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News
Briefs: Situational Conflict
| Trees & Rainbows | Corrections/Clarifications
News: Hole
in the Guard -- Veteran enviro reporter Lance Robertson leaving.
Happening
People: Molly Elliott
Situational
Conflict
Private contracting of city legal
services may be phased out in stages in a plan being discussed by
the city's ad hoc Citizen Charter Review Committee. Committee members
June 28 talked about drafting a referendum that would establish a
city legal officer who would advise the City Council and city manager,
and supervise the transition to mostly in-house legal services. Details
are still to be hashed out before the proposal goes to the council.
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Slant
-- It seems a highly unlikely scenario, but a rumor is circulating
downtown that a group of German investors were seen meeting
with PeaceHealth CEO Alan Yordy at the up-scale Bacari last
week. Overheard was "we want to buy your hospital," but with
German accents, hey, they could have been talking about the
wild West, saying, "Ve vant to ride your horse, bitte." PeaceHealth
spokesman Brian Terrett did not return a phone call asking about
the meeting.
-- Freeman Holmer of the city's Citizen Charter
Review Committee is reportedly moving to Lake Oswego in early
August, leaving a vacancy on the powerful ad hoc panel. Will
the committee accept new nominations or pick from the original
stable of willing citizens who have already been interviewed?
We suggest the latter solution. One good choice would be Bob
O'Brien who got a thumbs-up at first, but was bumped off in
an effort to "balance" the committee.
-- "The Gang of 9" are running pro-growth political
cartoons in the R-G, claiming to be "Eugene's True Friends,"
but their anonymity makes their motives suspect. What are they
hiding? Do they have a financial interest in sprawl? Follow
the money.
Slant is a reinvention of "Ahead of the Curve"
and includes short opinion pieces and rumor-chasing notes compiled
by the EW staff. Heard any good rumors lately? Call the
editor at 484-0519.
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Committee member Ken Tollenaar has taken the lead
on this issue and said he has "come full circle" in his thinking.
He said he started off with an inclination to abolish contracted legal
services, then gained an appreciation for the quality and cost of
services provided by attorneys Harrang Long Gary Rudnick PC.
"The fact is, the city gets a good deal from a cost
standpoint," said Tollenaar. But citing a long list of pros and cons,
he concluded, "The time has come for us to have an in-house city attorney,
and I hope we can continue relying on Harrang Long for specialized
services. -- Let's get a start on this."
The committee has looked at conflicting opinions and
analyses regarding the cost difference between in-house and contracted
or "out-house" legal services. Consultant Natalie West has concluded
that bringing legal services in-house could save money while city
staff reports indicate possible higher costs from such a move.
State and federal agencies all use career staff attorneys,
noted Art Johnson, a former city attorney who was invited to the June
28 meeting. "Intuitively, I believe an in-house attorney would be
less expensive."
Johnson said he has no complaints about the quality
of services provided by Harrang Long, but in the long run, the city
would be better served by an in-house attorney "who's total professional
responsibility is to the city" and does not give "the appearance of
a conflict of interest."
The conflict of interest issue has been a leading
concern in efforts to amend the city charter to allow an in-house
attorney. Harrang Long represents both the city and major businesses
and industries in the city, such as Hynix (Hyundai) and The Register-Guard.
"Government exists not just by the law, but by the
confidence of people in the law," said Johnson.
Tollenaar wrote in his pro and con notes about the
issue: "Merely having multiple clients creates a 'situational' conflict
of interest even if the contract firm violates no legal or professional
standards."
Looking back over his years as city attorney under
City Manager Hugh McKinley, Johnson said he was "surprised how much
power I had. -- The city attorney has enormous power to influence
policy." Johnson said he was "increasingly asked to help make decisions
that were actually administrative rather than legal issues."
The committee is expected to continue discussion of
the issue at its next meeting at 7 pm July 26 at the McNutt Room at
City Hall. -- TJT
Trees & Rainbows
A well-respected Portland pollster
announced June 28 that the people of Oregon and Washington want to
stop logging old-growth on national forests.
Davis & Hibbitts Inc. has polled for clients including
the timber industry, newspapers, nonprofits and government agencies.
According to the latest effort -- sponsored by several regional
environmental groups including Eugene's Cascadia Wildlands Project
-- a whopping 75 percent of people in the region want to leave
ancient forests standing on public lands.
"This poll demonstrates that the public is way ahead
of policymakers on this issue," says James Johnston of the Eugene
group. "The poll shows that old growth's more popular than politicians,
and politicians better start paying attention to those numbers. I
mean, these are numbers you usually see for small children and rainbows."
Davis & Hibbitts crunched the numbers by state,
by party affiliation and by resource-dependence of counties --
basically the rural-urban split often thought to determine how people
view environmental issues. The poll found that none of those factors
made a huge difference in the outcome: Most people wanted public old
growth protected.
Seventy percent of Oregonians polled favored "protection
of old-growth forest from logging on national forest(s)," as did 78
percent of Washington residents. Eighty three percent of Democrats
polled supported protections, as did 63 percent of Republicans and
78 percent of Independents.
Perhaps the most striking finding was the strength
of support for old-growth protection in rural, resource-dependent
counties in the two states. (Lane County, which produces more timber
than any other in Oregon, was considered not to be "natural-resource
based" for the purposes of the poll.) The resource-based counties
supported protections by 67 percent, while the others favored them
by 79 percent.
The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4
percent. The poll contacted a random sample of 600 people, which pollster
Adam Davis says is standard for the industry. The sample size is too
small, however, to make county-by-county comparisons, so no individual
data are available for Lane County. -- OI
Corrections/Clarifications
-- A wrong date was published last
week for the Eugene Chilibration due to an editing error. The event
will take place July 28.
