From The Heart, The Mouth Speaketh

Past Is Prologue: A Farewell

2008-12-02T22:00:00.000-08:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
This column first appeared in the Central Oregonian of Prineville, Oregon, December 2008

At the end of December, I will leave office after eight years of county judge and four years as a Prineville city counselor. Thus, this my final column in my capacity as chief elected official for Crook County.

As I leave office, it is with a great sense of pride in our community and what it has become and what it is becoming.

First, a note about what we are not: Prineville and Crook County are not Bend. In fact, we are less like Bend today than we were when I was a child growing up here, and Redmond was about the same size as us ,and Bend was only slightly bigger. When I took office, it was with a determination that Prineville would find its own voice within the region and that we would not simply become a suburb in the Central Oregon milieu. All you have to do is listen to the popular media to find out that we achieved that goal. Reporters and editors regularly seek out Prineville and Crook County to get a different point of view, to try and understand another side of the complexity that is this region and community. Our voice is heard in Salem and in Washington, D.C., and every policymaker knows that a Deschutes County Commissioner or Bend City Councilor doesn’t speak for Crook County or Prineville any more than a Jefferson County Commissioner or a Madras city councilor. We strove to achieve identity, and as I depart it is with deep satisfaction that I observe that we have placed ourselves firmly on Oregon’s map.

A second note about what we are not: We are not Eastern Oregon. There was a time when Crook County and Prineville were regularly lumped into the category of “all those other counties east of the Cascades.” But just in my tenure, we have seen Oregon divide into three parts, not two. Perhaps they were always there, and we have simply raised the profile of the central region, but if so the raising of it has been for the better. Central Oregonians are different from the rest of Oregon because they deftly combine common sense with imagination and a realistic sense of the possible. They are not rooted in a past which is unlikely to return but nor are they hopelessly in love with a new vision that isn’t achievable, given our resource base. Central Oregonians, and Crook County residents in particular understand the need to feed their families and are willing to sacrifice resources to make that happen, but at the same time they have never lost their sense that it is just as important to feed the soul, and they preserve the land and special places around them for just that purpose. We have one foot firmly planted in the west, recognizing our economic interdependence with the more populous part of the state, and another planted in the east where we feel a strong affinity for the historic and cultural roots we share with our neighbors. Like children from a split family we are equally at home in the house of Mom or Dad, even while we sometimes wonder why our parents can’t just get along.

A third note about who we are not: as Crook County and Prineville residents, we are not at the pinnacle of what we are going to become. In fact, we are only at the start. While the growth and development we have experienced in the last decade has been at a pace which has seemed almost overwhelming at times, we have barely begun to change. Every force and reason which caused people to want to be in this highly desirable area in this decade is still in play. Once we are through the current economic hiccup which is dragging down the national, state and regional economy, the opportunity for growth and change will re-emerge with all its previous force and ferocity. Whether the community can position itself to hang on for the ride while managing to keep some semblance of what is best about us is the challenge for a new generation of leaders.

Crook County has been for me a wonderful place: a wonderful place to be raised, a wonderful launching pad for my early life and career, a wonderful place to return to in mid-career and a wonderful place to raise my three young children. It is a place which has nurtured me, just as it is nurturing my children to become self-confident, intelligent young people who understand that community is more than just the house in which you live. Just as I have benefitted from the economic opportunities that the community has offered, I hope economic opportunity will continue to grow and that someday my children will be able to find economic opportunity here, so that they can pass along the sense of rootedness which is so important to me to their children and to their children’s children as well. Just as the sun glinting on the snow-capped Cascades or the site of Prineville nestled in the valley as you come down over the hill raises my spirits, just as the cathedral-like Ponderosa forest fills me with a sense of awe and a drive through the vast loneliness of the eastern county following the lazy winding river gives me inspiration as I ponder the hardiness of the pioneers who came before me, I hope these sights, sounds and smells will stir the souls of my children as well.

We who live here are blessed with an awesome responsibility: the responsibility to love the land while at the same time to coax a living from the land. We must honor the past, even while we recognize that the past is only prologue to what is yet to be. Although it is a hard thing to do, we must try to steer the middle course in all things, veering neither too far to the left nor too far to the right, lest we founder upon the rocks of tradition or beach ourselves on the sands of progress.

I have done my best over the past twelve years of public service to steer the ship of local government in that way. I’ve known I was steering the course correctly when I’ve felt the slings and arrows coming at me from both banks of the river of fortune. There have been glorious successes and miserable failures. I’ve learned right along with all of you how to better navigate each treacherous passage, and I’ve tried to leave good maps for the next generation of pilots in the form of a well-administered system of government, a strong financial position and a group of staff and volunteers who are dedicated and passionate about serving this county and community.

Throughout my tenure in office, I have kept taped to the inside of the court notebook which contains my court papers a single verse from the Old Testament Book of Micah. It has guided me in difficult decisions. As I leave, I offer it to my successors and to the next administration as a goalpost for public servants, now and in the future: “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly before your God.”

The principle is as sound today as it was when it was written.

Thank you for the honor and a privilege of serving you.

Eulogy: Remembering a friend

2008-11-28T22:03:00.000-08:00

A Eulogy For Lynne Angland
Delivered by Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
November 29, 2008, Prineville Senior Center

When I reflect back on Lynne’s life, I am inclined to think about fire.

You all know that Lynne was a redhead—and she lived like a redhead, full of energy and strongly held opinions and a feisty and indomitable spirit. A spark, a fire, a flame lived within Lynne, and you felt its heat from the moment that you met her.

Yet Lynn was one of the most level-headed, kind persons I ever met. You could disagree with Lynne. I sometimes did. And she would listen politely and respectfully and then carefully with an accountant’s precision, explain why you were wrong. The consummate professional, the only way you ever knew that your failure to agree with Lynne didn’t sit well was if you looked into those big blue eyes: which would be snapping , popping and alive with intelligence, a willingness to fight for what she believe was right and sheer guts and determination. To stand near Lynn was to stand by the open fire; to stand against Lynne was to feel the increasing heat of the flames.

I loved the fact that Lynne put her passions into play for others. When she launched her in-office daycare, we all thought she was nuts. I was sitting on the board of a nonprofit daycare at the time, and we were struggling to make ends meet with donations and tax-exempt status. I know Lynne was a creative accountant, but even she couldn’t prop up the balance sheet with goodwill alone! Eventually, that experiment proved to be too costly, but Lynne didn’t admit defeat; she just changed directions. Awakened to the problem of affordable daycare faced by many working parents, she set out to build a better system at the local and state level to ensure that this need was met. She didn’t do this because she had some amazing education expertise in this area: she did it because when Lynne saw a problem, she didn’t just leave it to someone else: she had to fix it.

Lynne’s involvement with the Soroptimists and the Senior Center was a godsend. The ladies (and their beleaguered husbands) who run that organization are really amazing. They single-handedly remove from local government and the community the responsibility for providing one of the most important social service any local government has to address. And they do it very well. But they do it better since Lynne came along and began to lend her expertise to examining the bottom-line and suggesting that whatever you are doing today isn’t as important as you are going to end up tomorrow, if you keep doing it. Lynne helped ensured the financial stability of an organization that is not only nice but is absolutely necessary for serving the Crook County senior community. Almost no one who is directed served by the senior center appreciated the importance of her commitment and its critical timing to the senior center’s future success. Certainly, the patrons of the senior center seldom connected Lynne’s involvement with the benefits they daily received. That was fine with Lynne. She was ever the background player. She was one of those people those of us in community leadership value most: the kind of person you turn to when a job needs doing, needs doing well and you don’t necessarily need the person doing it to grandstand and hog the limelight while they fix the problem. Lynne was made for that role, and she played it very well.

There are only three reasons why the county’s Natural Resource Planning Committee has survived. The passion of Sarah Thomas, a friend of Lynne’s whom we mourned earlier this year, was one of them; the leg work of Mike Lunn, who carries on alone, was another; and the leadership of Lynne Angland was the third. For those who don’t know about this committee, it is rather unique in Oregon’s local government structure. It is a group of people, NOT like-minded, who depend upon and care about the natural world in Crook County. It is comprised of farmers and ranchers, timber interests, local businesses, community leaders, agency personnel, environmentalists and other diverse groups. They gather once a month to discuss subjects like how to protect watersheds and how to promote forest health and how to graze cattle without damaging the land and how to protect frogs and wolves and fish and such. Lynne presided over this sometimes fractious group with good humor, with passion and with deep and abiding interest in all they talked about. What this group does is far outside the realm of cold numbers lined up in neat columns, but Lynne wasn’t the kind of person whose life and whose broad interests were ever going to be confined or defined by a ledger sheet.

There is little consolation to be taken in Lynn’s premature departure. Her absence leaves a hole too big too fill. Her family, whom she loved deeply, will miss her most, but her friends will miss and mourn her for days, weeks, months and years to come. The only silver lining to be found in this tragedy is that when Lynn left us, on her way to attend a state childcare commission meeting, she was on her way to do something bigger than herself, more important than just her community and exemplary of her passions and commitments to making her world a better place to be. Her flame flickered bright to the very end, and I have a hunch, that’s the way Lynne would have wanted to exit the world.

Let me close with poem loosely borrowed by Edna St. Vincent Millay. When I heard about Lynne’s passing, I immediate thought of this, and it gave me a little comfort, because I think it very succinctly sums up the Lynne Angland I knew, admired and called my friend:

My candle burned at both ends,
It did not last the night.
But oh my loved ones and my friends,
It gave such lovely light.

Thoughts at the Twilight

2008-11-04T00:00:00.000-08:00

This article first appeared in the Central Oregonian of Prineville, Oregon, November 2008

At this writing, the election of 2008 is behind us (or at least I hope it is.) A new County Court is now elected, and I am entering the final phase, the twilight, of my 12-year political career as the transition to the new county administration begins.

It will be a strange moment when I leave office after Dec. 31. No more cell phone ringing urgently. No waking up at midnight to check the weather and wonder if the snowplows have been dispatched yet to Juniper Canyon. No more calls at home from constituents just as I’m sitting down to dinner or putting the kids in bed. I can once again read the morning paper without that nagging worry about whether the reporter got the story right. Best of all, I hope I’m done for good with same-day over-and-back trips to Salem starting at 5 a.m. and ending at 8 or 9 at night.

For the most part, my successor is welcome to it, but despite the relief I feel at handing off much of this job to someone else, there is still a tiny, tiny piece of me that regrets that I won’t be around in a leadership role as the next chapter of Crook County history.

You see, serving in public office isn’t so much about having something to do as it is about serving a passion. Any one of my predecessors in the office of county judge and county commissioner can tell you, they didn’t do it for the money. All of us were inspired by the idea that maybe we could run things just a little better. Our hope was that as a result of our service, we might leave the county and its citizens a little—or a lot—better than we found them, and all of us in our heart of hearts had a sneaking suspicion on leaving office that the next administration might change thing.

And of course change is exactly what happens. After all, that’s the point and the promise of an election: it’s an opportunity to reconsider, to allow new people to bring fresh approaches to persistent problems, to throw out what we have been doing and do something different in the perennial hope of a better result. Only in this way does the grand experiment that is democracy ensure the continuous and forward advancement of our system over time.

Of course, not everybody’s plan works out as envisioned. Make no mistake, campaigning successfully is a walk in the park compared with the challenges of governing successfully!
The role of the candidate is to promise. Reality has a funny way of forcing one to adjust one’s promises after the fact.

Do you remember the campaign of George W. Bush 2000? We were going to get out of the business of “nation building.” We were going to “decrease dependence on foreign oil.” We were going to rein in federal spending. Then came Sept. 11, 2001. Oops.

Over the course of the last year, I’ve heard candidates promise much to the community. We’re going to have a better economy, planned growth, better communication, open government, etc., etc. etc.

At the same time, I’ve been reading the papers and watching the news as the housing market has taken a nose dive, consumer confidence has plummeted, standards of living for retirees dependent on investment income have fallen, manufacturing has slumped, unemployment has risen and federal and state revenue sharing has dropped.

Despite the promises of candidates to deliver the Promised Land in local government, they may be fortunate if country, county and community simply survive the next four years intact.
Perhaps the most amusing campaign promise of all is what I like to refer to as the “Goldilocks” standard—the idea that the government through regulatory intervention can somehow control the destiny of the community so that its business growth, development patterns and conflict arising out of changing economic and social norms can somehow be implemented at a pace which is neither too hot nor too cold but is “just right.” In truth, that is the Holy Grail of every government and every elected official, and like the Holy Grail, it has never been discovered. The boom and bust cycle of the American economy forces communities and government alike to take advantage of good times and regroup in bad times. A government which applies the brakes in the up-times risks slowing the economic engine to a point that it can’t be revved again when the inevitable downturn begins. That is both political and economic reality. Always has been, always will be.

Be that as it may, the newly elected candidates can do some things right as they move forward with their new responsibilities. While those things lack the “sex appeal” of fulfilling policy promise, they probably will mean more to quality of life for all of us.

Boiled down, an elected official in local government needs to do six basic things:

· Sketch a vision not of what has been but of what could be.
· Hire good people and get out of their way.
· Appoint volunteers who have passion and competence for their contributions to community betterment.
· Budget modestly, providing what is needed but not overburdening those who are expected to foot the bill.
· Work well with other units of government. You never know when you will need help from your neighbor.
· Stay in touch with your community and its emerging and changing values

As I close my tenure in office, I can look back on my tenure in office and realize that I’ve committed myself intensely to all of these areas. Some of these tasks I’ve performed better than others. Sometimes, I’ve been more on top of my game than at other times. No doubt my successor will tackle these challenges in his or her own unique way, and I wish him or her well in doing that.

Elected office doesn’t come with a manual. No conference tells you what to do the day after you take the oath of office. It’s a “do it yourself” thing. I only hope that whatever the next administration does—and I ‘m sure it will do things differently than I have done them—that it will do them keeping these principles in mind.

They served me well, and in the long run they serve the people of Crook County well, too.

Choose Your Future

2008-10-01T00:04:00.000-07:00

First published in the Central Oregonian, Prineville, Oregon, October 2008

The county court system is a very old system of county government in this country. A colonial import, it was at one time the system used by all of Oregon’s counties. Today, the system is retained by nine Oregon counties, all of the eastern. Oregon’s other 36 counties have switched to the more familiar system known as a “board of commissioners”

There is little difference between a county court and a board of commissioners other than the name. Their primary function is legislative. The courts themselves have no judicial powers. The key difference is in the office of county judge, a position within the court.

The county judge chairs the county court when it sits as a legislative panel. The judge also acts as a county administrator between sessions of the court, although he doesn’t have individual authority to hire and fire without the court’s consent. What the county judge doesn’t do is wear a black robe and pound a gavel. That function is the prerogative of circuit court judges.

Because the county judge has no judicial responsibility, he or she does not need to need to be an attorney. I am not an attorney, nor was my predecessor nor his predecessor nor his predecessor nor his predecessor. I don’t know of any of the county judges who have ever been attorneys at least in this century.

In the frontier days, the judge was simply someone from the community who could read and write and had a reasonable head for business and understanding of civics. It couldn’t be limited to an attorney because there weren’t enough attorneys to go around. Today, some citizens are confused by archaic references to county judges and county courts. To resolve the confusion, simply think of these positions as a board of commissioners and a county commission chair. In that light, the roles of these bodies became much more clear.

There are two candidates for county judge on the ballot this November. Democrat Kim Kambak is facing off against Republican Mike McCabe for county judge. Democrat Arleen Curths is facing off against Republican Ken Fahlgren for commissioner. I list them in alphabetical order. The listing should not be read as my preference. I do not endorse as a matter of policy.

The choice you make in these races is not inconsequential. Crook County faces some big issues in coming years. The county has a large budget and administers of significant services. Crook County serves over 25,000 citizens both within and outside the city limits. It collects nearly $6 million in property taxes and must raise nearly $24 million in fees and grants from other governments to keep services running. It has reserves of around $30 million which can be saved or squandered as the county court directs. Some 200 employees and their families depend on the court for employment, while 300-plus volunteers have to be recruited and appointed to fill various board, commission and committee positions essential government services.

None of these roles are well defined in the Oregon Constitution, Oregon statutes or in county ordinances. There are no job descriptions for these positions, and there is no legal authority to impose a job description on an elected official accountable only to the voters. Rather, the roles of the county judge and the county commissioners have evolved through tradition and are adjusted by various courts to meet the demands of the times and the personalities sitting on any given county court.

Despite the flexibility of the position, there are some common attributes that distinguish “good “county court member. “Good” members have common sense, the ability to work hard, a basic understanding of budgets and management of people, a basic concept of civics and how governments work at various levels, the ability to gauge the pulse of the community and the ability to make wise decisions about the community’s future. It is also helpful if individual court members can work well as a team since the court collectively is responsible for the community’s future.

An overlooked but equally important quality of the position is stamina. It can be great fun to be a court member. More often, it is not. Round-trips to Salem or Portland leaving at 6 a.m. and returning at 6 p.m. or even later can wear out the most vigorous court member, and when you get home, chores, family obligations, and community obligations and in the case of the part-time commissioners the demands of other employment still have to be addressed. The job is not for the frail or the faint of heart.

The ability to communicate matters enormously. The county judge and the county commissioners must be able to explain their positions to the public, sometimes in heated environments. If you are afraid of the media, this is not a job for you. You will be quoted—and eventually misquoted or quoted out of context. Civic groups want to hear from you occasionally and so do policymakers in Salem and even Washington, D.C. How you speak and present yourself—intelligently, grammatically and professionally—will in part determine how policymakers view the residents of Crook County.

But maybe the most important component of the job is the ability to multi-task and work on multiple projects at once. As the supervising authority for 30 distinct departments, counties have to provide more than 50 discreet functions within those departments. Staff and volunteers as well as citizens and taxpayers, other governments, media, outside interest groups, and sometimes natural forces such as fire, flood or landslide create a never ending kaleidoscope of activity, each piece of which must be minutely examined and understood in order to understand how it fits into the whole picture. This is not a job for someone who is not a quick study.

The choice of the next county judge and the next county commissioner will deeply impact your life, whether you know it now or not. Your decision should be based on more than popularity or a name-recognition contest. Take some time now before your ballot arrives and get to know the candidates, all of whom are eager to talk to you. Find out where they stand and how they think and how well they will fit into this job. Your future—our future—in Crook County very much depends on your choice.

National issues appealing but measures matter

2008-09-08T23:03:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
first published in the Central Oregonian, Prineville, Oregon, September 2008

American interest in political conventions is dead. In future, the conventions—long a television “filler” may be consigned to the cable channels while the networks opt for reruns of “American Idol” and “The Bachelor” to keep ratings up.

Or at least that was the convention wisdom before the 2008 conventions.

Nearly 38 million viewers are estimated to have watched Barack Obama’s speech. The speeches of John McCain and Sarah Palin tied for third place in the all-time history of viewership on Fox news, coming in only behind the President’s speech to the nation on the eve of the invasion of Iraq and a presidential candidates’ debate in 2004.

With numbers like that, the network’s pronouncements that the conventions are “dead” remind me of Mark Twain’s wry observation that “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated!”

With the approach of the election this November, I think a lot of people who thought American and Oregonian interest in politics was dead are about to be proven wrong.

Both tickets have emerged post-convention energized by their respective candidates. For the first time in American history we have an African American, a woman and two old white guys—one from the East and one from the West on the tickets. There’s a little something for everyone.

And people aren’t just excited about their own candidates. They are being energized by their desire to ensure the defeat of the opposition as well.

Democrats are appalled by John McCain’s choice of a social conservative who seems to have every one of the party’s sacred cows in her gun sight and appears to be intent on slaughtering them all.

Republicans hear the twin rumbles of an approaching wealth redistribution engine threatening popular tax cuts and military doves flapping ever closer. Neither sound has much appeal.

All this drama will no doubt cause Oregonians to turn out and cast their votes in record numbers this November. But as they study the national candidates, I wonder how many of them are equally prepared to decide important questions that will be facing back home.

In addition to interesting “people” races, this November’s ballot has 12 important initiative and referendum questions as well. Arguably, the way Oregonians respond to these proposals may shape your life more than the new face in Washington, D.C.

Thus, it might be a good idea to study and consider these measures a little bit before your ballot arrives in about six weeks.

A good example of a question that has big implications for everyone who pays taxes is the question of whether to repeal the “double majority” requirement for raising property taxes. That’s exactly what is proposed in Measure 56, which would provide that money measures presented in the May and November elections need only pass by a majority of those casting ballots. Gone would be requirement that these measures have to also receive a nod of assent from 51 percent of those registered to voters. If passed, this measure undoubtedly will make raising taxes—a feat deemed nearly impossible under the current system—easier. More than one opponent, however, says that more taxes are the last thing we need in this state and in the present economy. Chances are you haven’t even thought about this question yet. Here’s your chance.

A pair of measures on the ballot—measures 57 and 61—will increase mandatory sentences for those convicted of drug trafficking, identity theft and property crimes. One measure is being sponsored by unsuccessful candidate for governor and attorney general Kevin Mannix who engages the electorate theses days through the initiative process. The other measure was placed on the ballot by the legislature as an alternative to the Mannix proposal. Whichever gets the largest number of votes will “win” and become law. The concern I have in all the hoopla about whether Mannix or the Legislature knows best is whether passing either measure is good for Oregon. While cracking down on crime is a desirable in and of itself, the cost is high. Since the state’s money basically goes to three places: education, care for the elderly, the disabled and low-income people and corrections, are we willing to live with bigger elementary school classes and fewer caseworkers investigating abuse of seniors in order to ensure that the neighborhood crackhead gets a $40,000 per year room and board package plus education and job training courtesy of the state of Oregon. I’m not sure the trade off is worth the price.

There’s yet another measure that I think deserves some deeper attention: Measure 58 prohibits teaching a public school student in a language other than English for more than two years. This measure reflects the impatience of those who do not appreciate their scarce tax dollars being used to provide one-on-one instruction to the children of non-English speaking families year-after-year. I totally agree with and support the idea that we are an English-speaking nation and that children attending public schools need to be English proficient; however, I’m not sure this is the way to achieve that goal. As the parent of an elementary school child who speaks perfectly good English, the last thing I want is more valuable instructional time taken away from teaching my child reading, writing and math. In this day and age, the Number One imperative for teachers is to raise test scores among low-performing kids. If they fail to do that, schools can suffer dire financial consequences. Teachers already struggle to try to provide challenging curriculum for all 25 students in the typical classroom. Put a couple of non-English speaking kids receiving no outside help in the mix, and my kid may never be presented with challenging curriculum. While the concept is right, this may be a measure fraught with unintended consequences.

These are just a few of the measures on the ballot this November. All will be highlighted in your Voters Pamphlet. You can also study them online at the Oregon Secretary of State’s website at http://www.sos.state.or.us/ under the elections tab. These issues are going to be important to all of us and to the future of our communities and our children, regardless of whether JoBama or McPalin moves into the White House.

Things Do Look Different Here;

2008-08-01T22:17:00.000-07:00

Land Use Rules Allow Exceptions, But Good Luck Getting One
By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge and Heidi Bauer, Crook County Land Use Counsel

Commissioned for the inaugural issue of "The Independent", a journal of independent thought scheduled for publication in Bend, Oregon, July 2008

The “Big Look” task force created by the Oregon Legislature in 2005 to take a comprehensive look at Oregon’s vaunted land use system 35 years after its birth, recently reported its initial findings. The 10-member, geographically diverse task force consulted with interest groups and citizens around the state. Among its proposed recommendations, the task force suggests:

The Oregon Land Use Planning Program …has become complex and rigid over time—the clear connection between many policy regulations and desirable policy outcomes has become lost. Some lands that have little economic utility for farming or forestry are classified for those uses, creating significant frustration. Rural zoning has very little nuance or variation. At the same time, there is little or no protection for significant natural areas such as important wildlife habitat and watersheds.

If nothing else comes out of the task force, many rural Oregon elected officials, land use planners and private property rights advocate can point to this paragraph with a sigh of relief and remark, “Finally, somebody has seen the light!”

When Oregon’s land use planning system was adopted, it was promoted as the system every state would eventually adopt. That prediction did not quite work out. To date, no other state has adopted the Oregon land use system. A cynic might ask, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, is the failure to imitate the sincerest form of criticism?

A key glitch in making Oregon’s land use system workable is the failure in rural Oregon to distinguish true “resource land” from “non-resource” land. The fault for this largely lies with local governments themselves, although they were not encouraged in by the State of Oregon to make distinctions.

When land-use planning was originally implemented, counties and cities were required to classify the lands within their jurisdictions into broad categories. Great care and attention was paid to segregating residential, commercial and industrial lands into distinct zones. Outside of city limits, permissible levels of density consumed most of the political oxygen as people argued about whether specific rural residential areas were better classified as 5-acre, 10-acre or 20-acre minimum lot sizes. Once those debates were settled, the land mass that remained was classified as farm or forest, depending mainly on whether it had a merchantable supply of timber.

The reasons for lack of specificity are fairly straightforward. Counties did not have the money to perform the analysis needed to determine a parcel-by-parcel analysis of the suitability of land for agriculture. Counties, for the most part, also lacked the tools that would have made such analysis possible.

Even today, large tracts of rural Oregon have never had its soils data mapped. Tools such as geographic information systems (GIS) and satellite imagery have come on line only in the last ten years. Currently, even the ordinary citizen can immerse himself in data. However, 30 years ago absent internet search engines, detailed data on farm productivity had to be combed from dusty volumes often accessible only through offices thousands of miles away. The environment discouraged detailed analysis.

Clearly, access to information has changed. The “Big Look” report notes opportunities and recommends improvements in the Oregon land use system to keep it up to speed with technology and the times. Positive steps undoubtedly, but for the time being, Oregonians are still stuck with old systems and aged mechanisms to address outdated plans created with broad brush approaches and limited accuracy.

The State’s chosen vehicle for dealing with most of the shortcoming of existing maps is a tool called an “exception area.”

A local government can make an “exception” to allow uses of land which would ordinarily be proscribed if it makes one or more of several possible findings.

One “exception” is to allow development when the land in question is “physically developed” to the extent that it can no longer support a use allowed by the underlying zone. For example, a piece of ground might have clustered development of a few homes. The grouping of the homes render the ground unsuitable for agricultural and might allow the construction of other non-farm dwellings under an “exception” theory.

An alternative theory justifying an exception is to allow a normally retricted use in an area that is considered “irrevocably committed” to non-agricultural use. This exception may be allowed because existing adjacent uses or barriers to practical use of the land render normal uses permitted in the zone to be infeasible. This argument is often used to justify an exception on farm ground around which residential development has been allowed to encroach to the point that farming is impractical because normal farming activities—the sort which involve dust, smoke, noise, odor, late-night lights, etc.--create conflict with neighbors which is impossible to overcome. Sometimes this argument is used when a piece becomes isolated from identically zoned land adjacent by construction of physical features such as highways or other public works projects. Such “orphan” pieces of land occasionally can qualify for an “exception.”

Frankly, determining the suitability of a proposed piece of property for an exception under one of these theories is generally straightforward. The third “exception” under state law is the one which most often creates confusion for landowners, neighbors and local government alike.

The third basis embodied in rule which justifies an “exception” is that the subject property meets four tests: there are “reasons” which justify why the state policy embodied in state land use goals under which a particular zone was created do not apply; there are no reasonable “alternatives” to the site in question; the long term environmental, economic, social and energy consequences of allowing an “exception” have no greater impact than if an exception was allowed somewhere else; and the proposed use under an “exception” will be compatible with or can be made compatible with surrounding uses through the imposition of conditions.

This last test is so convoluted and vague and utterly lacking in both clarity and definition, that it is practically an impossible hurdle for any applicant to jump. It is this kind of test which gives land use planners and local government officials headaches, keeps special interest groups and landuse attorneys in business and drives private property owners to extreme measures such as the adoption of Measure 37. This is the kind of language which caused the Oregon City Planners Association, in a December 2006 report to the “Big Look” task force to comment that the state’s “…current land use laws have become “a complex, legalistic, and perplexing statewide land-use planning system that is difficult to understand and implement for average citizens as well as planning officials.”

Crook County recently found itself on the receiving end of this confusion with a pair of landuse decisions which were appealed to the state’s land use court, the Land Use Board of Appeals. These two cases classically illustrate the deficiencies of the current “exceptions” process.

In one case, an applicant applied to acquire an exception involving a 40-acre piece of farm ground. The property in question was under active cultivation and growing two or three crops of alfalfa each year. The piece had active water rights and was under irrigation. Testimony at the hearing from both the applicant and the neighbors was that there had been no complaints related to the use of the property as farm ground, and in fact, it was the neighbors themselves who were most vocal in arguing that the property ought to be retained as farm ground. The only strong argument made by the applicant in support of his position was that the acreage had been divided years ago by U.S. highway 26 from the adjacent farm ground across the highway. The applicant therefore argued that the ground in question was irrevocably committed to another use and qualified for an exception because of his inability to farm it—an argument which conveniently ignored the fact that the property in question even at the time of the original hearing was actively being farmed.

About the same time, a second applicant applied for permission to place a home on a small parcel in the extreme eastern part of the county, approximately 4 miles east of the community of Paulina. The applicant could not possibly qualify for an “exception” under the “irrevocably committed”, “physically developed” or “reasons” criteria. Instead, he had to apply under another elaborate and tortuous process for a non-farm dwelling on an existing parcel. The applicant applied to place a home on his non-irrigated property located in a subdivision which predates the adoption of land use planning. Four of the 23 lots in the subdivision ranging from 5- to 40-acres have existing homes on them. The applicant proposed to be the fifth home in the area, located on a 25-acre tract adjacent to a large irrigated farm parcel in excess of 500 acres. The owner of the large acreage appealed, claiming that the existence of one additional home would destabilize agriculture in the area and further would open the potential for the construction of a total of 29 possible homes in an area of 2000-square acres.

What do you suppose the outcome of these cases was?

In the first case, LUBA 2007-241, Scott v. Crook County, the Land Use Board of Appeals sustained the 2-1 decision of the County Court and declared the alfalfa field in question to be irrevocably committed to non-agricultural purposes, by virtue of the fact that is was segregated from the adjacent land by a highway and surrounded by residential uses. Never mind that the farmer was making a living off of it!

In the second case, LUBA 2007-250, Young v. Crook County, the Land Use Board of Appeals remanded the matter to the County Court for further consideration. The board found that the potential for 29 more homes was a threat to the stability of agriculture and the land use pattern of the area. The board noted that 17 of the 29 homes would have been located in the subdivision already in the area, but was disturbed at contemplating the impact of 12 more homes in the remaining 625 acres (a maximum density of 1 home per 50 acres.) The board ordered the County Court to reconsider the matter and ordered the court to prove that allowing one additional home would not increase the “historic rate of development” and would not “not reach a level that destabilizes the agricultural land use pattern in the area.” Apparently, no member of LUBA ever learned the axiom taught in all speech and debate classes, “You can’t prove a negative,” nor does any member of LUBA understand that, according to the most recent Census of Agriculture, 56 percent of the farms in Crook County are 50 acres in size or less.

These two cases are illustrations of why Oregon’s land use system is badly in need of reform. It is hard for ordinary citizens and landowners to accept that state policy requires them to spend thousands of dollars in application fees and legal fees, only to hear their lawyers make highly technical arguments which often are not fully understood by applicants, opponents or policymakers. The fact that the outcome is never certain and that the process of decisionmaking which drags applicants, opponents and local governments alike through multiple layers of judgment making is “salt in the wound” of frustrated property owners. For the most part, applicants only desire to build a house, to fund a retirement, or send a kid to college by putting unproductive ground, which will never be capable of being cultivated or making a profit, to its highest and best use.

The “Big Look” task force is right to call for reform of the State’s land use system, but several more years may elapse before its recommendations are heard, watered down and acted upon through the legislative process. The exceptions process, by contrast, can be altered at any time, albeit using a rigorous process process, by the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission by using its administrative rule-making authority to revise the statewide planning goals and associated administrative rules. An exceptions process which more clearly defines the objective characteristics of land suitable for exception—based on soil type, parcel size, adjacent levels of development, presence of cultivation, existence of irrigation or water rights, incidence of timber cover, inclusion in a critical wildlife habitat, presence of natural resources deemed worthy of protection—could easily be crafted to replace the current unwieldy system.

