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News
Briefs: Tax reform Killed
| Bearing Arms | Ethically
Challenged | Nobody Out |
News:
Citizen Marbet: Veteran activist leads charge for campaign
finance reform in Oregon.
News:
Vole Zones: Locating red tree vole nests helps save old forests.
News:
High Hopes: Richard Alevizos runs on optimism.
Happening
People: Will Klausmeier.
TAX
REFORM KILLED
The Eugene City Council voted June 24 to
reject local tax reform. The council voted 5-3 to defeat a motion
to further study measures to replace local property taxes with progressive
income and/or business taxes.
Mayor Jim Torrey said he was "adamantly opposed" to
the proposed tax on business gross receipts and opposed any new taxes
during the current recession. "A tax is a tax is a tax," Torrey said.
But not all taxes affect the rich and poor alike.
Property taxes hit the poor comparatively harder than the rich. That's
because for average families, a home represents the largest share
of total wealth. Whereas at high-income levels, homes are only a small
share of total wealth, according to the Center for Tax Justice (CTJ).
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Slant
Ç Looking ahead at city politics, the West Eugene Parkway
council vote is likely July 8. Will it be another one of those
4-4 splits with Torrey breaking the tie? We need a mayor who
grasps the hidden costs of sprawl. Charter Review Committee
recommendations are coming before the council and are likely
to get tweaked, maybe even twisted. The council action this
week on conflicts of interest appears to be a step backward
at first glance. Ahead are debates on a city auditor position,
bringing legal services in-house, and Torrey is likely to drag
out his tired old charter pets such as citywide elections and
line-item vetoes. Also coming up are revisions to the Land Use
Code Update (maybe hiring a temp planner to help move things
along), downtown parking (let's rip out those meters!) and a
living wage ordinance for city contractors. While we're at it,
let's have a council discussion about getting a new medical
center downtown!
Ç It's great weather for gathering signatures. A July 5 deadline
is approaching for organizers to garner enough valid names to
get their favorite initiatives on the November ballot. Several
of these Oregon initiatives have grabbed our attention and deserve
support, most notably campaign finance reform and single-payer
health insurance.
It's embarrassing to think that Oregon is one of the few states
that have no limits on campaign contributions to any state or
local race. Campaign spending has gotten out of hand, corporations
are dominating Oregon politics and we need to fix it.
Another big problem solver is The Oregon Comprehensive Health
Care Finance Act 2002. This well-crafted measure would cut both
the high price of health care and the scandalous gap in access
to health care. A staggering number of Oregonians can't afford
regular medical and dental check-ups and end up in hospital
ERs when they get sick. Has anyone calculated the savings to
Oregon schools if the cost of teacher health insurance is reduced?
It's likely millions for District 4J.
SLANT includes
short opinion pieces and rumor-chasing notes compiled by the EW
staff. Heard any good rumors lately? Contact Ted Taylor at 484-0519,
editor@eugeneweekly.com
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In Oregon, CTJ estimated in a 1996 report, the poorest
20 percent of households (income less than $25,000) pay about 6.9
percent of their family income to property taxes and about 2.6 percent
to state income taxes. The wealthiest 1 percent of households ($277,000
or more) pay 2.3 percent of family income to property taxes and 4.4
percent to income taxes.
The local tax system also favors wealthy business
owners and investors. Twenty years ago, businesses and households
in Oregon each shouldered about 50 percent of the state's tax burden,
according to a 1997 Oregon Public Employees Union study. But now,
after years of property tax cuts that favored businesses and other
tax breaks, the burden has shifted and businesses pay only about 33
percent of the tax burden. In the nation, Oregon ranks 43rd in the
share of taxes paid by businesses but fifth in the share paid by individuals.
Councilors David Kelly, Bonny Bettman and Betty Taylor
voted to continue pursuing tax reform. Councilors Pat Farr, Nancy
Nathanson, Gary Pape, Scott Meisner and Gary Rayor voted against tax
reform.
Reformers have called for a progressive overhaul of
the city's tax system for years. In 1997, then councilor Tim Laue
proposed a progressive tax on incomes over $100,000 and/or a tax on
corporate revenues. Laue said the city's current dependence on property
taxes unfairly burden poor families on fixed incomes. "That's why
the voters voted for Measure 5 and Measure 47," he said.