-- In last week's issue, the Freedom Festival, July
4th, was listed as being a free event due to incomplete information
received by EW. There was an entry fee at the gate.
Back to Top
Hole
in the Guard
Veteran
enviro reporter Lance Robertson leaving.
By
Orna Izakson
Eugene's daily newspaper has earned many
distinctions. For many years, it was the region's only paper with
a full-time timber reporter. Until July 10 it also can boast one of
the last two reporters at large Northwest news organizations who have
continuously covered forestry since before the spotted owl received
federal protection.
On June 27, Register-Guard environmental reporter
Lance Robertson began telling sources and colleagues that he would
be leaving the paper after 17 years to take a public relations position
at EWEB. He started at the R-G in 1984 as a copy editor, and
moved up to assistant city editor. He took over as timber reporter
in 1989, the year before the spotted owl was listed under the Endangered
Species Act, and stayed with the beat as it morphed into a broader
environmental beat.
For the past 30 months Robertson has also been the
lead negotiator for the Eugene Newspaper Guild as the union continues
trying to negotiate a contract with the R-G management. That
job took a toll on Robertson and his family (he's married with two
children, ages 6 and 10). During a June 22 interview, Robertson sounded
weary and dispirited about the lack of progress in the bargaining
process (see EW news items 6/28).
"The labor strife at the Guard has been going on for
two and a half years, and there's no question that is has taken something
of a toll on myself personally and my family," he says. "But I don't
want people to think I'm being forced out or that this is something
I don't want, because I made this decision on my own, I made it of
my own free will, and I'm excited about it."
"I easily could have said 'I don't want to be the
Guild's bargainer anymore' and continued to do my job as a reporter,"
he adds. "So the labor situation was a significant factor in my decision
to leave, but it wasn't the only factor."
Guild president and R-G features reporter Suzi
Prozanski says Robertson's departure is a "huge blow" to the union.
"He was a pillar of the bargaining team, and his wisdom and his experience
and his demeanor -- cool, calm, collected -- will be totally
missed."
"We're still trying to decide how we pick up the pieces
and go from here," she says. Several guild members have volunteered
to join the bargaining team, and it appears the representative from
the union's international group will lead the bargaining unless a
local replacement is found. Guild members are taking heart from the
imminent hiring of a part-time organizer, she adds.
Robertson's loss will be felt in the newsroom, too:
"He is one of the best environmental reporters, one of the best reporters
period in the state," Prozanski says. "One of the younger reporters
told me that Lance is seen as a father figure in the newsroom."
Robertson gets high praise from many colleagues as
well as the people he has covered over the years.
"He's certainly been a journalist of the highest caliber,"
says Patti Rodgers, a spokeswoman for the Willamette National Forest.
"I personally will miss the interactions that we've had over the years.
I think while there's no question in my mind that this is a wonderful
move for him, it will leave a real gap in quality journalism in this
town."
Environmental activist Tim Ream says Robertson's departure
will be a loss for forest activists and the community.
"I don't think there was anybody anywhere in the area
-- and probably in the state -- that understood federal
forest issues better than he did and was willing to report them as
fairly as he did," Ream says. In the case of the timber salvage sale
proposed after an arson at Warner Creek, he adds, Robertson "understood
the issue at a depth that I felt only the activists themselves understood."
When Robertson leaves, Oregon and Washington together
will be left with possibly only one reporter for a major news outlet
who remembers earlier days: Jeff Barnard, who has covered environment
and other issues for The Associated Press in Grants Pass since 1983.
Others have quit, moved on or been reassigned.
Several people who declined to comment on the record
said that shifting reporters to different jobs or different subjects
helps fight burnout and can outweigh the negative effects of the loss
of background. New reporters to the beat can have more enthusiasm
and are less likely to be captured by a particular viewpoint, they
say.
But Kathie Durbin, who covered forestry at The
Oregonian for many years, points out that institutional memory
like Robertson's is critical, if not in the reporter then in the editors.
"It's really important at the major newspaper in the
Northwest" to have staffers "who still remember what it was like before
the spotted owl, before the court injunction, when there were no brakes
on logging in the Northwest," she says. "It's just a different world
now." Robertson's departure is a loss, she adds, to all the R-G's
readers. "It's hard to think of a community that cares more about
environmental issues than Eugene-Springfield."
R-G staffers learned during a June 29 staff
meeting that a current hiring freeze will extend to Robertson's position
as well. Environmental coverage will probably be divided among the
remaining staffers.
Although Robertson says he has great confidence in
his fellow reporters, he believes divvying up the beat will lessen
coverage.
"If you treat it as something that can just be divided
up, you're going to have fairly inconsistent coverage," he says.
Back to Top
 Molly
Elliott
A competitive swimmer at Springfield High
School in the '60s, Molly Elliott taught water skills at the YMCA
as a UO senior. "It was my first chance to work with kids with severe
disabilities," she says. "I was hooked." Elliott postponed graduation
to take a few special education classes. "I did a practicum at Pearl
Buck Center," she says. "They offered me a job -- I did that
for seven years." For the past 20 years, Elliott has worked as a supervisor
in the city of Eugene's specialized recreation program, located in
the Hilyard Community Center. "Mostly we work with young adults, 20
to 30," she says. "This is a place where people can be safe, learn
new skills, and experience joy in themselves and each other." The
center offers a year-round slate of classes and outings, plus six
different summer camps. "Molly is great at working creatively with
each individual," says mom Stephanie Niedermeyer, "to enhance the
quality of their life." Visit the Monkey Face Gallery at 44 W Broadway
during this week's First Friday Art Walk to see artwork from the center's
newest program, Art Careers. -- Paul Neevel
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