Speech: Welcome, Crooked River Water Summit

Welcome remarks
Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
Crooked River Water Summit
April 27, 2007, Brothers Restaurant, Prineville

I have a challenge for you this morning.

All of you are relatively savvy people with computers, right?

My challenge to you is this: Following this summit today, when you are all charged up on water, and you have a fuller understanding of just how important water is to this region, I want you to go home and sit down in front of the internet.

Next, I want you to go to Google or MSN or one of those other search engines, and type in a few phrases, like “water” and “Oregon”. Some choices will appear. The Oregon Water Resources Dept. is a good place to start, and so it is the USGS Water Resources of Oregon site.

Click on either site, and start looking around. There is a lot of interesting information there about streamflows and hydrographs and surface water and groundwater and water quality and water quantity. A person can really learn a lot—as long as that person isn’t looking for information about Central Oregon.

What is noticeably absent from both sites is significant data about the water situation in Crook or Deschutes Counties. While there are occasional reference to the waters of the two counties and good data on the state of the reservoirs, there is almost nothing about the changing dynamics of the water situation in our communities.

In fact, if you pull up a map of water testing sites or a map of water quality monitoring locations, Crook and Deschutes really jump out at you: because the map is simply blank.

Now this absence of data doesn’t suggest that there isn’t any water in our area. We all know that’s not true. Nor does it mean that the water situation in Central Oregon isn’t relevant or important to the state or federal government. They simly don’t have the resources to study and keep track of everything they might like.

What it does suggest to me is that if we are going to use and manage water wisely for ourselves and for future generations in this part of the world, we are pretty much on our own.

That’s why today’s summit is so important. It is a chance for all of us to get on the same page about the water situation. It’s a chance for all of us to hear from the experts at the same time. It’s a chance for us to hear each other ask questions, and to hear the answers to those questions. It’s a chance to think about water means to our region and to the quality of our lives and the lives of our children.

I want to take a minute and thank the people that put this together:

First, I want to thank the Crook County Natural Resources Planning Committee which has been relentless about keeping this issue at the forefront of local conversations about how we are going to grow and develop as a community. There is so much on the plates of all local governments in these busy times that without a champion, these issues could easily get pushed aside. As long as the Natural Resource Planning Committee is around, I am confident that won’t happen.

Secondly, I would like to thank the water subcommittee of the Natural Resources Planning Committee. Those people are the ones who have organized the venue, planned the speakers, sent out the invitations and otherwise donated their time to make this come together today.

Lastly, I would like to thank a very special person: Sarah Thomas. Without Sarah, none of us would be here today at this event. It was Sarah who pushed—relentlessly and often annoyingly—for the creation of this committee. It has been Sarah who has kept pounding on the desks of the policymakers in our community that water matters. It is Sarah who carries the torch for the environment in my world, mainly because she does so in a way that is positive, humourous and still passionate.

Make no mistake: in the government we have today, passion is still a major currency. The French philosopher La Rouchefocauld observed as far back as 1665, “The simplest person who has passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent person who has none.” In this era of 24-7 news and instant information via the internet, many of us are beginning to feel fatigued by excess information and lot’s of theory which occupies our time and consumers lots of paper but never seems to move us toward real solutions. What is lacking is the passion that La Rouchefocauld so admired.

What brings you here today is your passion: passion for the land, passion for the water and passion for the people who rely on the land and the water. People like Sarah are making a difference, not because they have PhDs or remarkable and intricate and elegant conservation schemes but simply because they combine the knowledge they have with a passion for results.

I hope when you walk out of here today, you will feel that your time has been well spent. I hope you will see a way to convert passion into progress. Most of all, I hope you will feel a little closer to this great place we call home, and understand what you and we collectively can do to save it for the next generation.

Thanks for coming,and have a good summit.

Speech: Scott's Rules

Closing remarks
Central Oregon Realtors Association “Campaign School”
April 26, 2007, Bend, Oregon
Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge

I remember when my wife and I brought our first daughter home from the hospital. We were so excited. The days before had been a blur of activity. The birth itself was exciting, and a parade of well-wishers kept us entertained in the days right after the big event. We packed the gifts in the car and drove home, baby in tow. We stepped into the house, set the baby carrier down on the dining room table, looked at each other and with a sudden, horrible realization, and asked each other, “Now what?”