Landowners primarily want certainty in the use of their land. Certainty is the fuel for market forces that underpin health economies.Unfortunately, Oregon’s land use system—particularly in the use of the “exceptions” policy as it relates to land labeled with the catch-all zone of “exclusive farm use” provides anything but certainty.

Revising the exceptions definitions and process would be a step in the direction of restoring the increasingly frayed credibility of Oregon’s land use system in rural areas, and give it a chance to achieve the model-status which its founders envisioned.

Bio notes: Judge Scott R. Cooper is a former Prineville city councilor and is currently serving a second term as chair of the Crook County Board of Commissioners, known as a County Court. He is also the chief executive officer for the county. Heidi Bauer is planner and land use counsel for the Crook County Planning Department, with law degrees from University of Denver and City University of London in the United Kingdom.

A Mighty Task

2008-07-01T23:48:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge

In October of last year, the Governor called. Well technically, the Governor’s office called. The guy on the other end of the line is a higher-up in the Governor’s office and someone who has deep ties to Crook County, his grandfather having been a founding rancher in the Powell Butte area and a former county commissioner.

“Scott, the Governor has a favor to ask,” the staffer said.

I was instantly on alert. Every time the Governor asks for a favor, it ends up costing me, politically or financially.

“I’m awfully busy,” I replied, hedging my bets “but what does he want?”

“The Governor wants you to serve on a task force about resolving the county payments problem,” my friend said.

I ruminated about this. “The Governor wouldn’t like what I have to say about that issue,” I replied. “The county payments problem is partially about the failure of the federal government to do its job, but it’s also about some counties that don’t want to pay their own way. Besides, Crook County has tightened its belt and fixed its problems, and I’m not really sympathetic to people who are sitting around waiting for a miracle, that probably isn’t going to happen.”

“That’s definitely a point of view,” my friend said diplomatically, “and that’s why the Governor wants you to serve so you can say that.”

“Who else is serving” I asked, still suspicious?

“Bobby Green, C.W. Smith and Mark Labhart.”

“Who else?”

“You, if you accept.”

I thought about this. Bobby Green is a formidable commissioner from Lane County with a lot of clout statewide. He is the immediate past president of the Association of Oregon Counties. He played football for the University of Oregon and has been trading up on his athletic bona fides ever sense. C.W. Smith is the former sheriff of Jackson county turned county commissioner. C.W. is everybody’s best friend and keeps everybody laughing. It’s hard to win arguments with C.W. because he is so likable and he uses humor so well. Mark is a very bright commissioner from Tillamook County. He has a mastery of the intricate details of county government that few people could match. If the three of them were to gang up on me, I’d get clobbered.

“Anybody else,” I asked?

“Every agency head in state government, members of the House and Senate appointed by the Speaker and the President, staff from the governor’s office and a representative from the cities. We may add other people as we go along. The deputy chief of staff is going to chair the task force. I’ll tell you what. Try it, and if you don’t like it, you can quit.”

Feeling vaguely suckered, I hung up. I grumbled to myself that the last thing I need was more time out of the office for some Salem-boondoggle. Adding insult to injury, because the task force wasn’t given a budget, there wasn’t even going to be mileage or lodging reimbursement. On the up side, how often does someone in my position get the chance to get on a first-name basis with the key movers and shakers of state government, and to deal with them all in the same room at the same time? I decided that I would at least to a couple of meetings and decide what to do later.

Six months later, the task force birthed its baby: a report containing 54 recommendations, mostly for Legislative consideration, but some which can be implemented immediately by agencies and counties, suggesting ways to mitigate the impact of the pending loss of these payments.

And the report didn’t whitewash just what these payments mean to Oregon. On its opening page the task force forecasted the fiscal calamity that is about to befall Oregon. The state administration’s political leanings didn’t deter it from squarely blaming Washington for all but killing the vibrant forest industry of this state, and then terminating that support before coming up with a long-range solution to the problem the federal government created. The report noted that in 24 of Oregon’s counties, revenue losses will average 26 percent of their discretionary general funds and 44 percent of their road funds—a loss which will “compromise public health and safety, degrade county roads and exacerbate job losses in almost every region of Oregon outside of the Portland metropolitan area.”

It isn’t a pretty picture.

At best, the task force’s recommendations, even if all of them were adopted would mitigate maybe 20 percent of the loss. At worst, without the restoration of these revenues, some counties in the southwestern part of the state could be facing bankruptcy as early as July 2009. It’s an ugly picture, no matter how you paint it.

At the end of the day, the task force was clear: there are only four ways to completely address the loss of these monies: restoration of payments by the federal government, more taxation, drastic reductions in services or a freeing up of the forests within the state’s boundaries so they can be used responsibly for the benefit of wildlife, watersheds, forest health, AND rural economies and communities.

Barring any one of those outcomes, the task force suggested sensible tweaks such as requiring the state to make up losses to county general funds it creates by exempting certain businesses from income taxes; allowing federal income tax refunds to be attached to pay tax debts owed to state and local government; and allowing state and local road departments to co-locate facilities.
Other proposals were more radical and open to debate: raising the beer and wine tax or raising recording fees. I didn’t support all of the proposals, but it was educational to learn how other regions of the state and their elected officials view the world and how Salem-based officials of state government view the world.

In t he end the task force report is food for thought. You can view it online yourself at http://governor.oregon.gov. Look under the tab “Task force on federal forest payments.” Comments are being accepted through mid-August.

I’m glad I accepted the post. I learned a lot about my State and the unique challenges of its regions. I learned about how other counties operate the business side of their houses, and came home with some good ideas. I made interesting contacts which are useful in working with state agencies. I spent too much time away from home and family dealing with this issue, but in the end, the investment was worth the time.

Most of all, I learned to appreciate Crook County and Central Oregon even more than I already did. We have our challenges for sure, but compared to the rest of Oregon, things look pretty good from where we sit.

Letter: A Mother's Love

2008-06-30T22:15:00.000-07:00

June 30, 2008

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori;
Presiding Bishop, Episcopal Church USA
Episcopal Church Center
815 Second Avenue New York, NY 10017

Dear Bishop Jefferts Schori :

I was distressed to read in my newspaper this morning and subsequently on-line of the pronouncements of the Global Anglican Future Conference as embodied in its Jerusalem Declaration. My first thoughts were for my church and her future. My second thoughts were for you, the primate God has chosen to lead us through this difficult time in the history of the church.

The days and times that lay ahead will no doubt be difficult for you. You must wonder at times why you allowed yourself to be nominated and elected to this post. You must look back fondly on simpler days when you had time to pursue your academic interests and later to minister to the needs of ordinary people.

In those low moments, please remember the words of a very wise woman:

“In Death of the Hired Man, Robert Frost said that “home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.” We all ache for a community that will take us in, with all our warts and quirks and petty meannesses – and yet they still celebrate when they see us coming! That vision of homegoing and homecoming that underlies our deepest spiritual yearnings is also the job assignment each one of us gets in baptism – go home, and while you’re at it, help to build a home for everyone else on earth. For none of us can truly find our rest in God until all of our brothers and sisters have also been welcomed home like the prodigal.”

Those words were relevant, right and powerful when you penned them. They remain so today.

We in the Anglican Community are like a family, and like all families we have differences. Sometimes those differences get out of hand. We may stop speaking to one another or say things in the heat of the moment which are cruel or hurtful. But such transgressions do not make us any less a family.

When the family acts up, I think no one suffers more than the mother. No one yearns more for healing and reconciliation.

The position in which you now find yourself is much like that of mother to an embittered family at the moment. As a member of that family, I’m sorry that we so far have failed to bring you all that you might have hoped for in your presiding episcopacy. Surely, more progress in meeting the needs of the least fortunate would have been preferable to the moderating the bickering of purple-clad prelates squabbling openly in every newspaper on every continent. Still, this is the family which God in his ultimate wisdom has entrusted to you. You are our mother for the next few years, and I hope you will continue to find it in your heart to look past our grievous faults and wrongs and offer us a mother’s love and counsel.

Thank you for all you are doing for the Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Church USA, God’s people and for people everywhere. Take heart that the ultimate destiny of the Church and God’s Creation are in his hands, and so are you.

Yours in Christ’s Love,

Scott Cooper
Parish of St. Andrews, Prineville, Oregon

Address: Find Your Fuel

2008-06-07T01:52:00.000-07:00

2008 Commencement Address, Crook County High School
Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper
June 6, 2008, Prineville, Oregon

Superintendent Swisher, Principal Golden, Members of the School Board, Distinguished Members of the Faculty and Graduating Members of the Class of 2008 and friends. It is a privilege and an honor to be here today to offer on behalf of all of Crook County congratulations to the Class of 2008 congratulations on being the 100th graduating class of Crook County High School.

If truth be told, I am here today as the principal’s “second choice.” I know that because Mr. Golden told me so, when he asked me to do this. His exact words were, “I wanted to ask Mike Geisen, but he has some sort of National Teacher of the Year Thing in New York and since you graduated from Crook County High School, I thought maybe you might fill in.”

Thanks, Jim. I’m truly honored. As for the rest of you, I suggest you watch out about May 2009. Since the main qualification for this job appears to be graduating from CCHS, any one of you might be giving this address next year!

I’m telling that story for two reasons. Mainly I wanted the pleasure of watching Mr. Golden’s face turn red. I’m sure no one in the Class of 2008 has never been made to squirm by the principal and his sense of humor. Just remember, Jim, what goes around comes around. Secondly, I wanted an opportunity to mention early on in this speech the incredible achievement of Mike Geisen, a Crook County Middle School Teacher, who was recently named National Teacher of the Year. Mr. Geisen is a great example of the type of educator in which this District is investing, and I know that we have many more years of exceptional graduating classes which will be crossing this stage, well-educated to face the future.

Mr. Geisen nearly didn’t become teacher of the year, you know. To become teacher of the year, he first had to become Oregon Teacher of the Year. The way he found out he was Oregon Teacher of the Year was at an assembly at the Middle School. Local dignitaries were invited to join the State Secretary of Education in announcing that a great honor had been bestowed on a teacher in Crook County. When Mr. Geisen’s name was called, he was sitting near the top of the bleachers, and he came bounding down giving high fives along the way. When he reached the bottom bleacher, he caught his foot and fell face forward . If he hadn’t had the good sense to duck and roll, he probably would have broken his neck, and we wouldn’t be here today talking about him.

But Mr. Geisen did have the good sense to tuck and roll. And as a result, he simply stood up and brushed himself off and went on with the business of accepting his award. And in that one moment, I who hadn’t known Mr. Geisen before, became a big fan. I think Mr. Geisen is a great metaphor for that decision we all have to make at various times in our lives: When things don’t go quite the way we planned, are we going to lay on the floor humiliated or are we going to pick ourselves up and go on to greatness?

Greatness is what I’m hoping for out of the Class of 2008. Certainly, if 100 years of history is any guide, you have no reason to be concerned about whether this institution has given you the education you need to succeed in the world that now lies before you.
I recently met a man who graduated Crook County High School in 1960. Based in California, this man has a doctorate and until recently was head of the world’s largest screening center for prenatal and newborn genetic disease. I wonder what kind of mentor he had in CCHS chemistry that started him down that path?

Not too long ago I read about another Crook County High School graduate who graduated from these halls in 1943. After a distinguished military career in World War II, he went on to become chief judge of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where he continues to preside over the bench with senior status. I wonder how he did in U.S. Government class at CCHS?
A classmate of mine after graduating in 1982, went on to undergraduate studies at Harvard University and then to medical school at Albert Einstein University in New York before returning to Harvard to get a Ph.D. in biology. I didn’t see her for many years after we graduated, until I opened Fortune magazine one day and found an article about her pioneering work mapping the genome of the fruit fly—a project which laid the foundation for genetic mapping of all other species. Today, she has her own lab at Harvard named for her and supervises the work of 15 graduate students. I don’t have to ask what she got in biology. I was there, and let’s just say that her grades were always better than mine.
You see, as you become Crook County high school graduates today you join a long line of distinguished individuals who have made or are currently making a mark on the world. Regardless of what your experiences may have been to date, there is no reason why your potential horizons have to be limited to the rimrocks surrounding Prineville. The world lies before you. How you encounter it, is up to you.

As I look out over this audience today, I wonder what the future holds for each of you. Is the next Bill Gates out there? The next Mother Teresa? The next Les Schwab or a future President of the United States? Your lives are fraught with possibility.

In each of you, there is a special spark. Your teachers and all the rest of us gathered here today have been blowing on that spark for the past 12 years trying to make it jump into flames. Some of you have responded very well and have quite a blaze going. Some of you—well, let’s say that at least you’re still glowing.

What all of us want is to see that spark come alive, but what none of us, except you, really know is what kind of fuel it is that will make that spark jump into flames.

As you leave this place today, your greatest challenge is to find the fuel that that makes you burn. As you walk out of this hall/arena/stadium, take some time to think exactly where it is that your passion lies. Passion will take you places that hard work alone won’t. Passion will help make you the kind of alumnus who will be worthy of being remember by a graduating class 100 years from now.

What do I mean by passion?

Maybe you’re the kind of person who cares about other people: if that’s your passion, devote yourself to that purpose. Go on a mission. Join the Peace Corps. Find a career where people really need someone like you, whether that’s nursing or teaching or practicing medicine, whether it’s meaningful work as a minister, a mental health counselor or a coach.
Or maybe business is what excites you—that opportunity to stand astride the stock market and make it quiver at your every word. If that’s you, go for it: make a better mousetrap and sell, sell, sell. Figure out the next great running shoe, put Phil Knight out of business and endow Oregon State University for once. Whatever you do, do it well. Don’t settle for an 8-5 job. Tell yourself when you walk out of here, I’m going to be the very best at what I do, and then walk out of here and do it.

And if you’re one of those people who isn’t quite sure yet what you want to do, well do whatever you do with passion and zeal and excitement until you get it right. Try and try again. And when things get tough, remember the lessons taught by those who went ahead of you. Einstein nearly failed kindergarten long before he became the smartest man in the world; Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team for “lack of skill,” Henry Ford’s first two automobile companies failed; The Beatles were rejected by a major record label because, its executives said, “We don’t like your sound,” and Mike Geisen rolled his way to the feet of the Oregon Superintendent of Schools, and then picked himself up and walked away to be honored by the President of the United States in the Rose Garden at the White House.

As you enter the Great Big World, Class of 2008, don’t be afraid to dare to do big things. Spread your wings and to show us how high you can fly. Try many things, trip and fall frequently and whenever you do, pick yourself up off the floor and try again.

One hundred years from now, the graduating class of 2108 will be sitting where you are today. They are going to need their heroes, too, and their heroes might as well be you.

Doing The Same Thing But Expecting New Results

2008-06-03T01:49:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
First published in the Central Oregonian, Prineville, Oregon, June 2008

Somebody called me the other day to complain that the new library director doesn’t believe in alphabetizing. I listened politely, if somewhat incredulously, and made a mental note to ask the library director the next time I saw him what he was up to. I honestly didn’t think much about the matter until the new director happened to show up in my office on another matter. After we concluded our business, I asked him, “David: do you believe in alphabetizing?”

Even as I asked the question, I felt stupid. Of course he alphabetizes. He’s a library director. It’s what they do.

So it was that I listened with some astonishment as the county’s new library director explained to me that the current theory of library and information science is that as long as books are in alphabetical order by author and in numerical order by Dewey Decimal number, title order doesn’t matter. Most readers are capable of finding what they need in a few seconds if the book is in the right general area. He went on to explain that shelving in this fashion saves an incredible amount of staff time, and also allows library staff the freedom and flexibility to shelve series of books together in the order they are intended to be read.

That wasn’t the answer I was expecting, but I had to admit that his observations had some logic to them. After all, I’m sure I’m smart enough to look at five or ten books on a shelf and find the one that I want, regardless of the order they are in. Certainly, my bookshelves at home are in no particular order, and I can find any volume I need with only minimal searching. Still, I couldn’t quite get my mind around this new-fangled theory. After all, books in libraries are SUPPOSED to be alphabetized. Putting books in order is what librarians do, isn’t it?

Finally, I said, “David, you might well be right. There might be a different way to do business, and perhaps we need to consider that at some point in the future. But you’re new around here, and you have a lot of important projects pending. Do you really want to launch a big fight with a public that’s just getting used to you about the order of the books on the shelves? Will you please, as a favor to me and yourself, reconsider your position, which I think is a little too radical for Prineville and Crook County, and put the books back in alphabetical order?”
The library director laughed and agreed that innovation has a time and a place and maybe we’re not ready for big city thinking yet. He agreed to put the books back in order and save “progress” for another day.

I’m not telling that story to rat out the library director as some sort of progressive. He is in fact a great director who has brought the county fresh ideas about how to take our library in exciting new directions involving expanded access to information, better use of technology, more extensive programming and solid theories of collection management. He’s doing well, and he’s going to do even better in the future —as long as he keeps alphabetizing the books.

The point of the story is to point out just how hard it is for us in government and communities to get outside our comfort zone and think in new ways about old problems.

The library director was responding rationally to a long-standing problem in the library: how to put more people to work on important tasks like ordering material, processing material and helping patrons. Shelving, while necessary, prevents these jobs from getting done, and the faster it can be completed, the quicker the library staff gets back to more urgent work. Unfortunately, the library director’s excitement got a little ahead of his constituency’s tolerance for the new and different.

He isn’t the only one in that predicament at the moment.

The May 20 election results suggested that a lot of people are having problems coming to grips with the need to change the reality of how we have been thinking.

No point better illustrates that than the fate of some of my peer commissioners around the state. Of the thirteen incumbent county commissioners in Oregon who running for re-election with opponents, eight lost their seats in a primary battle. Given the supposed overwhelming advantage that incumbency confers in electoral contests, there is definitely a message here.
I know many of the people whom the voters sacrificed. They are hard-working, creative and dedicated to their constituencies. The fact that they lost their seats probably has more to do with voter frustration with rapidly occurring change than any particular thing they did.
My sense of the electorate right now is that having plunged from the glory days of economic supremacy in 2005 and 2006 to a rapidly cooling economy in 2007 and 2008, voters are being driven by fear and discontentment. Most say they say they want “change”. In truth, they don’t change as much as they want things to return to where they were: a time when a house purchase was a guaranteed retirement income, when easy credit allowed us to live well beyond our means, when a labor force shortage guaranteed that if you lost your job you could find one in a few days, when gas was cheap and so was food and so were goods.

The problem with the “good old days” of a few years ago is that they came at a price: housing prices rose far beyond affordability for first-time homebuyers, mounting debt eventually ate into our savings, employers started taking jobs overseas to find labor, our dependence on foreign oil forced us into uncomfortable reliance on unstable political regimes, we began to erode the competitiveness of our own farmers and we fueled the rise of developing nations like China and India who are now competing with us for the very things that have defined our comfortable lifestyle.

We may think we want the “good old days” back, but we aren’t likely to get them and keep them without making some fundamental changes in the way we have been approaching the world.
But therein lies the politician’s quandary: how does he or she convince voters that a little change, adjustment and acceptance of new ways of doing things may be necessary if we all don’t want to destroy the very way of life we prize?

Then again, how does a library director expand his services but still run economically, if we don’t give him the flexibility to try something new once in a while?

Remembering Sarah

2008-03-01T23:41:00.000-08:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
first published in the Central Oregonian of Prineville, Oregon, March 2008

Margaret Mead, the renowned anthropologist, once famously said, “A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

The saying appears on posters, refrigerator magnets and letter-size print outs posted on bulletin boards in schools and non-profit organizations. For the most part, it’s a “feel-good” saying meant to make often uninspiring work a little more appealing or to enhance recruitment of volunteers. Only on very rare occasions does someone get the opportunity to actually put the saying into practice.

My friend Sarah was such a person, and indeed she and her small group literally changed the world in our county.

The Sarah to whom I refer is Sarah Thomas and her group is the Crook County Natural Resources Planning Committee. Sarah is on my mind this week, because Sarah passed away on Sunday evening after an all-too-brief struggle with a debiliting illness and its ravaging effects.

Sarah was a one-woman band for protecting the environment. I use the word “protecting” because Sarah was no environmentalist interested in locking up the land and keeping it out of reach. Rather, she was committed to the idea that land is a trust and that communities and people have a responsibility to manage land for their own benefit and the benefit of future generations.

Sarah thought forests ought to be selectively cut and prudently thinned. She thought magnificent old trees ought to be saved but she also knew that young trees have to be removed—by fire or by hand thinning—or the health of the entire forest eco-system is put at risk. She thought that special places ought to be preserved for the enjoyment of future generations but she also thought that roads ought to be built that allowed people to see and appreciate those places. Sarah was ever up for an adventure, and she would have been the first one to jump on the back of an off-road vehicle to go see something amazing, but she never would have strayed from the established path and she wouldn’t have thought of “mudding” a riparian area on her way.

Sarah believed in wildlife conservation, but she appreciated a fishing and hunting culture as much as anyone. Sarah believed the public lands belong to the people, and she believed that necessarily meant people should be allowed to visit them for the purpose of camping, or woodcutting or fishing or rockhounding and everything else people do out there.

And because Sarah was so passionate and so firm about her beliefs, she was uniquely able to pull people together and insist they talk to each other about what they believe and ultimately forge resolutions that could be supported by environmentalists, ranchers, timber companies, federal and state agency representatives and community members. She called her group of 25 people, the Crook County Natural Resources Planning Committee, and thanks to Sarah’s diligence, the group has achieved some remarkable things since it was started in 2002. The group has raised awareness in governments around the county of the importance of restoring riparian habitats and protecting those habitats through better planning. The group has helped the forest service and environmental groups come to terms on how to proceed on proposed timber sales and has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money that would have been spent on appeals. The group has helped grazing permitees work through their differences with federal land managers. In its own small way and its own backyard, the group has been slowly changing its world.

Interestingly, Sarah came to her interest in natural resources late in life. She was not by any stretch of the imagination an expert in environmental science or land management policy. Her career-years were spent in healthcare. She stumbled, rather than walked with purpose, into the natural resources arena, but once she knew she had found her element and never looked back.

Her gift was in inspiring the rest of us to follow her passion. Sarah was more than willing to wait two or three hours in a lobby for an unscheduled appointment with a key decision-maker, yet when she finally got the opportunity to make her pitch, she never showed any signs of resentment. She didn’t let scientific jargon or endless amounts of governmental process scare her away from a good decision. Sarah didn’t know what a “dumb” question was. She just kept asking until she fully understood. And Sarah was someone who could be trusted with answers. If she didn’t like your response, she just kept providing more information in a sincere effort to change your mind. She didn’t personalize politics, and she never took her keen eyes off the ultimate goal of making the world around her better.

A lot of major environmental groups and public figures could have learned something from Sarah, had they ever met her.

In the last few years, Sarah became even more inspirational to those of us who knew her. Despite the cruel deterioration of her body forced by her progressive disease, she didn’t give up her passions. Accommodations had to be made, of course. She couldn’t travel quite as far, and she occasionally missed a meeting due to ill health. She began to walk with a cane, and travel over uneven ground became difficult. Still, she traveled the state, she made trip to a fire camp last summer, she still visited the forest, and she checked in regularly with all of us by email and telephone. The last time I spoke with her, she was planning a big “thank you” party at her house later this summer to inspire the volunteers on her committee. To anyone with a disability, Sarah was living proof that physical infirmity doesn’t make a person less useful to society.

For some reason, Sarah was very much on my mind this past Sunday. I had known she had been taken to the hospital, and I had hoped for some sort of recovery. The alternating showers of rain and snow along with blowing wind didn’t raise my spirits any as I wondered how she was doing. Thus, I wasn’t really surprised when the phone call came about 6:45 p.m. that my friend and my muse on all things environmental had passed out of this world.

Nor was I surprised when minutes after the phone call, the sun broke through the clouds and the world that was black and gray moments ago was suddenly transformed. I knew suddenly that Sarah had just arrived at her new destination, full of plans and ideals, zeal and enthusiasm and that the world around me had good reason to rejoice.

Lent: Observing the Season

2008-02-02T23:20:00.000-08:00

By Scott R. Cooper, vestryman, St. Andrews Episcopal Church of Prineville
first published on the Central Oregonian faith page, Feburary 2008

The calendar of the Christian church includes a number of distinct periods. The run up to Christmas is known as “Advent.” Then comes “Christmas”, followed by “Epiphany.” Next comes “Lent,” which concludes at Easter, when the resurrection of Jesus is celebrated by all churches, regardless of denomination.

Lent as practiced historically is a period of prayer, penitence, charity and self-denial. The period runs 40 days, not counting Sundays. The Christian Church began its observance of Lent this past Wednesday, known as Ash Wednesday, a holy day which is observed in some churches by services which conclude with the placement of ashes in the shape of a cross on the forehead of parishioners. The imposition of ashes recalls for us that no matter how far we may rise in this life, we should be ever mindful that we were created by God from dust, that we are inferior to him that God, not man, is ultimately in control of our destinies.

In Prineville, the season of Lent is observed in a structured way by Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians. The basic principles of Lent, however, cross all denominational lines. To observe Lent, regardless of your religious affiliation, is simply to reflect on Christ and why he came to earth to offer salvation to mankind and to try to emulate Christ’s life and follow his teachings.

To do this, does not require that you be in Church on Sunday morning, although we at the St. Andrews Episcopal Church and all the other churches of this community would welcome you at any time.

You can do this by adding a few very simple activities to your daily routine:

Consider renewing your prayer life. Take a few minutes each morning or evening to thank God for what you have, to remember those who have less than you and to ask for guidance and wisdom in the day to come.

Consider adding grace before meals as a family tradition. If you have children, this is an excellent way to expose them to spirituality, especially if you don’t attend services regularly. In addition, national studies show that children who have some religious exposure are nearly 4 times less likely to be involved in drug or alcohol abuse, delinquency or premarital sex.

Charity is a big part of the Lenten tradition. If you are not doing so already, considering donating an hour a week to a worthy charity of making a contribution as small as $5 a week to a good cause. That $5 is the price of a fast-food meal or a couple of fancy coffees which you don’t really need, but over 52 weeks it represents $260 which can make an enormous difference to someone in need. (Another way to engage in meaning financial support of good work is to throw your spare change in a quart jar and donate the proceeds when the jar is full. You’ll be amazed at how fast this adds up.)

Lent, Holy Week and Easter present us with ample opportunities to worship Christ in a beautiful setting with candles, incense, hymns, kneeling and formal prayers. Because we human beings are drawn to pageantry and show, these things can help feel closer to God. But Lent is much, much more than religious drama. Correctly observed, it is also a time of simple piety, when we through everyday acts increase our efforts to emulate Jesus, and in doing so to give meaning to his death and glorious resurrection.

A Question for the Future

2008-02-02T23:10:00.000-08:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
first published in the Central Oregonian of Prineville, February 2008

Did you ever check out the fine print on your retirement account statement or on the bottom of a brokerage account statement? Inevitably, these documents always contain the magic words: “Past performance is no guarantee of future results,” The phrase applies to local economies as well as to stock market performance.

I was reminded of this again review this week’s advance sheet announcing yet another increase in Crook County’s unemployment numbers, which rose to 9.5 percent at the end of January.
How is it possible that only a year ago we were boasting the lowest unemployment rates since the 1960s and the fifth fastest growing rate of employment in the state? What happened?
In short, the real estate market collapsed, and with it went Crook County’s economy.

Crook County is highly sensitive to swings in the national, state and local housing market. Direct employment in the construction trades provides about 5 percent of Crook County’s employment base. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg: Employment in Crook County‘s wood products manufacturing sector, which is heavily dependent on a healthy housing market, accounts for 14 percent of the county’s workforce. Eliminate these two sectors, and nearly one in five jobs disappears.

And that’s without counting the indirect jobs associated with the construction industry—transportation jobs, retail sales jobs, real estate jobs, etc., etc. etc….

If you’re not worried yet, you should be.

The past few years have treated Crook County extraordinarily well. Many of our long-time citizens cashed in on rising land prices to salt away nest eggs, secure retirements and fund new business ventures. The downtown roared to life with new businesses and improved shopping and the number of business units increased by 50 percent between 2000 and 2006. Bank deposits soared, public services improved, cultural offerings increased. State and regional newspapers hailed our community as an Oregon “hot spot”, and other communities paid visits to find out what we were doing so they might copy.

Then came the crash--not because of anything we did wrong as a community but because we were victimized by the burst of the national housing bubble, the emergence of the subprime market crisis, rising fuel prices and a panicky financial industry. But while none of these things were our fault, it is our responsibility to ask ourselves now, “What’s next?”

In the next few months, we as a community are going to have to address some stark questions: What are we willing to trade to secure an economic future? Should the welfare of many be sacrificed to quell the fears of the few? Can a limited-growth environment co-exist with a healthy economy? These are issues worth pondering as you consider how to mark your ballot for candidates and measures in May.

I personally view growth as a goose that continues to lay golden eggs. I think that progress by its very nature demands change, as hard as that may be for some people to accept. In the history of the world, there has never been a more efficient system for allocating resources than the forces of market capitalism and its power to direct resources to their highest and best use is undeniable.

Conversely, tampering with the laws of supply and demand risks artificially interrupting these forces and poses grave risks to a community’s economic health. Whether through ballot-driven efforts to eliminate certain industries or government-led efforts to interfere in private-sector decisions about how to define what is pretty, the community and its economic future is placed at risk when government and/or voters interfere with the logical progression of market forces.
Crook County finds itself at a crossroads. Some of our citizens have concluded that the past few years are the model of where the community will go in the future, and they believe it is imperative to slow the progress down in order to keep the community from changing so fundamentally that it becomes unrecognizable. Others, I among them, believe that the experience of the past few years has been an anomaly and that government should be slow and deliberate about doing anything that will tie an anchor to the legs of our progress and risk stopping it altogether.

As you decide in the next few months which of these camps you fall into, just remember the investment banker’s motto: “Past performance is no guarantee of future results,” and vote accordingly.

Remembering The Reason For The Season In '07

2007-12-01T14:55:00.000-08:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
first published in the Central Oregonian, December 2007

Did you ever stop to think about what really happened around Christmas some 2000 years ago?

Here’s the story: A Jewish man named Joseph, and Mary his wife—pregnant, but not by her husband—found themselves travelling through the Holy Land to the ancestral land of Joseph’s family. Not only was Mary pregnant, she was REALLY pregnant, and no doubt her ungainly belly, water-swollen ankes and other unpleasant side-effects were on her mind, as at long last the little family saw an inn come into view.

I bet Mary was beside herself with joy: at last, the chance for a warm bed, a hot bath and something decent too eat. Finally, she could put away the donkey and put up her feet. After days of travelling from Nazareth to Bethlehem, it must have seemed like the most wonderful thing in the world.

And then Joseph got to tell her, “Honey, I forgot to make reservations.”

The gospel writers are silent about what happened next, but I’m married. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out what Mary might have said or how she might have said it, and most of my ideas on this subject don’t involve the serene Mother of God the Christmas cards typically depict.

At any rate, after all the fireworks ensued a second-best place was found in the stable of the inn. Shortly thereafter a baby was born. There was some wrapping up in something called “swaddling clothes”, the baby was laid in a manger. A star appeared, some singing angels serenaded the newborn, curious local shepherds came to pay their respects, and wise men showed up bearing cools gifts.

All’s well that ends well, and in this story, despite a rough start, things didn’t turn out so bad .

But a couple of millenia later as we approach the annual commemoration of these great events, I muse to myself, what might pregnant Mary and weary Joseph and their newborn baby have faced if they were wandering about in our community in December looking for a place to stay.

If all our inns were full, where would a desperate young couple go? Since wise men bearing gold don’t travel this way much, where would they get a few dollars to fill empty bellies? How would they even get around, given that high-mileage, high-maintenance cars are more available than donkeys.

I wonder, too, what worries would have filled the minds of a modern-day Mary and Joseph about the future of their newborn son. Would they wonder how they would get healthcare if he were to get sick? Would they wonder about where they would find affordable daycare? What about quality schools and the opportunity to go to college? At least Mary and Josephy had the sure and certain knowledge that their culture required their children to take care of them in their old age. In our era, Mary and Joseph would have to worry whether the new baby might grow up, go away and leave them to the tender mercies of an inadequate Social Security check or an underfunded pension.