The current council now appears to be headed towards
making local taxes even more unfair to the poor. A transportation
fee and local gas tax now under consideration to repair roads will
charge the same amount to poor and wealthy residents, regardless of
ability to pay. — Alan Pittman
BEARING
ARMS
The Second Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution reads, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to
the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and
bear arms, shall not be infringed."
For the past 40 years, the U.S. Department of Justice
has held that the right to bear arms applies to well regulated militias
and not to individuals. That interpretation has helped make laws restricting
gun ownership by convicted felons, concealed weapons and other public
safety measures possible.
But last month, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft
sided with the National Rifle Association and officially changed the
government position on the 2nd Amendment, arguing that it "broadly
protects the rights of individuals" to bear arms.
The head of Oregon's well regulated militia, Major
Gen. Alexander Burgin of the Oregon National Guard, isn't too keen
about the change. "I think it's best left in the hands of a well regulated
militia than opening it up and having every Tom, Dick and Harry carrying
a weapon," Burgin said to the May 11 awards banquet of the Society
of Professional Journalists in Salem.
Burgin, who has almost 40 years of military experience,
says bearing arms is serious business. Ninety-eight percent of people
"don't understand the implication of taking someone's life," he says.
"It will affect you for the rest of your life." — Alan Pittman
ETHICALLY
CHALLENGED
The Eugene City Council voted June 24 to
send to the voters in November a proposed charter amendment that would
weaken council ethics rules.
The City Charter amendment would allow councilors
with a moneyed interest in city contracts to serve on the council.
It could also allow councilors to debate and vote on issues in which
they had a moneyed interest. The council voted 6-2 for the weakened
ethics provision. The two opposed preferred an even weaker ethics
standard.
The current City Charter requires: "No councilor may
be pecuniarily interested in any contract the expenses of which are
to be paid by the city or vote upon any subject in which pecuniarily
interested."
Webster's Dictionary defines a "pecuniary"
interest as one "of, consisting of, or pertaining to money."
The change proposed for referral to the voters would
strike the above conflicts of interest section from the charter. Replacement
language would require the disclosure of any "potential or actual
conflict of interest" and prohibit councilors from debating or voting
on matters in which they have an "actual" conflict of interest.
The proposed charter amendment does not define the
difference between "potential" and "actual"
conflicts.
In the past, the city and the state have defined "actual"
conflicts to include only instances of direct and blatant ethics violations
or graft. For example, in 1997 members of Citizens for Public Accountability
filed a complaint with the state Government Standards and Practices
Commission after Mayor Jim Torrey made a $215,000 profit on a land
sale near the controversial Hynix plant. The commission dismissed
the complaint arguing that since others also profited from escalating
real estate values near Hynix, Torrey did not have a conflict of interest
that would have prohibited him from voting on issues relating to the
new plant.
The Eugene city attorney firm of Harrang Long Gary
Rudnick PC represents both the city of Eugene and Hynix and other
businesses with interests adverse to the city. But the firm and city
manager have argued that this arrangement does not represent an actual
conflict of interest.
Even in the event of a blatant "actual" conflict of
interest, the proposed charter changes allow a councilor to be removed
only by a majority vote of the council and only if the council determines
the ethics violation was "intentional," a difficult legal standard.
— Alan Pittman
NOBODY
OUT
More than 82,000 signatures have been collected
so far to put a single-payer health care insurance initiative on the
November ballot. A press conference was planned for Thursday, June
27 in Salem to announce the final signature drive. Backers hope to
turn in 90,000 signatures July 5 in order to qualify for the ballot
with 67,000 valid signatures.
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Web
Sitings
Road to Yucca Mountain
www.mapscience.org
Type in your address and a map pops up
showing where you live and how close you will be to nuclear
waste transportation by rail and freeway if Yucca Mountain is
approved as a national dump. Look out Eugene, the railroad runs
through the middle of town.
Israeli Women for Peace
www.coalitionofwomen4peace.org
One of Kate Rogers Gessert's favorite
sites by Israeli women's peace groups. Go to Articles, especially
those by Gila Svirsky.
Key Indicators
www.populationaction.org/
A new interactive online database of key
natural resource and population indicators can be found by going
to Resources/Publications, then scroll to People in the Balance.
Blasting Enviros
www.envirotruth.org
The right-wing National Center for Public
Policy Research has a new website to attack the environmentalist
"jihad" against corporations. NCPPR formed to support the Contras
in Nicaragua, now lobbies for the tobacco industry.