Getting elected isn’t that much different. The thrill and pace of the campaign leaves little time to think about what you will do in the days immediately following the swearing in. But that day comes, and that’s when you’re going to find out: The skills you need for governing are a whole lot different than the ones you use for campaigning.

Assuming that you are all bright and electable, my job today is to give you some helpful tips about what to do after the inaugural party is over. These are my 10 rules for how to make yourself effective as an elected official, starting from day 1.

Rule Number 1: Beware the Rush!
You will be amazed how many people come to you in the immediate aftermath of the election to tell you about all the “wrongs” that have ever been done to them. They will want your commitment to straighten out all kinds of situations and all kinds of people who are detracting from the quality of the government you will soon be part of. All of them will declare with absolute certainty that they had no doubt you would win and that they were steadfast supporters throughout. (You will soon wonder how your opponent got any votes at all. given all the people who say they were your biggest supporters.) My advice to you is beware, and do nothing. What you are very quickly going to find out is that there is a reason why things are the way they are. There is a reason some people remain in their positions despite somebody’s unhappiness with them. The last thing you want to do is commit yourself before you know the facts to a course of action. That will only lead to backpedaling and awkward explanations later, giving you from the outset a reputation as “wishy washy” and a politician who can’t be trusted. So beware the rush of voters who want to be the first to enlist your help.

Rule Number 2: Make Principled Decisions
Presumably, you ran on some principles in order to get elected (unless you were running unopposed.) Now its time to stand up for those principles and put them into action. Yet from the day you start, you’re going to find your commitment to those principles tested. Like any good elected official, you’re going to start looking for middle ground to satisfy all comers—those who voted for you and those who didn’t. You’re going to get tempted to make peace and find compromise, and if you go there, you will pay for it. Voters do not get angry with politicians who do what is expected. They get angry when elected officials act unpredictably. As far as irritating the electorate, give them some credit. They obviously knew what you stood for when they elected you—assuming the principles by which you are governing are the same as those on which you campaigned—so there is little cost to you to stand up for those principles now. As you start down the decision-making path, just remember this: people who sail down the middle of the channel of the stream are targets for rocks thrown from both sides.

Rule Number 3: Don’t swim in the fish bowl.
The government arena is actually a very small place. Elected officials talk to each other, talk to staff and talk to people with an interest in what the government is doing. Since most of what government does is fairly routine and uninteresting, elected officials tend to not hear from the majority of the community they are supposed to serve. The problem with this, is that sound gets magnified in small spaces, sometimes to deafening proportions. To be an effective elected official, you need to get outside the “fishbowl” and consider issues from the perspective of the entire community, not just the members in front of you. A good way to do this is to put everything to the “newspaper test”--Is the decision you are about to make one that you would want to see on the front of the local newspaper? Then there’s the “family and friends test” Since your family and friends, if they are anything like mine, knew you long before you had electoral ambitions, presumably, they aren’t going to cut you any slack now that you have an “honorable” in front of your name. Ask this network what they think of decisions that are pending, and when Aunt Gladys and Cousin Mort both start scowling or evading the question, think twice about your decision. Finally, there’s the gut check. As elected officials, there is a tendency to let staff talk us out or into that which we somehow instinctively know won’t fly. After all, the staff have the data and the experience, and they ought to know, right? Wrong! Because staff have the benefit of data and experience, staff need to be able to convince you to get you past a knot in your stomach. If they can’t sell you on an idea at a gut level, chances are you will never sell the idea to the public. So listen to your gut reaction. A good instinct is probably what brought you to this job in the first place, and following it, will ensure that you keep it.

