About the Author

When my oldest son, a Marine, left for war and crossed the border from Kuwait into Iraq in March 2003 I started writing my conscience. After two tours that young combat veteran, my first born son, is now permanently disabled suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and his mother is now an ardent peace activist. Today I am active with Veterans for Peace, Military Families Speak Out and on the board of Rural Organizing Project Also, I am CEO of Rogue River Wind, Ltd and the inventor of a low profile wind turbine incorporating a high bandwidth relativistic generator

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There Are 13 Responses So Far. »

1. 

   Comment by themguys on 21 March 2009:

   How can Jim Bice file mul­ti­ple ‘news’ arti­cles and never even attempt to inter­view the sub­ject of his arti­cles? He is report­ing ‘news’ from only one side of a very seri­ous issue.

   Gee, he’s as Fair and Bal­anced as Fux Noise. Probly cut his teeth there, or lost em.

   Thank you Larry for giv­ing the accu­rate account of the sit­u­a­tion. The truth will always come out sooner or later.

   I only hope Stuffle­butt is los­ing some sleep, from his pre­vi­ous behav­ior, I doubt it. He shows so lit­tle regard for other humans doesn’t he?

   Well I hope this one lands right on his shoul­ders. And, like the lit­tle boy who cried wolf, NO ONE WILL TAKE HIM SERIOUSLY AGAIN.

   We can­not afford him any longer.

   And let’s git rid of his side­kick Wit­t­less, she is, in my opin­ion, as guilty as he is, maybe more so because SHE could have stopped this.

   And I will let no one, in my pres­ence, say this was just an ‘accident’.

   BS, we told them this was going to hap­pen, not if but when. They will try to defer blame, but we have to keep it where it belongs.
2. 

   Comment by gmick49 on 21 March 2009:

   Very good and right to the point Larry. Dur­ing the Jim Bice pro­gram both times on the air, he would not take callers to your defense. Instead he took calls that were County High­way bash­ers. I think his pro­gram should be called,THE JIM BIASED Show.

   Biased
3. 

   Comment by magix on 21 March 2009:

   Good call, gmick, the biased show. Per­son­ally, I almost won­der if there is a value to respond­ing to him at all as it only gives him cre­dence he does not deserve. Those that lis­ten to him already have a bias and are not likely to care about facts in any event and so will not be swayed by reason.

   On the other hand, Stuffle­bean must be feel­ing some­what des­per­ate to have to turn to Bias in the first place for media sup­port. How will he spin the death of Dean Cau­dle? Hard to say but it will be a tes­ta­ment to his true char­ac­ter to see him try.
4. 

   Comment by gmick49 on 23 March 2009:

   Mary. It was nice talk­ing to you in the Veg­gie, bread aisle at Wally World. LOL. It makes me won­der how some­one like Jim Bice can even have a talk show that won’t involve input from callers. It’s like he picks and chooses peo­ple that will only sup­port his the­ory, or what the Pup­pet Mas­ter tells him to say. Like you said, Stuffle­bean must be feel­ing some­what des­per­ate to have to turn to Bias. The death of Mr. Cau­dle is very unfortunate.My prayers go out to his fam­ily and loved ones. Pub­lic safety should be a num­ber one pri­or­ity to the High­way Dept. The crew that is left sup­ports that same thought, but the peo­ple that sup­port the Reor­ga­ni­za­tion of the High­way crew have a much dif­fer­ent look on things. As it is now, the High­way Crew have their hands tied and can’t respond to Emer­gen­cies like they used to due to under staffing.
5. 

   Comment by magix on 23 March 2009:

   Unfor­tu­nately peo­ple like him fill a niche but cater to fairly small group of peo­ple. I do know that many peo­ple at the road depart­ment feel awful about Mr Cau­dle. So far I have seen no pub­lic state­ment from the Com­mis­sion­ers regard­ing his death, cer­tainly noth­ing from Kevin beyond assur­ing every­one the reor­ga­ni­za­tion had noth­ing to do with the depart­ment failure.

   Per­son­ally, I regard the com­mis­sion­ers, Nikki and Kevin, as crim­i­nally neg­li­gent in this matter.
6. 

   Comment by den on 24 March 2009:

   There is a sit­u­a­tion. County Coun­sel has sug­gested, through inter­pre­ta­tion, a pos­si­ble future County pol­icy. Com­mis­sion­ers have not ques­tioned the rea­son­ing in this inter­pre­ta­tion, nor have they dis­cussed the impact involved in future actions in County busi­ness, which, now, could require every action to squeeze through the fil­ter of “Pro­por­tion­al­ly”. This could be bad news for tax payers.

