All Posts Tagged With: "Kevin Stufflebean"
Transparency vs Opacity, will be issue in forthcoming commissioners’ race
Despite narrowly surviving a recall effort for what even The World referred to as the undeniably “stealthy” manner in which twenty two county road workers were laid off, Commissioner Kevin Stufflebean is still curtailing public access.
…Commissioner Kevin Stufflebean outlined his new vision for board meetings. First step was to rearrange the courtroom, secluding employees to one side of the room…Next, he addressed how employees interact with audience members and the board. From now on, all public questions will be directed to the board. Commissioners can either answer them or give the person at the podium permission to take the floor… Stufflebean reminded the 20 or so department heads in attendance they do not have to respond to inquiries by the media and can filter responses through the commissioners’ office.
Stufflebean has been the center of controversy relating to public transparency and public access for some time and a strong case has been made the county, with the apparent approval of County Counsel, Jaqui Haggerty, misuses the executive session. Prior to the meeting Bob Main refused to attend an executive session claiming he didn’t feel comfortable keeping the details from the public. Whitty had no qualms about holding the executive session.
Further, Stufflebean wants to further complicate public access, thereby impairing the public’s ability to participate in its own governance by taking over the video taping of BOC meetings raising many eyebrows
The following was sent to the Editor. It refers to an article printed on January 27th.
It is the same sentiment that I share along with other volunteers at Coos Community Media Center.I was apalled to note Commissioner Stufflebean’s comment reported in Wednesday’s World, quoting a cost
to the county of $30-50,000 to record county meetings and place them on the web. Channel 14
currently records these meetings at a rate far lower than that. Channel 14’s subscription rates are
determined by hours of service rendered to the subscriber. Should the Commission continue to hold two
public meetings a month, that subscription cost would be around $7000 per year. For that sum, Channel 14
records 24 meetings, posts them on the web (where they remain for at least two months),
provides one week of “air” time (at least 12 repeats) on Charter Cable Channel 14 in the Bay Area and environs and on Comspan Channel 73 in Bandon, Coquille, Myrtle Point, and Reedsport, and provides a
DVD archive copy if requested. Additional meetings are charged at $90/ hour.
When the website went active in September of 2009, all the agencies who subscribe to Channel 14
were invited to place a link to it on their site. No government agency (or anybody else) has ever paid
a dime to have their meetings or programs posted to the web by Channel 14.
The care and maintenance of that website costs around $3000 per year.
During the county’s negotiations for the year’s contract with Channel 14, Mr. Stufflebean suggested
that the meeting content was the property of the county and that the commissioners should have
ownership of the sole DVD copy of each meeting. This smacks of censorship and all
citizens need to be wary of such attempts. Public meetings are public domain and can
be recorded by anyone and distributed at will.Gordon Young
Channel 14
So to recap, Stufflebean still wants to control the message and apparently doesn’t trust his own department heads to answer questions about their own departments. (We can all understand why he wouldn’t want Colby talking) Aren’t the commissioners busy enough without vetting questions and answers about ongoing county business? Does he really feel they are incompetent or is he hoping to disguise his intentions and actions from the public as it appears he did with the road department layoffs?
Again, where is Whitty in all of this? Does she share Stufflebean’s apparent contempt for the department heads skills? Does she share his apparent contempt for the public’s right to know? It sure seems like it.
New Year’s catch up #1 Van Elsberg running for County Commish
NORTH BEND, OR, DECEMBER 28, 2009: After much thought and the support of my family and friends, I have decided to seek the office of Coos County Commissioner. I do not take this decision lightly, as there will be many challenges ahead for Coos County and its citizens.
Larry Van Elsberg has opted to run for Position 2 against the very popular and some consider, unbeatable Nikki Whitty. Van Elsberg made quite a name for himself when he headed the recall effort that narrowly failed to unseat Commissioner Kevin Stufflebean but whether that fame will garner him votes will depend upon his platform, not the least of which is public safety and transparency.
Whitty did herself a lot of harm in my view by aligning so tightly with Stufflebean and participating in the public obfuscation of details leading up to the sudden layoff of twenty two county road workers on New Year’s Eve 2008. Hopefully, the bizarre manipulation of the road department budgets wherein the media released worksheets used to justify the layoffs showed the road dept operating in the red for eight of the last ten years (not possible by the way and Whitty should have known that) compared to the budget worksession versions handed out to the public in March showing ample funding for the road department and a balanced budget for the past ten years will be explained. Whitty has distanced herself from Stufflebean even to the point of moving her chair away from him during public hearings, but I don’t think she can totally cleanse herself in the eyes of the public.