Rule number 4: There is no legacy effect.
Lots of politicians, especially once they been in office for a while, start to worry about what kind of legacy they will leave. Forget about it. There is no such thing as a legacy—or at least not one that you created through your own efforts. The fact is you who are the stuff of front pages and dinner party invitations, will be forgotten within days of leaving office. Here’s an example: who was mayor of Bend 30 years ago? Name the last Deschutes County Judge. Who was Governor of Oregon before Tom McCall? Chances are you don’t know. Such legacy as you get will result from this approach: Do good things because they are the right things to do. A legacy may follow, but it won’t be by design.

Rule number 5. The election tomorrow is about what you have done today.
All the tactical election strategies in the world are no substitute for a genuine record of service to the people. Yet an amazing number of elected officials are so busy worrying about how to position themselves for the next election that they forget to do the very thing they were put into office for in the first place! Now is the time to start working on your campaign, simply by doing your job. Start by purchasing a white board. I keep mine hidden behind the door in my office, where I can see if from my desk but most others can’t. On it, I keep the top 10 (or 15 or 20) things I am working on which must get done. What this accomplishes is to keep you focused, when there are million things competing for your attention. If you stop making progress on your list, ask yourself, “why?” and make the necessary adjustments accordingly. As you complete good work for your constituents note them in a private journal. When re-election comes around, instead of wondering in a panic what you’ve been doing the past four years, you’ll find that you have a powerful list of accomplishments, and your problem will be in deciding what to leave out, not what to put into your campaign literature. Best of all and somewhat to your own surprise, you will have developed a reputation as “someone who gets things done,” and that is pure gold in a re-election effort.

Rule number 6: "First do no harm”
This is the “Golden Rule” of elected office. People basically care about three things: 1) personal security, 2) economic security and 3: the security of future generations (meaning, usually, their children and grandchildren.) If you take action which the public believes creates a risk of harm in any one of these categories, the public will react. So listen carefully to what the public is telling you, and when they begin to phrase concerns along any of these lines, perk up your ears and listen. Explain, or if necessary, stop what you’re doing and revise your thinking. It is the most important rule you need to learn to do your job effectively.

Rule number 7: Roosevelt was right.
Remember FDR’s famous line, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” People do not negotiate from a position of fear. Our brains are wired for two reactions when we feel under attack, fight or flight. Neither is a good situation for you. When things get tough, your job, through process and dialogue, is to get people back to a place where they are not frightened and they are not acting out of fear and they can start talking about issues in a rational and reasoned manner. Keep in mind that when people get frightened—when one of the three securities is breached—they start looking for someone to blame. Play it wrong, and that could very well be you

Rule number 8: Kindness goes a long way.
Every argument advanced before you as an elected official, no matter how specious it may seem to you, is relevant and important to the person making it. Belittling that person will only diminish your standing, not theirs. Learn to disagree without being disagreeable. The same goes when you find yourself on the opposite side of your colleagues. Your adversary today may well be the ally you need tomorrow, so make sure that you have to take a different point of view, you validate your colleague and express your regard for his or her analytical powers, and only then disagree respectfully, using your own facts, philosophies and opinions. Federal, and to a lesser degree State, legislative bodies have institutionalized this behavior. That’s why you’ll hear on CSPAN occasionally a member of Congress congratulate the “gentle lady from California” on her grasp of the issue, just before the congressperson ever so politely dissects and eviscerates the same argument on national television. Unfortunately, local government doesn’t have rules to effect civility. It’s a “do it yourself” kind of thing. You and your colleagues set the tone, for better or for worse. Do your part to make it a positive tone, and insist that your colleagues do the same. Leave your disagreements at the council/commission table. You will have to return to face each other another day. Most of all, when you must explain disagreement in the media, try to do it in such a way that acknowledges the opposite point of view and then explain, with all the respect you can muster, why your point of view is the better one.