More
Links:
WebSitings
Archive
WebSitings is a list of useful and sometimes
quirky web sites. Care to contribute to the list? Send suggested
sites and a short description to editor@eugeneweekly.com
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The motto of the grassroots group sponsoring the Oregon
initiative is "Everybody in — nobody out." If the initiative
makes it onto the ballot and passes voter approval, Oregonians will
be covered for health care regardless of income.
The Year 2000 Oregon Population Survey estimates 423,000
Oregonians are not insured and not eligible for the Oregon Health
Plan. That number is up from nearly 330,000 in 1998. Most of the uninsured
live in working poor households. In 1998, 66,000 were children, in
the year 2002 that number has climbed to nearly 70,000. Many of those
working are still without health insurance and other benefits.
"This is a truly grassroots effort," says organizer
Ellen O'Shea. "Health Care for All-Oregon has brought together coalitions
who normally do not work together. The conservatives, the left, the
working poor, social workers, advocates for elderly, church organizations,
unions and advocates of healthcare choice have hammered out the details
of how universal healthcare will come to Oregon."
The initiative would create a single paying agency
to finance medically necessary health care for all Oregon residents,
with no exclusions due to preexisting conditions, no deductibles or
co-payments. The program would be paid for by payroll and progressive
income taxes.
O'Shea says she expects heavy resistance from the
healthcare industry if the initiative makes
it on the ballot.
For more information or to help with signature gathering,
visit www.healthcareforalloregon.org/ or e-mail elleno@peak.org
— Ted Taylor
Back to Top
Citizen
Marbet
Veteran
activist leads charge for campaign finance
reform in Oregon.
By Hope Marston
The Columbia River valley opens wide and green. Lush
trees and the tumbling blue river must be two reasons the Kalama people
chose this as their home. The valley's beauty is stunning relief from
the thudding gray monotony of Interstate 5 north. Only one structure
blights the river valley view, a concrete tower in an hourglass shape:
the de-commissioned Trojan nuclear plant, originally built on an ancient
Kalama burial ground.
Trojan operated in Oregon from the early 1970s until
1993 for less than half its 40-year design lifetime. It generated
25 percent of Portland General Electric's (PGE's) power, until PGE's
board of directors closed the facility citing leaky tubes and diminishing
monetary returns. What PGE has never admitted, however, was the influence
of a barrel-chested citizen activist with a full graying beard named
Lloyd Marbet.
Marbet has been called a mountain man, a visionary,
a misguided liberal, a maverick, a hippie, tree-hugger, self-taught
scientist, and a longhaired warrior. Green Party 2000 presidential
candidate Ralph Nader called Marbet "a towering public citizen who
makes democracy work in Oregon." The Dalai Lama named Marbet one of
51 "unsung heroes of compassion" in 2001. Perhaps all of these are
accurate descriptions of this activist who has spent his adult life
"on a long journey of trying to understand what was going on and how
to possibly try to turn it around."
This year, Marbet is seeking to turn around the way
political campaigns are financed in Oregon, by attempting to place
an initiative on Oregon's ballot that would eliminate corporate contributions
and limit individual donations to elections. Once again he faces the
possibility of harsh defeat, or a slim chance of success.
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LLOYD
MARBET PITCHES CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM AT THE UO PUBLIC INTEREST
ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CONFERENCE THIS SPRING.
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Oregon is one of only six states with no laws limiting
political contributions. In 1994, Oregon voters put Measure 9, campaign
finance reform, on the ballot, and nearly 80 percent voted for it.
Campaign spending in 1996 decreased substantially. But the courts
threw out many reforms nationwide, including Oregon's. In 1997, Oregon's
State Supreme Court declared Measure 9 unconstitutional, ruling it
violated First Amendment rights, since political contributions are
considered a form of speech. In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld
a Missouri law limiting contributions, ruling the state correctly
attempted to curb influence peddling, which "tended to undermine citizens'
confidence in the integrity of government."
This time, petitioners are taking no chances having
their initiative declared unconstitutional. If Petition 43 passes,
instead of becoming law, it will amend Oregon's Constitution.
Petition 43 seeks to ban all corporate contributions
to political campaigns and limit individual contributions. For statewide
office, a person could donate no more than $1,000; $300 for an Oregon
Senate seat; $200 for the Oregon House; and $100 for candidates for
all other public offices. No person could contribute more than $10,000
to candidates in one year.