Surely God knew what he was doing when he sent his Son to mankind during the First Century and not into the Twenty-First Century.

With all this in mind, as we enter the busy holiday season, let’s keep in mind that the challenges of living in our day and age remain complex, and the task of successfully raising children and gathering the basic resources needed to live are daunting.

We are all blessed with different talents, different levels of abundance, different luck and different opportunities, but the number of blessings we count have much to do with what it will take to make this Christmas memorable.

For some, it’s a fur coat or a leather jacket; for others, it’s a good, quality overcoat from the Neat Repeat

For some, it’s ham and turkey and wine and three kinds of pie at Christmas dinner; for others, it’s a simple food box from St. Vincent DePaul.

For some, it’s having enough bedroomss for all the kids coming home for the holidays and having enough hot water so that everyone gets a shower on Christmas morning; for others, it’s just the hope of having decent housing in time for Christmas.

It’s not too late this Christmas season to remember those who are less fortunate than most of the readers of this newspaper. Whether it’s a name taken from one of the kids’ or seniors’ holiday giving trees in a bank lobby, a few extra groceries dropped off at The Oasis or St. Vincent DePaul, some spare change dropped in the Salvation Army bell-ringer’s bucket, or a little extra in the collection plate some Sunday, you can still make a difference in somebody’s life this holiday.

Joseph and Mary aren’t expected at dinner on Christmas Day in Prineville, 2007, but the spirit of loving, and sharing and caring that the birth of their baby ushered in and lived a life to demonstrate is still with us. Let’s honor the season by keeping in mind the reason for the season, and do what we can to make this Christmas bright for everyone.

Peace and goodwill to all.

A Tale of Two Sheriffs

2007-11-06T22:30:00.000-08:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
First published in the Central Oregonian of Prineville, Oregon, November 2007

Sheriff Clark isn't the first to fall from grace,

but a a predecessor 100 years ago eventually rose again

Once upon a time, there was a sheriff who lived in Crook County. He was well liked by his voters, and they returned him over and over again to public office. Even when confronted with a charge of abusing that office, he still was elected to another term by voters.
Who was this sheriff who got himself into such hot water? Meet John Newton Williamson, who was elected county sheriff of Crook County in 1886.

He served for just two years, but he must have been doing something right. He so impressed the voters of Crook County that they immediately sent him on to Salem to serve as state representative. Apparently he did good work there as well because just two years later moved up to the state senate. And from there it was only a short hop to the federal level—a position he attained in 1903, when voters sent him to Washington, D.C., as one of the state’s two members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

What an exciting period that must have been for a farmer-turned-local-politician-turned congressman. Williamson, who was born and raised in rural Lane County, was hardly a product of the big city. Yet here was an unparalleled opportunity make history at a point in our country’s history where our nation was just coming into its own in the world.

This was the period of Teddy Roosevelt, and his fight against the trusts. It was the era of progressivism, when rights were being extended to the American working class for the first time. The U.S. was flexing newfound muscle in South and Central America, where it gained rights to build a canal across Panama during Williamson’s congressional tenure, and technology and science were reaching new heights with the invention of airplanes, telephones and even ideas as complex as the theory of relativity.

It must have seemed to Williamson and others that anything was possible, including the transformation of a Crook County farmer into a man of power, influence and position.
Regrettably for Williamson, power, influence and position were not what history would have in story for him. Because while great things were happening in the nation’s capital, scandal was brewing at home, specifically one of the sorriest moments of Oregon history, the Oregon Land Fraud Scandal.

The affair involved allegations that most of Oregon’s congressional delegation was involved illegal acquisition of public lands or at least in helping friends acquire the same lands illegally. Three of Oregon’s four representatives and senators, including Williamson, were caught up in the affair and indicted. By 1905, Senator Williamson--the Pride of Prineville--was brought low by judge and jury, and the community mourned its misfortune that its first (and only) federally elected official didn’t bring the credit to the community that it had hoped for.

But that wasn’t the end of Williamson. Convinced of his own innocence, the one-time sheriff took his take to the U.S. Supreme Court, where eventually right won out.

I wonder what he thought while he waited for his appeal to be heard. He must have wondered why he ever started down this path of public service in the first place. I suspect he wasn’t any too appreciative either of his former friends and close associates whose testimony was the basis for his conviction.

But time, it turned out, provided the vindication Williamson was hoping for.

In 1908, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the convictions of both Williamson and his fellow representative. The Court found that the prosecution had engaged in gross misconduct involving a botched investigation and witness tampering in order to further the career of an ambitious U.S. attorney. While the Court stopped short of saying that the congressmen were innocent of the charges brought against them, it found clearly that the way the case was prosecuted was both malicious and suspicious.

In the end, it all came out right for Sheriff Williamson. And as we wait patiently or impatiently for a verdict in the case of a current sheriff indicted on charges of trying to intimidate his officers from running against him, I too am hoping for a positive outcome—both for the sheriff and the community.

I have no inside track into what the judge in this case is going to decide, and if there was wrongdoing, he has a responsibility to identify it and sanction it appropriately. But whatever the final outcome of this case, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Sheriff Clark has served a long and distinguished career with Crook County, and that regardless of the outcome of this present trial, we owe him thanks for his good work in addition to censure for anything he may have done wrong.
By any measure, the department run by Sheriff Clark today is a far sight better than the department he inherited in 1987. The professionalism and service Sheriff Clark has introduced to the organization has served us all well.

Sheriff Williamson ultimately returned to Crook County after he was exonerated. He gave up politics, returned to farming and eventually became postmaster—a capacity in which he continue to serve Prineville for years to come. He died well respected and beloved in 1943.

Just over 100 years later, we can’t know what fate history has in mind for us this time. Let’s hope the result is equally benign for all involved.

Clearing the smoke: Measures 49 and 50

2007-10-01T22:36:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
Published in the Central Oregonian of Prineville, October 2007

Two measure confront voters in November

In November, voters will be faced two measures, courtesy of the Oregon Legislature. Measure 49 is a rewrite of Measure 37, which was approved by voters in 2004. Measure 50 would raise Oregon’s cigarette tax to match Washington’s and commit the proceeds of the additional tax to the funding of a healthcare program for low-income children.

While the debate over these two measures was intense during the legislative session, most Oregonians paid little attention while the Legislature discussed the details. But we’re paying attention now: interest groups on both sides are investing playing to make sure that we do.
This month’s column is dedicated to clearing up the facts about both these measures and clearing away some of the nonsense. This column is not intended to influence your vote one way or the other, although for the sake of honest disclosure, I’ll tell you which way I’m leaning.

Measure 49
In November 2005, Oregonians passed Measure 37. The premise sounded simple: governments that reduce property values through land use regulations must either pay compensation or remove the offending regulations and allow development. But it hasn’t quite worked out that way. Many voters are now expressing dismay that large subdivisions in farm fields and cattle pastures wasn’t what they had in mind. The Legislature has run scared on this popular initiative from the start. Two sessions have tried and both have failed to find a “middle ground” to the problem of how to balance growth and protect private property rights. Measure 49 is the latest effort to placate a majority of Oregonians.

Measure 49 differs from Measure 37 in that it will allow small scale-development with a minimum of process. Property owners with a valid claim of reduced value can gain the right to divide their properties into one to three parcels. Bureaucratic hassle from state or local government or neighbors will be virtually eliminated. In trade, the opportunity to develop certain types of properties-- prime timberlands for example, will be eliminated and the option for large-scale , subdivision-level development will also be more or less extinguished. Most importantly, a landowner with a valid Measure 49 claim will gain the right to transfer his development rights to a new owner—something most courts now agree Measure 37 prohibits. For small landowners who don’t want to become developers themselves or who don’t want to become business partners with a developer, this is a big concession.

On the downside, Measure 49 treats the owner of a large parcel and small parcel just the same: both are limited to three parcels. The owner of timberlands or prime farm ground is simply out of luck. Likewise, those owners who have already spent time and money to perfect claims under Measure 37 are also out of luck: Measure 49 requires them to go through the process all over again.

How should you vote on Measure 49? Measure 49 is not perfect . On the other hand, most Oregonians now say that Measure 37 isn’t working out quite as they intended. Unfortunately, the November ballot forces you to choose: Measure 37 as it is or Measure 49. There is no middle path. I’m still not sure where I’m going to come down on this one, but I think that in the final equation, each voter has to ask himself or herself a simple question: Am I more in favor of property rights than I am of protecting the property next door from development? If so, vote no. Alternatively, if I’m more in favor or protecting the property next door than I am of preserving property rights, then I should vote yes. The choice is yours.

Measure 50
Measure 50 would raise the state cigarette tax by 84.5 cents per pack to match Washington’s tax. The proceeds would fund a state-supported health insurance program for approximately 117,000 low-income children.

Here’s what we know: a higher cigarette tax reduces tobacco consumption. Even tobacco companies agree with that fact. Best estimates are that Measure 50 would drive down cigarette consumption in this state by about 14 percent. Fact No. 2: Smoking a pack of cigarettes costs the United States about $7.50 per pack in added healthcare costs and lost productivity, according to the Center for Disease Control. If Measure 50 passes, the tax revenue from cigarettes would rise to $2.02 per pack for Oregon plus 39 cents for the federal government. You do the math: if the cigarette tax is raised, tobacco consumption will fall, healthcare costs will fall and economic productivity will rise, saving the nation about $3 for every dollar of lost cigarette tax revenue. In addition, approximately 117,000 children will have access to healthcare who otherwise might go without.

So why vote against this measure? Big Tobacco--Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds-- and anti-tax activists present a plethora of arguments. They argue that the plan to fund children’s healthcare is unsustainable and that as revenues decline, the plan will become a drain on the state’s general fund. They argue that local governments will lose tobacco-related tax revenue. They argue that amending the Constitution to adopt the tax somehow desecrates that document. Lastly, they argue that raising revenue by constitutionally imposing taxes on specific product is “opening Pandora’s box” and inviting taxation of other activities such as eating junk food.

To me, the opponent’s arguments smack of “Methinks you protest too much.” The legislature only allocated a fraction of the money which the tax is expected to raise to funding the children’s health program, and overall savings to the general cost of healthcare of driving down cigarette consumption haven’t even been factored in. Local governments receive a negligible amount of cigarette tax revenue. Keeping the constitution pure is a fine idea—or at least it was until we starting mucking around with it shortly after statehood. It’s a little late to argue that point now. As for the “Pandora’s box” argument, I just don’t follow it: this state already levies product-specific taxes on tobacco, liquor, beer and wine, ectricity and cell phone usage, to name a few. The government’s appetite for money to pay for new programs isn’t going to be diminished based on the decision to raise or not raise the existing cigarette tax.

The opponents of cigarette tax do have one strong point: A cigarette tax is unquestionably regressive. Lower income persons who can least afford new taxes end up shouldering the greatest burden. Is that fair? Does that outweigh the potential benefit to smokers in particular and society in general of reducing cigarette consumption and reducing healthcare costs? Personally, that’s an easy choice for me, and I will vote for the measure, but value judgment is one you must ultimately make for yourself.
Whatever you decide on either Measure 49 or Measure 50, please be sure to mark and return your ballot. Government of the people, for the people and by the people begins and ends with the people’s participation.

As Fall Presses In, Keep Summer’s Pleasures In Mind

2007-08-31T11:49:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
first published in the Central Oregonian of Prineville, September 2007

Fundamentally, Crook County has much to be pleased about

I both dread and anticipate the arrival of fall.

The return of cool weather, the beauty of the changing landscape, the excitement in my house that accompanies the start of school and the end of lawnmowing for another season are all reasons to be glad to put the hot days behind us. Professionally, there are reasons to like the fall as well: the early season threat of floods and the late season threat of fire largely disappears. The tide of hunters appears creating its own challenges, but their impact on law enforcement is more than offset by benefits to the local economy. It isn’t snowing yet, so winter road mainentance isn’t yet a priority. All in all, fall is a pretty nice time to be in county government.

If there is a downside to the season, it’s the fact that fall seems to signal that point in the year when we start to pay attention once more to the world around us. In the summer when the sun beckons us to enjoy our world from early morning until late at night, there are just too many things to do to waste a lot of daylight hours hunkered down in front of the tube or scanning the headlines of the paper. Even though the national housing market might be crashing around us and the war in Iraq continues to produce grim statistics and scandalous revelations about senior senators from Idao remind us once again that elected officials have just as many faults as normal people, things just don’t seem so bad as long as the sun keeps shining.

That changes with the shortening of the days. We start to pay attention again, and in the dark of the night as the cold presses in through our windows and we nudge the thermostate the news which seemed distant and far away just a month ago somehow seems more ominous. Maybe that’s why the framers of our Constitution called for elections to be held late in the fall: being farmers themselves, they understood this was the period in the year when we were most likely to be paying attention.

So as we enter that period, it seems like a good time to recap not what’s wrong in our community but instead to focus on a few things that are right.

Recently, I was invited to give a presentation to the Commerical Investment Division of the Central Oregon Realtors Association which met here in Prineville. As far as I know, this is the first big gathering of this regional group which plays an important role in directing investment throughout the region. As I prepared for the speech, my focus was on telling the Crook County story: that whatever you may have thought or known about Crook County yesterday, today’s Crook County looks decidedly different. In short, all the reasons I remain, Bullish On Prineville.

Here are just a few of the statistics I presented to that group:

While the 327 building permits issued in Crook County in the fiscal year ended 2007 was under the number issued in calendar years 2004, 2005 and 2006, the number continues to exceed the number issued in calendar years 2000-2003. What we are experiencing now appears not to be a slow down but a much-needed correction to sustainable and historic development patterns which the community can more easily absorb.

Faced with market pressure, the rapidly escalating price of housing in Crook County has begun to soften. In the second quarter of 2007 saw the median (middle) price paid for residential property settle at $210,000, compared to Bend’s $348,250 and Redmond’s $255,000. While affordability, especially for young families and first-time homebuyers, remains a concern in Crook County at any number above $200,000, the slowing trend suggests that in combination with a cooling (or “frozen” as realtors might characterize it) housing market nationwide, the possibility of a good mix of both affordable and higher end housing returning to our community is on the horizon.

The situation as it relates to employment oportunities continues to improve. The number of Crook County employers counted by the Oregon Employment Department rose from 480 to 664, between the first quarter of 2001 and the first quarter of 2007. That’s a 38 percent increase. By contrast, Oregon overall posted only a 22 percent increase experienced by Oregon and even Portland posted only a 21 percent rise in the same period. Clearly, business continues to invest in Prineville and Crook County.

With the increase in employers came two key things: population and wealth.

Crook County was the fastest growing county in Oregon in terms of population in 2005, outpacing Deschutes County. In 2006, the two counties swapped positions with Deschutes taking first position and Crook taking a close second. With an estimated population of 24,525—for all intents and purposes 25,000—Crook County has experienced a total increase in population since the 2000 census of 29 percent. During the same period, the Oregon population grew just under 8 percent. I suspect I’m not the only one who walks into Bi-Mart these days and feels like there are an awful lot of people I don’t know anymore, but I’m not complaining: the newcomers bring talents, diversity and new perspectives to our community to help us plan a better future.

Perhaps even more importantly for the future of our economy, they also bring with them economic opportunities for those of us who predated them.

During a six year period, 2001-2007, the total quarterly payroll in Crook County jumped 47 percent. compared to 25 percent statewide. The average wage increased 29 percent, compared to 17 percent statewide. Deposits in Crook County financial institutations, as reported by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation were 226 percent greater in 2006 than in 2000. By contrast, the statewide total increase was about 152 percent greater over a six year period, and the Crook County growth exceeded even that of Deschutes County, which increased 215 percent during the same period.
Bottom line is: Crook County’s economic fundamentals are strong: At no period in our history, have we had it so good. As the days shorten and our thoughts turn once more to the world around us, we would be well advised to bear that in mind .

Taking A Bite Out of Cancer

2007-08-09T23:33:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
first published in the Central Oregonian, August 2007

As Cancer Surpasses Heart Disease As State's No. One Killer,
Here's What We're Doing About It

Two incidents in recent weeks caught my attention.

The first was the phenomenal success of the Relay for Life event held over the weekend of July 28. It was a sobering reminder of just how many lives are touched by the effects of cancer, and touching monument to the way people can open their hearts and wallets to help people they have never met. The event raised over $54,000 from our small community to help fund cancer prevention and research. That’s a whopping achievement for community the size of Prineville.

The second matter to come to my attention was contained in a not-so-interesting report copied front and back on a yellow sheet of paper that I receive every month from the Oregon Public Health Division. Entitled, “Communicable Disease Summary, this front-and-back newsletter usually contains statistics and treatment information geared more for healthcare providers than for county judges. This time, however, the newsletter contained a timely fact: Cancer has climbed above heart disease as Oregon’s number one killer.

It isn’t true in every county. In ten of Oregon’s counties, including Crook County, heart disease is still the leading cause of death, but the gap between heart disease and cancer is steadily shrinking. It is just a matter of time until cancer overtakes heart disease and all counties see cancer as the number one enemy.

In a corollary study, the Division of Health looked at the impact of cancer on a county-by-county basis. Their findings were that in Crook County in 2004 (the last year for which complete statistics have been compiled) cancer caused a combined loss of 119 years, compared to average life expectancy had cancer not intervened. Imagine all that lost economic, cultural and social productivity that would lost to this disease.

The report contained a few more surprises.

Not surprising was the fact that the leading cause of death in Crook County in 2005 was by far and away lung cancer. Nor is there much surprise that the leading cause of lung cancer is tobacco, with 80 percent of lung cancer diagnoses linked to tobacco use. What did surprise me were the numbers two and three cancer-related deaths: brain cancer was second while cancer of the lymphatic system (non-Hodgkins lymphoma and leukemia) were third. Bringing up fourth place were colon, pancreatic, ovarian and bladder cancer and not until fifth place did breast and prostate cancer appear. Who knew?

One of the keys to effective cancer treatment and prevention is early diagnosis. This got me wondering, just what are we doing in Crook County to raise awareness on this issue? So I called Crook County Public Health Director Wendy Perrin and asked for a report. This is what she told me.

The Crook County Health Department offers a numbers of programs designed to detect potential cancer, help patients identify treatment and assist patients in modifying behavior that may lead to cancer. The department has a strong program for helping local residents kick the tobacco habit. Smoking cessation supplies are available through the department as well as one on one counseling. In fact, one full-time person does nothing but counsel individuals on how to quit—an investment which saves lives and, in the long run, tax dollars for all of us to the degree indigent and elderly people don’t contract lung cancer.

This year, the department is excited to have launched an aggressive new preventative vaccine to address cervical cancer. The vaccine is called Gardisil, and it is available through the local Health Department. Doctors recommend it for girls age 9-26. One vaccine can eliminate 70 percent of cervical cancers later in life. Those are pretty impressive odds. The cost of the vaccine is reasonable too. Based on income, the vaccine can be had for as little as $10. In addition, the department offers screening for cervical cancer (pap smears) which are vital for the detection of precancerous lesions. An annual pap smear is recommended for all women over the age of 18, but one in seven women “hasn’t gotten around to” a test in the last three years. Twenty-two percent of women ages 18-24 have never had a paper smear. That’s too bad because this simple test precipitously increases the chance of survival as a result of cervical cancer.

Women are also encouraged while visiting the health department or their local medical providers to receive annual breast exams and to learn the techniques for monthly self examination. These are important pre-screening tools which can help women learn when to seek a mammogram—an important means of detecting breast cancer early and increasing survival rates. Despite the importance of these basic prevention activities, 27 percent of breast cancer cases are caught too late in Oregon when the prognosis for cure is poor. An astonishing one in eight women reports never having had a mammogram.

For the gentlemen, the county doesn’t offer as many services. There are a couple of reasons for this: for one thing, the principle cancer of concern to men is prostate cancer, and we guys are notorious for not going to the doctor. Since you can’t very well examine the prostate of the unwilling, there’s not much point of keeping a doctor on staff to twiddle his thumbs and wonder where the clients are. For another, only a doctor can perform a prostate exam, so this service is best left to local practitioners. What the health department can do, however, is provide information about the symptoms of prostate cancer and help arrange medical examinations by physicians and nurse practitioners—help which is especially important for low-income individuals. As with all cancers, early detection is the key to long-term successful prognosis.

Those are just a few of the service the Crook County Health Department offers. Now co-housed with the Ochoco Community Clinic, the goal of Crook County Health Department is to be a primary source of information for individuals in the community who need help getting information about health conditions or connecting to health services. In some cases, the health department itself is a direct provider of services and it is an excellent resource for those needing to be matched with providers. For more information about health-related issues, call the health department at 447-5165.

Crook County and particularly the Crook County Health Department are committed to doing our part to help reduce and perhaps in some cases even eradicate cancer and other diseases in our community. Not only do we enjoy keeping our friends and neighbors around, but we also realize that everyone who walks through our doors is someone’s child, sibling, parent or other loved one, and the pain that accompanies premature loss of life to diseases like cancer and heart disease is pain inflicted on our entire community.

Our goal is to keep you well, and I and the folks at the Health Department look forward to the day when the yellow sheet from Oregon Public Health lists the leading cause of death for Crook County as “Old Age.”

Meditations on the ‘Nanny State’

2007-07-04T09:01:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
This column was written but not published.

Government can't be all things to all people

With the close of the legislative session last week, Oregon Senate minority leader Ted Ferrioli complained in the Oregonian that our state is fast becoming the “nanny state.”
Sen. Ferrioli’s specific complaint was in reference to legislation banning smoking in bars, bingo halls and bowling alleys. He also didn’t like bills requiring schools to limit the distribution of junk food, requiring deposits on water bottles and protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination. “Oregonians don’t need senators to make their life choices for them,” said Ferrioli. “Welcome to Nanny Land.”
Whether this sort of legislation is positive for Oregon or not is a matter of individual judgment. But in one regard I agree with Sen. Ferrioli. The public expectation for what government should provide is becoming increasingly unrealistic, given budgets, authorities and Oregon’s tradition of individual rights and independence.

And its not just Oregon. It’s the rest of the country as well.

Just about once a week there is a story that runs on CNN about the victims of Hurricane Katrina and what, in the opinion of Anderson Cooper, is not being done for these people by the government.

I don’t want to sound hard-hearted, but where did the idea come from that the government is supposed to make your life completely whole again when natural disaster strikes? A little help to get you through the immediate crisis seems to be the sort of thing a generous and compassionate government ought to do, but does our government really owe you a new home, new furniture, a replacement vehicle and a new job and all you have to do to get it is fill out stack of papers? It seems to me that the founding fathers would be appalled at what we have become.

I wonder what our citizens today would ask for if they were catapulted back 150 years in time: would they want calvary troops to accompany their wagon trains across the desert to ward off Indian attacks? Would they expect paved roads across the Rockies to make the roads easier for their wagons to traverse? How about government-maintained sign posts along the way directing them away from ill-advised shortcuts through the Utah desert. CNN would have you believe that paying taxes “entitles” citizens to such amenities. Ted Ferrioli would shake his baby rattle.

Locally, we are seeing much the same thing of late.

I continue to be amazed daily at the types of phone calls the county receives from people seeking the assistance of local government to resolve all sorts of problems. A recent newspaper article quoting a sheriff in Arizona referred to the new role of law enforcement as “babysitting.” That’s what it feels like.

Some of the more ridiculous things I’ve been confronted with since I took office 7 years ago include these gems:

One lady called and wanted to know where she should file the paperwork to have the county pay the undertaker for the cost of burying her father. (This is not a service which your taxes pay for.)

One gentleman called and wanted to know if the county would purchase him a new set of dentures. (The county doesn’t buy dentures.)

An elderly gentleman called and asked if the county could force his neighbor to move a pile of dirt out of her back yard. The dirt, he said, was disturbing the view from his patio door.

One lady wrote and asked if the county would consider adopting a “no shooting” ordinance countywide. (We won’t. This is not Multnomah County.)

Several people have called and asked if the county would bring them gravel for their private driveway or send a county blade (No, because pretty soon everyone would want a load of taxpayer-funded gravel for his or her driveway or ask for county staff to come compete with local contractors.)

If people weren’t so serious about these requests, they would be funny. But they are serious, and their expecations bear pricetags and therefore, their requests are anything but funny.

The Bill of Rights Is Also A Bill of Responsibilities

2007-07-04T08:58:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
first published in the Central Oregonian, July 2007

Vesting your rights means carrying out your responsibilities

A time honored part of the Independence Day holiday is public soul searching about what it means to be an American.

Inevitably, this conversation will turn to a discussion of rights.

Americans are very proud of their rights. We have whole lists of them: taxpayers rights, voters rights, individual rights, the list goes on. And why shouldn’t we be proud of this distinction?

No country before our ever granted its citizens rights as broad as ours. Even today our Constitution is modeled by other emerging democracies.

But what too often goes overlooked in all this talk of rights is talk of an equally important concept: the idea of “responsibilities”. This is important because the exercise of rights without the acceptance of responsibility is just another form of tyranny. That tyranny occurs when you use your rights to keep someone else from pursuing “life, liberty and happiness” (which incidentally is not a Constitutional right but rather a goal outlined in the Declaration of Independence).

If we are to preserve the independence which has made this country great for the past 231 years, we must be cognizant that implicit within our cherished Bill of Rights are unstated corollary responsibilities. If they were written out, they might look something like this:

Amendment I
You have a right to free speech, but you have a responsibility before speaking to be informed. You have a right to exercise freedom of religion, but you have a responsibility to recognize that others may believe differently and are just as entitled as you to pursue their beliefs.

Amendment II
You have a right to bear arms, but you have a responsibility to handle your firepower safely and to teach your children to do the same.

Amendment III
You have a right to have no soldier quartered upon you in your home, but you have a responsibility to be respectful of the brave men and women of the U.S. military who defend freedom for the rest of us.

Amendment IV
You have a right to be secure from unreasonable search and seizure of your home and your person, but you have a responsibility to obey the law, to promote good morals and to generally behave yourself in such a way that searches and seizures aren’t necessary.

Amendment V
You have a right to due process of law but you have a responsibility not to turn the law against your neighbors as a weapon. Seeking compensation for damages above and beyond what you’ve actually suffered or using the law simply to stop others from their activities is a perversion of the law and the protection we all derive from it.

Amendment VI
You have a right to a fair trial but you have a responsibility not to allow justice to be perverted by playing legal games to avoid the consequences of your crimes.

Amendment VII
You have a right to trial by jury, but you also have a responsibility to do your part for ensuring the integrity of the jury system by responding to a jury summons.

Amendment VIII
You have a right to avoid cruel and unusual punishment, but you have a responsibility not to desire the same for others. Justice is done when the misguided are brought to penitence and restored to a productive place in society, not when the misguided are punished for years on end without hope of reprieve.

Amendment IX
The rights of the people are paramount in the our Constitution but nothing in the Constitution relieves you of your responsibility to have compassion for your fellow citizens and human beings in distress, wherever distress may be found.

Amendment X
The rights not enumerated in the Constitution are reserved to the respective states, but the responsibility for the welfare of the whole United States belongs to all of us.

The founding fathers of our country understood the importance of guaranteeing rights. They had surprisingly little to say about responsibilities. I think they probably couldn’t envision a world where someone might sue for hundreds of millions of dollars because she spilled hot coffee in her lap. Nor could they imagine a world where the mention of god or evolution in the schoolhouse might lead to discipline of a teacher or where governments might seek to take guns out of the hands of ordinary citizens.

But even though they couldn’t imagine such things, they would have recognized immediately the problem that accompanies the exercise of rights without the corresponding exercise of responsibilities.

Attention to both is what makes us and keeps us truly free.

Remarks: “Flaws in the Oregon Land Use System”

2007-06-19T22:45:00.000-07:00

Prepared for to the “Big Look Task Force On Oregon Land Use Planning” (SB82, 2005)
June 19, 2007, Deschutes County Administrative Building
Delivered by Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper

The land use system in Oregon is deeply flawed because:

The black-letter law is no longer the law. Statutory law and local ordinance have been so augmented by administrative rule and LUBA-sanctioned case law that land-use law has become inaccessible to the average citizen. Of late, it has also become inaccessible to policymakers, who are lay people elected without specific knowledge of land use but yet who are expected to apply the law with finite precision. Because policymakers are generally counseled against engaging in ex-parte communication (due to the burden of disclosure such communication creates) and because policymakers are limited to consideration of the record presented and unable to pursue independent research, they ultimately must make their decision based on the input of clever attorneys and consultants who represent applicants and opponents and of staff who have inordinate and inappropriate sway in molding the outcome of land use decisions—often out of sight of applicants and/or opponents. Such a decision-making process leaves the public with a perception that the land-use system is the province of “good ‘ol boys” making “backroom deals.”

Codes fail to articulate what can be done with the specificity and certainty needed to make decisions in a businesslike manner. A zoning code—even a strict and detailed code--is preferable to a land use code because it provides specificity about exactly what is and is not permissible on any given piece of property. Such specifics are immediately translatable to a bottom-line appropriate in business decision-making. In contrast, Oregon’s system invites would-be developers to invest substantial sum up front in the form of plans and application fees and only afterwards discover whether they will be allowed to proceed with planned development, and under what conditions. This wastes money, unfairly penalizes small and inexperienced developers and has a chilling effect on economic development.

Money, not right, ultimately prevails. No matter what the issue, a would-be developer with enough time and money can eventually defeat the system, either by depleting the resources of opponents, seeking a new and more successful venue for a more favorable hearing by taking advantage of the virtually endless appeals process, or, in extreme cases, by seeking legislative changes at either the state or local level that overturn the lawful decisions of policymakers. The popular perception that “justice” is for sale in land use decisions is not entirely without foundation.

All land use cases are “lose-lose” propositions. The land use system does not allow for mediation. It does not allow policymakers to seek middle ground or common ground among applicants and opponents. Anyone who has ever attended a land use hearing knows that its principle components are misinformation, disputed motives, fear and emotion and, in the end, the selection of a winner” and creation of a “loser.” In any dispute case, someone will walk away happy and someone will walk away mad, the one exception to this rule being when both parties walk away mad. There are no “wins” for elected or appointed officials, hearings officers or planning officials. The process is divisive, does not operate on consensus principles and leaves many applicants and opponents with the impression that the system is heavy-handed and useful only for smashing people’s economic dreams or destroying communally held values.

The system applies different standards to different regions of the state. Most of my constituents above a certain age decry the loss of prime farmland around the Portland area to urban expansion. They remember when the areas now covered by shopping malls were once berry farms and orchards. They do not understand, nor should they, why these lands are so easily sacrificed under Oregon’s land use law while arid, cheat-grass prairies studded with lava and basalt are prized and protected east of the Cascades as prime farm ground. When residents of my county drive west of Eugene on their way to the coast, they are at a loss to understand why it is in inviolate rule that 80-acre minimum parcels must be preserved in Crook County for the benefit of a few skinny cows while Elmira and Veneta are surrounded by crop-less, cow-less 5-, 10- and 20-acre parcels the principle feature of which is a blackberry bramble cover My constituents postulate that Oregon land use is mostly about preserving a sunny playground in the eastern part of the state to which rain-soaked urbanites can conveniently escape on weekend. You know what? They’re right!

When Oregon land use was adopted it was hailed as a revolutionary system that would be adopted by all 50 states within 25 years. Thirty years later, we’re still waiting. Imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, but likewise the failure of even a single state to imitate Oregon’s system or even portions of it should be viewed as a sincere form of well-deserved criticism.

So what is to be done to improve upon our system?