   This is a story of “old news”. The story is old, the mem­ory is weak, and why would any­one care. Read on, you may care.

   Search­ing for the “Pro­por­tion­ate”, I know it is just around the next cor­ner, no, the next cor­ner, it will be found, we are putting all our resources on it. It is an adjec­tive, cor­re­spond­ing in size or degree or extent. It should be easy to find. I first heard this word, in a Coos County Com­mis­sion­ers meet­ing. Kevin Stuffle­bean and Nikky Whitty used the word, It has been thrown around so much it may now be the standard.

   As the word pro­por­tion­ate, was used, what fol­lowed was, Nol­lan and Dol­lan, which has also been said in con­junc­tion with the word “pro­por­tion­ate”. The mys­tery expands.

   What is Nol­lan and Dol­lan? Thought you would never ask.

   Nol­lan, Supreme Court Of The United States No. 86–133 NOLLAN ET UX v. CALIFORNIA COASTAL COMMISSION. June 26, 1987.

   Dolan, United States Supreme Court Case No. 93–518, DOLAN v. CITY OF TIGARD. June 24, 1994.

   The word, “Pro­por­tion­ate” appears in para­graph 13 Coos County, County Plan­ning Com­mis­sion Doc­u­ment, “IN THE MATTER OF THE APPEAL OF OREGON RESOURCES CONDITIONAL USE’, FINAL DECISION AND ORDER 07–10-278PL. This appeal came before the County Com­mis­sion­ers on Octo­ber 2, 2007, “appeal regard­ing a con­di­tional use appli­ca­tion sub­mit­ted by Ore­gon Resources Cor­po­ra­tion (HBCU-07–06).

   Part of para­graph 13, “The Appli­cant shall be respon­si­ble for the pro­por­tion­ate cost of main­te­nance, repair, and upgrades of County roads on the des­ig­nated trans­port route {specif­i­cally, West Beaver Hill Road” .…..}
   ORC was required to pro­vide a Traf­fic impact analy­sis {TIA}

   ORC com­mis­sioned URS Corp. (Job 325696360) for a Pave­ment Analy­sis Report on West Beaver Hill Road, com­pleted June 3, 2008. and accepted by the County.

   The URS report, was used to applied “pro­por­tion­al­ly” cost to the County and to ORC through a process call, “in my opin­ion”. This judg­ment was left to the County Road­mas­ter, Com­mis­sioner Stuffle­bean. We have these cost, they have those cost. The county then set out to obtain, out of the cur­rent road depart­ment Bud­get, their con­sider “pro­por­tion­ate” cost by cre­at­ing avail­able funds, and to request or require, through contract/agreement, with ORC to get from them their “pro­por­tion­ate” funds.
   There was no sec­ond opinion.

   Return­ing to the appeal hear­ing by the Com­mis­sion­ers. The appeal hear­ing was com­pleted under time restraints, after one exten­sion, and was under the require­ment to be com­pleted in 16 days. The time restraint neces­si­tated no pub­lic com­ment, and no new infor­ma­tion which might open the record, which was closed at this time. Thus the time urgency has car­ried through to a point that action appear to be related to job lay off.‘s, and acquir­ing the avail­able money from the Road Depart­ment Bud­get, hot money to use as soon as pos­si­ble to be put into West Beaver Hill Road.

   This accom­plished, the county could imme­di­ately pre­pare the West Beaver Hill Road for ORC to haul mined ore from the cur­rent leased and per­mit­ted Wey­er­haeuser properties.

   When Com­mis­sion­ers Whitty, Grif­fith and Stuffle­bean con­sid­ered the appeal, as much as 60 to 75 per­cent of the time was spend in dis­cus­sion of the impact to the roads. In that dis­cus­sion Coun­sel stated,. “What the board needs to be care­ful of , under case law, is that, what ever you decide to do, tied to the impact on the road, is pro­por­tion­al” “It would not be fair under the Nollan/Dolan deci­sion to impute every­thing to ORC when it (road) is being used by some­thing else”.

   Thus, on that day there, was reborn, pro­por­tion­ally in Coos County. To be fair, to those doing busi­ness with the government.

   The con­cept, pro­por­tion­ally, born orig­i­nally in Nollan/Dolan as sug­gested by County coun­sel, received no com­ment, no Chal­lenge, no ques­tion how that idea in those cases would apply here. Just total accep­tance by the com­mis­sion­ers, from there we shall proceed.

   No sec­ond opin­ion, just accep­tance with­out question.