Grassroots non-profit organizations (GRNOs) could
make contributions provided they keep a separate account and 80 percent
of the group's donations are $200 or less. Marbet believes the GRNO
provision does not necessarily exclude corporate sponsors; it just
changes how they can contribute. It also enables citizens to enforce
the law themselves by bringing a civil action, rather than waiting
for the slow wheels of government to grind during a fast-paced election
cycle.
Marbet has been told that collecting more than 89,000
signatures by July 5 "can't be done," but this isn't the first time
he's heard that one. When he took on the Trojan plant in the late
'70s as "just a guy with a year of college," Marbet was also told
he didn't have a chance. And for many years, it appeared he didn't.
Nowhere
to Run
Marbet's efforts to shut down Trojan
began after he read a book called The Perils of the Peaceful Atom,
written in 1970 by Richard Curtis and Elizabeth Hogan. He was in his
kitchen, reading a chapter that horrified him, and turned to his pregnant
partner. "I remember looking up from that book and saying, 'Diane,
if they build the Trojan plant, I think we ought to go to Canada.'
And I turned the chapter, and the title of the seventh chapter was
'Don't Bother Running.' It literally shocked me. And at that point
for the first time in my life, I just suddenly realized there was
not going to be a way to get away from the destruction on our environment,
and I realized I was going to have to do something about this."
Elaine Kelley, now a Catholic nun but then a Greenpeace
activist, remembers meeting Marbet for the first time at an anti-nuclear
meeting in 1978. "Lloyd was a very young idealistic and angry young
man in those days," she says warmly. "He got up and said, 'Now let's
all of us go home and collect our garbage and take it to PGE's front
doorstep and leave it there.' Because he was really angry about the
waste issue. He was saying it tongue in cheek, but he was saying that's
basically what they're doing to us. I was really impressed that he
would say something like that."
Over the course of the next many years, Marbet, Kelley
and others worked to drive nuclear power from Oregon, testifying before
licensing meetings for the Pebble Springs nuclear facility. The plant
was never built.
Portland activist and attorney Greg Kafoury recalled
some of those early days in a 1998 speech at Willamette University's
Law School, "Lloyd Marbet was there, in a room with a bunch of 'blue
suits‚' powerful, important, serious people, and they all knew
the reality. We were going to have 20 nuclear plants in Oregon. It
was a done deal. And this hippie shows up with one year of college
and he said, 'It says here that citizens can intervene and can ask
questions and can be a party. I would like to be a part of this process.'
They thought he was a joke. Yet he won. They lost."
Marbet tried three times to persuade Oregon voters
to pass initiatives aimed at shutting down Trojan; in 1986, 1990 and
1992. He called the plant "unsafe." He argued that $100 million could
be saved over 25 years if the plant were closed and other energy sources
were used. He warned that Trojan could not withstand a major Northwest
earthquake that geologists predict for the region. The utility outspent
Marbet and his group each election cycle. Each initiative aimed at
closing Trojan failed.
In 1992, PGE spent $4.5 million advertising and campaigning
against two "close Trojan now" measures. One was Marbet's. The utility
threatened West Coast blackouts if Trojan were closed. Voters responded,
defeating both measures by 60 percent of ballots cast. Two months
after the election was over PGE officials backtracked, revealing there
was plenty of energy after all.
Abruptly, on Jan. 4, 1993, the PGE board voted to
shut down Trojan. The New York Times quoted an internal Nuclear
Regulatory Commission document that reported, "The accident risk posed
by the Trojan plant is more than 300 times the commission's safety
goal." The newspaper reported that 20 percent of the plant's tubes
were damaged, and replacing them would cost $200 million.
Many in the state still think of Marbet as the "man
who closed down Trojan." At times he thinks of himself this way, but
he also realizes that "if I had closed Trojan down, I think the kind
of reality that I would be living in is basically people pointing
the finger at me and saying, 'You shut down a perfectly good operating
nuclear plant. It's all your fault.' This way, it was amazing, because
people came up
to me and said, 'You know, we thought you were just
full of it. Now that we've seen what's happened, we thank you for
what you're doing.'"
Starting
from Scratch
Marbet was vindicated, just as he
hopes he will be this election with campaign finance reform. But when
he began raising money for this campaign, he had to start from scratch.
"I went around to various groups and said, 'Let's do this,' and the
same thing, 'You don't really have much of a chance.'"
