office as county judge, but I'll do my best. Please rememeber that all of these anecdotes reflect the lighter side of life in Crook County, which for the most part is peopled by normal, law abiding, thinking people who expect little and demand less of their government. The exceptions, however, make for superior stories, and that's the point of my comments today.

To kick off, let me tell you about the day I once spent 4 hours chasing a set of dentures for an indigent individual after Sen. Whitsett referred him to my office for assistance. The basis of this referral was that this poor man, a Crook County constituent, was complaining of weight loss and malnutrition because he couldn’t eat. I chased his dentures through every local public health agency and state and federal resource I could think of. I spent a half day asking people to help this guy find some teeth so he could eat again. What I found out was that no one covers the purchase of dentures. Finally, I find a private source of payment. And when I called my constituent back to report, “Problem solved”, only then did he reveal that he had insurance coverage all along sufficient to meet his needs, but he didn’t want to risk a premium increase by filing a claim.

Some of my favorite stories come out of the compliance arena. Until I took office, the county didn’t have a compliance position, and the county’s approach to compliance made it nearly impossible to get the county to act when a danger to public health or safety or an unsightly nuisance was reported by a neighborhood. We have two compliance officers who chase junk cars and unapproved septics and planning and building code violations from one end of the county to the other. Their stories are some of my favorites. The best one I ever heard related to a constituent in the south part of the county who decided to extend his cramped quarters in a travel trailer to include a living room built out of pyramided hay bales. This apparently worked for the gentleman, but it proved a little cold. The gentleman decide to resolve the problem with a heating unit, which it turned out was a wood stove—with a hot stove pipe stuck up through the middle of the hay bales. That was the point where the county got involved and red tagged the entire project, pending some sort of insulation between the combustible hay the hot stove pipe.

Another favorite compliance case involved a 92 year old man feuding with his 84 year old neighbor about what he described as an unsightly view out his patio doors. The gentleman was relentless with daily calls complaining about his view of his neighbor’s junk. The poor little lady who was the subject of these complaints responded by noting that she lived alone with no family support and didn’t have the means to move her stuff out of her neighbor’s view. In desperation to resolve this one, I finally dispatched the Community Corrections Department to move the junk pile out of view. When they returned 15 minutes later, they reported with some glee that the source of this ongoing dispute was a single overturned rowboat and a pile of dirt. Once it was moved to the side of the house, the complaints ceased.

Yet another compliance case involved a family with two small children who had to be evicted from their house due to unsafe living conditions. The situation was so pathetic that the compliance officer, who is a young guy with a big heart, literally returned in tears to see if we could find an alternative home for these folks. For half a morning, I called around, looking for a placement for this family, and eventually the Central Oregon Housing Authority agreed to move the family into one of its units in Redmond. Within a few hours, the family reported to the CORHA headquarters for an intake evaluation, and that was the first time we learned that the father of the crew was a 34-year old man with 37 previous arrests and convictions in the Crook County Circuit Courts. There was also, it turned out, an outstanding warrant for his arrest, issued by Crook County Parole and Probation. The resolution of the housing problem suddenly became clear. We lodged the girlfriend and her two small children with CORHA, and we lodged the Dad in the Crook County jail. The ultimate irony of all of this was that once the father got out of jail and reunited with his family and started searching for a rental for the family, he listed the compliance officer who had ejected him in the first place as one of his references.

Maintenance of the Courthouse has provided some of my best stories about the challenges of serving the public. Shortly after I took office, I was puzzled that I couldn’t get hot water anywhere in the Courthouse. When I investigated, I found that the elements in the water heaters had burned out years ago and that maintenance had been instructed to save money by not replacing them. A few days and $20 later, we were in hot water once again. Another of my favorites was a complaint from a schoolteacher whose classroom had climbed to the top of the clock tower one day that maintenance in the clock tower was inadequate because the tower was dirty and had too many flies and yellow jackets flying around—Considering that the clock tower is open-sided, I’m not sure what she though we would do about that.

And speaking of dust, I will never forget the day the County was cited by DEQ after we carpeted the courthouse. Apparently, somebody was offended when we removed the old floor tiles during working hours revealing a floor surface below where the cement had gone to powder long ago. DEQ cited the county for tolerating excessive dust in the courthouse and endangering the health of the public and the workforce. The county responded with a hot letter noting that dust may be the most ubiquitous product that Central Oregon produces. We suggested DEQ cite God, since he is probably the ultimate source of ambient environmental dust in the region in the summer months. To the best of my knowledge, the citation was never sent, and we never heard anything else from DEQ.

I suppose nothing is scarier in my position than some of the knowledge I encounter in the public and environmental health arenas. Shortly after I took office, we started publishing restaurant inspection scores in the newspaper in an effort to encourage local eateries to make some much needed improvements. In telling this story, it is important to remember that we were only publishing the second inspection score—the one the restaurant achieves after we have come in the first time and identified their deficiencies that must be corrected within 30 days. When we reported in the newspaper that a well-known, brand name eatery had achieved a score of less than 70, it wasn’t long until I had a visit from the furious owner of the franchise. As he argued to me that I should suspend the reporting program, his justification was priceless: “I can’t be responsible for what goes on in my restaurants. That’s why I hire managers. I shouldn’t be penalized when they don’t do their jobs.”