   After con­tinue dis­cus­sion, cen­tered around iden­ti­fy­ing, main­tain­ing the roads at there cur­rent level before the project begins, coun­sel used the word again, when sug­gest­ing there was a “fine line” when address­ing wear and tear on the road when con­sid­er­ing the pro­por­tional impact.

   In con­clu­sion, para­graph 13, word­ing was the com­bin­ing of two pro­pos­als pre­pared by the plan­ning depart­ment staff, and/or coun­sel, as pre­sented at the con­tin­ued appeal hear­ing, Octo­ber, 4, 2007, meet­ing where the Com­mis­sion­ers com­bined the word­ing, for approval. Please note, there were other issues dis­cussed in the appeal, this arti­cle has only focused upon pro­por­tional and para­graph 13 of the above appeal.

   den
7. 

   Comment by themguys on 24 March 2009:

   Thank you Den, I for one, am impressed with your pieces.

   Let’s all not for­get the Com­mis­sion­ers’ legal coun­cil SAT on the state board, I’m sorry can’t remem­ber the name, the min­ing board.

   I think this woman ‘has some splainin to do’.

   She would know exactly what cover Kevin could use and how. I think, instead of poor Wit­t­less, our atten­tion should turn on her!!

   SHE is the one giv­ing the legal advice, right? SHE is the one who told em go ahead.

   Have any of them com­mented about Mr. Caudle’s death?

   I ageee M, I hold them per­son­ally respon­si­ble, in ALL their smugness.

   No won­der she calls the cops on cit­i­zens, per­haps the rude woman was ask­ing the ques­tions she doesn’t want answered.

   Too close for com­fort. Only peo­ple with secrets need to oper­ate behind locked doors.

   Goes all the way through the Coquille County Courthouse.

   Hey G Man !!!!!
8. 

   Comment by gmick49 on 25 March 2009:

   Wow Den. It’s great that you have done your home­work. Looks like you have some pretty good facts. Keep up the good work. Jim Biased has com­mented he has never read, heard, Visu­al­ized any fac­tual Infor­ma­tion where the County High­way Depart­ment has been Involved with any sort of safety to the pub­lic. Of course he is one sided. He will prob­a­bly ignore these facts. And there are many times we have assisted Emts,Sheriffs Dept. in traf­fic con­trol alone, not to men­tion using County Equip­ment to Aid when needed with Expe­ri­enced peo­ple. Magix did a great article,and I sent this to Jim Biased. Of course he won’t respond, but I felt com­pelled to send him this link. It is about safety for the Cit­i­zens of Coos County. We now have a fatal­ity that could have been avoided.
   http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/597/1/County-crews-coöperate-in-rescue/Page1.html
9. 

   Comment by gmick49 on 27 March 2009:

   Have you guys seen this yet?

   Press Release
   March 27, 2009
   From: Coos County Clerk, Terri Turi
   The sig­na­ture ver­i­fi­ca­tion process for the Peti­tion for Recall against Com­mis­sioner Kevin Stuffle­bean is now com­plete and has been cer­ti­fied by the Coos County Elec­tion Office.
   3,773 valid sig­na­tures of active, reg­is­tered vot­ers in Coos County were required for an elec­tion of recall to be held. 5,290 sig­na­tures were processed; 4,747 sig­na­tures were accepted; 543 sig­na­tures were rejected for a vari­ety of rea­sons, i.e., not reg­is­tered (includ­ing can­celled), not an active reg­is­tra­tion (inac­tive), out of county, etc…
   Com­mis­sioner Stuffle­bean will have 5 days to issue a State­ment of Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion or sub­mit a let­ter of res­ig­na­tion. Should a State­ment of Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion be filed within the 5 days (April 1, 2009), an elec­tion will be held on May 5, 2009. Should a res­ig­na­tion of office be filed, it would take effect immediately.
10. 

    Comment by themguys on 27 March 2009:

    We sim­ply can­not afford NOT to remove this incom­pe­tent Commissioner.

    He is nei­ther bright enough, nor edu­cated enough, nor open enough to rep­re­sent him­self, let alone Coos County. We can­not as a county, con­tinue dis­re­gard­ing the eco­nomic con­di­tion of this coun­try, down to our small towns in Coos.

    WE have to watch out for one another to get through this, I think we aren’t even close to the bottom.

    I’ve never been as con­cerned for my coun­try and my chil­dren as I am today.

    I don’t think any of the bas­tards are telling us the truth.

    About any­thing.

    Have a M A WWWWWW VELOUS WEEK END.
11. 

    Comment by den on 5 April 2009:

    Ref:

    http://www.koosnews.com/kncurrent/kncurrentwk/page1.pdf

    I would like to get a copy, to review this hear­ing where cit­i­zens tes­ti­fied. It could have been filmed by Chan­nel 14, or just record. If I can find out when that was I can get a copy.