An improved land use code would require decision-makers at all levels, local and appellate, to base decisions on strict reading of statue, code and administrative rule. Tightly written zoning codes specifying specific uses should replace the inaccessible interpretations and divinations of LUBA. .Certainty and simplicity should be restored to the land use system in place of the highly subjective interpretations of comprehensive plan policies which now characterize the system. Decisions in land use cases should be redefined as legislative, not quasi-judicial. In doing so, local policymakers would be ungagged and freed to use their consensus-building skills to craft creative solutions that are “win-win” for developers and surrounding communities without placing applicants and opponents in hopeless and fruitless oppositional positions. The appeals process should be truncated sharply. I believe LUBA should be abolished and appeals from local decisions restricted to petition for writ of review to local circuit courts. Most importantly, local control should be restored as promised in Senate Bill 100 so that each community can determine its own destiny in how land within its borders is used without interference from DLCD, LCDC or other out-of-town special interest groups. It is time to quit waiting for other state’s to copy our failed system and to start looking around at the other 50 states for better systems to import to Oregon.

Thank you for your time.

Speech: Child Neglect Summit Remarks

2007-06-01T23:29:00.000-07:00

Convening Remarks,
Crook County Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Summit
Delivered by Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper
Meadow Lakes, June 1, 2007

Let me start with two simple numbers: 71 and fewer than 10. Write them down. Remember them. 71 and fewer than 10. At the end of my remarks, we’ll come back to why these numbers are important to the topic we are here to discuss today.

That topic, of course, is child abuse and neglect, and what we, collectively as a community can do about it.

Some of you may know my family. We’ve been around Prineville for many years, and we’ve come to know a lot of you. For the most part, we’re a pretty conservative bunch, which reflects the rural upbringing of my parents, grandparents, aunts, great aunts, uncles, great uncles and multiple cousins. It probably reflects the fact that for the most part my people are hard-working, blue collar and deeply religious. Their worldview looks suspicious at anybody who starts out his introduction with “Hi. I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you,” which is sort of what we’re all here today to propose we ought to do more of.

My people tend to think simplistically and in terms of absolute values about life: They think people ought to do right by their families. Take one wife and care for her. Be good to your husband. Raise good kids who will to stay in school, be respectful to adults and don’t do drugs. Above all, make a plan for your life that will take you out of the house as soon as you turn 18. In many regards, we are not unlike many of my constituents in Crook County, which probably explain why I’ve been elected three times. People like people who are and who think a lot like them.

Now if I were to ask my family what we ought to do about child abuse and neglect, they would very quickly have a response. First, they would tell me stories about how the whole situation is overblown. They recite a newspaper account or a story from the internet about a Mom who pops her kid on the behind for making a smart comment and ends up in jail for the night. Or they might share a remembered tidbit from Bill O’Reilly or Lars Larson, about a first grader somewhere who kissed a classmate and got suspended for sexual harassment. There would be much clucking of tongues about the state of a world that discourages good parenting and is too P.C. for most people’s taste.

Being the “liberal” in my family, I of course, wouldn’t let them get away with this simple explanation. It’s in my genes to push, usually beyond the point where I should. So I would challenge their responses and ask them whether the government and society has any obligation to address child abuse and neglect. To make my point, I would ask them what we ought to do about child-rapists and people who physically assault kids. They wouldn’t even have to think this over either. Provided my aunts weren’t listening, my uncles would growl some impolite words about it being too bad the libs on the Supreme Court don’t see the value in castration. My aunts would suggest that more prisons, or possibly capital punishment, are the answer for those kinds of people.

These responses from my own family are probably not far off the mark from what most residents of Prineville and Crook County think when asked about this touchy subject.

The fact is, neither my family members nor most of the community, have any idea what child abuse and neglect really look like. We don’t have any idea what is going on around us each and every day. Only two things shock us into occasional thoughts about the issue: the ridiculous and the unthinkable.

But for the most part, the type of situations which comprise child abuse and neglect don’t fit into either of these neat pigeonholes.

Some D.A.’s may have resources to pursue routine corporal punishment as a crime deserving of judicial penalty. Ours doesn’t, and if he did develop such an idea, I think that at budget time, he would discover that the county suddenly had higher priorities than continuing funding of his office at present levels.

Nor do I think the D.A., juvenile department or DHS have time to worry about the little boy on the playground experiencing his first crush. To be honest, I think any one of those agencies would be almost relieved if their caseloads were so light that that kind of complaint could merit an investigation. Unfortunately, we passed that day long ago.

On the other end of the spectrum, county and state offices do a good job of responding to the clear-cut, no-argument-from-anybody cases of child abuse such as those which result in death, broken limbs, malnutrition or sexual penetration. Those cases get priority from all agencies and are easily dispatched within normal judicial processes.

But these are not the majority of what is coming to us. What is coming to us on a regular basis is a considerably more murky set of potentially abusive or neglectful circumstances. These cases involve delicate questions of law and careful analysis of what constitutes abuse or neglect. We must ask ourselves multiple times daily, what are the rights of biological parents to raise their children as they see fit? What resources does the community have to address all the factors that may come into play in a single case?

Let me tell you a few real-life stories to illustrate my point:

I attended circuit court this past week to listen to a dependency cases in front of Judge Ahern. The facts of the case were these: there are four children, currently living in foster care. This is the fourth time the case has been before the court, as the parents seek return of their children. The children were originally removed from the home due to allegations of drug use, alcohol abuse and too frequent domestic violence carried out in front of the children. There were no allegations of physical harm to the children, although the mother’s housekeeping and hygienic standards, it was suggested, would nauseate most of us. At this particular point in this case, the father has agreed to enter an expensive and promising residential drug and alcohol rehab program in Portland to conquer his substance abuse problems once and for all. The mother has agreed to a safety plan to protect the children from further abuse. The mother and father, previously separated, are back together, and there have been no further known incidents of domestic violence. As for the mother’s housekeeping, the mother has agreed to submit to regular DHS inspection of the household. The parents desperately want their children back, they both say, so they “can be a family again.” They are sure that this time—time number four—they will “get it right.” The Court Appointed Special Advocate says the children are bonded to the parents, but she has doubts about the wisdom of going down this path again. The children can’t take another transition. The foster mother has also bonded to the children, and she is begging for the chance to adopt them. She says she’s not sure she can guarantee she can emotionally take another cycle of removal of children showing signs of recovery only to have them returned broken and bruised again if these parents fail for the fifth time. The court-appointed attorney for the children asks the most relevant question of all, “How many chances are we going to give these people?” How many indeed?

I don’t know the answer to this situation. The law is clear: biological parents are to be given every opportunity to reunite with their children so long as those parents are making efforts to resolve their issues that caused them to lose their children in the first place. My heart and common sense tell me that these parents are hopelessly inept at parenting, and there is no chance of these two people putting the interests of their children above their need to deal with their personal demons. My wallet reminds me that about 70 percent of children involved in dependency cases end up later in life as part of the delinquency caseload, which would argue strongly that society’s best interests are served by getting these kids out of the system and into stable homes with caring parents—regardless of whether those children are natural or adopted. There are simply no good answers to this case or the dozens of others like it pending in our local circuit courts. In this case, the judge went with the law, which is what he is bound to do, but I have dealt with the law long enough to know that it is cuts like a chainsaw, not a scalpel, and while it applies broad general principles, it seldom is adequate for addressing the unique challenges of highly individualized cases.

Here’s another real scenario for you: a family of six children is daily boarding the school bus with fingers tinged blue from cold. Their clothes are dirty and have holes. They eat breakfast and lunch ravenously at the school cafeteria. They shower after gym class, and the PE teacher understands these are the only showers they get each day since there are no shower facilities in the home. “Home” in this case is a relative term, since it consists of a travel trailer with a lean-to, with a woodstove for heat. There are, however, two parents in the home. The Dad works at a minimum wage job. The Mom has a partial disability due to complications arising out of severe diabetes and receives government support. Her healthcare costs consume most of her disability check, and the Dad’s meager check has to cover the family’s living expense. For the most part, the family gets by on food boxes and an Oregon Trail card. Are these children neglected? They have a roof over their head, they have heat, they have food, they have parents present, and they have running water and basic sanitation after a fashion. My family would call these children neglected, and if you saw your children or nieces, nephews or grandchildren in such circumstances, you would likely call them neglected as well. But are they? It may be that this family is guilty of nothing more than poverty. And poverty, while regrettable, is not a crime, and in the United States of America, a country founded on individualism, liberty and the right to pursue life largely free from government intervention, by what right do we punish people simply for being poor?

We at the county face these difficult choices every day in the addressing the complicated issue of abuse and neglect. The situations I described above do not constitute a small percentage of our caseload. On the contrary, they are the majority. The issues require delicate balancing of law, rights, morals and respect for different opinions and beliefs. DHS child services professionals, law enforcement personnel, compliance officers, prosecutors, lawyers and judges agonize over the right answer to these questions and others like them.

And many of them go home at night, hug their children and spouses, and look around at their comfortable surroundings and wonder: did I do the right thing today?

I know that because I see them. I’ve sent employees home from work for a few days on paid administrative leave because what they saw and what they had to do was simply too much, and they needed a little time to get their heads together. I’ve patted professionals on the hand and assured them they did the “right thing,” even when we both know the “right thing” will inevitably bring this child, this family down the “wrong path” at some point in the future.

There are no easy answers to the problem of what to do about child abuse and neglect. And even if we could find a bright line to sort out what does or does not constitute neglect, we wouldn’t have the capacity to take every child who stands in harms way and put that child in a safe environment. Remember those numbers I started with: 71 and fewer than 10? 71 is the number of dependency cases Crook County filed in 2006. Fewer than 10 is the number of foster homes available for placing children in Crook County. With a gap like that, removing every child from harm’s way is neither possible nor practical.

So what can we do? We can educate the public about the foster care system and perhaps convince a few more families that there is reward in giving brittle and bruised children some semblance of normalcy. We can try to build a more caring culture which encourages early intervention to prevent, identify and stop abuse and neglect at the earliest possible sign of it. We can focus on reducing drug and alcohol abuse which are at the root of or co-mingled with the vast majority of these cases. We can lobby the state and federal government to strengthen our laws to recognize that issues of abuse and neglect are incredibly individualized and one-size-fits-all dictates written in legal stone are not helpful in sorting through these complex issues.

Individually, it unlikely we can achieve these things. Collectively, we have a greater chance, but even then, we may not achieve thousand percent increases in foster care placements. We will never eradicate drug and alcohol abuse entirely. Nor will we achieve wholesale rewrites of the law. But we should remember that great journey begins with a single step, and each little step we achieve moves us toward our final destination.

Have no doubt, the destination this meeting represents today is important. The long-term costs of child abuse and neglect rattle through the system, initially in the form of foster care supports and sadly and eventually, in far too many cases, in the form of detention and treatment costs and the costs of repetition, generation after generation.

Your work here today is to choose the path that will eventually take us to our destination of a better place where resources for addressing child abuse and neglect are increased even as the instances of these cases are reduced. Miracles cures aren’t required or expected. All we ask today is that when you leave here after a few hours is just one more good idea as we work together on this most difficult of challenge.

Good luck with your summit.

Office Call? $75. Meds? $50. Insurance? Priceless.

2007-05-01T00:10:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
originally published in the Prineville Central Oregonian, May 2007

Medicare Is Nearly Broke, and Oregon Hospitals May Not Be Far Behind

Last week, for the second year in a row, the trustees of the federal Medicare system issued a grim warning: without intervention to save it, the Medicare program will be broke by 2019. The Social Security program will crash in 2041, if steps are not taken to save it. All of this is the result of the pending retirement of 78 million baby-boomers. Trustees called for an immediate increase of 16 percent in the payroll tax or, alternatively, a 13 percent reduction in benefits. As is obvious to anyone, the job of the trustees is to ensure the solvency of the program, not to get elected.

Coincidentally, last week, Pioneer Memorial Hospital in Prineville presented its annual report to members. The report showed essentially flat revenues from the prior year, and negative net revenues (meaning expenses exceeded revenues). The report also showed that the hospital loses 5 percent on every Medicare-funded procedure it undertakes—which is a lot considering that not quite half the procedures at the hospital are Medicare-eligible.

So that raises a concern: how much more loss can a local hospital sustain on a program that is already losing money?

One of those attending the hospital membership meeting was Jim Diegel, chief executive officer of Cascade Health Community, which owns St. Charles in Redmond and Bend. He explained the dilemma very succinctly. On a nationwide basis, policymakers are actually seeing most hospitals making modest profits for the first time in many years. Those profits are in the less-than-5-percent range, but they are profits nonetheless. In Oregon, the situation is just the reverse.

Oregon hospitals across the board are losing money on Medicare, in large part because the federal reimbursement rate for Medicare procedures is tied to the usual and customary reimbursement rates established in 1982. At that time, Oregon had a remarkably efficient healthcare system. The state’s one major insurance company was the physician-owned Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Physicians had a stake in the profitability of healthcare, so they tended to be conservative and cautious in ordering procedures. In addition, the reimbursement rates paid for procedures were carefully scrutinized and tended to be lower than those in other states. Thus, the rates to which Medicare reimbursement were pegged in 1982 were artificially low from the beginning.

Fast forward 25 years: physicians do not have a stake in the Medicare program. The expense of delivering medicine has ballooned as technology has advanced and as all of us have developed a habit of living longer and requiring more intensive procedures to combat our age-related issues. The system as it was designed in 1982 no longer serves Oregonians very well.

It does, however, serve some state: namely Florida.

Florida just happens to have the largest senior population in the United States, with 16.83 percent of its residents aged 65 or older. By contrast, Oregon’s senior population ranks 25th in the nation at 12.91 percent. Florida, unlike Oregon, also has a lot of political clout (remember the butterfly ballot mess in 2000?). Not coincidentally, it has significantly higher Medicare reimbursement rates than Oregon. A hospital in Florida performing the exact same procedure as a hospital in Oregon receives up to 2.2 times the reimbursement, all because of the outdated 1982 reimbursement schedule.

The message is clear, if you are going to get old, and provided you don’t mind alligators and hurricanes, it would be a good idea to move to Florida—at least as far as your healthcare is concerned.

For those of us who choose to take a pass on alligators and hurricanes, we face a serious dilemma. Do we stay right here in God’s country and watch the healthcare system wither away around us, or do we take our chances with reptiles and weather and move far away where we can at least find a doctor and hospital when we need one? It is a choice none of really want to make.

So what to do?

I don’t know what the answer is to the federal crisis. If, as has been suggested by some Oregon leaders, we advance a national universal healthcare agenda, one strong possibility is that reimbursement rates will be tied to Medicare rates. That would be a catastrophe for Oregon -- instead of Pioneer Memorial Hospital losing money on 40-some percent of patients, it would lose money on all its patients!

Some state legislators, notably former Gov. Kitzhaber and state Sen. Ben Westlund, of Bend, are pushing for an Oregon solution, along the lines of the original Oregon Health Plan. Unfortunately, history suggests that the Oregon Health Plan only works when times are good. When the economy tanks, as it inevitably does in this state’s up-and-down employment cycle, the health plan goes with it.

Still others have suggested more revenues are in order to support the healthcare system. A proposal to raise the cigarette tax (to match Washington’s) died in the Oregon legislature last month. A beer-and-wine tax increase has yet to come to the floor for a vote. Various presidential candidates have proposed raising either payroll taxes or income taxes to fund healthcare proposals. One popular idea is to copy the Massachusetts model and give all employers the choice of either providing health insurance coverage or paying into a state-funded system. The problem with any of these ideas is the potential impact on businesses—particularly small Mom-and-Pop businesses that make only small profits to start and that would be devastated by even the smallest increase in staffing costs.

So the ultimate solution to an enormous problem hasn’t emerged yet. In Crook County, it feels a bit like we are sticking chewing gum into the hole in the dam in order to hold back the water. One wonders how long our “fixes” will last. By bringing the Ochoco Community Clinic to Prineville, the community helped create a safety net for those who have no other source of medical help. By creating new space for the county health department and co-locating it with the Ochoco Community Clinic, we have expanded our ability to serve the public, especially those without other access to preventative care. Our local hospital has done a good job of recruiting additional physicians and augmenting their numbers with lower-cost skilled medical professionals such as physician’s assistants and nurse practitioners. Last year we hosted a forum in Prineville to help seniors get signed up for supplemental insurance coverage. Citizens of our community with no insurance or inadequate insurance have access to the state’s bulk purchasing discount program. The board at Pioneer is looking at a plan to lease the Pioneer Facility to St. Charles—effectively merging its operations with a bigger entity hoping for economies of scale. These are all good solutions dictated by the market and economics of healthcare, but they are, at best, Band-Aids.

We as residents of the United States, Oregon, and Crook County enjoy one of the best healthcare systems in the world. No country can beat us when it comes to the quality of medicine, the training of providers and the availability of life-saving technology. But there is a cost to continuing to enjoy this, and the Medicare Trustee’s report has starkly identified the choice before us: raise revenue or cut benefits.

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt may have summed it up best in the Medicare Trustee’s report itself: Medicare reminds us of the great dilemma of health care – the things that are priceless are not price free.

Speech: Welcome, Crooked River Water Summit

2007-04-27T17:22:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-25T23:32:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-10T23:30:00.000-07:00

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.

Oregon Trods The Road To Apocalypse

2007-02-01T08:03:00.000-08:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
Published in the Central Oregonian, Prineville Oregon, February 2007

Continued Inaction On Timber Payment Threatens Reduction In Vital Services

The story of falling timber harvest in the Northwest is all too familiar now, but it’s definitely one worth repeating.

In 1986, just over 95,446,000 board feet of timber were harvested off U.S. Forest Service land in Crook County. By 2003, the number of board feet had fallen to 332,000 board feet—about three tenths of one percent of the 1986 level.

If one compares the ten years comprising 1983 to 1992 to the ten years comprising 1993 to 2002, the amount of timber harvested off forest service land in Crook County in the second decade was less than 1 percent of the amount harvested in the first decade.

The timber industry traditionally helped Oregon achieve a unique position among the economies of the 50 states: despite the fact that the workforce remained relatively low skilled, the state boasted a relatively high average wage, which in turn helped keep Main Street cash registers ringing around Oregon. In addition, taxes imposed on businesses which cut the timber, became a critical source of revenue to Oregon schools and the state’s local governments.

All that changed, starting about 1990.

Environmental groups, convinced that every tree in the forest was the roost of an endangered spotted owl and further convinced that Oregon’s vast forest tracts were somehow in danger of disappearing began through policy initiatives and litigation to slowly strangle the timber industry in Oregon.

Whether we as a state were too late to wake up to what was happening to us or simply too politically ineffective to stop the inevitable, remains a source of debate. Whatever the reason, in the short space of a decade, the state essentially lost its most important industry, along with thousands of associated jobs and economic security for Oregon’s schools and rural communities.

With the loss of the timber industry, an essential source of revenue for local government also disappeared. Where local governments and schools once survived and thrived on the continuous stream of revenue provided by timber harvest, the tax receipts dwindled after 1990 right along with the timber supply.

Things were nearing the point of crisis in 2000, when along came Congress, in the guise of legislation called the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act of 2000, sponsored by Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Larry Craig of Idaho.

Under this act of Congress, the federal government accepted some responsibility for the havoc its environmental policies had wreaked on the timber-dependent communities of the rural West. A slightly penitent and cash-flush federal government agreed to try to somewhat makes up for the unintended consequences of its previous decade of policymaking by agreeing to make payments to counties and schools in 39 states, based on the average of timber severance taxes received as a result of harvest from federal lands over a five year period. For Oregonians, this legislation had the added allure of allocating nearly 50 percent of the federal money to our state—something I suspect a number of congressmen voting on the bill didn’t really understand at the time.

“Hallelujah,” shouted local government and school leaders. “It’s about time!” Breathing a sigh of relief, local governments put their money worries behind them, at least for the six years the legislation was initially authorized.

Fast forward to fall of 2006: the first round of “county payments” legislation has now expired. Despite the efforts of Oregon congressmen, it hasn’t yet been reauthorized. The President and his administration, swimming in surplus when the bill was passed, have spent the country into a deficit. Meanwhile, congressmen in 38 states have figured out that the legislation which was so good for Oregon wasn’t as good for their states as anticipated. Thus, when the county payments bill expired on Sept. 30, Congress was in no mood to reauthorize it.

As a result, local governments and schools in Oregon are on the verge of a crisis. Some are on the verge of near collapse, as it is becoming increasingly apparent that $107 million paid annually to Oregon counties to support general services, $91 million paid annually to support county roads and $31 million paid for schools is about to disappear.

Depending on the size of the federal checks being received, the 33 of 36 Oregon counties are impacted in different ways by this impending loss. Clatsop, Gilliam and Multnomah, which receive no payments, are not affected. But Douglas County will lose 69 percent of its General Fund—the monies used to run basic government services, including law enforcement. Grant County will lose 73 percent of its road fund, and even relatively affluent Lane County, is bracing for the loss of 35 percent of its General Fund. In preparation for grim reality, Coos County has pink-slipped 25 percent of its workforce. Jackson County has closed its 14-branch Central library system. Lane County will lay off 200 sheriff’s deputies, close 100 jail beds and stop prosecuting illegal drug possession. Coastal Curry County announced in an email to county commissioner earlier this week that it is examining the possibility of dissolving its county government altogether.

To say the least, things are not good.

In Crook County, the picture is slightly different. Like our fellow counties, we stand to lose if county payments legislation is not reauthorized. The $2.5 million reduction we would face represents about 60 percent of the annual revenue to the Road Fund. Ouch. We truly hope that doesn’t happen.

But Crook County also has unique advantages other counties do not enjoy. For one thing, the county government has building reserves in preparation for this day to help weather a transition. For another, the county’s healthy rate of growth will help generate revenue to partially backfill the loss of county payments dollars. In addition, the county has revenue-generating resources at its disposal which other counties do not.
Cuts will still be required, especially within the Road Department budget. While no cuts in the General Fund budget are anticipated, no growth to meet the demands of a growing population will be possible either in the budget year ahead of us.

Despite this, however, we anticipate that all existing services will be preserved, road department operations will continue as usual and no extraordinary changes to countywide staffing levels are anticipated.

We at Crook County are still hoping for a Hail-Mary-Pass, a last-minute miracle or a rabbit-pulled-out-of-a hat. If it can be done, we’re convinced the team of Senators Wyden and Smith and Congressmen Walden, DeFazio and Hooley will get the job done.

But just in case they don’t, we’re ready with a Plan B to craft a budget that works within the resources we have. None of us think it will be fun, but in the end, we recognize that with teamwork and creativity, we can manage within the means we have.

We don’t think you would have it any other way.

When The Future Isn’t Working, Try The Past

2007-01-01T21:45:00.000-08:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
This column originally appeared in the Central Oregonian, January 2007

Modern politicians aren't the first to confront paralyzing partisanship

Sir Robert Walpole is best remembered as the first prime minister of England. He is also memorable as the longest serving prime minister in English history. Walpole first entered Parliament in 1701 and served until 1744—a time when the British government was as bitterly divided between two major parties as the United States seems to be today.

Early in his career, Walpole experienced first-hand the downside of partisanship and party-infighting. In 1712, his party split itself into separate, quarrelling factions. As a result, the party temporarily lost its control of the majority, and in the resulting political bloodbath that followed, Walpole was imprisoned in the Tower of London for six months.

His political fortunes were unaffected by that setback, and by 1721, Walpole’s party was back in charge with Walpole himself determined not to fall further victim of partisanship.

Thus, Walpole launched in earnest a career intended to keep his party in power (and presumably himself out of jail) by emphasizing in his world a hitherto unknown idea: politics ought to be “polite”.

Although he was much criticized for doing it, Walpole introduced into English politics the very radical idea that politics and politicians should characterize themselves through the observance of extravagant courtesies toward one another and by not taking positions which deeply divided the country. Walpole’s administration emphasized areas of agreement: expanded trade, reduced taxation, cutting the national debt and reducing involvement in foreign wars. (Is this starting to sound familiar?)

On the political side, he used his considerable personal skills to eliminate from parliamentary debate vicious personal attacks. By controlling the agenda carefully to allow only those matters which enjoyed overwhelming popular support to come to a vote, he forced members of Parliament to vote together in the public interest instead of strengthening their political divisions by dividing into partisan camps.

Walpole was derided by his contemporaries as a “do nothing” leader who avoided the serious issues of the day in the interests of maintaining political peace and harmony, but modern historians are more generous. The long view is that this was the period when Britain was radically made over as the leading commercial and economic power of the World. Art, architecture and learning thrived. The modern political system vesting ultimate authority in elected leadership was perfected. Science and exploration flourished. Military power was strengthened, and territorial acquisitions laid the foundation for the future British Empire. If this is a “do nothing” legacy, bring it on!

Walpole’s Britain faced four essential crises at his accession to power: The tone and practice of the legislative system was so partisan that neither party was generally believed to be representing the interests of the public at large, and each vote taken seemed to drive the system farther apart, not bring it back together. The nation’s ongoing entanglement in foreign military adventures was widely viewed as out of control and there was a general sense that the national interest was not being served by the amount of blood and treasury being poured into these affairs. While experts insisted that the economy of the nation was fine, the average citizen couldn’t quite shake that worried feeling that downturn might be just around the corner, and daily media and politics seemed obsessively focused on religious, social and philosophical topics that, while diverting, didn’t seem central to the real issues of the day.

Where Britain was when Walpole inherited the mantle of leadership feels a lot like where the United States and the State of Oregon are today.

Harry Truman once said famously “The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.” I like that quote, and I think it is true.

I think there are some instructive lessons for today’s politicians to be learned from the steps and missteps of the British parliamentary leaders of the early Eighteenth Century. As new majorities take control in Washington, D.C., and Salem, Oregon they will be wise if they look to Walpole’s example in setting their own agendas:

A successful Congress and Legislature will navigate carefully among those issues allowed to come to the floor for a vote. It will force votes on issues that matter to average citizens such as keeping the economy healthy, managing the national debt, improving the quality of education, ensuring access to healthcare, and continuing down the path of disentangling ourselves in a prudent way from the political mess in the rest of the world. Some issues near and dear to the hearts of individual congressmen or legislators may be shelved for future debate in the interests of pursuing an agenda which enjoys national support today.

Leadership will deal fairly and even-handedly with both sides of the aisle, ensuring that members of Congress and the Legislature are tasked with pursuing solutions to problems which match their passions and talents, not just randomly assigned committee work in a manner intended to shore up party control in future elections. Debate over legitimate policy choices will be encouraged and tolerated by leadership. Debate intended to promote one party at the expense of the other will be squelched, and repeated violators of the prohibition on partaking in partisan antics will be penalized by loss of influence, position and the ability to speak further.

There are plenty of people in the capitols of Washington and Salem who will say this can’t be done. The approach is both Pollyannaish and naïve. This approach simply amounts to putting off until tomorrow what you can’t get done today. A charge might be leveled that upheaval, chaos and partisan trumpeting are simply the birthing pangs of true greatness.

Perhaps, but I ask you a simple question: Is the path we’re currently on working for you? It isn’t for me, and in our personal lives, when the future isn’t working, most of us have learned to try something different. To find out way again, we return to the tried and true.

That’s where I’m at just now watching our political system, and in the Walpolian approach of 1721-1744, with its emphasis on simple courtesy and keeping the agenda focused on a simple, achievable and generally agreed upon agenda, I see a lot of parallel to our current situation. Washington and Salem would be wise to try and see it as well.

Speech: "Believe It Or Not"

2006-12-14T16:34:00.000-08:00

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.

Of Angels, Shepherds and Wise Men

2006-12-01T21:52:00.000-08:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
Originally published December 2006 in the Central Oregonian of Prineville, Oregon

Characters From The Christmas Story People Our Every Day Lives

The Christmas holiday is one that means something different to everyone. For some, it means a trip out of town to visit relatives. For others, it means the arrival of the relatives. Some combine relatives with friends, and some spend the day alone. For some families, the highlight of the day is the opening of gifts. For others, it may be a family ritual such as a dinner or attending church together or reading the nativity story.

Regardless of how you and your family spend Christmas, you probably know the basic elements: Christmas is the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. The history and tradition of this event is reported in four separate gospels in the New Testament, each of which includes a few details not mentioned in the other three. For the most part, however, we Americans get the gist of the event: Jesus was born in a town called Bethlehem in Judea, where his parents had traveled at the command of Caesar Augustus. Because everyone else was traveling at the same time, there was no room at the inn, so Mary and Joseph had to take lodging in a stable. As a result, the Son of God was born in a manger, attended by animals. In the age before television, news of the event was broadcast immediately—by choirs of angels who appeared to terrified shepherds watching their flocks on nearby hillsides. Once these farmers got over the shock of seeing angels, they hurried to Bethlehem to worship the new baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. At some point thereafter, wise men, (labeled kings in some versions) followed a star to the place where the baby lay in order to do him homage.

There might be some parts of the world where the basic elements of Christmas still aren’t understood, but I’m willing to guess that Prineville isn’t one of them.

A theologian could probably explain why the gospel writers chose to emphasize these elements in telling the Christmas story. Surely there are lots of other things they could have talked about: Was it cold when the baby was born? Was the birth difficult? What was Joseph’s reaction to all of this? What was the reaction of townspeople of Bethlehem to the appearance of stars in the sky above them and choirs of angels breaking out into song in the fields around them? On these points, the gospels are silent, and we are left only to contemplate. All we are told for certain is that angels, shepherds and wise men were part of the mix.

I am no theologian, but I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a parable in the gospel writers’ choice of images. I have often thought that angels, shepherds and wise men might be a metaphor for the important and basic roles we depend on people to play in our lives even today.

I know that we in Crook County are surrounded by angels, shepherds and wise men, and for the most part, we don’t appreciate them for who they are as we see them going about their everyday work.

Too often, we think about doctors, nurses, therapists, aids, orderlies and other health professionals as those people on the other end of the insurance bill (assuming we are fortunate enough to have insurance.) Not until we’re in crisis do we truly stop to appreciate that these people have lives that don’t revolve around us. They too have families and Christmas dinners to attend. When we ask them to neglect those in order to care for us, they are in many respects very much the angels among us.

As for the shepherds, that’s easy: they are the people who put their lives on hold in the course of protecting us from our own folly. The shepherds take many forms: They are the search and rescue volunteers, who take time from family or job to hunt down lost hunters and hikers in the forest. They are the policemen, deputies and troopers and traversing dangerously slick highways to answer the distressed calls of stranded motorists. Each fireman and EMT, turning out in the dead of night, is a shepherd, and so are the road crews that plow snow round the clock or clean culverts at 2 a.m. so that we have a chance of surviving our own stupidity when we drive too fast to work in the morning.

And then there are the wise men (and women). These are the people we look up to and to whom we look for guidance and comfort. These people don’t sort themselves in an easily definable way. Sometimes they are visible elected leaders, although elected office itself doesn’t confer wisdom. Sometimes they are leaders through example, such as food pantry workers, youth leaders, service club members, or church leaders. These selfless individuals care so deeply about others that they sacrifice their own comfort to make a difference in the lives of fellow men and women by contributing their labor, their resources and their leadership to make a difference. And then there are the village elders, those whose life experience, life example and good humor inspires the rest of us to keep striving to replicate their example. They too are wise men.

I think perhaps it’s not an accident that the gospel writers placed their emphasis on angels, shepherds and wise men at the expense of so many other details in the Christmas narrative. To the degree that the gospel offers a roadmap for life, I wonder if we aren’t called by this story to pause a moment amidst the hectic pace of Christmas preparations and think about the categories of people who make essential contributions to our lives.

Angels, shepherds and wise men were present at the dawn of the new era. They were witness to and actors in ushering in a new kingdom. Their contributions of sharing joy with the rest of the world, lending their protection to gentle animals and newborn babes and stubbornly following stars so that they could witness and pay tribute to revitalization and rebirth of civilization itself is a story that is timeless.

The possibilities of a world which values Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men aren’t limited to the village of Bethlehem two thousand years ago. Men and women in our community are striving to convert possibility into reality each and every day.

There are angels, shepherds and wise men among us still. To them and to their families and to each of you, have a blessed Christmas.

The Most Important People Not On The Ballot

2006-11-01T22:23:00.000-08:00

By Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper
Originally published in the Central Oregonian, November 2006

Remembering The Spouses On Election Day

Recently, while waiting for a delayed flight in the Portland airport, I ran into Congressman Greg Walden and his wife, Mylene. Proving that federal officials are no different than the rest of us, they were grounded for the full 90 minutes it took for a late plane to arrive. Not one to waste time, however, Greg was in full control of his situation, talking into his cell phone, with frequent prompting from his wife:

“Anthony: are you up? Anthony, if you are there, pick up the phone. Anthony, this is DAD, and if you are there, pick up the phone. OK, I hope you are not there and you are on your way to school, and don’t forget to feed the dog.”