I’m pleased to report that that program was tremendously successful. Within 6 months, the average restaurant inspection score went from 70 to 90. But averages don’t always capture the true picture. There are still a few restaurants in which I will not eat in Prineville. My favorite story I ever heard was about an inspection conducted by Environmental Health which discovered some strange and unrecognized meat in the kitchen. The inspector looked around a little bit more, and while he was never able to prove anything, he strongly suspected the meat might have been connected to the plucked and butchered carcasses of several Canada Geese he found in the dumpster. Another local restaurant had some difficulty in opening, because in the course of three inspections, each one produced a fatal flaw in the form of cigarette butts found in the food. I admit that cooking kills a lot of germs, but that was too much for the restaurant inspector. The worst part of this story was that shortly after all this unfold, my mother chose one of these two restaurants as the site of her birthday dinner. I’ve never told her to this day why I confined my appetite that night to prepackaged soda crackers!

No story about restaurants and food is complete without reference to one of the highlights of my term as county judge so far—my trip to Korea as an invited guest of the Governor on his official trade mission. We were treated like royalty on this trip, and the Koreans were very gracious in showing us traditional Korean hospitality. It was a wonderful cultural experience. At one point, they took us out for a traditional Korean meal, and I had to admire the artistry of the chefs when they set in front of me a Korean delicacy, a fish laying long ways across the play with thinly carved and cascading layers of sushi piled in its center. It was artistic and obviously expensive. I was so impressed I admired it for several minutes, and that’s when I notice that it seemed to be moving. In fact, it was moving a lot. Suddenly it all became clear. The sushi piled atop the fish just minutes before had been part of the fish. Well, this is the essence of diplomacy: When in Rome (or Seoul) do as the Romans, or in this case, the Koreans. I put my scruples aside, I grabbed my chopsticks, I ate my fish and I drank a lot of the Korean tradition drink, Soju. I am proud to this day that of all the Americans at the table, I was the only one who was able to do that. EDCO’s Roger Lee, whom many of you know, simply turned a pale shade of green. He really will never appreciate what he missed. Had I not undertaken eating the fish, I am quite certain I would never have drunk as much Soju as I did. And had not drunk that much Soju, I am equally certain I would never have had the courage later that night to join a Pilipino band on the stage of Karaoke palace. If I hadn’t joined that band, I would never have serenaded 100 Koreans with the strains of John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High, and had not done that, I would not have achieved the immediate affection of my Korean hosts, and the jealous admiration of my Oregon friends who in their long careers had never seen anyone break through Korean reserve so fast and further the cause of Korean-American trade.

But we’re not done with this little trip down memory lane yet. No story of the bizarre experiences that I encounter as county judge is complete without a discussion about one of the county’s least pleasant functions: the disposal of the unclaimed dead.

If a body is unclaimed, then the responsibility for disposing of it defaults to the county under Oregon law. Our standard procedure is to cremate the body using the cheapest possible means available. We have a good working relationship with the local funeral homes, who take turns picking up bodies, completing the necessary paperwork and disposing of remains. One day several years ago—it happened to be the Friday before Labor Day weekend--I received a routine phone call asking about the disposal of a body. I assigned to a funeral home, and went on about my business, giving no further thought to the matter. A few hours later, the undertaker called back. This time, his question was a little out of the ordinary: the family of the deceased having now order three separate viewings of the body, would the county be willing to pay for those? At this point, I had to ask, “What family?” An indigent burial by the county by definition occurs only when there are no family or friends and no estate to take responsibility for final disposition of the body. A viewing certainly implies somebody is taking an interest in the deceased. I told the undertaker there would be no further proceedings in this matter and all negotiations for disposition and payment henceforth should be negotiated with the family. About 4 p.m., I left the office to start driving to Odell Lake for an annual camping weekend. I was barely out of town, when my cell phone rang. I answered it only to discover that my very accommodating secretary had transferred to me the call of the distraught daughter of the deceased, who proceeded to scream at me for the next 10 minutes about the county’s lack of compassion for her deceased father and the duty and obligation of the county to pay final burial expenses for this citizen who for so many years had been a taxpaying citizen of Crook County. Since I couldn’t get a word in edgewise, I could only wonder where she got this idea.

I could go on and on about some of the things I’ve deal with during my time at the county, but I think the above gives you some idea of what passes as daily fare in the county administration offices.

My wife reminded me last night of an exchange we once had when we were awaiting a flight at the San Francisco airport. We were eating at the restaurant, and a TV was on. The show was the Jerry Springer Show. There was some sort of conflict going one with an unbelievable plot line involving highly dysfunctional people. My wife was fascinated. By some strange twist of fate, she had never seen the Jerry Springer Show before. She turned to me and said, “Honey, this is made up. People like this don’t exist. I don’t believe it.”

Having done this job for a while, I didn’t miss a beat. “Honey,” I told her. “Don’t delude yourself. People just like that do exist, and some of them are my constituents.”

Thanks for letting me share with you my Believe It Or Not Version of Crook County Government. It has been a pleasure to be your speaker today, and I wish you a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, but I leave you with one very valuable thought: If you're going out to dinner this Christmas, don’t eat the goose.