Rule number 9: Understand the role you play.
One of the greatest challenges faced by newly elected officials is understanding the role of different players in the system. Cities, counties, states and federal government all have different interests and different constituencies. When other bodies come before you or you appear before them, you need to understand where they are coming from. You can’t simply dismiss another part of government as ignorant or malicious. Chances are, you simply aren’t working toward the same goals with the same set of values. That makes you different, not demonic. Getting past those differences requires putting in the time to understand and trust other players in the system. So join professional organizations like AOC and LOC and learn perspective from your peers. Attend the town halls of state and federal legislators and hear the variety of opinion they must balance. Visit legislators and congressmen in their offices, and get a sense of what else is going on besides your little problem, whatever it is. The other side of the equation is understanding properly your relationship with staff. Staff are your technical experts. They are supposed to have the best information, and generally, when they appear before an elected body, they already have data that has led them to position that makes logical sense in terms of finances, history and best practices. Your job as an elected official is not to outsmart the staff—it is to insert the community’s values into the equation, and to address the issue of whether the proposed action does harm to any constituency or violates any of the three securities mentioned previously. It is not your job to produce the data. It is your job to challenge the data, and to let staff explain how the data-driven recommendation will contribute to or at least not conflict with the community’s values. Until you are satisfied that you have achieved that equilibrium, you should not quit pushing, all the while emphasizing and explaining your objective and paying proper deference to the role of staff. This brings me to a final point. Sometime during your career you are going to be told, if you haven’t been already, that the proper way to divide the staff-elected official role is this: elected officials make policy, and staff implements policy. This sounds good in principle, but in fact it’s nonsense. The way a policy is implemented is a form of policymaking in and of itself. It is micromanagement for you to ask at a council meeting what we are doing about fixing the pothole in front of Mrs. Jones’ house. It is good management to ask what is the timelines a citizen may reasonably expect to receive a response from public works when a pot hole is reported, citing by way of example, the one in front of Mrs. Jones house which has yet to be filled despite her having called two weeks ago. That’s an appropriate question, because you as the elected official are ultimately responsible for the welfare of the city or county or district you serve and all the citizens in it, and you can’t ensure their welfare is protected if you aren’t inquiring about how the staff is doing that.

Rule number 10: Keep the homefires burning.
There is no more important piece of advice that I can give you. You will meet a lot of “friends” in this job, starting with the day you are elected. If you are doing it right, you may also lose some friends in this job. Whatever the case, your newfound “friends” will be there until the first time you decide not to run for re-election, and then they will move on to the next person who can do them the favor they are seeking. Your family, on the other hand, loved you before you were elected, and they will love you still for all the same reasons, when you are no longer an elected official. Unlike friends, family is constant, and there will be times when you need them to give you a hug and tell you everything will be okay, and you are not the bad person the letters to the editor say you are this week. Keep in mind that the legislative body which you serve has likely been around a long term. It worked after a fashion before you came along and it will bumble along after you leave. But your family is a fragile creation, which needs constant tending and attention. Whatever joy this job brings you will be fleeting, but a supportive spouse and great kids and the opportunity to enjoy grandkids is forever. So tend to the people who loved you first and love you the most and will love you when it’s over. The rest of us will take care of ourselves.

The career you are considering embarking upon will be one of the most rewarding of your life. It will be, at times, one of the most frustrating of your life. And absolutely, it will be one of the most interesting of your life. Good luck to all of you.

Eulogy: For Zona Irene Cooper

by Scott R. Cooper
delivered at the funeral of Zona Cooper, April 10, 2007, Prineville Assembly of God, Prineville, Oregon

Wednesday night just before 5 o’clock, my grandmother slipped quietly out of this world, and into the next.

It wasn’t a hard death. Gathered around her bed were her two sons, two daughters, her daughter-in-law and life-long neighbor, her best friend of the past 37 years, some of her grandchildren, a great grandchild and a great, great grandchild.

There was no pain. Her breathing simply grew shallower and shallower, until pretty soon, she just quit breathing altogether. If you have to go, I guess that’s the way to do it.

Her passing wasn’t something she dreaded. She had just a few weeks previously mentioned on hearing the news of the death of yet another relative that the balance had now tipped and she had more loved ones on the other side than remained here on this earth. The night before she entered the hospital she reported having dreamed of visiting with my departed grandfather, the only true love of her life. She believed firmly that when she closed her eyes one last time on this earth, it would only be a short time before she would awaken to the joyous sound of departed parents, a sister, brothers, sons, aunts, uncles and cousins.