“Anthony,” it turns out is the congressman’s 16-year-old-son, staying at home alone for the first time ever while Mom accompanied Dad to Washington for a White House reception. Good parents that they are, Greg and Mylene demonstrated keen awareness that frequent contact with a teenager is the best way to keep him out of trouble.

The call to Anthony was a bit unusual for the Waldens. Usually, Mylene stays home in Hood River and manages the family’s affairs, while Greg flies solo to and from Oregon each weekend. This arrangement apparently works for the Waldens (although it wouldn’t work for me), and it is a great illustration of just how dependent we elected types are on the support of our spouses to get our day jobs done.

That little incident reminded me of another close up and personal experience I had with a candidate’s spouse while I was in college in the early 1980s..

During one of the Presidential years, I was asked to attend a BBQ one hot summer day. The candidate was vice president George H.W. Bush, who showed up, smile on his face, and proceeded to shake hands and work the crowd. This being pre-Sept. 11 the vice president actually was allowed to mingle with people, and I shook his hand and visited a little before turning my attention to the main event, the BBQ! After filling my plate, I looked for an empty hay bale on which to sit, and I ended up next to a pleasant looking white-haired lady in a blue dress and a lot of pearls. She was warm and friendly and really made me like the candidate she was apparently there to support. Only toward the end of our conversation did I learn her name: Barbara Bush, wife and mother of future presidents of the United States.

Today, as the polls close and we take a deep breath and sigh with relief that the end of another campaign season has finally arrived, the spouses of political candidates I have met and those who are on the ballot this season are very much on my mind.

I think that in the age of media hype, it is easy to forget that before candidates signed some piece of paper in a county clerk’s office, they were ordinary citizens just like the rest of us. No matter how weighty their responsibilities, they can’t escape the mundane requirements of everyday life: I’ll bet that even the President of the United States must make a point of remembering his anniversary, and I still chuckle when I remember that a U.S. congressman, between worrying about Iraq and the state of the forests, worries about getting his kid to school on time and making sure the dog is fed.

As this season’s campaign has closed with a particularly vitriolic war of charges and countercharges, I’ve wondered occasionally about how the candidates and spouses, many of whom I know, are faring on a personal level

For candidates themselves, all the ugliness is just an unpleasant fact of political life. Only the most naïve didn’t know that politics ultimately is a contact sport, and if you can’t play rough, you probably shouldn’t play at all. But I’m not sure that spouses always have the same level of understanding of just how rough this business can be. Unlike the candidates themselves, the spouses never had an opportunity to sign the bottom of some form, in effect agreeing to endure a year’s worth of unpleasantness and the sheer drudgery of a campaign.

Going back to my earlier example, do you think Barbara Bush really knew what it might take to try to look elegant while sitting under the hot Missouri sun perched on a hay bale in pearls? I doubt she enjoyed that any more than the wives of our redoubtable gubernatorial candidates have enjoyed watched the respective spouses whom they care about deeply beat each other to a verbal pulp for 11 months running.

Not one of the spouses of our current crop of candidates—not Mrs. Kulongoski, Mrs. Saxton, Mrs. Walden, Mrs. Gilman, Mrs. Lundquist, Mrs. Mohan, Mrs. Clark, Mrs. Avey, Mr. Berman, Mrs. Wendel, Mrs. Conklin, Mrs. Harris, Mrs. Noyes or Mrs. Uffelman—ever co-signed papers agreeing to watch their beloved spouses—the people they presumably love and admire most in the world—take a public drubbing night after night on television and radio, in newspapers, through recorded telephone messages, on campaign signs and in literature. More than anyone else, they know the strengths and weaknesses of their spouses and your candidates, and they are willing to let them step up and take it, despite the stress and pain which inevitably accompanies any campaign.

Before this election season finally sputters to a well-deserved end, let me express a public thank you to these unsung and long-suffering heroines and heroes of the political season. When you signed on “for better or for worse,” this is probably not what you had in mind, but you have bravely endured in silence the attacks on people whom you know to be caring and capable. More than once, you have no doubt put a brave smile on your face, when all you really wanted to do was pull the covers over your head and cry. Putting pride aside, you have begged friends and family for money. You’ve licked envelopes, answered the phone, kept books, motivated volunteers and fed the dog and run the kids to school more than you bargained for. And if you are really, really lucky, your reward will be, you get to do this all over again in two or four years.

As the season comes to an end, here’s to you, spouses. You play a vital role in advancing Democracy in America, and whether we’ve said it or not, on behalf of the electorate, thank you. It wouldn’t happen without you.

Speech: Local Economic Snapshot

2006-10-12T10:52:00.000-07:00

Remarks delivered to the Board of Directors,
Economic Development for Central Oregon
meeting in Prineville by
Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper
October 12, 2006

In Crook County, All Economic Signals Point To 'Go'

The unemployment rate in Crook County in August 2006 fell to 5.0 percent. That rate was slightly higher than Deschutes County’s statewide low of 3.9 percent rate and slightly lower than the State of Oregon rate of 5.2 percent and the Jefferson County rate of 5.1 percent. This is the lowest rate the county has seen since the late 1960s and the first time in the last 20 years that the country rate has fallen below the state rate of unemployment.

A quick look at the components of employment in Crook versus Deschutes County reveals both similarities and differences.

Trade, transportation and utilities was the top employment sector in both counties, accounting for 20.5 percent of employment in Crook County and 17.6 percent in Deschutes County. The chief difference between the two is that the primary subsector in Crook County was wholesale trade, which you can read to mean “Les Schwab” while the primary subsector in Deschutes County was retail trade. Also of note within this sector, was the difference in average salary, as reported in 2005. Crook County employees laboring in the Trade sector were paid on average $9,500 per year more than their counterparts in Deschutes County.

Leisure and hospitality was the second largest sector of employment in Deschutes County, accounting for 13.4 percent of employment. It was the fourth largest sector in Crook County, accounting for 6.7 percent. As with trade, there was a substantial difference in salaries paid in this sector between the two counties, with Deschutes County employees being compensated an average $5,000 per year more than Crook County employees. I expect the gap in this sector to close in years to come with the maturation of the destination resort industry in Crook County. At present, there are three resorts under active considerations, one approved and in construction and two pending before the county planning commission. In total, these three resorts, assuming they are approved, will add 4200 units of housing—50 percent of which will be in the form of overnight accommodations—to Crook County.

Crook County’s second-largest sector of employment and Deschutes County’s fourth largest sector was government. At 13.8 percent of the workforce, Crook County’s governmental presence is now more economically significant than its manufacturing segment, which has slipped to third-ranked among sectors at 12.9 percent. Average pay in this sector was $35,000 in Crook County, which compares favorably with the average pay of $37,500 paid in Deschutes County. Although smaller in numbers than their state or local government counterparts, federal employees are a particularly significant component of government employment in Crook County. Average wages for federal employees were more than twice those of state employees and not quite double those of local government employees. At $17 million, the federal payroll for 334 employees in Crook County was only slightly less than the local government payroll of $21 million for 733 employees.

Behind government in Crook County was the manufacturing sector, accounting for 12.9 percent of employment. 87 percent of manufacturing employment—or 1,040 out of 1,200 employees--was centered on the wood products industry. Average wages in this sector were $5,000 less than the better diversified manufacturing sector of Deschutes County. This sector remains a major concern of the county’s because of heavy concentration of employment in a few companies. As we have seen in the past, the loss of just one company in this sector could dramatically alter the overall employment picture.

The fifth most important sector in Crook County often comes as a surprise, even to local citizens. Here’s hint: despite the hoopla surrounding Prineville’s new reputation as “Growth Central,” it is not the construction industry. It is the education and health services cluster. Employment in this sector would be concentrated primarily in the local hospital and three medical and three chiropractic clinics, the Federal Quality Healthcare Center based in Prineville and the community’s two private schools, Mt. Bachelor Academy and the Prineville Christian School. At 6.5 percent of total employment, this sector equals the employment of the leisure and hospitality industry in terms of numbers of employees, but that widely understates its impact. In terms of payroll, this segment has an impact equivalent to that of state government and more than three times that of leisure and hospitality. On the radar screen of regional recruitment, this sector is definitely an overlooked “sleeper,” and I would encourage this board to pay attention to additional recruitment opportunities in this area.

As mentioned, construction does not rank among Crook County’s five most significant employment sectors. This sets Crook County apart from Deschutes County where the construction sector ranks third among the county’s industries. Notwithstanding the characterization of Prineville by media and real estate publications shows a mere 327 people employed in the construction industry in 2005, which doesn’t begin to compare to the 1700 people employed in Trade or the 1200 people employed in the Government or Manufacturing sectors. Three years of building permit data lend further support to the idea that uncontrolled growth is threatening the future of Prineville is actually a myth.
We are currently issuing about 1,500 building permits per year, which includes construction, mobile home placements and remodel permits. The breakdown between city and county is about 40 percent city and 60 percent county. Like the rest of the region, we appear to be on a track this year to slow down a little, and will likely end the year with a handful less permits issued than were issued in 2005 or 2004. This slowdown should reverse in 2007 as destination resort construction and the start of construction at Brooks Resources begins to drive numbers upward again.

Overall, I think we are in about the best economic shape we have been in a long time. At the moment, the community’s best features are:

Plentiful industrial land being offered at relatively inexpensive prices and held in diverse ownership.

A recently expanded urban growth boundary.

Recently updated infrastructure plans and transportation plans at both city and county, which are helping us keep pace, if not stay ahead, of the growth curve.

Plentiful housing which is still highly affordable by regional standards.

A workforce which is definitely shrinking but which is still more plentiful than what can be found in Deschutes County.

Reasonable development costs--most notably the complete absence of SDCs—and business-friendly planning and building departments at both city and county.

A local tax and fee structure which puts little burden on the business community.

With the introduction of destination resorts, additional opportunities for leisure, recreation, culture and executive housing which should help bring the area to the attention of the business community.

A downtown undergoing relatively dramatic urban renewal, putting a positive face on the community.

We are also blessed with strong relationships and very supportive partners at the federal, state and regional level and the working relationship between County, City and Chamber is one which invites dialogue and encourages cooperation and communication.

In short, all systems are “Go” in Crook County, and that’s exactly what we plan to do in days, months and years to come.

Election 2006: Tough Choices

2006-10-01T21:53:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
Originally published October 2006 in the Central Oregonian, Prineville, Oregon

Ballot Questions Boil Down To Choice of Values

Election Day is coming up soon, and voters will have to decide what to do with 10 state ballot measures and two local measures. Unlike past elections, the issues presented here aren’t hugely complex. Rather, voters are being asked to pick and choose between competing values. Their responses will dictate state choices and direction in years to come. Here’s a brief look at what’s on the ballot. This summary doesn’t advocate for or against any measure but offers you, the voter, a concise way to consider what message your vote for or against the measures will mean.

Measure 39: Eminent domain. This measure prohibits government from taking private property for the purpose of reconveying it to other private interests. Such conveyances occur, on occasion, when a government is trying to promote economic development by converting blighted neighborhoods and blighted properties into attractive and thriving commercial, residential or industrial areas. Nobody even thought this was legal until a year ago when the U.S. Supreme Court decided it was. Bottom line: If your highest value is support of private property rights and protection of civil liberties, you should vote for this measure. You should vote against this measure if you support government-backed efforts to improve communities, both economically and aesthetically.

Measure 40: Regional judges. This measure mandates that judges of the Oregon Supreme Court and Oregon Court of Appeals will be elected on a regional basis. This measure was previously defeated by voters. It is a response to the correct perception that the majority of judges on the state’s highest courts tend to be from Portland. Backers argue that a more regional court will make choices which reflect the regional diversity of the state. Opponents respond that judges apply the law, which isn’t supposed to change based on where you live. Bottom line: You should support this measure if you feel that where judges live affects how they rule. You should vote against it if you believe that voters ought to have a free hand to place and retain judges on the bench, based on qualifications without regard for address.

Measure 41: Lower taxes. This measure allows voters to increase their personal deduction on their state incomes taxes. It reduces taxes and in doing so it reduces income to the state government. Top-end taxpayers benefit disproportionately to low-end taxpayers. Bottom line: Vote for this measure to see your state income taxes cut. Vote against this measure if you don’t want to see state funding reduced for programs such as education, senior and disabled service and assistance to the poor.

Measure 42: Insurance rates. Most insurance companies now tie your property and auto insurance rates to your credit score. The justification is the statistical fact that people with better credit tend to have less claims. Initially, if passed, the measure would probably raise premiums for the best credit risks. A counterargument is that over time credit scoring forces poor risks to go without insurance, which raises costs for all ratepayers by putting more uninsured motorists on the road. Bottom line: vote for this measure if you believe that insurance is about sharing the risk broadly and keeping down costs for everyone. Vote against it if you favor premiums based on statistical risk and you are willing to accept the potential costs associated with having more uninsured motorists on the road.

Measure 43: Abortion and minors. This measure requires 48-hours advance notice to parents before a medical provider can provide an abortion to a minor. An exception to circumvent parental notification can be made by petitioning an administrative law judge. Proponents argue that abortions carry physical and psychological risks that minors are generally incapable of fully evaluating without parental involvement. Opponents argue that parents are not always involved, and that parents sometimes substitute their values for the best interests of the child. They think the idea that children will be able to take advantage of the administrative law judge system is naïve, and they point out that there is no exception for pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. Bottom line: vote for this measure if you favor parental involvement when teenage girls must confront the difficult decision of what to do about an unwanted pregnancy. Vote against this measure, if you believe it unfairly burdens young girls who have uninvolved or abusive parents.

Measure 44: Prescription drug access. Currently, the state negotiates discounts with drug companies which allow qualified Oregonians to purchase prescriptions at a discount. Eligibility is limited to income-qualified residents over 54 who haven’t had insurance coverage for at least 6 months. This measure expands the program to cover all Oregonians without health care coverage (other than Medicare Part D.) There is no additional cost to Oregon. Alone among the ballot measures, this one has no statements of opposition in the voters pamphlet. Bottom line: Vote for this measure unless you are philosophically opposed to less costly prescription drugs and expanded access to health care by the uninsured.

Measure 45: Term limits. This measure limits the terms legislators can serve in the Oregon House and Oregon Senate. The measure passed once before, but was thrown on by the Courts on a technicality. You either believe long-term experience is helpful and essential to constituents and the political system as a whole or you don’t. When term limits were in effect, there is little question that the departure of long-term legislators lead to confusion and lack of historical perspective by legislators. There is equally no question that the measure paved the way for new voices in the legislature. Bottom line: Vote for this measure if you think new ideas are more valuable than experience in managing the complex bureaucracy of state government. Vote against it if you believe that lack of experience on the part of newcomers puts the special interests and lobbyists (who aren’t subject to term limits) in control.

Measures 46 and 47: Campaign contributions. Measure 46 is simple. It changes the Constitution to explicitly authorize limits on campaign spending. It prohibits the legislature to change any voter-approved limitations except by a three quarters vote of both chambers. Measure 47, in contrast, is complex. It severely limits the size of campaign contributions to candidates for statewide office by individuals and political action committees, and it bans contributions by unions and corporations outright. Measure 47 becomes law only if Measure 46, passes, so if you favor 47, be sure to vote for both. Bottom line: If you believe that money in politics is generally a bad idea which has a corrupting influence on the political process, vote for these measures. If you believe that money is a necessary evil that helps otherwise unknown candidates gain recognition and if you believe that corporations and unions, which are affected by state law, ought to have the right to support candidates who support their positions, vote against these measures.

Measure 48: State spending cap. This measure is about limiting the growth of state spending to a formula tied to a combination of population growth and inflation. Supporters argue the measure is necessary to restrain out-of-control state spending. Opponents say that spending is a reflection of the services people demand and has little to do with inflation or population. Both sides agree on some points: the measure will not affect your income or property taxes. At best, it might prevent new taxes (like income tax surcharges or cigarette taxes) from being introduced in the future. In addition, if passed, the measure will reduce state spending, meaning there will be less for the biggest portion of the state budget—education, prisons and assistance to distressed segments of the population such as seniors, the sick, the disabled, the poor and others. Bottom line: Vote for this measure if you want the state to reduce expenditures and avoid future tax hikes. Vote against it to preserve smaller class sizes, prison beds and assistance to the elderly, the sick, the disabled and the poor.

In addition to the state measure, there are two local measures on the ballot as well.

Bowman Museum: The first is the renewal of the 6 cent per thousand Bowman Museum operating levy. This is a continuation of an existing levy. It costs the owner of a house with a taxable valuation of $200,000 $12 per year. Passing it will not raise taxes. Bottom line: vote for this if you want the museum to continue business as usual. Vote against it if you want to minimally reduce your taxes and force the museum to cut back programs, hours and operations.

Pool Levy: Both a construction levy and an operating levy are on the ballot, placed there by the Parks and Recreation District. Only district voters get this question. If passed, the measures would allow the District to replace its 50+ year-old outdoor swimming pool in downtown Prineville with a newer, larger swim facility with modern controls which can operate year-round. Backers say that if the measure is passed, out-of-district voters will pay more to use the facility. The combined request to voters is for $1.25 per thousand. For the owner of home with a market value of $200,000 (taxable value of $140,000), that’s $175 per year. Bottom line: If you want a modern, pool that operates year round, vote for this measure. If you’re opposed to the pricetag and/or you’re willing to risk the shutdown of the existing pool before a new one can be built vote against it.

Boiled down, the questions on this year’s ballot are not complicated. But they are hard. They require significant choices about values and voter preferences. Your statements at the polls will influence the decisions of lawmakers in the 2007 session. This is a synopsis only. For more in-depth understanding, spend some time with the voters pamphlet before you mark your ballot. However you vote, be sure to return your ballot before polls close on Nov. 7.

A Four-Way Test For Election Season

2006-09-24T22:42:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
This column was published in the Central Oregonian of Prineville, Oregon, September 2006

Judge Candidates Factually, Fairly, On Substance and On Vision

With Labor Day, comes the resumption of campaign season—that time in American life when voters are invited to ponder the state of their nation, state and community.

Interestingly, the period during which we are invited to undertake this political self examination of our system is relatively short. From Labor Day to election day is a mere 65 days—nine weeks and a few days. In Oregon, there are even less days, since ballots typically mail two weeks before election day and voters begin marking them the minute they arrive in the mailbox.

Such a short time frame is in many ways an open invitation to mischief. A favorite tactic of candidates is to level charges and accusations at opponents late in the election season, hoping that there will not be adequate time for the other side to respond. Another “dirty trick” is to save up money and negative campaigning until the days just before the election and then try to bury the other side with bad publicity, knowing full the other side might not have any cash left to defend itself. When voters favor candidates who engage in such shenanigans, they are unfortunately rewarding politicians for their shrewdness in playing the political game and not for their command of the issues and concern for the people they hope to serve.

Like many of us, I wish these weren’t the rules of the political game. Unfortunately, it has always been that way. The only U.S. President to run for re-election without having to face down a mean-spirited, boisterous and at least partial misrepresentation of his record was George Washington, who ran unopposed for a second term.

Since then, it has been all downhill. Thomas Jefferson as vice president, not-so-secretly paid editors to negatively cover his boss, President John Adams. Jefferson himself was subjected to attacks on his unorthodox religious views and his personal morality—subjects which had nothing to do with how he conducted his office. Andrew Jackson’s enemies “Old Hickory” invincible, so they attacked the moral character of his wife and possibly contributed to her early death. Even Abraham Lincoln entered the election of 1864, fighting off accusations that he was a “war-mongerer” who dragged the nation into an immoral conflict where it had no place being and calling upon the sitting President to rectify the situation with an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of troops.

One of my favorite examples of how history is too frequently forgotten and events get in the way of facts is the fate of the only Oregonian ever to serve in the nation’s highest office. Until he crashed and burned, this Salem native was a “golden child” of the nation. As a young engineer in China when civil war broke out, he put his life on the line to save children and defend a hospital from rebel forces. As head of the Food Administration during World War I, he managed the nation’s food supply to feed two continents: war-ravaged Europe and North American without having to resort to a rationing program. He was promoted after the war to head the American Relief Administration, where he single-handedly organized famine relief for 20 million starving Russian peasants. From 1920 to 1928, he was Secretary of Commerce in two administrations, and in that role he was architect of an economic policy that raised general prosperity and the standard of living for Americans at all levels as incomes rose, prices fell, the work week shrank as leisure time increased and, productivity and corporate profits soared. Once he became President, however, all memory of those achievements vanished as the Great Depression set in and Herbert Hoover, born in Iowa but raised near Salem, Oregon was consigned to the ash heap of history, where he was destined to be reviled by generations of historians as one of the worst U.S. presidents.

As a fellow Oregonian, my sympathies go out to Hoover. Modern historians have been a little kinder than those who chronicled his rise and fall in his own time. But there’s no doubt about it, Hoover provided one of the core tenets of American political science: as voters, we generally are more concerned less with what a candidate has done for us yesterday than what they are willing to promise they will do tomorrow—right after they’re elected.

History suggest that approach gets into some interesting predicaments. Knee-jerk reactions are why we banned blacks from the state in 1857 and followed up with a ban on Japanese property ownership in 1923. And who among us doesn’t positively cringe at the thought that our irrational fears led us as a state between 1917 and 1983 to tolerate the forcible sterilization of 2,650 Oregonians deemed by the State unfit for reproduction by reason of mental or physical defect. As for candidates and elected officials, the last election produced a bumper crop of bums, ranging from a state representative hooked on meth, to a House budget writing chief converting campaign funds to personal use to House and Senate leaders who somehow “overlooked” paying their own property taxes for 13 and 6 years respectively.

Clearly, such gaffes suggestion a little caution might be in order was we approach a raft of ballot measures and some pretty pronounced choices for candidates this November.

I recently read a paper proposing a simple framework for how we ought to evaluate our political options as voters. It suggests listening to candidates and learning about measures with four criteria in mind:

Focus on Facts. Read widely about the impacts, good and bad, of measures. Read all the information printed on the ballot and the arguments in the voters pamphlet. Get both sides from the newspaper. Don’t put your faith in candidates those whose actions don’t quite measure up to their words.

Focus on Fairness. It’s true that for every action there is a reaction. Try to figure out both halves of where a particular proposal will take this state and make an informed choice that provides the greatest good for the greatest number and by choosing the option that inflicts the least amount of harm.

Focus on substance. Your mother had it right when she admonished you that if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. A candidate or political operative who can’t defend his or her proposals on their own merits but rather resorts to personal politics or smear campaigns is someone who hasn’t learned the essential lesson of politics. The job is about building and maintaining relationships within the community and with decision-makers in other adjacent communities, counties, regions and within the state, nation and world. If you can’t be nice to your opponent before you’re elected, you won’t likely be nice to anybody else after you take you’re oath of office.

Focus on the Future. Politics as usual asks, “What’s in it for me?” Politics of a higher calling asks the question, “What’s in it for future generations?” Look for politicians who stake out the high ground.

These four tests are or should be at the heart of every political deliberation. Our political system doesn’t work perfectly, but it’s the best the world has yet to invent, and its genius is that it is constantly undergoing revision. This November would be a great time to start making some changes in our own approach.

Speech: Cooperative Conservation

2006-08-22T11:51:00.000-07:00

Remarks prepared for delivery by Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper
at a federal “Listening Session” on Cooperative Conservation
Deschutes County Fairgrounds, Redmond, Oregon
August 22, 2006; The remarks were prepared for the
Honorable Dirk Kempthorne, Secretary of the Interior,
Mark Rey, Undersecretary for Agriculture,
Rick Otis, Deputy Environmental Protection Agency Associate Administrator
and Mr. Bob Lohn, NOAA Fisheries Regional Administrator. Ultimately,
the remarks were not delivered due to the crowds seeking access to the
microphones at the event and the resulting time limitation imposed on speakers.

One County Already Approaches Conservation With Collaboration

Secretary Kempthorne, Undersecretary Rey, Mr. Otis, Mr.Lohn, other distinguished guests. On behalf of the citizens of Crook County Oregon, the historically original seat of government for the entire Central Oregon, I welcome you to God’s country. As chief elected official for my nearly 3000 square mile county, I am pleased to convey to you on behalf of my citizens our longstanding belief that it IS possible for a thoughtful and deliberative community of caring and resourceful people to enjoy the benefits of commerce, agriculture and recreation while still protecting wildlife, water quality and resources. My citizens reject the idea that these goals are mutually exclusive, and they reject the politics of polarization which now characterize the natural resources debate in this country.

Forests which are choking on their own fuel load have value to forest managers or to commercial timber operators or to weekend recreationalists. Lands which are denuded of forage due to overgrazing, will not over time return value to lessees or to the public which seeks to enjoy them. Use of OHVs in a manner which damages sensitive watersheds is as offensive to the suburban householder reliant on forest springs to recharge his community water system as it is to the most ardent Sierra Club member.

In my community, we are committed to the principle that we can through rational conversation and a shared commitment to dialogue find solutions which will satisfy both sides of the current debate about what to do with the West. For the past three years, we have been pursuing an extraordinary strategy based on this strategy, and I am here to report to you today that the approach is working.

In 2002, at the urging of a local citizen, the Crook County Court, (or board of commissioners as it is sometimes called) formed a group called the Crook County Natural Resources Planning Committee. The board consists of approximately 26 members at any given time, who meet monthly or more often as needed to debate and recommend to the County Court positions on natural resource management from the community perspective. The stakeholders who sit on this group are broadly representative of the historical factions of the community and they include timber interests, agricultural interests, local business, community and government, environmental groups and key agency decision makers. The county provides a facilitator for the group, whose main job is to keep everyone talking to each other, even when the dialogue starts to get a little rough.

All recommendations of the committee are ultimately transmitted to the County Court which decides whether to send them on or not to natural-resource policy decision-makers as county-endorsed recommendations. Although not always, generally speaking, the Court members have found that once an idea has gained enough momentum to be tested and found worthy in the purifying heat of a Natural Resource Committee debate, it is an idea of sufficient merit that it will generally pass through the screen of any reviewing federal agency without too much further debate.

So what kinds of topics is the committee taking positions on?

The committee has engaged in serious soul-searching about the value and impact of salvage logging. The rough and tumble of debate between environmental activists and timber interests has helped educate both sides, and has had the happy result of causing agencies to redefine the boundaries of proposed salvage sales in ways that minimize or eliminate ecological stress while at the same time convincing local environmental groups not to pursue knee jerk appeals of every sale.

In another heated discussion, the committee was able to come up with a consensus recommendation on how to minimize damage to ranchers and farmers if wolf reintroduction were to be allowed and expanded in Oregon. That policy debate brought realization to all sides that the plight of the wolf is real and the heritage of our region is threatened by the potential loss of those species while also helping wildlife advocates come to realize the grave economic damage that Most recently, the committee has become passionate on the subject of riparian protection. Single-handedly, the committee has become a champion for intelligent land-use and natural resource policies necessary to preserve water quality and to protect floodways in our rapidly growing communities. Committee-sponsored educational seminars were notable for the turnout of elected officials, planning staff, farmers, creekside homeowners, realtors and developers, all of whom sought to learn what part they might play in protecting their community’s riparian assets. Although such seminars are commonly produced by interest groups and governments, I am convinced that it was the non-biased, non-judgmental, educational impact of a seminar organized and endorsed by peers which set this effort apart as truly successful.

Most recently, the community has taken up a discussion with our local school district about how to use a combination of federal land-management agency resources, school partnerships and community involvement to improve natural resources education in our public schools. The committee and school district in undertaking this effort are acting in farsighted way intended to ensure that the good groundwork in environmental ethics laid by the committee today will continue through future generations.

Those are just a few of the ways our community, the community of Prineville and Crook County, is committed to and has been pursuing the strategy you are calling “Cooperative Conservation.” We believe in this model of shared decision-making between federal agencies, concerned citizens, local communities and diverse interest groups. We hope you do too.

For too long, the debate about natural resources policy has been dominated by too few clumsily trying to disguise decisions made to quiet the clamoring voices as good decisions satisfying the wishes of the many. In fact, every pollster or political strategist in this country who knows what’s he’s talking will tell you that the majority of residents and citizens of this country are solid centrists, distrustful of the claims of both the right and the left.

Somehow, in this out-of-way-corner of the nation and the world, Crook County has found a solution that is working for us. The keys have been:
a continuous effort to keep all points of view at the table and talking,
recognition by senior federal land managers in our area that flexibility in political position is a worthwhile prices to pay for the valuable benefit of endorsement by community and constituency, and
a clear preference by local stakeholders for engage and remain engaged in a constant search for points of agreement rather than the creation of an endless catalogue of points of disagreement.

The Cooperative Conservation philosophy and movement is a step in the right direction. My community is living proof that the concept can and will work. Our encouragement to you is not to be discouraged by the bumps in the road you will inevitably hit as you seek the path to compromise, but to stay the course. From our perspective, the end is definitely worth the journey.

Thank you for hearing me out today.

Speech: Taking The Oregon Trail Abroad

2006-08-04T08:38:00.000-07:00

Speech to the Prineville-Crook County
Chamber of Commerce Economic Development Committee
August 4, 2006, Meadowlakes Restaurant
Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper

International Trade Offers Dividends For All of Oregon

(Note: This speech was preceded by an introduction by Roger Lee, Executive Director,
Economic Development for Central Oregon, regarding the participants, purpose and details
surrounding the Governor’s Trade Mission to Korea. Mr. Lee also provided brief background
information related to the relative positions of Korea and Japan as Oregon trading partners.)

Good afternoon, and thank you for asking me here today to discuss with you the recent success
of the Governor’s Trade Mission to Korea and Japan, which occurred June 24-29, 2006. It was
my privilege to accompany the Governor, senior members of the administration and leading
citizens of Oregon’s business community on this trip. As the only representative of Oregon
counties in attendance, I felt an awesome responsibility to represent all my peers in local
government as well as to represent to potential future trade partners the tremendous economic
potential of our region and state.

Let’s examine to start the question, “Why do we care about foreign investment with Japan and
Korea?”

Import and export trade with Korea in the first 5 months of 2006 accounted for a few million
dollars short of $32 billion, Oregon to federal trade statistics. Trade with Japan accounted for
more than $83 billion. Trade with the two countries in all of 2005 accounted for $257 billion.
The portion of U.S. international trade accounted for by shipments of Oregon exports to all
countries has consistently been only about 1.4 percent of the national total since 2000. Yet,
Oregon accounts for 10.0 percent of all U.S trade with Korea and 10.9 percent of all U.S. trade
with Japan.

To put those numbers in perspective, compare California’s exports to Japan, which accounted for 12 percent of the U.S. total last year while California exports to Korea accounted for 5.4 percent of the U.S. total.

Although the fact doesn’t get much coverage, it is obvious these two countries are big, big
players in Oregon’s economy and in Oregon’s continuing economic prosperity. If you removed
Japan and Korea from the Oregon equation or if you relocated the companies that supply those
markets from Oregon, you would see an instant change in the Oregon economic landscape.

So what is Oregon sending overseas?

Not surprisingly, the number one export from this state is microchips. Wheat is the second
largest export and tractor trailers are third. Somewhat surprisingly, Oregon also shipped $83
million worth of hay abroad last year as well as $73 million worth of raw lumber.

From such numbers, anyone can see that the overseas market is an important customer to this
state. And as we think about that, we should remember some key truths that any businessperson
knows:

• First, we can all agree that retaining existing businesses and business relationships is far
easier than developing and recruiting new business.
• Second, we all know that tending to your customers and maintaining your business
relationships is a constant thing. If you wait until things go south to start paying attention
to your important accounts, it’s generally too late to save the situation.
• Third, we know that the best source of new business is to draw on the relationships you
already have to expand business relationships and mutually profitable ventures.

The basic principles of business are also the basic principles of economic development. As
businesspeople, if you stop and think about it, I believe you will appreciate that the business
logic behind the Governor’s trade mission:

• By undertaking the mission, the Governor made an important effort to reach out to very
important customers of Oregon.
• Because the economic climate is good and there is a general good feeling between the
state and these two major trade partners, the Governor used this “window in time” to
strengthen ties between the Pacific Rim and Oregon.
• Finally, the Governor through this mission laid good groundwork to build upon the
existing relationship between Oregon and Korea and Japan and opened the door to the
possibility of additional business.