Undaunted, Marbet filed the petition with Secretary
of State Bill Bradbury, against whom he'd run for office in the 2000
election as a Green Party candidate. In that race, Marbet raised almost
$13,000 while Bradbury, the Democrat, and Lynn Snodgrass, the Republican
opponent, raised and spent almost $2 million between them. "The cost
of races is definitely going up," said Marbet. "One media purchase
by one of the candidates was $300,000 more money than the last two
candidates for secretary of state had spent in their entire campaign
in the last election just four years before!" This was one more piece
of evidence that convinced Marbet he needed to work to stop the unrestricted
flow of money into Oregon politics. And he decided to begin with the
help of Ralph Nader.
In August 2001, Nader planned a rally at Portland's
10,000-seat Rose Garden. It was the first stop on his "Democracy Rising"
tour, where he hoped to invigorate citizens to participate in everyday
politics. Marbet wanted to be there to promote his petition. But an
old nemesis blocked the way.
The
Sizemore Factor
Bill Sizemore is prolific in Oregon
for the number of conservative initiatives he regularly places on
the ballot. His political action committee, Oregon Taxpayers United,
has been promoting its agenda for nine years. He spends hundreds of
thousands of dollars on each initiative. Just before the Nader rally,
Sizemore challenged Marbet's petition in court. The title, Sizemore
said, was misleading, "What is hidden in the ballot title is that
if this measure passes, traditional Republican sources of campaign
contributions will be severely restricted or eliminated altogether.
Right now, the playing field is pretty balanced, and it's back and
forth, but with what Marbet has designed, it's all skewed towards
the left."
Marbet disagrees, "I believe that Republican sources
of money will be restricted, but I don't think it's skewed towards
the left. Basically what Bill Sizemore's saying is people with wealth
really have no substance to stand on when it comes to going out and
doing some kind of grassroots organizing. I think what it's going
to do is level the playing field."
Sizemore lost his challenge to the ballot title, but
the delay for Marbet was a huge setback. "He knew when he challenged
our ballot title we wouldn't be able to distribute our petitions to
the Super Rally that Nader did in Portland, and so we completely missed
that event. I mean, we did get in there and talk to people, but we
had no way of getting signatures."
Then, out of the blue, Marbet got a call from a retired
professor from Bend who told Marbet he would contribute $10,000 toward
campaign finance reform if the money were matched, and if petition
circulators were paid 50 cents per signature. Marbet raised the matching
funds, and was on his way again.
Sizemore has already begun waging phase two of his
battle against Marbet's petition. He criticizes Petition 43 on his
weekly radio program, and plans to spend money taking out opposition
space in the Oregon Voter's Pamphlet. "I think campaign finance
reform should not put any limits on how much individuals can give.
But should contain requirements for full disclosure on where the money
is coming from. They should have no forced contributions from anybody,"
says Sizemore, warming into one of his favorite topics. "That would
mean a corporation could not give and a labor union could not give."
Sizemore is supporting an initiative that would prohibit
public employee unions from influencing elections. He is opposed to
unions contributing to elections, arguing their employees don't have
the opportunity to withdraw their funds if they don't support the
union's political choices.
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"Our
job is not to look for results, but to be faithful to the truth."
–Dorothy
Day
Marbet
quotes the passage and then adds, "And I think of that a lot
in those dark moments."
|
 |
Sizemore says he would support Marbet's petition if
both corporations and unions were restricted from making political
contributions, and if only individuals could give. But even with those
parameters, Sizemore is sure someone would find loopholes. "Campaign
spending is an impossible horse to corral," he says. "Give me a good
lawyer and an accountant. Put them in a room. Give me the best campaign
finance reform law you can write, and I can bet you they can blow
it apart."
Defending
Initiatives
Surprisingly, Marbet and Sizemore
battled on the same side briefly and once. Each is eager to protect
the initiative process — a tool Oregon voters have used for
nearly a century to enact laws often ignored by the state Legislature.
This year, there are more than 175 potential initiatives for Oregon's
ballot. Issues such as labeling of genetically modified foods, instant
runoff voting, several on tax relief, gambling, land use, marijuana
use and others. Each statutory measure needs 66,786 valid signatures
by July 5 for a place on the ballot. Constitutional amendments need
89,048 signatures. In 2000, Oregon had 26 initiatives on the ballot,
but voters approved only five. Two were constitutionally challenged.
Sizemore and Marbet joined forces in 1995, when the
Legislature put an initiative on the ballot to require a certain percentage
of signatures to come from each county in the state. The measure failed.