    In the Koos News this 4/3/08
    Kevin said this:
    “Larry VanEls­berg, as Chief Peti­tioner for the recall. He resigned as Road­mas­ter in April 2007, shortly after a hear­ing where many cit­i­zens tes­ti­fied that the road depart­ment was not doing their job and was being mismanaged.”

    I would say that the most impor­tant pub­lic safety area of all was just plain, missed. Some­one was asleep on their watch.
    http://mgx.com/blogs/2009/03/21/larry-van-elsberg-responds-to-editorials-critical-of-stufflebean-recall/

    Kevin said this:
    “we have seen over $5 mil­lion dol­lars in road improve­ments in the last year and
    a half alone by mak­ing pub­lic safety and road improve­ments a priority.”

    If it were pos­si­ble to do more that state the date and the three meet­ing where he says he talked about reor­ga­ni­za­tion and lay­offs. On the record­ing either DVD by chan­nel 14, or county Record­ing just pick the time he said it, then it can be checked. Thus far by review­ing, not one has found this state­ment spo­ken at those pub­lic meet­ing. It has been con­tem­plated from the meet­ing on Dec. 16, Bud­get Issues, BOC court room, that after that meet­ing there was an exec­u­tive ses­sion, there it is believed the sub­ject of reor­ga­ni­za­tion and lay­offs was the topic. A pri­vate meet­ing, under the pub­lic meet­ing laws.

    Kevin said this:
    I solicited a review by the Board of Com­mis­sion­ers. The Board reviewed data and bud­get pro­jec­tions at three dif­fer­ent pub­lic meet­ings before mak­ing a deci­sion. There was no vio­la­tion of any open pub­lic meet­ing laws; in fact we went out of our way to
    ensure the dis­cus­sion took place in the public.”

    I was just won­der­ing who the “We” are. A mouse in the pocket? It is look­ing as if he, alone, or maybe it is this “We”, has brought to gov­ern­ment what none oth­ers have been able to do.

    Kevin said this:
    “We have just begun the work of account­abil­ity and integrity in County government”

    Is there pos­si­ble more going on in our County than any­one of use knows about. Are be going National. Is a direct con­duit to the golden source of fund­ing being devel­oped. Are these County goals or Kevin’s goals.

    Then Kevin side this:

    “We have too much rid­ing on our future to be derailed at this point. We have to
    be account­able at the local level in order to have the cred­i­bil­ity at the state and national level to secure crit­i­cal addi­tional fund­ing to accom­plish these goals.”

    Now Kevin is con­trol­ling the County gen­eral fund, yes which is doing so well it has extra money for new com­puter con­trac­tor ser­vices, remodel the Owens build­ing. And give out money hand over fist at the BOC meet­ing to every­one who ask. In fact the road Depart­ment, who do not get their fund­ing from the Gen­eral Fund, also is doing well after the lay­offs and has extra funds for the Beaver Hill Road min­ing project.

    Kevin said this:
    Because some very tough deci­sions have been made, Coos County is in a bet­ter posi­tion than other coun­ties, and it’s my goal to con­tinue to guide the county through this eco­nomic storm.”

    It is my under­stand­ing, and for the Record, there were about 4700 and some, per­sons, cur­rently got the ball rolling to push the County back on course.

    Kevin said this:
    “I pledge to con­tinue to look out for all Coos County res­i­dents, unlike these few dis­grun­tled peo­ple who are try­ing to push the county off course with their false
    allegations.”

    den
12. 

    Comment by Toothless Cajun on 5 April 2009:

    Give him enough rope & he will hang himself!
13. 

    Comment by den on 5 April 2009:

    This was send in last week, Ltr to Ed, and not pub­lished, good, I find tuned it, . This is the 2nd let­ter on this sub­ject as I move through the events of the appeal of ORC per­mit approval, and appeal denial thus result­ing in para­graph 13, pro­por­tion­ally, reor­ga­ni­za­tion of the road depart­ment, Road Mas­ter being given the “blank Check” for min­ing haul routes main­te­nance and the role of coun­sel and com­mis­sion­ers in the deci­sion process. Next let­ter is planned to include, (it I can get there from here?) why $450.000 where did it come from, why now.