The campaign will be an opportunity to bring out details of Whitty’s and outed commissioner, John Griffith’s handling of the NW Natural pipeline issue, of which Van Elsberg, then County Road Master was intimately aware of and might illuminate the legislation, hold onto your hat Roblan, that relieves NWN from paying its fair share of taxes to the county.
With luck the local media will start covering these issues with a level a detail they ignored at the time. We will certainly do our best, as time permits, to bring these facts to light here as the campaign progresses.
Stufflebean threatens lawsuit against The World
Wednesday was a very blustery day in Coos County with Commissioner Kevin Stufflebean threatening to sue reporter Meghan Walsh and The World for ‘lack of credibility’. During a Board of Commissioners meeting Phil Thompson, active in the recall effort to oust Stufflebean last May said an article pointing out the glaring discrepancy between fact and Kevin’s pubic statements regarding his bankruptcy helped affirm the reasons behind the recall. Namely, the commissioner may bend facts and distort truth.
The commissioner advised his television audience and those present he was filing suit against the paper and Meghan Walsh personally for unspecified errors in their reporting. In my humble opinion this was more knee jerk, face saving posturing and I imagine it is very unlikely any lawyer would risk their license to file such a suit. Then an obvious plant stood up and said how wonderful it was that Nikki Whitty and former commissioner, John Griffith and Kevin Stufflebean had the courage to layoff personnel. I wonder if the family of Dean Caudle who died when the reduced road crew didn’t barricade a flooded road last spring feel the same way.
My hope is that Meghan Walsh and The World will investigate how the spreadsheets reflecting the budget figures used to justify the layoff of the road crew showed only $3.5M in January and over $5M during budget work sessions two months later. Were those figures cooked to deliberately deceive the public? That is a very fair question and if the answer is yes a severe ethics violation.
Finally! The World calls out Stufflebean on bankruptcy discrepancies
Several people, particularly Commissioner Kevin Stufflebean, believe the circumstances of his bankruptcy are a personal matter and not a news item. Stufflebean made his bankruptcy a public issue when he repeated apparently false claims to the news media. Previously, I criticized The World for not reporting on the glaring factual discrepancies from Stufflebean’s own mouth with respect to the bankruptcy (and the firing of 22 county road workers). The news is not Stufflebean’s bankruptcy, the news is that an elected official may have lied to the public he serves. That is news. That is big news!!!
Today, The World has done some fine investigative reporting and correctly informed the public that an elected official may be playing fast and loose with the truth.
Coos County Commissioner Kevin Stufflebean’s public explanation of his recent bankruptcy filing contains factual discrepancies, The World has learned.
In July, Stufflebean and his wife filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection in federal court in Eugene. In a subsequent interview with Eugene’s The Register-Guard newspaper, Stufflebean mentioned five factors contributing to his financial wreckage.
Information available from public records, however, raises questions about each of the five factors. Stufflebean has defended his statements in recent interviews and e-mails to The World, but he has provided neither full details nor any documents to support his contentions.
The World staff writer, Meghan Walsh did an excellent job of investigating this matter. Right on!!! This is what newspapers are supposed to do.
County votes two to one in favor of flooding Kentuck Golf Course
Bob Main was the lone voice of dissent expressing valid concerns about washing toxic chemicals both from fertilizing the golf course and from a former methamphetamine lab being washed into the bay. Commissioners Whitty and Stufflebean were unconcerned about potential damage to the bay. The flooding is necessary for Jordan Cove to offset wetlands lost to the proposed LNG terminal.
The commissioners added three conditions to the project to limit costs to the county and damage to the environment, but the three-person vote was divided. Commissioner Bob Main voted no, in light of concerns he said he had about pollutants washing into the bay. Commissioners Nikki Whitty and Kevin Stufflebean voted yes.
Jody McCaffree recommended an oversight committee to avert a similar disaster as the Mas-Tec pipeline.
The port agreed that there should be a technical advisory committee, such as the one it already has, including leaders from the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve and Coos Watershed Association.
The applicant gets to be its own advisory committee. That will be like listening to foxes discuss how to guard the hen house.