I want to believe that’s exactly where she is now, safely reunited with family she loved so dearly, free of the pain of the ravages of old age, and maybe just a little too impatient for the rest of us to cross over and join her.

If she were here, I know what she would tell us.

She would have looked at the flowers and think that was a lot of money spent, but secretly she would have been pleased.

She would have appreciated the timing of her own departure just before Easter Sunday, and she would have urged me to tell you all that it’s never too late to get yourself right with the Lord.

Most importantly, she would have looked at this sizeable assembly of family, and she would have been very, very pleased. And after she was very, very pleased, she would have started worrying about where they were all sleeping, and who was cooking for all them. Pretty soon, she would have been making up beds with the wildest assortment of mismatched sheets, blankets and pillowcases you have ever seen, all the while explaining that you can’t see them with your eyes closed anyway.

Because she was sure we were all going to catch our deaths of cold, she probably would have nudged the thermostat a little past its customary 84 and she would have worried when we all laid on the floor, started gulping water or peeled off the kids clothes to prevent heat stroke or cool them off.

If she felt up to it, and we were really, really lucky, she might have decided to whip up a batch of doughnuts. For those of you who never ate one of Zona’s doughnuts, let me just tell you that after eating one of Zona’s doughnuts, eating a Krispy Kreme is like chewing wallpaper. They were that good.

And that’s just the beginning of the million different ways she would have mothered, shepherded, hovered and worried about all of us and all of you.

These qualities were never on better display than when she decided in the early 1980s that we all ought to start going camping together at least once every year. Camping with grandma was an adventure everybody in the family at various times was called upon to enjoy, share, endure, or tolerate, depending on how that season went.

Officially, the camping trip was supposed to be the last weekend in July, but for grandma, this was a year-round obsession. One of her principle concerns was that somebody else would get our spot. If she couldn’t get my Dad or my brother to do it, she would drive up to the campsite in the National Forest with her friend Carol sometime before the snow melted and hammer big “Reserved” signs into the trees, warning away trespassers. If anybody did happen to move into our spot, the week or so before the campout, well, grandma had a remedy for that too: she simply knocked on their trailer door and told them they would need to move. About February, she would start harassing the Forest Service about the need to send in heavy equipment to smooth out the unimproved access to the spot, which wasn’t even a designated camping area. If spring floods had done anything to the creekside, they were expected to repair that too. Just before Memorial Day, she would pack her trailer. Sometime before the end of July, she would make a practice run to the campsite for the weekend just to make sure everything was in order. One year, when she learned that her out-of-state daughter would be joining us, she bought a second travel trailer just to ensure that everyone would have a bed. Nothing gave her more pleasure than this annual gathering of family, and in true grandma fashion, she showed us her love the only ways she knew how: by showering us with enough food to feed a small starving country and offering us the considerable benefit of her advice and opinions.

Now to understand Grandma, you have to understand that Grandma treated advice a lot like she treated medicine: one should give it to people when you perceive they need it. If you wait around for them to ask, it might be too late to do them any good.

No one ever had to worry about where Grandma stood. Is your moral compass in need of adjusting? Grandma will be glad to help you set it straight again. Are your child-rearing skills not up to par? Have no fear, Grandma was more than willing to explain to you what the likely consequences of your approach. Does your marriage need some fine-tuning? You could always count on Grandma to help straighten you out, maybe before you even you knew you needed any help.

But all that was just Grandma being Grandma. I don’t think of us who knew her best ever doubted her intentions or the love she bore for all of us, no matter what the words might sound like.

As I think back on Grandma’s life, an old hymn keeps running through my mind:
There is a balm in GileadTo make the wounded whole;There is a balm in GileadTo heal the sin sick soul.
Now Gildead is some far away place in the Middle East, but for all of Zona’s children and grandchildren, we had our own personal Gilead, and that was Grandma’s house in Prineville. And if you needed your wounds bound up or your soul revised, that was the place to go.
No matter what might be going on in our lives, all of us knew there was one person we could count on for love and support when things reached rock bottom, and that was Grandma. Sometimes, all it took to make things right was just a visit on the telephone. If things were more serious, a visit might be required. And if that didn’t work, then a pan of biscuits, a cup of coffee or some deep-fried pork chops, fried potatoes and cornbread would probably resolve the problem.