While theirs was a short-lived alliance, Sizemore almost affectionately
calls Marbet "a very dedicated, sincere, misguided liberal."
Down
to the Wire
Marbet has reached three more milestones
for campaign finance reform. He has 91,000 signatures as of June 24,
but still needs a few thousand more to ensure a place on the ballot,
since a certain percentage will likely be thrown out as duplicates
or bad signatures. It's good petitioning weather. And best of all
,he has won the Sierra Club's endorsement of Petition 43. It' s especially
gratifying, because in 1998 Marbet stood up to the entire environmental
community opposed to a gambling measure. Environmental groups stood
to gain state money if Measure 66 passed, but Marbet was the only
person to buy space in the Voter's Pamphlet arguing against
it.
"If we really believe in protecting the environment,
that also includes the people we live with," he says, "and to use
money from gambling and turn the state into a gambling enterprise,
ever since the lottery, lacks morality. It is not the right decision."
Marbet's political road has not been easy or well
marked. But what keeps him going is a quote by Dorothy Day, a Catholic
service worker, considered a saint by many. She said, "Our job is
not to look for results, but to be faithful to the truth." Marbet
quotes the passage and then adds, "And I think of that a lot in those
dark moments."
As Marbet drives his black pickup truck from town
to town, mobilizing petitioners either by heart or with his new dollar
per signature wage, he knows it will be a struggle, just as always.
That doesn't stop him, or even slow him down a beat. Elaine Kelley
thinks she knows what drives him on: "I think what a lot of people
lack is vision. A lot of people go through life and never develop
this in their lives and Lloyd has a very strong vision and value system
that drives him. He has a great love of life, of the planet, of all
creatures, and of all people. He's a very unique individual. He follows
in the tradition of great men of history. Maybe he'll never go down
in history as being famous, but he's following in those footsteps."
Marbet wants to see strong citizen pressure collapse
the huge tower of corporate political control, just as citizens collapsed
nuclear power in Oregon a decade ago. He just hopes it doesn't take
voters as long to see his vision.
Hope Marston is involved in the Pacific Green Party,
Justice Not War and other human rights organizations. Before moving
to Eugene, she worked as a journalist for more than 20 years.
Back to Top
Vole
Zones
Locating
red tree vole nests helps save old forests.
BY
ORNA IZAKSON
If you've heard of the red tree vole at
all, it's probably because of environmental activists climbing trees
and looking for it. The rare mammal, which builds its nests 75 to
200 feet up in old-growth trees, has developed quite a following in
the southern Willamette Valley. Under the Northwest Forest Plan, finding
an active red tree vole nest can put ancient forests off limits to
logging, 10 acres at a time.
The red tree vole is one of approximately 300 old-growth-dependent
species that the landmark 1994 forest plan requires the Forest Service
and Bureau of Land Management to consider before — or sometimes
after — logging. The idea was to find out what critters and
plants, fungi and lichen require old forests to live, and manage logging
to keep them off the endangered species list.
As of June 21, however, that list of species has shrunk.
The red tree vole, whose nests have massively reduced the extent of
several local timber sales, will not require surveys before logging
in many areas, including portions of the Siuslaw and Umpqua national
forests and the BLM's Eugene, Roseburg, Coos Bay and Medford districts.
The requirements will remain in place on the Willamette National Forest.
Under the Northwest Forest Plan, when the agencies
find certain of the rare species in proposed timber sales, they're
supposed to create buffers to protect them. Most of the species only
command buffers of a couple hundred feet, and sometimes logging is
still allowed as long as not all the trees around the species are
taken. But the red tree vole, the only mammal on the list, requires
buffers of 10 acres. So finding active red tree vole nests can reduce
a timber sale fast.
It's been a powerful tool for grassroots activists.
At the Clark timber sale along Fall Creek, site of the longest-running
anti-logging tree-sit in history, nearly two thirds of the original
acreage is now off limits to logging because of the voles. The sale
initially was slated to cover 96 acres; now only 29 acres remain legally
open to logging.
"Doing surveys is one way people can be involved in
the process," says activist Carly Deicher of the Oregon Forest Research
and Education Group, which climbs trees looking for voles. "It's like
a legal direct action that people can take, and a way that people
can keep the Forest Service and the BLM in check. And taking that
away (Protection for the red tree vole) is bullshit."