Stufflebean assured everyone … “Regulatory agencies tend to pick on government entities more than private companies.â€
It is anyone’s guess where that pearl of wisdom came from or what evidence there is to support that statement but meanwhile, Stufflebean is once again backpedaling on earlier statements made to the press about his bankruptcy. Today, a county citizen asked him why he hadn’t reported his personal contributions to his campaign that forced him into bankruptcy. Failure to report contributions is a clear violation of election laws.
His explanation was that there were non-reportable expenses such as gas and mileage to speaking events. So given the campaign cost less than $6,000 and Coos County is not that large it would seem that it didn’t take much to tip the financial scales for the commissioner. Now he has also blamed his wife’s job loss and his own, heretofore unconfirmed, claim of a $28,000 a year salary cut when he took on the commissioners seat.
Either way, Stufflebean doesn’t appear to have much of a handle on his personal finances and was irresponsible toward his debtors if he, indeed, did take a lower paying job. So why are we letting someone with such a track record of inconsistencies and poor judgment make decisions for the County?
Stufflebean backpedalling on bankruptcy cause
As reported on this blog previously, Coos County Commissioner Kevin Stufflebean claimed during an interview with Register Guard reporter, Winston Ross, his recent bankruptcy was due in part to using personal savings to defend against a recall effort. The claim raised the specter of possible campaign finance law abuse as he did not claim any personal contributions or expenses with OreSTAR.
Stufflebean repeated the claim in a later interview with the LA Times about recall elections around the country. Several Coos County citizens have reported the inconsistencies with the Oregon Secretary of State and this week, Eldon Rollins asked Stufflebean during a BOC meeting why his expenses were not properly reported. Caught in a web of his own making Stufflebean tried to hide behind a claim of personal privacy and followed up with Rollins after the meeting via email-
From: kstufflebean@CO.COOS.OR.US
To: Rollins
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2009 13:52:50 -0700
Subject: Personal InformationEldon:
Just to clarify your question that would be a fact that all reportable information was placed on ORESTAR per campaign finance laws.
If you have further questions regarding my personal stuff, then I would encourage you to email or stop by my office or call.Kevin Stufflebean
From: Rollins
To: kstufflebean@CO.COOS.OR.US
Kevin, just to clarify even more:
Your campaign expenses and how you met them are not personal stuff. They are public campaign finance reporting stuff.
Furthermore, your newspaper interviews are not private stuff, they are public because you made them public.
If you are quoted in the newspapers as saying that one of the reasons you had to declare bankruptcy was because of all the money of your own you had to spend on the recall, then a prudent individual would assume you spent a fair amount of your own money on it.
Sincerely,
Eldon Rollins
So “all reportable information” was provided to OreSTAR after all, meaning Stufflebean’s statements to two separate reporters from two respected newspapers separated by a period of weeks were untrue, a falsehood, something akin to ‘a lie’. Stufflebean, when caught in inconsistencies famously blames the press for misquoting him but The Register Guard and The LA Times are not as easily impeached as the local press.
Naturally, there is no reason to believe Stufflebean is ‘accurate’ now if he was inaccurate before, in fact there is every motivation to question every statement that comes from him, unfortunately The World does not do their job and will not report for the public just how liberal with the truth some of our elected officials are.
Teamsters 223 drops Unfair Labor Practice complaint against Coos County
According to sources close to Teamsters 223 the Union dropped the ULP against Coos County. Reasons cited for dropping the ULP relate to insufficient evidence to support the claim the County was contracting out labor formerly performed by bargaining unit workers. Meanwhile, reports continue to abound the remaining members of the Coos County Road Department are working excessive overtime to meet the minimum safety needs of the County.
Commissioner Stufflebean, who barely survived a recall attempt as a consequence of the perceived slippery way in which he laid off twenty two road workers on New Year’s Eve recently filed bankruptcy claiming his savings were depleted fighting the recall. If this claim is true he failed to declare his contribution to OreSTAR possibly violating campaign financing laws. The commissioner is reportedly vacationing in Hawaii with his family.
Coos County desperately needs a free press
Honestly, I totally support reporting good news and tooting the horn for local accomplishments. Alas, a problem arises however if the feel good, pat everyone on the back, lets bake cookies and hand out awards at the chamber meetings comes at the expense of real analysis of local issues and hard investigative reporting.
Really, who decides what is an accomplishment? Does spending millions of taxpayer dollars on an airport terminal to subsidize out of town golfers and the Bandon Dunes qualify as an accomplishment? Does trying to bring in big corporations demanding a huge environmental footprint while ignoring local renewable resources qualify as an accomplishment? Who is on the accomplishment board of approval? Who gets to decide? The readers sure don’t.