So, with that background, what exactly does one do on a trade mission?

Basically, you do the same thing you do when cultivating business at home: you have a lot of
lunch and dinner. You go to a lot of receptions. You exchange pleasantries and hand out a lot of
business cards. In Korea and Japan, you use chopsticks, you eat raw fish, you try to avoid the
live baby octopus, and you try hard not to think about exactly what it is you might be putting in
your mouth. You talk up the strategic and business advantages of your state, region and locality.
You try to get your customer to express his or her reservations or concerns about your area so
that you can get accurate information to the customer allaying those concerns. Most importantly, you “set the table” for future discussions and relationships that you hope will evolve eventually into productive lines of business.

In the United States and Europe, there is less of a role for government in cultivating business
relationships. We don’t see trade missions from Oregon to Nebraska or Oregon to New York or
Oregon to France because business leaders themselves initiate and manage those relationships. A governor’s delegation doesn’t add a lot of value. But Asia is different. In Asian culture, status is everything. Asians elevate high-level government officials to near reverence. In Asia, no
individual would dream of driving around a flatbed truck with a hand-painted sign criticizing the
chief elected officials. Such an individual would likely be jailed—an idea perhaps we should
adopt!

In Asia when a Governor of even a relatively small state like ours shows up at a reception to mix
and mingle, it is sufficient cause for the very top echelon of decision-makers to turn. That is what we experienced in Korea, when major media and 150 of South Korea’s top business leaders
attended the mission’s closing dinner. In Japan, the turnout was even more impressive. Some 450 people crowded into the ballroom at a top-notch hotel adjacent to the Imperial Palace to hear Governor Kulongoski’s message of welcome. It was astonishing and incredibly successful event.

For Crook County and Central Oregon, the trip was successful as well, although we were there
for a much more specific reason than to generally show the flag. For us, the signal event of the
mission took place at a luncheon the day after we arrived in Seoul.

At the luncheon, the Governor met with the chairman and top executives of TYM tractor. For
this meeting, he was joined by me, Roger and Bud Prince of Redmond Economic Development
as well as the Oregon chief of staff, the Director of Oregon Economic Development and the
Executive Director of the Port of Portland.

Here’s the scoop on TYM. The company operates in 28 countries around the world. Recently, it
consolidated U.S. operations in Redmond. The company’s bread and butter is the manufacture of flatware and cigarette filters. It also makes tractors, rice transplanters and various other farm
equipment. With distribution operations based in Redmond, the company’s long-term plans call
for construction of a future manufacturing facility in the United States. The company’s interest in the U.S. has to do with political and economic dynamics in Korea itself.

I won’t even try and explain the political side of the equation, but on the economic side, the cost
of labor in a highly educated, highly unionized environment is of increasing concern to Korean
business leaders. While we were in-country, Seoul itself was named the second-most expensive
capital in the world to live in, an indicator of the cost of doing business there. In addition, Korea
is heavily dependent on foreign oil as the main source of generating electricity. The escalating
price of oil is causing Korean companies to reconsider how to manage the cost of operations. In
doing so, the ready availability of inexpensive hydropower in this country is not lost on anyone
over there.

While none of us can say exactly what TYM’s long–term plans are, we do know that Central
Oregon is on the short list of sites where the company would like to build a future plant. Both
Redmond and Prineville are under active consideration. The company recently invested in the
purchase of 25 acres in the Tom McCall Industrial Park right outside of town. One of the reasons I wanted to go on this mission was to put Prineville squarely in front of the chairman of TYM as being very interested in pursuing an additional relationship. The company’s ultimate decision about when and where to build a 500-job manufacturing facility will roll out according to its own internal plans on its own time frame, but as an elected representative of my county, I am certainly not willing to cede the opportunity to compete for this project to Redmond, simply
because it got the distribution center. Trust me, it was not lost on the chairman of TYM that the
highest elected official in Prineville was seated next to the Governor during our hour and half
lunch. Whether the chairman noticed Redmond’s economic development director was seated in
the corner, I can’t say.

The chairman of TYM turned out to be a very pleasant fellow—a Purdue-educated renaissance
man of many talents. In addition to being chairman of multi-national company, he is also chair of
the South Korean Chamber of Commerce. And he is president of the Korean cartoonists
association. He loves the United States. He particularly loves the wide open spaces of eastern
Oregon, and for that reason, he has been here several times already. With some amusement we
learned at lunch that he, like many Koreans, is a big fan of Oregon cherries. We were astonished
to learn they cost 60 cents apiece in Korea and to which this multi-billionaire rations to his
family in units of four, three and two stems! We also learned from him about the burgeoning
Korean interest in Oregon wines. Both of these are clear opportunities which the Governor
capitalized upon with a generous offer to send both cherries and wine as gifts of the state upon
his return to Salem.

After sealing relationships with the chairman, the Central Oregon delegation left the main group
to travel to Chang Won City near Pusan to tour the TYM plant and meet with the leadership of
the company there. It was amusing to us that the Koreans kept apologizing for taking us to such a small place. The “small” city had 500,000 residents, but in their eyes it might as well have been Powell Butte.

At the plant more opportunities for our area emerged. For one thing, in discussing transportation logistics within the state, we learned about a problem on the trunk rail line coming into Central Oregon. We learned that due to limited tunnel height in two places, containers can’t be doublestacked on flatbed cars. That vastly increases the cost of shipping into Central Oregon. Fixing this is a top priority for both regional officials and for Port of Portland representatives. A meeting is scheduled with the Class One rail folks sometime in the next month to begin discussion on how to lower the floor of the tunnels involved by 12 inches to allow us to double potential container traffic into the region without having to add cars.

As we toured the plant we also learned how TYM assembles and containerizes its tractors for
shipment from ChangWon City to the Redmond TYM distribution center. One of the things I
discovered is that TYM currently ships the tractors with wheels and tire on. As a result, the
number of tractors that can go in a container is reduced, which has the effect of increasing the
ultimate cost of shipping because more containers have to be used to get the same number of
tractors here. Now, being from the home of the state’s largest tire distributor, I know that
shipping tires and wheels to Prineville is like shipping ice to Eskimos. You can bet that upon my
return home, my first call was to the vice president of sales for Les Schwab to discuss putting a
meeting together between TYM’s U.S.-based leadership and Les Schwab to talk about the
potential of putting Schwab-supplied wheels and tires on TYM tractors once they arrive
stateside. Considering that TYM plans to expand shipments of tractors to the United States to
10,000 units a year in the short term, that little bit of information alone could make the trip
worthwhile to my community’s largest employer.

While forging the relationship with TYM was my principle economic goal on this trip, it was far
from the only benefit this mission produced.

While I was off in ChangWon City touring plants and soaking up local culture with TYM
executives in the karaoke club, the Governor was engaged in numerous meetings with other
Korean and Japanese companies with business interests in Oregon. One of the first of his
meeting was with Hynix Semiconductor. Hynix is the leading manufacturer in the world of a
type of semiconductor. Its revenues in the second quarter of 2006 were about $1.67 billion. The
company recently completed a $350 million expansion in Eugene. The Governor’s meeting with
the company chairman and his offer of state assistance with workforce training helped cement
the company’s presence here—an important thing to do considering that at some point in the
future the company already has announced plans to built a second $5 billion facility somewhere
in the United States.

Another important meeting for the Governor was the opportunity to meet Hanjin Shipping
Company’s leadership. Hanjin is the largest user of shipping containers in the world. Its 2005
sales were $2.3 billion. Its commitment to use the Port of Portland is critical to the Port’s
continuing success, and make no mistake: it is a choice to use Portland instead of Seattle or San
Francisco or Long Beach or some other West Coast Port to import and export merchandise.
Hanjin’s use of Portland has significant advantages for brand-name Oregon companies like Fred
Meyer, Columbia Sportswear, Nike, Dollar Tree and Kroger. The Governor used the occasion of
his meeting to deliver the news in person to Hanjin executive that the state will soon supply
another post-panamax crane at the Port of Portland to ensure the continuing global
competitiveness of that facility.

In Japan, the Governor took time to drop in on a company called IMEX which manufactures
carbon toner in Salem. There, it was the turn of Oregonians to get a surprise. The IMEX folks
were so pleased to receive the Governor that they used the opportunity to thank him and the state with a surprise announcement of plans to invest an additional $5 million in their Oregon facility.

These were just three of something like 27 meetings the Governor conducted while the mission
was in Asia. It was an incredibly grueling schedule and really something to watch. And when he
wasn’t in meetings, he was on various cell phones back to Oregon trying to run the state.
Whatever your political opinion of the Governor, I’m here to tell you that he deserves kudos as
somebody who that week worked very hard for Oregon and for Oregonians. There is no doubt in my mind as I saw him stagger exhausted down the hall every night that he earned every nickel and then some of his $93,600 annual paycheck!

Let me conclude by suggesting to you that I think we as a state need to do more of this sort of thing. We live in a global economy. Worse yet, we share the southern border with the sixth largest economy in the world, and the world economic position of the state to the north of us is such that the President of China stops off to pay respects to Boeing, Microsoft and Gov. Gregoire
BEFORE he takes time to pay his respects to George Bush! The risk of not being competitive in
the global economy is the risk that that Oregon will simply become what many people think of
us as already: the place you fly over to get from Seattle to San Francisco.

That’s not my vision for Oregon. It’s certainly not the Governor’s and just as I want Oregon to
be profitable, I want Crook County and Central Oregon to share in that prosperity. I am pretty
sure you will agree with me that it not acceptable to live in a community where our idea of
business recruitment is to take whatever is leftover after Bend and Redmond cherry pick the list.

To ensure that doesn’t happen, have to get out there and promote ourselves. And let’s not kid
ourselves. We have a lot to offer:

• Affordable land
• Great utility rates.
• A dependable workforce.
• A reputation as a great place to live and work.

This trip was paid for out of my own
pocket. It cost me personally about $3,500, but the personal education I received in the dynamics of economic development and the value of harnessing government and the private sector in pursuit of international opportunity was invaluable.

I found the people of Korea to be warm and friendly and far more Americanized than I had ever
understood before. While this was my first trip to Korea, it was my third to Japan, yet I was
reminded once again in forceful terms of just what a dynamic and powerful economy that
country has and why it is in our national interest, politically and financially, to maintain strong
ties to that country.

Sometimes I think we in this state are victims of our own ignorance about our history. We
shouldn’t forget that the reason we are all here today is because of a global competition to
dominate trade in a particular commodity. The British, Americans, Russians and Spaniards all
tried at different times to assert their dominance over the Oregon country in order to control the lucrative fur trade. Ultimately, it was Thomas Jefferson’s decision to send a trade mission
disguised as a scientific expedition and led by Lewis and Clark that decided who would
ultimately control the Oregon country. That we are here today was because a political leader,
President Jefferson, had the foresight to boldly venture to foreign territory to explore new
economic opportunities and to seize economic advantage for our fledgling nation.
I do not think it is a far cry to suggest that the Corps of Discovery and the Governor’s Trade
Mission to Korea and Japan may each in hindsight be seen to have produced dividends. Lewis
and Clark had to portage whitewater, brave hostile conditions and nearly freeze to death while
the biggest challenges we faced were the discomfort of an airplane ride and the problem of
keeping our food balanced on unfamiliar chopsticks.

Still, each mission returned imbued with a sense of discovery and with optimism about the
possibility of new economic opportunity. For 200 plus years, Oregon has been leading edge of
charting trails into the wilderness. The work is no less important today than it was when Lewis
and Clark came this way. Oregonians of the future will be well served if future governors,
business and community leaders continue in this fine tradition of trailblazing for Oregon.

The Price of Indecision

2006-08-01T22:11:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
This column originally appeared in the Central Oregonian in August 2006

Failure of Congress To Reauthorize County Payments Has a Pricetag

In 2000, Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden and Idaho Republican Larry Craig pulled off a coup.

The pair of senators successfully championed legislation in Congress to pay nearly $1.6 billion payments to Oregon counties and schools. The bill was intended as a stopgap to deal with losses sustained by rural communities as a result of the “timber wars” being fought between politicians and interest groups over how much timber to harvest from federal lands. Harvest off federal lands for decades was the principal source of funding for local communities and schools in the West. The idea behind the Wyden-Craig bill was that while the various groups worked to find some sort of balance between timber harvest and forest health, the federal government would make payments to affected communities to offset their losses.

The concept wasn’t bad. It follows a general line of thinking that citizens of both Oregon and the nation seem to have been embracing in recent years—the idea that if the government is the source of economic damage, the government ought to pay for the privilege.

With strong support from Rep. Greg Walden, passage of the county payments bill was legislation of major magnitude. The $1.6 billion appropriation is the same amount Congress appropriated to restore educational services in the South in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It’s the amount the federal government recently spent on energy assistance for low-income households nationwide. It was a godsend for rural Oregon, and the benefit rolled up to urban Oregon when the state legislature decided to make all 191 schools districts in the state beneficiaries of the schools-portion of the payments.

In Crook County, the impact of the legislation was significant. County payments comprise about 40 percent of the annual county road budget (with the rest coming from gas tax, grants and earnings off the county road fund.) Last year’s payment was just over $2.3 million. By contrast, the last year the county received payments based on actual timber cutting, receipts had declined to a mere $41,215. Clearly, County payments not only matter; they matter A LOT!

The downside of the Wyden-Craig legislation was an agreement the sponsors were forced to make to get the bill passed: the “poison pill” in the bill is that it expires on September 30, 2006, unless Congress votes to reauthorize it.

In case you were counting, that’s 61 days from now, which means that after this year’s payment is received, there will be no more money without Congressional action.

That could be a big problem, especially considering that when Oregon’s delegation tried hard to push a replacement bill through Congress last year, they didn’t even get the bill out of committee.

The reason for the congressional change of heart is simple. In 2000 when the original bill was passed, the federal government estimated its year-end surplus at $230 billion. Six years later, the government is projecting a deficit of $423 billion. That’s quite a gap.

On the one hand, the $1.6 billion that Oregon needs to keep its road safe and schools running is a drop in the bucket compared to the trillion dollars in deficit spending run up by Congress and the Administration in the last three years. On the other hand, as Sen. Everett Dirksen once was famously supposed to have said, “A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” The question now is whether one of those billions is going to be our money as the government struggles to try and find a way to rein in excess federal spending that threatens the economic security of the entire nation.

I along with other Oregon officials don’t believe our state should be Congress’ sacrificial lamb in the battle of the budget, especially considering that it was Congress, not Oregon, that failed to craft a resolution to the basic problem.

It doesn’t seem to me that it is too much to ask that the federal government figure out a policy that preserves forest health and allows some level of sustainable timber harvest. Doing so will create jobs, improve the environment, renew the flow of self-sustaining funding for Western roads and schools and reduce the amount of money now expended on very expensive efforts to suppress wildfires (something we are keenly aware of this week in particular as broad swaths of merchantable timber are, literally, going up in smoke.) At the same time, such a policy could go far to help balance the nation’s books—something all of us want Congress to figure out a way to do.

Unfortunately, while the answer seems clear to those of us who live amidst some of the nation’s most magnificent forests, it’s anything but obvious to some folks in Washington, D.C. Six years after county payments were adopted as an interim solution, feuding parties remain intractably stuck in an indecisive political fog about what to do next. That’s one choice that as owners of the underlying lands it is within the ability of the federal government to make. But the question I ask is, if the government simply can’t or won’t decide, then why should Oregonians and other Westerners have to pay the price for that indecision in the form of continuing deterioration in public roads, inferior schools and declining forest health?

That’s exactly the point I hope to leave with 535 members of Congress during one week in September when we will be joining our county colleagues from other states in Washington, D.C., for two days of intensive lobbying as part of a last-ditch effort to get the county payments bill reauthorized. With $2.4 million in annual payments hanging in the balance, we’ve got to try to resolve this issue in our favor.

We certainly are going to make the effort. How much the federal government cares about Oregon and the rest of the West is the question in the balance. One way or the other, we’re going to be there in person in the nation’s capital face to face with the people who make the decisions to find out once and for all what the answer really is.

Speech: On release of a housing needs assessment

2006-07-26T16:41:00.000-07:00

Remarks upon the release of the Central Oregon
Workforce Housing Needs Assessment
delivered by Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper, a
member of the Oregon State Housing Council at the
Bank of the Cascades, Bend Oregon, July 26, 2006

The List of Those Who Need Housing Help Might Surprise You

The 7-member Oregon State Housing Council of which I am pleased to be a member is the body in Oregon charged with recommending to the Governor and Legislature policy initiatives which will expand the supply of affordable housing throughout the State.

Core to our ability to achieve that mission is our ability to keep the focus of the State and local communities on the need for affordable housing—not just for vulnerable citizens traditionally served by housing agencies such as the mentally ill and low-income seniors—but also on the working class.

The people who need help in maintaining some semblance of balance between the cost of housing and the ability of working people to pay for it are all around us.

They are the clerks at Safeway and Rays and Thriftway. They are teachers educating our kids. They are secretaries and receptionists who are the heart and soul of any great company. They are the service technicians and journeymen who work for the electric company, the gas company and the cable and dish company.

None of us would suggest that these categories of workers are anything but hard-working Oregonians and Americans. But even with overtime, the salaries they make won’t keep pace with housing prices that exceed the ability of workers at the median income to pay by a factor of 2-4 times.

Let’s be honest: there was a time when many people thought affordable housing meant drug-infested inner-city projects for welfare recipients. That stereotype doesn’t reflect the reality of the affordable housing movement today. And the stereotype certainly doesn’t capture the needs of hard-working and responsible men and women and families who lack the credit and the income to buy that which every American dreams about: a home of their own. That’s why we use the term “workforce housing”: to connect in the public’s mind the vital importance of housing as a core element of the state and local economic development package.

Instead of the “projects” of yesterday, today’s affordable housing programs invest in:

Working with financial institutions such as Bank of the Cascades to provide mortgage guarantees which allow ordinary Oregonians to buydown interest rates and downpayments in order to secure mortgages affordable to working class Oregonians.

Encouraging innovative development which provides tax incentives to non-traditional developers of residential housing such as commercial developers to utilize spaces such as the floors above ground-level retail to provide affordable workforce housing.

Working with local communities to secure donations of surplus public lands and federal funding used to purchase property for “land-banks,” as a hedge for affordable housing developers against the high cost of acquiring raw land in communities where prices are rapidly escalating and availability of raw land is shrinking.

Assisting local communities through tax incentives and direct grants to rehab deteriorating buildings into housing units which are priced for workforce and which bring new life to blighted downtowns.

Working with citizens on projects such as the use of Individual Development Accounts, which use tax-incented corporate matching funds to match dollar for dollar savings by low-income consumers and allow them to grow their own downpayments over time.

Working with employers to find creative ways to tailor creative “win-win” benefit packages that include an affordable housing components. Simple examples of such initiatives include setting up automatic payroll deduction to help secure on-time, every-time payment for financial institutions in exchange for preferential interest rates, and providing up-front assistance to employees through employer-paid rental deposits, which relieve the employee of the need to come up with large cash balances but are secured by the employer’s ability to recover any potential loss through the final paycheck. Such benefits not help workers but also help employers by reducing turnover and positioning employers as desirable and attractive places to work.

At the State Housing Council we are pleased to be undertaking these and other initiatives to promote the importance of thinking about workforce housing needs as one of the many parts of the economic development effort that sustains and fuels the health and vitality of this region.

The effort to bring new capital to the region and to ensure balance between the region’s workforce and its lifestyle and economy is ongoing. Housing Works efforts through this report are supportive of the efforts of local policymakers who are trying to craft packages which make the most sense for our communities

I would like to thank Housing Works for this report and to thank the Bank of the Cascades for having the vision to fund it.. The report points out the need, and I am confident that policymakers working in conjunction with the forces of the free market and private enterprise can find viable and creative solutions to rise to the challenge

Somebody once said that failure lies not in falling on the floor. It lies in continuing to lay there without trying to get up. With this report, the slippery floor beneath us is identified. The challenge is to determine how and how soon we will be up and on our way.

Of All The Things I Never Thought I Would Do…

2006-07-01T22:07:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
This colum was originally published in the Central Oregonian, July 2006

Selling Oregon Abroad

On June 24, while the rest of Prineville was enjoying Crooked River Round-Up festivities, I quietly left town. In the six days that followed, covered about 12,000 miles on two continents and three countries. The journey included four international legs and stops at six different airports.

I travelled as a member of the Oregon Governor’s Trade Mission To Korea and Japan. My partner over and back was Governor Ted Kulongoski. Other notable delegates included the State Treasurer, the Director of Oregon Economic Development, the Director of Oregon Agriculture, the Director of Oregon Tourism, the Executive Director of the Port of Portland and the State Treasurer. Roger Lee and Bud Prince of Central Oregon Economic Development. I was the only representative of Oregon counties in the delegation. The mayor of Springfield attended on behalf of Oregon cities.

I personally paid my expense for transportation, and most lodging and meals. I had several reasons for wanting to do this trip: first, I was pursuing an active lead that EDCO has been working for sometime with a major manufacturing company looking to expand its operations in this area. The company has already purchased a potential site in Prineville. Having the Governor along to endorse the project hand-in-glove with a top elected official helped seal the deal. Barring any glitches, we could see results of this trip as early as 2008.

My second goal was to support the effort to promote Oregon as a potential investment opportunity. Our location between California and Washington sometimes puts us at a disadvantage competitively. California boasts the 6th largest economy in the world, its governor is recognized in every country and on every continent and San Francisco and Los Angeles enjoy world renowned. Likewise, Washington, having as it does the headquarters of Boeing and Microsoft has “star power” around the globe and Bill Gates is recognizable anywhere. While Oregon companies like Nike, Intel, Columbia Sportswear and Adidas USA are name-recognizable, somehow the world doesn’t connect them with Oregon. Thus, if we want more of those types of companies to come to Oregon, we have to get out there and sell ourselves to the World. That was an important part of this trip.

A third and very important reason for my going was to blunt the “Portland” effect of this mission. It is easy to demonstrate that Portland is business friendly to an international clientele. But proving the business case for rural Oregon is a little harder. That’s where I was able to shine on this trip, because believe it or not, Prineville has a great story to tell. Although we don’t often think about it, Prineville’s economy is tightly tied to international markets.

Our largest employer, Les Schwab, brings an enormous number of containers through West Coast ports from Asian shores. (You can see them stacked up by the warehouses at the top of the hill.) Our two large secondary wood products plants are heavily dependent on important raw materials to produce finished goods for resale. Ochoco Lumber, headquartered here in Prineville, among other activities, manages operations in Lithuania involving complex multinational financial transactions. If you stop to think about it, we are living proof that global businesses can not only survive but can prosper in rural as well as urban Oregon. That was a key message it was my job to deliver on this trip.

To be honest, I was surprised to be asked to be part of Oregon’s official delegation. I guess I’ve grown accustomed to being overlooked in favor of Portland, Eugene, Bend or Medford. Perhaps the fact that I was even asked is a measure of the degree to which Prineville has captured the attention of the rest of the state as an up-and-coming community with good economic prospects. Maybe the invitation had something to do with good relations that I’ve gone to great pains to build with key state officials. Or maybe none of the rest of my County peers were willing to torture themselves with a physically grueling international trek. Whatever the reason, it was an honor for me to be a part of this effort to sell Oregon and particularly Central Oregon to two important trading partners.

The significance of Japan and Korea to Oregon’s economy is widely recognized. But consider, Japan invests $1.2 billion in Oregon annually and is this state’s largest trading partner. More than 10,000 Oregonians are employed by Japan-based companies doing business in Oregon. Korea is Oregon’s second largest trading partner, behind Canada. Oregon exports $1.3 billion in goods annually to Korea, of which the majority is high-tech products. Despite this impressive track record, there is clearly room for expanded presence, and the purpose of this trip was to capitalize on that opportunity.

Trade missions are important because Asian culture places a very high value on personal relationships. A face-to-face meeting with the chairman of an Asian company will do much to encourage future business development. Asian business leaders value personal connections as at least as important as more traditional factors in business decision-making such as tax structure or property costs. In addition, Asian culture places a high value on status. Thus, having the Governor along was critical to the mission’s success.

Regular readers of this column will know that the Governor and I don’t always see eye to eye on state issues. I reserve the right to disagree with him in the future, but I have nothing but praise for Ted Kulongoski’s performance on this trip.

Averaging more than five meetings each day, he sold Oregon with passion and conviction. I know. I was right there with him. Bone-weary, he gave two rousing speeches to rooms packed with the top business leadership of Seoul and Tokyo. He was a great “closer,” and he brought home several deals worth millions by the trip’s end. Through salesmanship and statesmanship, Ted K really brought it home for us this week.

And what did I do?

I spent one day with the Governor selling Central Oregon’s virtues to the Korean-based company mentioned earlier. The Governor and I sat side by side for two hours selling the chairman of a multi-national company worth billions based in 28 countries on the virtues of building his next plant in our region. The next day I flew inland Korea with three others to spend a day at the company’s factory and to meet the rest of the company leadership. This project is no pipe dream. The company has already purchased 25 acres not too far from Prineville, and I am confident that the very good meeting we had in Seoul will help push the project to conclusion.

The rest of my time was spent like all the delegation, promoting Oregon’s virtues. I talked about the Les Schwab story. I promoted the City of Prineville Railroad as a logistics manager to help international companies manage their regional freight needs. I promoted Redmond’s excellent air service with international connections as a business opportunity. I pushed investment in the region’s destination resorts. I preached the tourism agenda, especially with the underserved but English-proficient and nature-crazy Korean market. I discussed with one Tokyo bank president the needs of Oregon businesses for additional financial services, especially in the area of transactions involving international currency exchange and potential expansion of agricultural lending.

In short, I was an Oregon ambassador. I bowed a lot. I ate a lot of raw fish. I sacrificed my knife, spoon and fork for four days of chop sticks. I wore black suits and crisp white shirts for hours on end in some of the hottest muggiest weather I’ve ever encountered. I spent my own money to promote a state and a community in which I believe passionately.

This trip was never on my radar screen as one of the opportunities this job might provide. And I’m humbled and privileged that the Governor trusted me enough to allow me to represent counties around the state. I’m thankful to my regional colleagues for having the confidence that I would represent them well in a strange culture.

At the end of our trip, the Governor remarked to an assemblage of Japan’s 400 top business executives gathered in a Tokyo ballroom that trade missions often just set the stage for future returns. By contrast, this trip produced some immediate results, and I am confident that greater returns will be realized, both for Oregon and for Prineville, in days, months and years to come.

Meanwhile, I’m glad to be home, where the language is English and the food is beef. I’m wiser and more worldly than I was when I left, but I’m also as confident as ever that Oregon as God’s Country has no equal.

A Few Little Numbers Tell A Good Story

2006-06-01T21:53:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
This column originally appeared in the Central Oregonian in June 2006

Numbers Indicate An Economy On The Upswing

That’s the case with changes to Crook County’s economic structure in recent years. Employment, housing and construction data all point to renewed prosperity for our community in a region buffetted by economic hardship for more than a decade.

The numbers below are gathered from publicly available sources, mostly the U.S. Census, Oregon Labor Market Information System and U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department. Together, they tell a compelling story of a community which is definitely on the economic upswing.

* * * * *

Crook County Population, July 1, 2005..................................................................... 22,775
Rank of Crook County in Population among 36 Oregon counties................................. 24th
Prineville, Population, July 1, 2005.............................................................................. 9,080
Rank of Prineville in Population among 241 Oregon cities............................................ 51st

Crook County in square miles....................................................................................... 2,979
Density (population per square mile) of Crook County..................................................... 10
Entire state closest in size to Crook County.......................... Delaware (1,954 square miles)
Density (population per square mile) of Delaware.......................................................... 430

Rank of Crook County among 36 Oregon counties in unemployment.......................... 19th
Crook County unemployment rate, latest...................................................................... 6.1%
Crook County unemployment rate one year ago........................................................... 6.6%
Crook County unemployment rate five years ago......................................................... 8.2%
Crook County unemployment rate 10 years ago......................................................... 12.1%

Total Crook County Employers, latest............................................................................ 563
Total Crook County Employers one year ago.................................................................. 525
Total Crook County Employers five years ago ............................................................... 470
Total Crook County Employers 10 years ago.................................................................. 441
Percent increase in 10 years ........................................................................................... 28%

Average annual wage per employee, latest............................................................... $31,666
Average annual wage per employee one year ago.................................................... $30,779
Average annual wage per employee five years ago.................................................. $26,508
Average annual wage per employee 10 years ago.................................................... $23,030
Percent increase in average annual wage over 10 years............................................... 37.0%
U.S consumer price index increase over 10 years........................................................ 28.1%

Median Crook County Household Income 1999..................................................... $40,746
Median Crook County Household Income 2005 (HUD estimated)........................ $48,050
Percent change, Crook County.................................................................................... 17.9%
Percent change, United States (non-metro)................................................................. 15.8%

Commercial/Industrial Building permits issued, 2005....................................................... 59
Commercial/Industrial Building permits issued, 2000......................................................... 6
Percentage increase in 5 years........................................................................................ 33%

Residential building permits issued, 2005....................................................................... 267
Residential building permits issued, 2000....................................................................... 401
Percentage increase in 5 years........................................................................................ 50%

Assessed real market value of Crook County, 2005-06............................... $1,706,790,132
Assessed real market value of Crook County, 2000-2001........................... $1,037,527,994
Percentage increase in 5 years..................................................................................... 64.5%

Home ownership rate, 2000......................................................................................... 74.3%
Home ownership rate, 1990......................................................................................... 71.4%

Residents 5 and over who speak a language other than English in the home
Crook County................................................................................................................ 6.3%
Oregon......................................................................................................................... 12.1%
United States............................................................................................................... 17.9%

* * * * *

I’m always interested to hear from people what they “know” to be true. The facts sometimes tell a different story. When it comes to the economy of Crook County, there is definitely a story to be told, and the numbers seem to say that it’s one of which we can all be proud.

‘What If’ Tests Disaster Planning—And It Works!

2006-05-01T21:55:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
This article was published in the Central Oregonian of Prineville, Oregon, in May 2006

County Residents Can Have Confidence If Disaster Strikes

What if… ?

That’s the question that occupies the days and nights of one, not-so-well known unit of county government, the emergency management division of the office of the Crook County sheriff.

What if a rapid snow melt overtopped a dam ?

What if the bird flu virus mutates to allow human-to-human transmission ?

What if a wildfire forced the need for a mass evacuation of a large neighborhood ?

What if, indeed.

The last few weeks have been an opportunity to test just how well we in Crook County are prepared to address the frightening prospect of a ‘‘What If ’’ that becomes all too real.

All of us in local goverment recently have been keeping a nervous eye on water levels in the Ochoco Reservoir and to a lesser extent the Prineville Reservoir. If you don’t know why, chances are you have moved here since 1998. If you lived here in 1998, you remember full well what happed over Memorial Day that year.

A freak storm stalled over the Ochoco mountains, sending a tremendous rush of water down the mountains into Ochoco Lake. The reservoir, which was full for the upcoming irrigation season, overtopped. The resulting wall of water damaged about 500 homes near Ochoco Creek in Prineville. Local government and resources were quickly overwhelmed. Things were only slightly better after a Presidential disaster declaration made state and federal help available.

None of the events of 1998 have been forgotten in 2006 by those of us in local government who recently saw water levels starting to rise and rain continuing to fall. Thus, we all pretty much simultaneously contacted Russ Rhoden, the beleaguered head of the Ochoco Irrigation District, to find out what we should worry about.

Foruntately, we all found out that Russ, who was here for the previous flood, was as on top of the situation as any manager could be. With the District pouring water out of both reservoirs as fast as possible, there was little left to do to manage the water flow. That was the good news. The bad news was that despite the best efforts of the irrigation district, the water was still coming into the reservoirs about twice as fast as it was running out. At one point, we calculated that if the situation didn’t change, Ochoco Dam would overtop in about 15 days.

Time for Plan B.