I’ve thought much these last few days about what made us all want to go to Grandma for advice. Certainly, it wasn’t because we always wanted to hear what she had to say. Sometimes, it was hard to hear the truth spoken so bluntly, even if it was with love.

I think Grandma’s ability to dispense advice must have been rooted in our knowledge of her own personal experience with real hardship—hardship which she met with spiritual resilience and a toughness that she was able to pass on when needed to the rest of us. It gave her the ability to tell us, no matter how raw a deal life might hand us, to suck it up and keeping moving. As she once told Linda, That’s Just What Adults Do.

Certainly, Grandma’s hardships were many: At the age of 14, her mother suffered a paralyzing stroke and overnight Grandma became mother and caretaker for her parents and seven siblings, all the while pursuing her high school education. That experience left her with an overwhelming appreciation that life is unpredictable, and you should take from it the joy you can get and enjoy it while you can. Certainly, her experience with the Depression and the extreme poverty that surrounded her community had a lasting influence on her. If nothing else, it left her with an enduring love for polyester, durable shoes, sensible cars and a good return on investments. But it also left her with a lifelong empathy for the less fortunate—an empathy which based on her checkbook resulted in an astonishing generosity to those down in their luck a few hundred dollars at a time.

Perhaps the greatest trial of Grandma’s life came to her in 1959, when her beloved 9-year-old son, Larry, was diagnosed with an untreatable bone cancer. For two and half years, she nursed and loved that little boy through a leg amputation and increasing pain with every ounce of energy she had. After Larry’s passing, Grandma said each and every day felt like there was an immense stone pressing down on her chest in the place where her heart used to be. But she even made the most of that adversity. She used her acquired knowledge of medicine to become a dedicated and compassionate nurse whom patients soon learned to ask for by name.
But even after this, God wasn’t done testing Grandma’s faith. In years to come, she was dealt additional blows. First there was the loss of her husband to creeping physical deterioration and at the end, dementia. Then there was having to nurse her eldest son waste away, as he was afflicted with slow paralysis as a result of ALS, Lou Gherig’s disease. A brother died suddenly without warning of an unsuspected shellfish allergy. A sister died on the operating table after what was supposed to be a routine procedure. And in addition, there were her own health issues: a tumor on her brain stem, a life-threatening blood clot, breast cancer which resulted in surgery and treatment for radiation, several fractured vertebrae and various other diseases of the elderly. I’ve wondered sometimes if, like Job, Grandma was the object of some sort of bet between God and the Devil about just how much one person could withstand without cursing God’s name. I think sometimes Grandma wondered about that too, but like Job, she persevered, and her faith remained unshaken to the end.

Grandma would have been the first to tell you: hardship is the basis of character. That which does not kill us makes us stronger. My grandma--your sister, mother, grandmother and friend-- had more than her share of hardship in life, and was rewarded immeasurably with phenomenal character.

My life has been the richer for having known my grandmother, and for loving her and having been loved by her, and I know that many of you out there have had the same experience.
It’s hard to be without grandma. Every day I hear things and see things that I want to relate to her, save for her or discuss with her. I find myself picking up the phone to call her or expecting to see her when I walk into her house. I grieve with the rest of my family because I miss everything about her. I miss trading news with her about family members, the community and the world. I miss her unsolicited advice just as I miss the opportunity to give her the same. I miss her worrying about me just as much as I miss worrying about her.
Yet I know Grandma is happy today, and no matter how much I miss her, I rejoice with her in these facts: I know Grandma’s happy to be back among so many people she has loved and lost over the years. I know Grandma’s happy because finally she is in the presence of her lord and savior, in whose service she toiled and sacrificed for 87 years, and most of all, I know she’s happy because she knows we are all gathered here together to remember and honor her, and in doing so, doing what she would most want us to do: loving each other.

That’s what Grandma did, that’s what she always wanted us to do and if want to honor her memory, it’s what we’ll continue to do.