Why hasn’t The World covered the glaring inconsistencies in Stufflebean’s bankruptcy statements? Have they queried the elections board and asked why Stufflebean failed to report his own expenditures? How are we the reader supposed to make informed decisions without a free and open press?
The World’s latest editorial tries to whitewash their cheer leading efforts for the SCDC crowd or maybe they are just making excuses for not spending any resources on real investigative journalism.
As the steward of your hometown newspaper, I think celebrating those blessings is part of my job. That’s particularly true when the country is steeped in recessionary gloom.
Of course, a good newspaper also watchdogs local government and points out community problems. Delivering tough love is a core principle for journalists.
But disputes and calamities are never a complete picture. That’s why The World has made special efforts this year to report on local accomplishments, and to play up good news when we find it.
We’ll keep doing that, even when the economy improves.
“We’ll keep doing that...” how about you start doing that?
If this trend holds, Stufflebean may not qualify for a new job
The jobless are screwed if they have any late or unpaid debt if they want a new job, even entry level jobs that don’t handle money.
Once reserved for government jobs or payroll positions that could involve significant sums of money, credit checks are now fast, cheap and used for all manner of work. Employers, often winnowing a big pool of job applicants in days of nearly 10 percent unemployment, view the credit check as a valuable tool for assessing someone’s judgment.
But job counselors worry that the practice of shunning those with poor credit may be unfair and trap the unemployed — who may be battling foreclosure, living off credit cards and confronting personal bankruptcy — in a financial death spiral: the worse their debts, the harder it is to get a job to pay them off.
“How do you get out from under it?†asked Matthew W. Finkin, a law professor at the University of Illinois, who fears that the unemployed and debt-ridden could form a luckless class. “You can’t re-establish your credit if you can’t get a job, and you can’t get a job if you’ve got bad credit.â€
There is only one solution, run for political office, no credit checks or qualifications required.
Stufflebean spins recall details for the LA Times
The LA Times has written a story, ‘Throw the Bums Out‘ denoting the growing intolerance on the part of the populous for corrupt or incompetent politician. Amongst the examples given is our own Kevin Stufflebean who narrowly survived a recall last May.
Par for the course, Stufflebean continues to blame the recall on imaginary budget constraints that forced him to layoff twenty two road workers without notice and sparked a potentially devastating unfair labor practice complaint against the County.
The recall campaign in Coos County was sparked last year after the three-member board of commissioners cut the county’s 40-person roads department by 55%. The board had to reduce its $4-million budget by a quarter…”It wasn’t like I wanted to cut those jobs. But that didn’t matter,” said Stufflebean, who oversaw transportation issues for the board.
Stufflebean even repeats claims of harassment and abuse.
Residents drove by Stufflebean’s home, taking pictures of him and his family and posting the images online along with nasty comments. His wife was yelled at while grocery shopping. His son, who attends high school with the children of some of the laid-off county road workers, tried to shrug off criticism about his father.
The most interesting claim, however, regards his personal savings and the recall and his bankruptcy.
The campaign against the recall drained his savings. He and his wife recently filed for bankruptcy.
If Stufflebean did, in fact, use savings to finance the recall then he should have reported the contribution and the expenditure with OreStar. As we have previously reported it appears he did not, in violation of public campaign finance laws.
Probably, the bankruptcy court trustee would be interested in knowing that he diverted assets to a recall election rather than paying his creditors less than six months before filing bankruptcy.
Then again, maybe Kevin is just making all that up about spending his own money to save his job… trying to save face, perhaps. What do you think?
Stufflebean’s rationale for bankruptcy raise questions
Noted previously, Stufflebean has given several reasons for filing bankruptcy including his recall fight. A review of the OreSTAR election database does not list any expenses paid by Stufflebean toward his recall fight begging the question, did Stufflebean violate election laws by not reporting campaign expenditures?
Further, has he declared in his bankruptcy filing his disposal of personal assets toward the recall? Is he required to?
My sources have told me that he carried heavy credit card debt back when he worked for the State so he knew a claimed $28,000 pay cut would have a serious impact upon his ability to honor his debts. So why complicate the matter with continued spending on big screen televisions or a recall election?
IF Stufflebean violated campaign laws and IF he improperly filled out the bankruptcy filing, both could meet with harsh penalty, which may explain why The World omitted the claims blaming the campaign and a reduced salary from the original AP article. The World supported Stufflebean during the recall election.