Plan B is in the capable hands of an affable and experienced sergeant in the sheriff’s office, Russ Wright. Previously, Plan B, was managed by another very competent deputy who went on to experience other facets of law enforcement named Brandon Smith. Brandon, in turn, inherited a program built by Wayne Inman, a police chief retired to Prineville. These three since 2001 with the full backing and encouragement of the Crook County Court and Crook County sheriff have given us in this county an emergency mangement program unequalled in any other county east of the Cascades, including Deschutes County.

At least on paper it’s a good program. Now we were about to find out if the program would work in practice. And work it did.

Within hours of ascertaining that conditions for a possible flood seemed to be coalescing, the emergency management division started the wheels of emergency response turning at high speed:

An emergency declaration was readied for use at a moment’s notice requesting assistance from other state and federal agencies. Typed, ready to go and pre-signed, in the event of an actual emergency, it would only have had to be dated and faxed to be activated. That would have instantly started money and resources flowing into Crook County to meet emergenyc management needs.

The local health department, within a day, commandeered from every Central Oregon agency serving special-needs populations the names of individuals with special needs—people on home health or hospice and people with chronic health conditions—who might live in a floodpath. Contact information and evacuation routes were mapped and plans made to identify critical evacuations should they become necessary.

The Crook County School District was notified of possible flood conditions and asked to be prepared to cancel school if flood waters had continued to rise. The District was also tremendously helpful in assuring the county of the availability of its school bus fleet if a large-scale evacuation had become necessary.

The GIS department of the county (GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems and is the braintrust for computer-aided county mapping and technology) swung into action with a real-time test of the county’s recently developed and unique autodialer system. This program allows the county to notify nearly simultaneously by telephone residents of the entire county or portions of the county of a pending emergency. The test was a great success, with the autodialer atempting contact with 190 homes deemed to be in the floodpath. And that’s just in the 7 minutes it was allowed to run ! Of those attempted contacts, all but five turned out to be current numbers, and the autodialer connected with 78 percent of the homes it tried to reach (The autodialer obviously can’t work if you don’t pick up the phone and you don’t have an answering machine.) To make sure all phone lists are current, the GIS department followed up with a download from Qwest of updated phone numbers.

Emergency call lists were rapidly updated and staff put on high alert to provide 24-hour coverage and be available to respond immediately in the event of an emergency. Media contact lists were updated to ensure clear lines of communication with the public.

The City of Prineville was brought into the discussion and joined in enthusiastically. Not only did the police department demonstrate leadership in preparing to respond to a potential emergency, but the efforts of the public works department to drain the city’s lagoon system paid immediate dividents by increasing the storage capacity for stormwater and reducing the threat that raw sewage might spill into the Crooked River such as happened in 1998.

School District personnel helpfully offered to cancel school as needed in the event of a likely emergency and made the entire school bus fleet available as needed to assist in any large-scale evacuation.

In all, about 40 individuals from 20 agencies attended a pre-planning meeting to prepare for a potential flood. The County, City, Schools and the irrigation district were there, of course, as were emergency responders such as police, sheriff, state police, fire, ambulance and Red Cross volunteers. ODOT attended as did the Oregon National Guard. The ususal ‘‘turf ’’ battles weren’t anywhere to be found as agencies worked harmoniously to assign tasks to those most capable of carrying them out, regardless of uniform color, and to make contingency plans to effectively manage disaster.

In the end, it was all for nothing. Good water management by the Ochoco Irrigation District, a drop in temperatures and dry weather slowed the water release.

That was a relief for everyone, but I don’t regret the preparation. What I saw in 2006 was a marked contrast to 1998. While there was nothing good that came out of Sept. 11 and Katrina, they definitely sharpened local government’s edge in planning for emergency response. What I saw in early April was a local government fully prepared in the event of an actual emergency to make the most of the resources it has to mitigate the impact of potential disaster as much as possible.

We’ll never be perfect, and managing an actual disaster is as much about responding to the things you didn’t plan for as it is implenting the plans you have, but having seen the preliminary steps to a disaster kick in like clockwork in real time, I can say I’ve never been more proud of Prineville. I hope we never have to use what we’ve learned, but if we do, I’m confident we’re as ready as any local government our size out there.

Please Mr. Gates, Take Your Time

2006-04-01T22:02:00.000-08:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
This column originally appeared in the Central Oregonian of April 2006

Upgrading Software Is Stretching County Capacity And Patience

I read in the newspaper the other day that Microsoft has delayed the release of its new software operating system because of technical problems. Frankly, I’m relieved.

For those who aren’t technically savvy, the operating system is the “guts” of a computer. It makes all the other parts work together. Periodically, Microsoft releases new versions of operating systems to help our computers work more efficiently.

As we demand more and more of our computers, the old systems aren’t powerful enough to make the computer work efficiently. Software is a dynamic thing. Each time a new package is put on the computer, all sorts of unexpected things happen with the software which is already there. Microsoft continuously upgrades its systems with “repair kits” developed mostly by Microsoft, to fix the problems that Microsoft created. You have to use them or else the whole system quits will eventually lock up and quit working. Then you’ll get to buy them, like it or not.

Eventually, when Microsoft starts “repairing the repairs” it releases a brand-new operating system and forces everybody to buy it by not supporting the old system with any more repairs.

This is good for Bill Gates and Microsoft. This is not so good for Crook County and the rest of us who buy Bill Gates’ products.

This is on my mind this month because Crook County has spent a great deal of time lately dealing with computer issues. While there isn’t a particularly “political” dimension to this activity, it is important because the efficiency of our computers and the proficiency of our staff in using them determines how well we can serve the public. But because most of us aren’t 17 and weren’t born with a keyboard attached to our thumbs, we’re honestly dreading Mr. Gates’s new operating system and all the challenges it will bring.

For the past year, the county has been working through changeover of its major computer systems.

The Treasurer’s office is switching from one accounting/payroll package to another. This was not a voluntary decision. The company which has maintained our current program for 15-plus years is going out of business. Next time we call for repairs, there isn’t going to be anybody to answer the phone. Thus, we’re switching, which wouldn’t be so bad if the airplane didn’t have to keep flying while we swap out the engines!

The same company which supports the treasurer’s software also supports the tax and assessment software used by Crook County. Since assessing and collecting taxes is central to what we do at the county, the software used by the assessor and tax collector also has to be changed out. Unfortunately, you can’t just run down to BiMart and buy a new software program to calculate Oregon property taxes. Oregon’s 36 counties are the only potential users of that program, and that market is way to small to interest TurboTax or Bill Gates. Thus, the county has to invest in expensive and customized software packages to keep the tax system running.

You would think that given the importance of the taxing system to fund vital systems, the state’s lead tax agency, the Department of Revenue, would take the lead on helping counties find and fund a common and appropriate tax software package. For whatever reason, they don’t, and in any case, another department’s experience has shown that asking for state help can be a two-edged sword. Sometimes help is worse than just doing it yourself.

The clerk’s office is also in the middle of a massive changeover of its elections system as it uploads data to the Oregon Centralized Voter Registration System. The concept of this is simple. When completed, the Oregon secretary of state will maintain a database of voters statewide. That computer in turn will link to a federal database. As people vote, the fact that they have already voted will be noted (although who they voted for remains secret) and concerns about people voting twice will be eliminated.

Sounds good, but it is fraught with challenges. Because each state and each county make their own decisions about voting systems, voting machines and voting software, making all the pieces work together has been a challenge to say the least. Its one thing, to say, “We need a new system. Make it happen!” It’s quite another to actually put it together, especially considering that their is an election May 16, and the thing has to work. There have been a lot of late nights and a lot of overnights in Salem poured into the centralized voter registration system by the county clerk and her staff for the past six months. We’ll soon see if everything works as expected.

As if all this weren’t enough to worry about, the County Court last year launched a program to upgrade desktop computer systems and operating systems countywide. Using the proceeds of a one-time property sale, the county is replacing outdated computers and software that individual employees use daily to write reports, calculate budgets, accept payments, write checks, process email and all the other functions of a government. With new technology, some of our old machines won’t support new generations of software. In addition, the county currently has to maintain four different versions of individual pieces of software in order to match the software to the operating system. A single standard machine and standard operating system greatly reduces the complexity of maintaining the system and providing training. It also ensure that county staff are able to communicate efficiently with constituents, vendors and other local, state and federal agencies. There hasn’t been a general update of this type in the county for five years, so the time has come.

This is important, if incredibly boring work. It isn’t the stuff of the front page, but once completed, these upgrades will assist the county in remaining responsive to citizens, ensuring accuracy, getting work done, improving efficiency, holding down costs involved with hiring additional employees and contracting out work. All this sounds like the stuff you want your elected officials to worry about. And we are, and ever so slowly, with excruciatingly uninteresting conversations, we’re getting the job done throughout Crook County.

Meanwhile, here’s a message for Mr. Gates and Microsoft: Take your time releasing that new operating system. We’re plenty busy already.

Reaping What You Sow

2006-03-01T22:00:00.000-08:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
This column originally appeared in the Central Oregonian, March 2006

Everyone Benefit When Campaigns Keep It Positive

I don’t know about you, but I am finding it harder and harder of late to watch the news or read the newspaper, and I suspect that it is going to get worse as the biennial Primary season advances.

In this day and age of the 24-hour news cycle, the internet, “blogs” and other forms of media, we seem uncommonly addicted to the idea that the people who serve us are acting with some sort of hidden motive and a high level of incompetence. Cases in point:

“Exactly when did the vice president pull the trigger, AND WHY WEREN’T WE TOLD IMMEDIATELY!” the national press corps thundered in unison a few weeks ago. Hmmm, I wonder: Why wasn’t the first thought of the vice president who had just shot his friend, “What should I tell the press?”

“Exactly when did the director of FEMA know the levies would likely fail and when did he tell the Secretary of Homeland Security and when did he call the President, AND WHY WEREN’T WE TOLD IMMEDIATELY!, the fluffy- haired correspondents for cable news hollered loudly while the President tried to promote his international agenda in India and Pakistan two weeks ago. Let’s see. What’s more important: putting a major U.S. city back together, finding permanent lodging and jobs for a hundred thousand displaced citizens and trying to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons or figuring out who said what to whom when?

“Exactly when did the State of Oregon economist know that state tax revenue was going to exceed initial projections and trigger a giant tax refund, AND WHY WASN’T THE LEGISLATURE TOLD!” some state politicians want to know, in the wake of a $650 million underestimate of biennial revenue. I can’t help but think that the fact that the projection by its nature was a best-guess based on the information available 12 months ago, and the fact that state economists don’t have supernatural knowledge of things to come might have something to do with it.

“You didn’t agree with me on a particular decision, and I’M GOING TO RUN AGAINST YOU!” is the slogan I’ve heard touted by several local candidates and future candidates. While that is exactly the vision the founders envisioned for dealing with disagreement in our democratic sciety, I shudder to think how society would function if elected officials voted strictly based on popular opinion instead of making decisions based on combined respect for public opinion AND a thorough knowledge of relevant law and facts. If we are going to go that route, why not save the money we spend on elected officials and institutions and simply hire a few more pollsters?

There is, and there ought to be in government room for disagreement. Our system works best when options are laid on the table and debated in a healthy environment by worthy advocates. It is not only acceptable but also desirable for the national and local press corps, major political parties, elected bodies, elected officials and candidates and voters to question both the decisions made and the process for arriving at them. The issue is HOW to question decisions and processes, and in my view this is best accomplished when civility and rational thought characterize the discussion. This is the democracy other nations envy.

What I believe is unhealthy is the present environment where all disagreements about policy choices devolve into attacks upon character and the presumption of wrong-doing on someone’s part. If one thinks for just a moment, one only wonders how leaders in the past would have fared in our current times.

Could Franklin D. Roosevelt, coming off the Great Depression and faced with a military aggression unparalleled in history, have effectively led the Free World to victory in World War II faced with partisan sniping and a Congress and people which demonstrated a lack of national resolve and questioned the strategic, political and tactical decisions of his administration 24 hours a day?

Could Republican Governor Vic Atiyeh, faced with the worst recessionary conditions in Oregon history in the mid-1980s, have preserved services and government, if he had been reflexively labeled a “heartless politician” by one party and a “tax-and-spend liberal” by the other, bogging the system down and preventing achievement of the ultimate solution of simultaneously cutting budgets and implementing a temporary tax surcharge?

I don’t know what the current crop of candidates is going to do this season. The effort to “label” the opponent has already begun at the state level in the Governor’s race. It hasn’t filtered down to the local level yet, and I hope it doesn’t.

Somewhat naively, I continue to hope that we can figure out some way to “take the politics out of politics.” Oregonians as a whole have a reputation as a polite and friendly bunch, who shy away from controversy. It is one of the stereotypes and truths about this state that I most cherish and appreciate about living here.

As the primary season unfolds in months ahead, I hope that candidates, media and voters will consider that each one of us contributes to the environment in which we ultimately have to live. We can engage in the process and pursue the serious questions of the day in a civil, respectful and principled way, or we can continue to perpetuate the cynicism, mistrust and general culture of discontent. The result of that path will be to keep good candidates off the ballot, drive voters from the polls and cause the public to lose confidence in government at all levels.

Whichever direction we choose, of this I am certain: Ultimately, we reap what we sow. I for one hope for a successful and productive political season with a good harvest at the end.

Board and Committee Week Brings Out The Best

2006-01-01T22:18:00.000-08:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
This column originally appeared in the Central Oregonian of January 2006

Filling 520 Volunteer Positions Taxes Friendships and Patience

Traditionally, the week between Christmas and New Years is a very bad week to take a phone call from the county judge or a county commissioner . Fortunately, this is a little known and often forgotten fact. If everyone knew this fact (and knew the reason why) the business of county government might come to a sudden halt.

The significance of this time frame that this is traditionally the week when the county scrambles to find bodies to fill board and committee appointments, which are traditionally made at the first meeting in January.

At present, the Court is responsible for recruiting and filling 311 distinct positions, distributed across 34 separate commissions, boards and committees. Additionally, there are 73 local elected positions (excluding state and federal races) for which at least one candidate must be recruited to run. There are also 136 precinct committee positions which appear on the ballot which keep the Republican and Democratic party apparatus running (fortunately, the parties recruit these folks.)

If you add those numbers up that equals 520 positions which must be appointed at any given time. Based on the county’s new population statistics, that means just over 2 out of every 100 residents or just under 5 registered voters are tasked with the job of governing the rest of us.

And these numbers are for county-appointed boards only. They don’t include the volunteers needed by the city, the school district, the fire board and the parks district, nor do they include the volunteers who keep the churches, non-profits, service clubs, sports teams and other worthy causes running.

Such intense competition for bodies may be one reason why there tends to be a high rate of attrition among volunteers. The County Court made 47 appointments on January 4. Of those, 23 were reappointments and 24 were new appointments, so just slightly more than a majority turned over this year. That’s actually a good thing in my view because as our community changes, we need to stay vigilant about giving opportunities to hear fresh ideas.

The job of finding appointees is tricky. Although the county runs frequent advertisements recruiting potential new members, the response provides only a small number of the candidates (probably less than 5 percent.) The reest of the positions have to be filled by Court members, other board and committee members and county staff begging, pleading, cajoling, arm-twisting and calling in favors. It’s not a pretty side, but it gets the job done.

That’s what makes those phone calls during the last week of the year so dangerous: Take my call, and you may find yourself supervising mosquito spraying or voting on whether to put down vicious dogs or advising the county on how to recycle more garbage. They’re not the most glamorous jobs, but somebody somewhere created a board and somebody has to fill the resulting positions.

Whereever appointees land in service to the county, the tasks they assume are challenging.

Some of are more high profile than others. The planning commission may be the worst job in the county with the heated feelings that surround land use. Fair Board members are constantly challenged with how to ikeeping the fairgrounds running, given the size of grounds, number of buildings and interest groups involved in policymaking. I’ve pointed out before that those involved in library governance, among other chores, get to hear challenges from members of the public who want to ban certain authors or types of books from the collection.

The hardest positions to fill are undoubtedly those serving road, water and sanitary sewer districts. Because these boards serve such a small geographic area, the board members are often familiar with all the parties involved. The decisions and debates tend to get personal. It’s one thing to hear a plea from someone you’ve never met before and won’t likely meet again. It can be miserable saying “no” to one neighbor in order to say “yes” to another. These appointees in my view are the unsung heros of local government.

Finding the quantity of bodies needed to fill boards and commissions is only half the challenge the Court faces. Finding the right bodies is equally daunting. Boards made up entirely of old, white, Republican men who have been doing the same job foreever aren’t reflective of the community at large. A good board is broadly representative of the community it serves. That means the Court when making appointments must factor in the mix of men and women, must balance grandparents with parents of young children. We also try to mix up political and ideological viewpoints and try to ensure that minorities willing to serve are represented. Then there’s the intangible part of finding a person whose personality will fit with the rest of the board. In the end, the ultimate goal is to appoint the best qualified person, but there are a lot of factors that go into that determination.

Sometimes, the challenge of finding appointees who fit certain profiles mandated by the State becomes almost comical. How do you politely ask a potential nominee to the mental health advisory board if he or she or any member of his or her family has ever been mentally ill or addicted to gambling or substances, yet at least some of the spots on the Mental Health Advisory Board are required to be filled by such a candidate. (The answer is, delicately—VERY delicately.)

What I can report to you proudly is that once again this year the Court completed the appointment process on January 4 with an almost full slate of appointees. Out of 49 potential appointments, 47 nominees were identified and appointed. I’m deeply grateful to those who have stepped up and agreed to serve. For their efforts they will receive no pay and they may be subjected to intense public scrutiny. If all goes well, they will contribute something lasting to the betterment of the community.

Meanwhile, there’s still that 1 percent vacancy rate. Is anybody out there dying to contribute time to crafting a workforce agenda for Central Oregon? Call me. I’ve got a board for you!

The Spirit of the Season

2005-12-27T15:44:00.000-08:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
Published in the Central Oregonian, December 2005

The Need For Christmas Spirit Doesn't End December 31

For as long as I can remember, Crook County has taken time each holiday season to remember the less fortunate. This is the time of the year when the local food bank reports that its shelves, depleted in the fall, fill again. Names fly off community Christmas trees in the lobbies of public and semi-public buildings. Businesses, governments, churches, non-profits and individuals offer their own gifts of holiday cheer with brightly decorated lawns and storefronts.

Children are clothed, adults are fed, shut-ins receive visitors and for a season, the world is a brighter place. What’s not to love about Christmas, especially in our part of the world?

Interestingly, I can’t remember a time when we in this community didn’t mark the season with an extraordinary outpouring of generosity. I’ve often wondered what it is that makes this such a giving place.

One possibility is that many of our residents have at one time or another known hard times themselves. People who themselves have wondered where money for Christmas gifts will come from or how they will put a Christmas dinner on the table tend to have more empathy for those in a similar predicament.

And we’ve been there. After all, it wasn’t more than a few decades ago that residents much of Prineville knew all too well what it was to live with the boom and bust cycle of the timber industry which dominated the local economy. The fat wallet of one Christmas might well be followed by a leaner paycheck just a year later.

But even the vagaries of the life in the mills paled compared to the destitution an earlier generation felt. That group, who came to Prineville in significant numbers, was fleeing the twin scourge of the Dustbowl and the Depressions. Many of them literally arrived with nothing more than the possessions they could carry.

The world they came to was no stranger to hardship either. The pioneering families who came here from the mid 19th Century onward learned quickly what it meant to try to scrape a living by farming and ranching the desert and sagebrush plains. More than one of those hardy individuals spent many a cold winter wondering whether supplies laid in during summer’s heat would carry the family through winter.

Perhaps the memory of those struggles etched all too vividly in the minds of this community’s members what it means to struggle economically and to wonder where the next meal will come from. When people have experienced tough times themselves, they’re less likely to appreciate the struggles of others.

So it has always been in Prineville, and each holiday seems to be marked by an even more impressive outpouring of generosity, this year being no exception.

What I wonder is whether we can sustain this kind of spirit in years to come.

By all accounts, things are getting better around here. I covered in this space last month the amazing economic success this community is experiencing in the form of record low unemployment, rising property values and substantial growth in bank deposits. But that’s only part of the story. Social data also are showing change.

To its credit, Oregon shed its title of “hungriest” state in the nation last year, falling from first to eleventh-ranked among the 50 states. Crook County wasn’t immune to that trend as the percentage of families in our county receiving food stamps fell. Also on the decline was the percentage of households in Crook County living below the poverty level, while educational attainment continues to show improvement. Even some of our risk factors for children--low birthweights, in utero exposure to alcohol and tobacco, abuse and neglect statistics--are on the decline.

There is no doubt that some of this statistical change is attributable to a lot of good work by committed community members and public servants. An equally amount is attributable simply to the mathematics of in-migration of an older, more affluent, better educated population which “dilutes” the pool of individuals who are struggles, causing percentages to fall even while real numbers increase in some cases.

However you want to look at it, the problems of hunger, illness (physical and mental), underemployment, lack of shelter and even homelessness haven’t gone away completely and aren’t likely to do so soon. That’s why fostering the spirit of giving continues to be so important—not just at Christmas but every day of the year.

We have to be continually on guard. A rising tide doesn’t always lift all boats. Sometimes in the excitement, we simply to notice the boats which quietly slip unnoticed below the waves.

It’s all our jobs to make sure that doesn’t happen.

The Christmas season has always been the high point of this community’s engagement with the underprivileged and this year is no exception. Reports are that names are flying off the community tree. Donations are up. The Commission on Children and Families reports the most coordinated Christmas Campaign yet.

We can deservedly pat ourselves the back. Once again, we seem to have managed to keep at least some portion of Christmas focused on values other than making cash registers ring and maximizing the days off work. But the hard work is still ahead of us when the euphoria of the season fades, because poverty is a 365-day-a-year, 24/7 kind of thing, and it never, never takes a holiday .

We don’t have to pack up the Spirit of Christmas like a holiday decoration. In a perfect world, would proudly display it all year round. It’s a choice we make, and whether and how we make it defines the kind of community we are not just at Christmas, but the rest of the year as well.

Speech: Veterans Day Commemoration

2005-11-11T11:09:00.000-08:00

Remarks Prepared For Veteran’s Day Commemoration
By Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper
Nov. 11, 2005, Crook County High School Auditorium
(This speech was ultimately not delivered)

Lincoln's Letter To Mrs. Bixby Rings Relevant Still

On Nov. 21, 1864, the Civil War raged. Amidst the battle, President Abraham Lincoln was moved to write a letter. He wrote to one Lydia Bixby, a mother of sons, all fighting for the Union Cause:

The letter reads:

Dear Madam,--

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

On this Veterans Day, 2005, Lincoln’s words are strangely contemporary.

How “weak and fruitless” are any efforts on our part to convey the regret we feel for the loss of young life fighting on foreign soil for causes and ideals that transcend the understanding of many of us.

How grateful is the nation to those men and women for their commitment to defend freedom for people they have never met.

How we cherish the memory of loved ones lost which is all that remain to us.

How we hope that God will touch the grieving heart of loved ones left behind, for we know that none but God can ever hope to set things right again.

And how solemn is our pride in our nation, and in the men and women who serve it, that we stand still today as we have for 229 years as the world’s bastion for Freedom.

That love of Freedom sets our country apart from other regions of the world, those dominated by terrorists, by fanatics and by brutal dictators. That Freedom is itself a precious thing, and like all precious things, it provokes in others envy. And as with anything which is envied, there are those who would take away from us that which we most love.

As Lincoln so elegantly put it to Mrs. Bixby, to keep our freedom we are called upon to make sacrifices, which by definition, means giving up that which we are least willing to lose. The Bixby family of Massachusetts in 1864 was called upon to make such a sacrifice. The Lucas family of Oregon, and many others, received a similar summons in 2005.

I don’t know if it is possible to convey adequately the sorrow and regret we feel for these families for their sacrifice on Freedom’s Altar even while we also extend to them our heartfelt gratitude and appreciation. The pain and pride of expressed by Lincoln yesterday, we feel anew today.

Lincoln’s war engulfed a nation and caused a nation to re-examine its commitment to its founding principals The war we are fighting today is provoking similar soul-searching and passionate debate. History ultimately deemed Lincoln’s war as one which was worth the price of fighting. History has yet to render a final judgment on the present war. But there is a theme and a desire common to both wars:

God Bless the men and women who donned uniforms and fought for this country and what it stands for in times past. God Bless the men and women who wear the uniform of this nation today. God Bless this great nation with continued Freedom, and let me conclude as Lincoln so eloquently expressed in his second inaugural address: “Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this (the) mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.”

A Steady Trek In The Right Direction

2005-11-01T21:52:00.000-08:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
This column was originally published in the Central Oregonian, November 2005

Little Numbers Suggest Big Things Are Underway

What if you lived in a community where unemployment was sitting at the lowest level seen in 15 years?

What if you lived in a community where the value of your property experienced an increase of 50 percent in just three years?

What if you lived in a community where deposits into local banks jumped 25 percent in just 12 months?

What if you lived in Crook County, Oregon?

The economic news of the last few weeks has seldom been more positive. And don’t take my word for it.

Unemployment for the month of September was calculated at 5.8 percent, compared to an Oregon-wide average of 6.1 percent. The Oregon Employment Department, which publishes unemployment statistics on its website dating back to 1990, identifies that as an all-time low for the month of September. (The high was 9.5 percent in 1996 and the previous low was 5.9 percent in 1990.)

Property values? The Multiple Listing Service reporting in The Bulletin, compared median home prices between January and September of each year from 2001 through 2005. (The median is the point where half the sales were more and half the sales were less.) At the end of September 2005, the median price settled at $147,000—up 29.5 percent over the prior-year level. As recently as September 2002, the median was only $98,000, a change of 50 percent in just 36 months. No other community of Central Oregon experienced such a rapid run up of prices, yet the median price of a Crook County home is still well below that of other Central Oregon communities, which ought to give some comfort to those who fear that housing is at risk of becoming unaffordable.

As for bank deposits, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation tracks those. By looking at deposits on June 30 of each year, the FDIC is able to evaluate the health of the financial institutions on which the country and individual states and communities depend. In doing so, it also provides an annual snapshot of the economic health of our community, since most people and businesses presumably keep their money in banks and not the sock drawer! The FDIC data show that deposits into Crook County financial institutions as of June 30, 2005, were $210 million. That’s up from $167 million one year prior in 2004, and it represents a whopping 25.7 percent in a single year. By comparison, deposits statewide grew only 8.0 percent. Deposits in Deschutes County were up 17.6 percent, and deposits in Jefferson County were up 7. 8 percent.

Even poverty seems to have taken somewhat of a break in our community in the past year. The Oregon Department of Human Services annually issues a report on food stamp utilization at the county level. The current report, for the year 2004, reveals that an estimated 686 people eligible for food stamps did not receive assistance. That number is actually down from 2003, when an estimated 922 people did not receive assistance. The participation rate—the percentage of households eligible who actually participated—rose in 2004 to 80 percent from 73 percent just one year earlier. Combined, those numbers are a clear indication that the community is doing a better job of helping those who need help most.

I think statistics such as these are an indication that something is going our way—finally—in Crook County. Despite increasing numbers of people who require jobs, unemployment is falling. Despite the persistence of economic malaise at the national and state levels, property values and personal wealth are on the upswing locally. Notwithstanding government policies which allegedly leave the rich, richer and the poor, poorer, Crook County’s underprivileged population appears to be shrinking and is being better served today than in the past.

With the approach of Thanksgiving, I can’t help but think that we have much for which to be grateful in this county.

In celebrating success, I don’t mean to suggest we don’t have problems as well. Despite gains in the number of locally available employment options, we are still dangerously dependent on a handful of large employers, the departure of any one of which would be disastrous. Despite the relative prosperity of our community, our economic health is not divorced from that of the region, state and nation. A calamity that befalls one befalls all. While our numbers are going in the right direction, many of our neighbors still need help securing adequate shelter, adequate food and adequate employment.

I doubt there will ever come a day when these problems won’t exist. After all, they have been with societies and communities since the beginning of time. Perfection isn’t the goal, because it can’t be achieved. What is important is to make steady progress.

This year’s numbers suggest the residents of Crook County are doing just that.

Take Initiative: Think Before You Sign

2005-10-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
Published in the Central Oregonian, October 2006

What We Vote On Has A Lot To Do

With Whether You Sign That Initiative Petition

It is a ritual in Oregon politics as predictable as falling leaves, freezing nights and autumn rains: the arrival of a new batch of initiative petitions. This fall is no exception.

At this writing, a total of 81 potential initiatives have been filed with the office of the Oregon secretary of state. By comparison, 2004 saw a total of 143 initiatives filed and 2002 experienced 152.

Initiatives—the right of the people to take their legislative proposals directly to the ballot—are the mother’s milk of Oregon politics.

Oregon boasts the oldest initiative process in the country. It dates back to 1902. The initiative system does not exist in every state, even today, and in those states where it does exist it is sometimes called “The Oregon System” in honor of the state that founded it.

In May, the Oregon System gets another road test. Potential ballot titles are being reviewed now by the secretary of state and attorney general in preparation for sending them out with signature gatherers in an attempt to get enough signatures from qualified voters to place them on the ballot.

Not all will succeed, but some will certainly qualify. The outcome could shape the State for decades to come.

At this point, I think we can pretty confidently predict that there will be at least one measure and maybe more dealing with tax reform. If you want to choke off government revenues further as a means of limiting the size of government, you may have your chance. If you prefer a straightforward spending cap, that may also make the ballot. Not in a service-cutting mood? Maybe a measure to authorize additional development fees to be collected on behalf of schools will catch your interest.

Oregonians in Action, which successfully sponsored Measure 37 on the last ballot and upset the Oregon apple cart on the land use front, is betting you want more of the same. Several groups think you want to impose additional restrictions on the ability of the government to take private property (with compensation) for public purposes. Anti-abortion folks believe that restricting abortion is on the electorate’s mind, while those concerned about rising healthcare costs are convinced you’ll like a ballot measure that caps attorney’s fees in medical malpractice suits as one solution to the problem.

Many of the sponsors of these measures view the initiative process as a game—albeit a game with serious consequences for large segments of the State. Most backers of initiatives, if pressed, would claim that they are pursuing ballot measure solutions because they have been shut out of the mainstream process. (Players within “the system” counterclaim that the ideas presented by initiative promoters are too loony to deserve serious consideration. Time will tell.)

Personally, I have my doubts about the use of the initiative process. As a political junky I find it amusing, in the way reality TV is amusing: You can’t really believe that there are people who really think and act like that, but since you’re seeing it with your own eyes, you can’t entirely discount what you seeing.

There are, of course, rare exceptions to every rule, and I readily acknowledge that that the initiative process has had moments of greatness. The extension of the right to vote to women was one such moment. Establishment of the 8-hour work day was another. So was creation of the state’s workers compensation system, the establishment of compulsory education for children and voter initiatives to improve funding for institutions serving the deaf, the blind and the mentally ill.

I’ll even go so far as to say that the initiative process was an appropriate voter response to a couple of contemporary issues such as run-away property taxes and a general reining in the state’s out-of-control land-use system. Lawmakers had plenty of warning that both these issues were stirring and chose to do nothing long before the people took the issue into their own hands.

But those are the rare exceptions. The vast majority of initiatives are simply a waste of paper, ink and voter attention. Voters must concur since they’ve passed barely1 in 3 of the initatives and referenda forwarded to them. It seems Oregonians have little patience for mundane questions such as whether to issues bonds for various counties, how much to pay legislators, whether to reorganize state and local government and imposing regulations on fishing. By and large, these issues don’t shake state government and Oregon society to its foundations, and they are probably better left to the discretion of legislators.

That brings me to the present round of initiatives petitions, which are going to start circulating in the next few months. My hope is this: When confronted with a request to sign an initiative petition, by all means please do so if you think the subject at hand is a “front burner” issue of statewide importance that warrants a vote. But before you sign, please consider that every valid signature on an initiative petition is one step closer to a significant investment of state and local resources.

Your signature is worth something. So is your time as a voter, and so are the resources which will have to be directed toward finding out the answer to the ballot questions presented.

Before you put your name on the bottom line, make sure you are certain that getting the answer is worth the price of asking voters the question.