Activists have found between 40 and 50 red tree vole
nests inside timber sales in the forests near Eugene. Patti Rodgers,
a spokeswoman for the Willamette National Forest, says staffers there
go out to double check the activists' findings and estimates that
"approximately 95 percent were as represented."
That's a help, she says, since the agency doesn't
have the budget to go beyond the required survey protocols, which
don't require climbing every tree.
"We're grateful to have additional information brought
to us," she says. "Why would we go beyond the protocol? That's a scientifically
based methodology… It's not that we're shirking our responsibility.
We are in fact redeeming our responsibility. What they have done is
to increase our knowledge base and in so doing, allowed for greater
protection of the species."
But climbing each tree is exactly what the activists
do in their determination to prevent old-growth logging. And they
claim to have found twice as many red tree vole nests as the Forest
Service officials who were paid to look.
"Their protocol was pretty much walk into the forest
100 feet and look up into the canopy and see if they could see a suitable
habitat or something that looked like a red tree vole nest," says
OFREG's Deicher. "A red tree vole nest can look like anything in a
forest. It can be a little clump of fir needles on a branch way up
in the canopy, not even visible from the ground."
Friday's changes were part of an annual review of
the species on the so-called "survey and manage" list. Activists note
that the process does not include public comment, and that the determination
was made without good science. The Oregon Natural Resources Council,
one of the groups that forced the Forest Service to do surveys after
years of recalcitrance, is planning to
sue.
"Survey and manage is one of the safety nets that
keeps (those species) from becoming threatened and endangered," says
ONRC's Doug Heiken. "We're basically taking away part of the safety
net that protects some of these species."
The move is part of a "recurring broken promise,"
he says. "They promised to do everything as carefully as possible,
and here we're getting rid of the protections we have for old-growth
species … Here we're making it easier to cut what little remains
when we should be stopping old-growth logging altogether."
Back to Top
High
Hopes
Richard
Alevizos runs on optimism.
BY
NATE PUCKETT
To Richard Alevizos — yoga instructor, college
student, and Eugene resident — the problem is clear. "Marijuana
should be legal," he says. "And hemp cultivation needs to become a
viable industry in Oregon."
To Richard Alevizos, the solution is even clearer:
"I should be governor," he says. "I'm the best candidate ... I have
to win."
 |
|
RICHARD
ALEVIZOS (RIGHT) CAMPAIGNS ON THE HEMP PLATFORM IN EUGENE.
|
To Richard Alevizos, a snowball's chance in hell depends
on the quality of the snowball. Brimming with the sort of wide-eyed
optimism that is usually limited to recent religious converts and
the overmedicated, the 36-year-old independent candidate for governor
has big plans.
He envisions a state economy re-energized by a burgeoning
hemp industry, wherein once-deserted lumber mills refine once-illegal
plants into paper products. Marijuana buds would be smoked by Oregonians,
legally, and taxed by the state. He speaks in broad, sweeping terms
about saving the environment, fixing the budget, and protecting the
state's rights from federal incursion.
"We've got to break the cycle," he says. "If we never
give somebody different a chance, we'll never get to see where we
could be going."
Alevizos definitely qualifies as somebody different.
Born in Cambridge, Mass., and a graduate of Marquette University (he
is currently seeking another undergraduate degree from the UO in French),
he once hitchhiked from Panama to Portland "so I could find out how
many nice people there really are out there." He eschews the traditional
suit-and-tie garb of most candidates, opting for a hemp shirt with
shorts and sandals.
But it would be a mistake to pigeonhole him as some
sort of proto-hippie dreamer who, upon moving into the governor's
office, would drape some tapestries on the walls and start blaring
the Dead. Alevizos talks too much about economic issues to fit that
sort of mold, and his grasp of the political process is firmer than
that of many activists. He emphasizes the notion of states' rights
— traditionally a Republican touchstone — and wants to
subsidize the logging and fishing industries to a certain extent.
The only thing bigger than Alevizos' plans may be
the political obstacles he has to overcome. Chief among such hurdles
is money, or more accurately, the lack thereof. Millions of dollars
will be spent on this year's race by the two major-party candidates,
Democrat Ted Kulongoski and Republican Kevin Mannix. The Alevizos
campaign counts its money in thousands, and has counted to two so
far.