    Work­ses­sion Owens Build­ing — Ques­tion re: Explo­ration Agree­ment & Lease with ORC, Feb­ru­ary 24, Nikki Whitty does not want to enter­tain ques­tions about para­graph 13, because that was a Land Use issue, and a done deal. Kevin, spoke in turn, to give a review about para­graph 13, that ORC and Coos County were within the “Clar­ity of one sen­tence” for the tar­get amount of funds for the first pay­ment when the “Haul Per­mit” is issued. (review last let­ter on Proportionally)

    There is an apple and oranges game which goes on here that can be very con­fus­ing. The Com­mis­sioner will not/cannot talk about any “Land Use” issue because any issue may have to come before the Board in a discussion/decision process. Most times on an appeal from a Plan­ning Com­mis­sion decision.

    The real issues are the agree­ments that the com­mis­sion­ers can make with ORC or any­one, to do some­thing on county land. The com­mis­sion­ers can agree to let them explore for min­er­als, they can lease lands for them to mine, All of this process is not a pub­lic process, it is secret. You can not see, know, or be a part of, unless asked, and then can­not dis­close any of the nego­ti­a­tion terms in progress.

    The “pro­por­tion­al­ly” for the West Beaver Hill road was a done deal at this Feb­ru­ary 24 work­ses­sion, It became a done deal in a land use appeal on Octo­ber 4, 2007, long before this meet­ing. But, the total amount of funds, and when paid, and even the actual over­all time period was hang­ing because the road mas­ter needed some clar­ity of a sen­tence from coun­sel,
    con­cern­ing the agree­ment between County and ORC.

    That denial of appeal in Octo­ber 4, 07, work­ing under stress of time con­straints, and with no pub­lic com­ments to keep from open­ing the record with new input of infor­ma­tion has taken a funny twist. The appeal pur­pose included many areas cov­ered in the per­mit approval for ORC that were not addressed prop­erly. Road main­te­nance was one of those areas.

    So, under this cloak of already included in the per­mit, road main­te­nance was not a new issue, thus to open the record with “new” infor­ma­tion. Coun­sel sug­gested, along with plan­ning staff to sub­mit back to the com­mis­sion­ers two pro­pos­als, which the com­mis­sion­ers com­bine into the word­ing of para­graph. 13. The bril­liance of the idea from coun­sel was to leave all pro­ce­dures and for­mu­la­tion and super­vi­sion under the con­trol of the County Road­mas­ter, and not have any of that revis­ited by the Com­mis­sion­ers. Was this new information?

    Was this Kevin’s “blank check” so to speak, to fig­ure out the pro­por­tional ratios, dol­lar amounts time sched­ules and pro­ce­dures, and within his own spear of oper­a­tion and influ­ence as County Road­mas­ter to resolve the source of the County’s pro­por­tional share, and how to obtain it, with out that plan to be revis­ited, by the Com­mis­sion­ers? How could such a bom­bas­tic error, for the deci­sion of such a large min­ing oper­a­tion includ­ing mul­ti­ple mil­lions of dol­lars of road main­te­nance, with future expan­sion of addi­tional roads included in the haul­ing plan, be left to one County Com­mis­sioner. And, not to be revis­ited, to the other com­mis­sion­ers. There lies the bones of a Road Depart­ment, and the avail­able $450,000.00 for road upgrades and maintenance.

    The “Pub­lic” will never be privy to the agree­ments, leases, roy­al­ties, arrange­ments, and pro­por­tions, until after they are complete.

    Nikki Whitty clearly stated an answer to the ques­tion, “are there going to be a future meet­ing, where we can ask the ques­tions we want”? Because at this meet­ing you could not ask a land use ques­tion, and get an answer. Yes she indi­cated, if we are able to final­ize a lease and explo­ration agree­ment, after get­ting some out­side coun­sel and help, those doc­u­ments have to come up on our agenda, (Board of Com­mis­sioner, BOC) for con­sid­er­a­tion. At that time we can take final comments.

    Now as yee all know, on the date those final­ized lease and explo­ration agree­ments which are on the agenda for a Wednes­day Board of Com­mis­sion­ers, BOC meet­ing, the trum­pets will sound, the announce­ments will be made for “all yee fair lads and ladies” to come to the court for your review of these doc­u­ments, and be quick now, before one of the Com­mis­sion­ers makes yee motion of approval, and two for one does agree, and it is done.

    Cyn­i­cal I am now. Ever look at an agenda. “Approval of lease and explo­ration agree­ment with ORC”. Its your job to pay atten­tion, because it was announced. Will you get to look at the doc­u­ment, not before it is approve, you can bet your sweet back side on that. So, on with the show. Trans­parency in gov­ern­ment. Thus, begin the work­ses­sion of ques­tions and answers from the pub­lic, ORC, and the County Com­mis­sion­ers, in the remod­eled Owens build­ing, Coquille Ore­gon, Feb­ru­ary 24, 2009.

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