Katrina: Could It Happen Here?

2005-09-01T15:47:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
Published in the Central Oregonian, September 2005

Local Disaster Management Plans Go Beyond Hope of Federal Help

If you were in Prineville on May 31, 1998, you probably have some vivid memories.

Perhaps you recall Ochoco Creek jumping its banks and inundating the entirety of Ochoco Creek Park. Perhaps you remember rescuers trying to reach people trapped on the south side of the creek after their flatcar bridges washed away. Or perhaps you remember the swamp which developed along NW Fifth Street, where houses stood with water running into the doors and windows.

Do you remember the National Guard troops in our streets? What about the news trucks with their mounted satellite dishes and big booms? How about the checkpoint at the top of the grade to limit access to residents only?

Surely you haven’t forgotten the arrival of FEMA. Following a Presidential declaration of emergency, the agency took its own sweet time arriving. Disdainful of an offer to use the Ochoco Grade School, the agency set up shop in Redmond—because it had to have air conditioning…in Prineville…in June. Plus, FEMA insisted, the hotels in Prineville just wouldn’t cut it, lacking as they did at that time, adequate amenities, meaning pools, bars and attached restaurants.

I remember the entire episode. At the time, I was a member of the Prineville City Council. I, the rest of the Council and the then-County Court all watched with increasing frustration as FEMA bungled the relief and recovery effort. Within days it was clear to everyone in local government that FEMA didn’t know its own rules, that FEMA was so tied up in red tape and paperwork of its own making that most folks who had suffered catastrophe would be required to leave long before they could get any help from the federal government and that what FEMA does best is dictate rules to local governments about how to rebuild, long after the disaster that brought them around in the first place has ended.

With all this in mind, I watched two tragedies unfold in the Southeast last week. First, came Hurricane Katrina with devastating damage brought about by wind and flooding. Then came the second disaster: the arrival of federal aid--tardy, disorganized and inadequate. The party in power may have changed in Washington, D.C., but good old FEMA remains as incompetent under George Bush as it was under Bill Clinton.

When I took office in January 2001, I decided that I didn’t want my community to be at the mercy of FEMA the next time disaster comes along. My fellow commissioners and the rest of the county’s elected officials felt the same. The events of September 11, 2001, only strengthened our resolve to do what we could to increase our preparedness locally to handle whatever calamities might come our way.

Without a lot of fanfare, we began to invest in an upgraded emergency management program. We added a full-time staff person in the sheriff’s office to plan and coordinate emergency response, and we have recently begun training a second senior officer in emergency management. The budget for emergency management, which in 1999-2000 was just short of $5,000 today is more than $164,000 in General Fund plus another $232,000 in grant funding projected to be received this year.

We have engaged our partners in the emergency management field, with special emphasis on working with the medical community to test the limits of our local system. We have drilled our emergency responders to deal with simulated fire, flood, disease outbreak, dam breaks and terrorist attacks. We continue to find new and creative exercises each year.

We have new (expensive) satellite communications equipment, which is supposed to enable our emergency responders to continue communicating, even in the worst-case scenario. We worked with the fire department and Qwest to make sure the new fire halls in Powell Butte and Juniper Canyon could be commandeered and made ready on short notice to act as emergency response centers for the entire community. We are working with the National Guard to obtain space in the new armory to set up a back-up 911 center and multi-agency command post which would be operable in the event of an emergency. The effort to bring the Guard to Prineville was, in part, an effort to make sure we had a corps of emergency responders in our back yard.

In addition to stocking up on equipment and facilities, we have revamped our internal procedures to create clear guidelines for continuance of government, for allowing decisions to be made as rapidly as needed without getting bound up in red tape and for ensuring the availability of resources to deal with an emergency. We continue to work on our mutual aid agreements to ensure that we can call and receive help from other governments as soon as it becomes apparent we have a disaster too big for local folks to handle.

We even have a “reverse 9-1-1” system in place so that we can rapidly contact the entire county (or any portion of it) by telephone and provide a recorded message giving instructions about potential threats or evacuations.

I can say with confidence, that we are much better prepared in 2005 than we were in 1998 for whatever disaster comes our way.

Despite all that, we still have much to do. Katrina has taught us a few lessons. We need to revisit our program for evacuating special needs populations. We need to reconsider our plan for evacuating individuals who do not have access to private transportation. We need to consider our plan for managing a shelter of last resort so that we don’t experience the chaos of a Superdome. We probably need to work with our partners, the schools, to craft a plan for continuing the education of children in the aftermath of a large-scale displacement. There is always more work to be done, and each disaster provides new opportunities to consider the weaknesses in our own planning.

I don’t really know if we are “ready” to deal with the next catastrophe. I suspect we aren’t because true emergency management is about being prepared and being flexibly enough to respond to everything for which you didn’t plan. We’ll never really “know” if we’re ready until the moment we have to react, ready or not. That will be the true test, and the one I hope never comes.

But I know this: if we are called upon to act, we are miles ahead of where we were seven years ago. I’m not saying we won’t need the state or federal government’s help again at some point in the future, but even if they can’t get their act together, we’ll be prepared to do what we can right here at home.

A Modest Proposal For The Oregon Legislature

2005-08-01T22:05:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
This column was originally published in the Central Oregonian, August 2005

One Local Polititician's Ideas About How to Build A Better Legislature

The 74th General Assembly finally gaveled to conclusion last week at 6:20 a.m. on Friday morning. For the most part, this Legislature left shallow footprints in the sands of time, and it will be remembered more for what it didn’t do than what it accomplished.

One bill that did pass, however, does have the potential to bring about real change on the Oregon political landscape. Senate Bill 1084 created a 30-member commission to review all aspects of the Oregon’s legislative branch of government. The commission is supposed to study all aspects of how the legislature does (and does not) function, including timing, frequency and length of sessions, legislative procedures and the adequacy of legislative facilities and staffing.

There is a chance this bill could propose some fundamental and much needed reforms for the way we govern ourselves in Oregon.

Let me be candid and state that my expectations aren’t high. In many ways, I think the committee’s charge is predictive of what the commission will recommend. It will likely recommend annual sessions to replace the current sessions held only in odd-numbered years. It will probably recommend beefing up the legislative pay package. I think it will recommend professionalizing legislative staffing, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it recommend some major capital investment in the Capitol building itself to create space and upgrade technology.

Unfortunately, all those things qualify as “business as usual” as far as I’m concerned. What’s really needed—and where I doubt the commission or the legislature will go—if fundamental and far-reaching reform of the institution itself.

If I were a commissioner making recommendations on how to change the Legislature to make it more effective (And I won’t be since the commission has already been selected, with only one of 1 of the 30 commission members coming from east of the Cascades), I would make a few more radical suggestions. Tongue-in-cheek, you can call these ideas, A Modest Proposal.

The first thing I think the commission ought to remind the Legislature is that Constitutionally it only has one job: to balance the state’s budget. With that in mind, the Legislature ought to impose on itself a simple rule: Until a budget is passed, no other legislation will be allowed to move to floor for a vote.

Had this rule been in effect in 2005, the Legislature wouldn’t have been able to spend months taking floor votes on “important” issues such as which variety of pear should be designated the official state fruit? It couldn’t have spent floor time discussing whether Oregon should have a state fossil. It couldn’t have spent time arguing about the need for a Smokey the Bear commemorative Oregon license plate while the education budget languished. Only after passing a budget balancing resources between schools, human services and public safety would the legislature have been allowed to take votes on these issues, assuming they still wanted to spend time, on such issues once their main chore was accomplished.

Critics of this idea will immediately respond that they don’t have data on which to build a budget until well after session starts, and they shouldn’t start building budgets too early. So here’s another crazy idea the commission could recommend: Start the session later! A session that started in late spring and ran until fall and put major effort into getting the budget bills out in the first 90 days would not only spend its time on what’s important, it would also put legislators and Oregonians interested in the process on the road when the sun is shining and the pavement is dry. That alone might improve the mood in Salem, and it would certainly improve the ability of people in the eastern part of the state to participate in a meaningful way in state government.

Which brings me to my third idea, and the most radical suggestion I have for the commission. If it really wants to change the tone it Salem, it should re-examine one of the fundamental premises of Oregon government: how we allocate our legislators among ourselves.

There are, at present, 30 Oregon senators. They are elected based on population. As a result they are predominantly from the west side, with a heavy concentration in the Metro area. The House is elected the same way with the same resulting skew in representation. The districts on the westside are geographically compact. The individuals who represent them tend to know their neighborhoods and don’t spend half their campaign driving about. By contrast, the districts on the eastside are enormous. Our own Senate district covers all of Crook and Lake, parts of Kamath, Deschutes and parts of Jackson counties, and we’re not the biggest!

It doesn’t have to be this way. The U.S. Congress has a population-based House and a geographically based Senate with two senators from each state. Why not apply the same principle to Oregon and create a Senate that allocates one senator from each county for a total of 36? The additional six senators are a small price to pay for giving all Oregonians an equal voice in the legislative process, no matter where they live. In addition, because voters at the County level will have a better chance of knowing the individual they are voting for, the quality of representation will likely go up as well.

I have a few other ideas about things the Legislature ought to do differently. They don’t include an annual session. They don’t include a highly compensated legislature where professional politicians replace citizens with jobs and mortgages. And they don’t include a new office building in Salem. As a result, they probably haven’t got a prayer of ending up in the final report of the Senate Bill1084 Commission.

That’s too bad. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing the same way time after time and expecting a different result. The SB1084 commission can choose whether it wants to continue the insanity or propose measures to make a real difference in our state’s future.

On Dollars and Sense

2005-07-01T12:57:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
Published in the Central Oregonian, July 2005

County Fiscal Picture Comparatively Bright

The beginning of July is a high point in Crook County the Crook County calendar. With its advent, we mark the end of rainy June, the beginning of summer fun with Rodeo, rock hound powwow, 4th of July, horse races and county fair all in close succession. The campers among us enjoy the opportunity to head for the woods for some great camping in the Ochocos, while the gardeners revel in the long days and hot sunshine. It’s a great time to live in Central Oregon.

July is a great time for local government as well, not because of all the excitement but for more practical reasons: July 1 marks the start of a new fiscal year.

Governments live and die not on the traditional January to December calendar but on their fiscal years. For federal employees, that’s October to September. In state government, the fiscal period runs for 24 months, ending June of odd numbered years. For local governments, the fiscal year is annual, running from July to June.

Unlike July, June is awful. June is that month when budget managers avoid purchasing anything but the bare necessities in order to avoid the risk of overexpending their budgets. June is the period when department heads that have overspent are called on to answer for their profligate ways. And June is when all the funders who have sent you money for the year want reports about how you spent it. June is awful.

By contrast, July 1 dawns bright. The new budget year begins. The coffers, empty one day before, are suddenly full again. Instead of requesting more reports, the State asks where to send this year’s check.

In Crook County, this July is particularly nice, because once again we find ourselves in a financial position envied by other governments in the state.

Thanks to some basic rules followed for years by this County Court and its predecessors, Crook County begins this fiscal year having preserved a full range of services to its citizens, having respected its employees and their needs and with a demonstrated record of stewardship.

To give you a snapshot, Crook County unlike other local governments in Oregon didn’t have to begin this year with layoffs. We ended last year with more money than we began—a step which should give the county sufficient cash flow to operate without borrowing between July, when the fiscal year begins, and November, when tax revenues flow.

On a very happy note, the county begins this year with new collective bargaining agreements in place with its two labor unions. These agreements (between road department workers and sheriff’s deputies) were reached without acrimony and include provisions which provide reasonable wages and benefits to union employees in line with those the county is able to offer other employees. Most importantly, the contracts preserve the flexibility needed by the county to assign personnel in ways needed to meet the needs of residents. Our experience in this bargaining round (which is good for the next four years) is in marked contrast to the experience reported by our peers, most of whom seem to be headed for binding arbitration or strike.

Another marked difference between Crook County and our fellow local governments is the fact that benefits costs which are currently devouring many governments are relatively restrained here. For the most part, Crook County employees are not enrolled in the troubled statewide public employees retirement system. Instead, Crook County offers a 401k program to all full-time employees. Thus, we haven’t been tagged with the terrible costs associated with keeping PERS afloat. While our fellow counties and cities are racking up 15 to 40 percent increases in retirement costs, Crook County was able to hold its retirement cost increase to around 8 percent this year.

The story is the same with medical benefits costs. We have all heard the horror stories of health insurance rates increasing 20, 40 and even 100 percent. Crook County employees, who share the cost of the premium with the county, saw a modest rise of 5 percent with no changes in co-pays or deductibles. The difference? Intelligent and careful use by employees of the health insurance plan and an extensive educational campaign by the county to help employees understand that the rising cost of healthcare affects their long-term contribution and compensation.

Lastly, the fiscal picture is bright this year because Crook County has been carefully and prudently stewarding its resources for several years. We’ve tried to work smarter, not harder. We’ve resisted the urge to spend every last penny received in new revenue, and we’ve focused very hard on budgeting with one eye on the future and one eye on the past.
That hasn’t always been a popular. Budget deliberations can be unpleasant. Everybody has pressing needs and almost everyone has a constituency to support his or her request. The sheriff needs more deputies. The D.A. needs more prosecutors. The Courts want more jail beds. More planners and inspectors are needed to keep up with growth. Health agencies need more nurses. Vocal groups from the library, the fairgrounds and veterans groups say their programs need more money. They’re all right. The problem is, if everyone got what he or she needed, the treasury would quickly run dry. Thus, county commissioners must develop thick skins and the ability to say “no” or “find a grant,” no matter how worth the cause.

All this is not just to engage in self-congratulation. There’s a point here. At this writing, all of us in this state who pay attention to politics are watching with horror as lawmakers in Salem flounder their way through a session without any clear idea of where the financial ship is sailing. Alarmingly, the Salem lot are beginning to resemble the Washington, D.C., rabble who are madly borrowing something like $1.6 million every minute to keep the ship of state afloat.

Those folks could learn something from our county.

Budgeting here isn’t about partisan rewards. It’s more about common sense. The kind of rules we follow won’t make a political textbook, but they have the makings of a good personal finance class. We follow some simple rules. We don’t spend money we don’t have. We pay our savings accounts first and budget our discretionary expenses out of what’s left. We don’t buy luxuries when we can’t afford necessities. We recognize that Hope Is Not a Strategy (While we hope things will get better, we budget as if they won’t.) Finally, we follow the first rule of holes: If you’re in too deep, stop digging!

These rules have served us well in Crook County. They make the arrival of each July more enjoyable than the last July. As Salem and Washington lawmakers continue looking for answers, they might take a moment to take a lesson from us.

A Message For Graduates

2005-06-01T22:09:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
This column originally appeared in the Central Oregonian, June 2005

Reasons Why New Graduates Should Make Oregon Home

Saturday is graduation day for Crook County High School.

Members of the Class of 2005 will walk across the stage in front of proud parents, stepparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends and receive recognition for 12 years of academic effort and personal development. The high school’s beloved ag teacher, Mr. Papke, will deliver the commencement address. If all goes well, he will both inspire and educate the newly minted graduates

Unlike, Mr. Papke, I have never been asked to give a commencement address. I think I’m glad about that, because I think of all the addresses one could be asked to give, commencement speeches are the most frightening. To look these young people in the eye and tell them what awaits them in the Big Wide World without scaring them half to death is a delicate task.

The recently released Oregon Progress Board report for 2005 captured some of the improvements our state has made in the past two years. Among them: Oregon is creating jobs again--over 31,500 in 2004, alone. Those jobs are being distributed more evenly across the state and real wages (wages after taking inflation into account) are rising in both rural and urban areas. On the education front, third graders are becoming more proficient at math. More adults have high school and college degrees and more Oregonians are connected to the internet, giving them access to the outside world. Oregon advanced its standing among the states in terms of civic engagement. The Board pointed out that Oregonians can look with pride at the 2004 election, which produced near voter participation. Socially, the state also progressed, shedding its status as the “hungriest” state in the Union, moving from 50th to 43rd in terms of hunger status. Also one the decline were the state’s teen pregnancy rate and the use of tobacco by eighth graders.

Statistics like this are the sort of thing the Chamber of Commerce puts on its web site. What graduate wouldn’t want to start a life and raise a family in such a state?

But the report reveals a dark side as well. While wages were rising, per capita income fell—generally an indication that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. While third-grade math grade scores were trending up, third- and eighth-grade reading scores went the other direction. Rates of poverty and homelessness, while not declining, didn’t improve either, and home ownership and the affordability of housing worsened.

Viewed through that lens, maybe a new graduate might want to think about taking up residence just over the border in Washington.

But wait, the report addresses that too.

Evaluators compared the two states to each other. What they found was encouraging: With 81 total comparisons Oregon outshines Washington in 49 measures, or 60 percent of the time. Using 70 comparisons available for all 50 states, Oregon does better than the rest of the states about 65 percent of the time.

So, new graduates, the upshot of all of this data is this: you live in a state which is better than average and moving up in the ranks. You don’t—yet—live in the most livable state in the Union. And now that you’re 18, graduated and emancipated, you have some choices to make about how you will construct the rest of your life in response to that reality.

I hope you choose to stay in Oregon.

We’re a quirky little state. We love the great outdoors and we want to preserve large tracts of land for recreational purposes. But we also want natural-resource based industries to provide good jobs for our residents. Voters banned hunting cougars with dogs, and experienced a resulting explosion in cougar populations statewide, which we now want somebody to do something about. But we’ve also been clear that “something” isn’t going to include bringing back dogs. In survey after survey, large majorities of Oregonians have said they want both a continuation of the state’s land use planning system as well as governmental policies that favor private property-rights. The demand for expanded public services and a higher-quality education system is ever rising, but we definitely don’t want higher taxes, and we don’t like fees very much either.

Welcome to Oregon, the land of contradictions.

To my way of thinking, that’s just another part of what makes us interesting, and more importantly it speaks to the incredible idealistic streak which is at the core of our state’s heritage and the way we tackle problems.

See, in Oregon, we really do believe that we can have it all. We don’t much believe in trade-offs. We have plenty of trees. We should be able to have uninterrupted green space and sawmills! The amount of money collected by state and local governments increases by more than rate of inflation every biennium. Why can’t we maintain services and improve education? In an era of zero-down mortgages, why is home ownership a problem for any creditworthy Oregonian?

This is the state where the unthinkable used to be the common place. Oregon is the state that passed the first bottle bill. Oregon is the state that made 100 percent of its coastline publicly accessible. Oregon is the state that implemented a forest practices act that became the model for states everywhere, and Oregon has managed without a sales tax for nearly 150 years. We have always done the things the experts told us couldn’t be done.

So, graduates, when the experts say that we should wring our hands and worry about progress measures of various types, let’s stop and think where we are. This is Oregon. Things really do look different here, and we have a long history of solving the problems that the rest of the world deemed unsolvable.

I have every confidence we’re going to keep doing just that in the decades ahead. I hope you’ll stick around and help us.

Speech: Powell Butte Christian Church Dedication

2005-05-22T16:57:00.000-07:00

Remarks delivered at the dedication of the Powell Butte Christian Church
By Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper, May 22, 2005

The Most Magnificent Temple Lies Within

The old testament book of Ezekiel tells the story of the temple in Jerusalem. It gives detailed instructions for how the temple should be constructed and how the worshipers in the temple should conduct themselves. From the size of the altar to the layout of the gates to who may enter and what may be sacrificed, Ezekiel lays out a plan. The purpose of this plan, says the prophet, is to fill the house of the Lord with glory.

Ezekiel never saw his temple built. That task fell to Solomon, and his temple was destined to become one of the wonders of the ancient world.

But like Ezekiel, Solomon also failed to understand the true value of the temple. The temple‘s status did not derive from its architectural significance. Its status did not derive from its ability to gather all the faithful under one roof. Jesus made it clear when he drove the money changers and the sellers of cattle and pigeons that the temple only had value when it truly reflected the glory of God and when it did not stand as a monument to the glory of man.

The Powell Butte Christian Church embarks today on another chapter in its own glorious history--a history rich in service to its parishioners and its community. With the gift of this facility, church members will be more able than ever to reach out to the hungry, the needy, the helpless, the depressed, the downtrodden and anyone who is in need some small way of a touch of God’s grace.

That’s the real opportunity which this building offers.

We are at a point in our community where there is ever present need all around us. You may not know someone who is hungry, but you likely know someone who is hurting. You may not know someone who is gravely ill, but you likely know someone who is lonely.

The measure of the success of this building will not be how many faces crowd these pews every Sunday. The measure of the success will not be how long the asphalt holds up. The measure of the success of this building will be how many people walk in your doors seeking grace and love, and walk out of the building knowing they have found it.

The building itself is a gift to our county and to our community, and I congratulate you on a great achievement. But the greatest work is yet to come, and I and the community look forward to working with and watching fill this great space with the glory and grace of God who has given you this magnificent tool with which to work.

Speech: The Value of Volunteering

2005-05-13T16:49:00.000-07:00

Remarks Delivered At A Volunteer Recognition Event
By Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper At the
Crook County High School Auditorium, May 13, 2005

A wise man named Albert Einstein once said, "Not everything that counts can be counted. And not everything that can be counted, counts."

Think about that for a minute: how much time do we all spend every day counting things:

--counting monetary contributions, without counting the good those contributions have done;
--counting the contacts we have made, without counting the difference that resulted from those same contacts;
--counting on others, without realizing how many people are counting on each of us.

Einstein understood that some things simply don’t lend themselves to classification and a reduction to quantitative terms. Einstein would certainly have understood that volunteering is one of those things.

Why do people volunteer? It isn’t about the money;. it isn’t about prestige, and it certainly isn’t because there aren’t a thousand other things that a volunteer could be doing.

From time to time, governments and academic types try to reduce the value of volunteer time to economic terms. How many of you have ever filled out a grant application where you had to calculate the number of hours that would be donated and multiply by some arbitrary number—usually minimum wage—to calculate an “in kind contribution.” If you’re like me, you hate these forms, because there’s something wrong and something demeaning about attempting to reduce the contributions of ever precious volunteers to monetary terms.

To attempt to put a dollar figure on the value of volunteerism cheapens and undermines the basic concept. Volunteering adds richness and diversity to our lives. It helps us understand our neighbors better. It promotes civility in our interaction with others. It gives us a sense that the world is not such a hopeless place as long as people like us care enough to protect our corner of it.

Whether you serve on a church board, or you coach a youth sports team, or you help battered women or you simply stop to help a stranded motorist, your every spontaneous act of kindness helps bind your community together. Volunteering is helping, not hiring; giving, not taking; contributing, not counting.Each one of you is here today because you are doing something to make a difference, or because you have somehow been supportive of someone who is making a difference or because you know someone who has made a difference in your life. You understand that the difference a volunteer makes can’t be reduced to monetary terms. The volunteer counts, but his value defies counting.

It’s not rocket science, and you don’t have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. Add up the hours if you must but don’t put too much faith in them. Our friend Einstein once said of his favorite charity, The Red Cross, it is “a light in the darkness and it is the duty of all of us to see that it does not go out." That’s our challenge. That’s why each one of you is here, for each of you represents a tiny flickering candle, who collectively, in a way that defies computation or reduction to a cold formula, do your part each and every day to keep the darkness at bay. And for that, you truly deserve the thanks of a grateful community, a pat on the back and a good round of applause for yourselves. Won’t you join me in thanking yourselves for all YOU do.

Homecoming For A Former Governor

2005-05-01T22:20:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge

As Ex-Gov, Kitzhaber Gets It On Forest Management

I never agreed much with John Kitzhaber when he was governor of Oregon. I never thought the ex-governor “got it” between 1993 and 2000 as Prineville and other rural communities staggered beneath the implosion of our timber-based economy. I always thought the governor had a remarkable affinity for fish and trees to the exclusion of a concern for the people who relied on the fish and trees to make a living.

These days, John Kitzhaber is a distant memory. At the end of his term, he pronounced Oregon “ungovernable” and fled to a Colorado where he pursues his abiding passion for promoting a healthcare agenda.

So I reacted with quite a bit of surprise recently when someone sent me a copy of an address the former governor gave in April to the Society of American Foresters. The surprise wasn’t that he was giving speeches. It was that I actually agreed with a portion of his speech.

Here’s an excerpt of what John Kitzhaber is saying these days:

“The ongoing conflict surrounding natural resource management should concern us for a number of reasons. First, because of the values which are at stake: on the one hand, the majestic beauty and spirituality of our natural lands and the powerful landscapes which help define us as Westerners – and on the other hand, the jobs and important economic activity which depend on these same natural resources.

“We should also be concerned at a deeper and more fundamental level as well because this conflict and the acrimony which surrounds it are disrupting the important relationships which underlie strong, vital communities. People are labeled in this debate --labeled as environmentalists or ranchers or timber operators – labels which define only our differences and none of our common goals and aspirations.

“I believe that thriving, prospering communities depend on the ability and the willingness of the members of the community to recognize the fundamental interdependence between their economic, environmental and community needs; to see these needs as integrated parts of a larger whole, rather than as separate, competing entities.”

Kitzhaber goes on to talk about how current management policies have led to forests overstocked with stands of pine and fir, increased risk of catastrophic wildfire and unhealthy watersheds. He deplores the loss of rural economies and rural jobs in our state. Most of all, he expresses dismay over the ever-more acrimonious tone which polarizes different factions in the natural resources debate. Increasingly, the various parties involved have stopped taking time to listen to one another and resorted to the Courts to sort out their differences. That decision has led to a standoff that Kitzhaber says has resulted in “a management paradigm in which forest practices are shaped more by stakeholder politics than by sound science and balanced public policy.”

I would say that a few years away from Oregon have done our former governor some good. He appears to have regained the perspective which Oregonians on our side of the Cascades have been advocating since the debate first began over how best to manage our resources.

I have always been offended at the suggestion that residents of the eastern two-thirds of Oregon somehow lack an environmental ethic and simply want to be left alone to do what they want to the land. That doesn’t square with the values with which I was raised nor does it square with the attitudes that I’ve heard espoused by long-time residents and newcomers alike.

What I have always understood Oregonians on the dry side to want is a national and state policy on resource management that honors the need to balance resource capacity with the ability to make a living off the land. The key word in that sentence is “balance.” I don’t think any of us who are native to this region don’t travel through the forests with a sense of awe and privilege at the beautiful landscape that surrounds us. I don’t think any of us want to see that landscape destroyed. But all of us recognize that land isn’t static: to be productive, it must be managed. Good management includes the removal of smaller trees to make room for larger one. Good management can include a sensible grazing plan which enhances, not hurts, forage condition. Good management requires the ability to access the interior of the forest by building (gasp!) some roads! Good management even means the conservation of species by managing wildlife numbers so that the entire population doesn’t risk dying of disease and starvation.

I’m thrilled that Governor Kitzhaber is starting to see it our way. I hope that his newly enlighted views represent a “chink” in the armor of opposition to common sense and a chance to re-engage long time foes in a new dialogue about common sense approaches to resource health.

Apparently, you can take Oregonians out of Oregon, but you’ll never take the Oregon out of a true Oregonian. Welcome back to the ranks of the rest of us, John Kitzhaber.

How Much Do You Know About Your County?

2005-05-01T16:04:00.000-07:00

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
Published in the Powell Butte View, May 2005

Grab a pencil and test your knowledge of where our community fits in the world of statistical data. (Answer key with notes appears at the end of the article.)

Among the 36 counties of Oregon, where does Crook County rank for growth?
1st
2nd
15h

Among 3,140 counties in the nation, where did Crook County rank for growth in the period 2000-2004
91st
186th
749th

Where did Crook County rank in unemployment within Oregon counties, based on latest figures?
Highest
16th (of 36 counties)
Lowest

Which Central Oregon county consistently has the highest per capita income in the region?
Deschutes
Crook
Jefferson

Which unincorporated community (defined as a census tract) in Crook County outside Prineville has the largest population?
Powell Butte
Prineville Reservoir area
Mill Creek area

At $14.21 per thousand dollars of assessed value, the average property tax assessed in Crook County in 2003-04 was:
Higher than Deschutes and Jefferson Counties
Lower than Deschutes and Jefferson Counties
The same as Deschutes and Jefferson Counties

With 8.6 percent growth in 2003-04 (based on assessed real market value), real estate values in Crook County:
Outpaced all counties in Oregon
Outpaced all but five counties in Oregon
Was the lowest in Oregon

The largest employment segment in Crook County is:
Manufacturing
Trade, Transportation and Utilities
Government (federal state, local and schools)

The 2000 census of religion found that 27.4 percent of citizens in Crook County are affiliated with a church. Compared to Multnomah County that percentage is:
Slightly larger
Quite a bit smaller
About the same

Comparing land ownership patterns in Crook County Deschutes Counties, the percentage of land owned by the government in Crook County is
Quite a bit more
Quite a bit less
About the same

Anglo and Hispanic residents of Crook County represent the largest and second-largest ethnic communities. What identifiable ethic group is third?
African American
Native American
Asian

Commuters to another county make up what portion of the work force residing in Crook County?
Less than 10 percent
10-20 percent
More than 20 percent

What county in Oregon has the highest percentage of women-owned businesses?:
Multnomah
Crook
Deschutes

What percentage of Crook County residents live in a mobile home?
10.3
24.3
28.5

When asked their ancestry by the 2000 census, Crook County residents reported 23 distinct nationalities (not including those who reported “American” or “other”). What was the most commonly reported ancestry?
English
German
Irish

Answer key: In each case, the answer is “b”
Notes:

1 and 2) A Census press release in April identified Deschutes County as the fastest growing county in the nation and the 91st fastest growing county in the state. Although the numbers for Crook County (2nd fastest in the state and 186th fasted in the nation were available through the Census’ web site, media attention given did not follow.)
3) Baker, Columbia, Coos, Grant, Harney, Klamath, Lake, Linn, Malheur, Morrow, Sherman, Umatilla, Wallowa, Wasco and Wheeler all had higher unemployment rates in March 2005.
4) Based on latest available data (2003), average hourly wage in the three counties was: $29,354 per year ($14.11 per hour) in Crook County; $29,118 ($14.00) in Deschutes County and $26,954 ($12.96 per hour) in Jefferson County.
5) source: Census 2000
6) Based on county assessor reports to the Dept. of Revenue, the average property tax paid in Oregon counties based on assessed valuation ranged from a high of $17.05 per thousand in Morrow County to a low of $8.89 per thousand in Curry County. Crook County residents paid $14.21 per thousand, while the average Deschutes County resident paid $14.24 and the average Jefferson County resident paid $16.69.
7) Based on county assessor reports to the Dept. of Revenue. Counties reporting faster increase in value were Deschutes, Douglas, Josephine, Sherman and Washington.
11) 91.4 percent of Crook County residents self-identified to the census as being “white” but not of Hispanic or Latino origin. Persons of Hispanic or Latino origin accounted for 5.6 percent of the population. Native Americans made up 1.3 percent of the population, Asians, 0.4 percent, “other” categories, 5.2 percent. Less than half of one tenth of the population reported ethnicity as being African-American or Pacific Islander.
8) Trade, transportation and utilities, employing 1680 people, mostly with the Les Schwab corporation, is the most significant source of employment in Crook County. Manufacturing (mostly wood products) and Government are tied with 1220 employees each.
9) Hood River County leads the pack in Oregon in church affiliation, with 47.8 percent of its residents claiming some religious affiliation. It is followed closely by Multnomah County (45.7 percent) and Umatilla County (43.3). Crook County ranks 16th of 36 counties.
10) Just under 50 percent of the land in Crook County is publicly owned, while over 80 percent of the land in Deschutes County is publicly owned.
12) One in 5 Crook County residents commutes to another county to work, but Crook County does not have the highest commuting pattern in the region. That distinction belongs to Jefferson County where 1 in 4 residents commutes.
13) Statewide, the percentage of women-owned business is an average 27.6 percent. The only county other than Crook in which more than 30 percent of the businesses located there are women-owned was Douglas, 30.8 percent.
14) Statewide, 10.3 percent of residents live in mobile homes. In Deschutes County, the number is 13.8 percent and in Jefferson County it is 28.5 percent
15) The most commonly reported ancestry was German at 16.6 percent, followed by Irish, 11.3 percent and English, 11.2 percent