It has also avoided any affiliation with a political
party. Alevizos is running as an independent, more alternative than
the alternative Pacific Green Party, which has yet to nominate a candidate
of its own. (PGP Co-chairwoman Sarah Charlesworth says it is "quite
likely" former 4th District Congressman Jim Weaver will enter the
race in August.) Without party backing, Alevizos must get onto the
ballot the hard way: by garnering more than 15,000 signatures by registered
Oregon voters. He claims to be more than halfway there, predicting
he'll fill his quota in July, well before the Aug. 27 deadline.
"I realize the system is stacked against me," he says,
having mentioned earlier he believes his cell phone has been "bugged"
by the powers that be. "But anybody can run for governor. We can change
people's minds."
| 'With
the advent of legal hemp, all environmental concerns in Oregon
will be taken care of.' |
Indeed, mind-alteration seems to be the policy he
is leading with. An informal sampling of Eugene residents showed that
when people recognize Alevizos' name, it's as "the weed guy." As the
candidate is fond of pointing out, 52 percent of Oregon voters were
in favor of legalizing medical marijuana, so he refuses to believe
that a pro-weed label dooms his chances of winning.
While Alevizos does not view himself as a one-issue
candidate, many of his solutions for other issues come back to cannabis.
For example, a statement on his website reads, "With the advent of
legal hemp, all environmental concerns in Oregon will be taken care
of."
His take on the state's current budget crisis also
focuses on hemp and marijuana. "Our current marijuana policy is chewing
up a tremendous amount of time, money, and resources," he says. He
claims that his first act as governor would be to convene with the
state attorney general, local police chiefs, district attorneys, and
judges in order to focus their efforts elsewhere. (The fact that it
is legislators, not governors, who make and change laws is a fact
Alevizos tends to de-emphasize. While Alevizos says "the Legislature
would have to work with me" if he was elected, he is vague about what
would drive them to do so, citing only a "fear factor.")
Charlesworth of the Pacific Greens worked with Alevizos
during the Ralph Nader campaign. She disagrees with the notion that
he represents the only pro-hemp choice in this year's race.
"The Green Party is pro-legalization of marijuana
... we see the drug problem as a health issue, not a criminal one.
And we would only nominate someone who shared those views," she says.
Weaver, who says he will enter the race for governor
as the PGP candidate "only if I think I can win," does not view Alevizos
as a political competitor.
"I've never heard of him," says Weaver. "If I run,
I'll be running against guys named Kulongoski and Mannix."
The guy named Alevizos (pronounced Al-uh-VEEZ-ohs;
the name is Greek) has a little disdain of his own for the Green Party.
While he admits that most of his views align with the PGP platform
— he claims he even wanted to run on the PGP ticket, but gave
up on the idea after deciding they wouldn't get behind him early enough
— he relishes his role as an independent.
"I went to the state Green Party convention in June
(of 2001), and there wasn't one single thing they could agree on,"
he says. "One way or another, voters are going to know where I stand.
They may not agree with me, but at least they'll know what they're
disagreeing with."
Make no mistake, however: Alevizos plans on getting
enough voters to agree with him. He is an extremely energetic candidate,
and so eager to enact change that he ran as a write-in candidate in
the 1994 governor's race — when he was 28, seven years too young
to meet the Oregon constitutional minimum for
the office.
"I can win, definitely," he says. "We just have to
tune our minds to the right vibration, so to speak, and go for it."
 |
Will
Klausmeier
During the 1980s, chemist Will Klausmeier organized a biomass-energy
research group at the Argonne National Laboratory and consulted with
biotech firms. He moved to Thailand in '88, managed an aquaculture
(shrimp farming) enterprise until it was bought by BP, then returned
to the U.S. in '95. "My wife went ahead with a list of five towns
to visit," he says. "Eugene was first on the list Ç she didn't get
to the others." Klausmeier set up a consulting practice and began
to research pollution-reducing formulations of diesel fuel. He settled
on a precisely proportioned "cocktail" of ethanol and water plus a
vegetable-oil-based surfactant to facilitate mixing with diesel. A
"steam explosion" on combustion absorbs heat and atomizes the fuel,
reducing emissions of both nitrogen oxide and particulates. Klausmeier's
New Energy Partnership aims to have its clean diesel in use by centrally
fueled fleets in California by 2004, to meet new EPA standards. "I
quit science at 4," says Klausmeier, picking up a brush to work on
an oil painting of Sweet Creek. "When I came to Eugene, the change
in location sparked me to revive my art Ç I paint a little every day."
-- Photo by Paul Neevel
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