Commissioner Stufflebean files for bankruptcy protection
Coos County Commissioner Kevin Stufflebean, the man in charge of our public money and resources has filed Chapter 13. According to the Register Guard, Stufflebean blames the recall, his ex-wife and the exorbitant costs associated with being a public official.
His wife lost her job a few years back, Stufflebean said. When he became commissioner two years ago, he said, he took a $28,000 annual pay cut. Stufflebean makes about $59,000 a year now.
Campaigning against the May 5 recall election also cost him a significant amount of money personally, Stufflebean said.
Until recently, he also was paying for on-the-job expenses out of pocket, as the board of commissioners was trying to keep its expenses down.
“I took about a $3,000 per month loss in revenue,†Stufflebean said.
Another hit came from legal fees when the mother of Stufflebean’s son filed to gain custody of the boy, he said.
A check on OreSTAR would confirm whether Stufflebean spent his own money fighting the recall although if he did he did not report it from what I can see.
It should be possible to confirm the salary drop as well. Unconfirmed sources have told me in the past Stufflebean was in such deep financial trouble he had to buy a big screen television at ‘Rent to Own’.
Republicans bailing out on SS Palin
From The Hill
Republicans facing tough elections in 2010 don’t want Sarah Palin campaigning with them.
Though the soon-to-be-former Alaska governor is seen as popular with the conservative grass roots, several Republicans said she’d help them by staying home in Wasilla.
Several of these Republicans hail from districts or states carried in 2008 by President Obama, a frequent target of Palin’s criticism. Republicans must keep these districts and win others where Obama is popular if they are to gain seats next year.
As Margaret Carlson said last night on Countdown
Sarah Palin is very good at stringing words together that don‘t have a subject, a verb and an object. They‘re just present participles and prepositions and “I love the people of Alaska†and “I‘m quitting so I can serve them better.†It makes no sense.
Reminds me of my own perceptions of trying to follow Kevin Stufflebean’s word streams. ( I wasn’t the only person wrinkling their forehead trying to decipher what he was saying), but it is interesting that people like Palin are able to advance into politics. Palin at least is good looking, hard to explain some of these other characters.
Now, Levi Johnston, the father of her grandson is saying she quit for the money, which supports my claim from the beginning.
Citizens call out Coos County Commissioners on chromite mining
Fairview residents, Ronne Hearn and Jaye Bell have been dogging the commissioners on the ORC mining venture and wrote this well crafted and thoughtful letter.
Dear Commissioners,
We all out here seem to be lacking that magic one page sheet (written after the fact) that says that Nollan and Dolan have any thing whatsoever to do with road proportionality, let alone when we, the county, currently have no stake in the deal and thereby, presumably, are not the ones destroying the road. Counsel may be busy but she’s the one who brought up this “one page” piece of elusive information. She works for you. Ask for it. You work for us. We want the page.
The DVD. Copying DVDs is generally not difficult, particularly in light of a $340,000 computer upgrade which might include the ability to copy DVDs. That meeting was the 1st of May. We are now celebrating Memorial Day weekend. If the county can’t do it, give it to Bob Arnold along with a few bucks for his effort and some blank DVDs and he’ll take care of it. If, as was suggested, the DVD is flawed, then contact Mr Ralls and suggest a new copy. I’m sure he’d be on it in a heart beat.
As to the ORC Letter to the Editor in Saturday’s World: It sounded so much like Mr PubEd that we looked up the guy in the phone book to see if he was for real.
Did you notice any of the flaws in the rationale in that letter? Russell Ralls, not ORC, did say there was gold and platinum in the sands and that because their specific gravities were substantially heavier than the other minerals, they would spin off first. Perhaps it is a thought that the county, rather than ORC, determine for the sake of the county whether the gold and platinum are “worth” saving. I’m sure you’d be a lot more solicitous of your gold and platinum than would be ORC.
1.5 million dollars. Based on what? All the commodities – except for gold and platinum…. – are way down. Just get in there and sign some stupid deal or the voters will get you in 2010. Hello…… We ARE the voters. You work for us. We don’t want you going off on some NWN/Methane type of deal. Neither has served the county well as all of you may have noticed. You were told in advance that these were boondoggles. You didn’t listen
And we’re telling you now: Go Slow. Hire your own expert attorney, Drag your feet all you want. Unless there’s something going on under the table, you have no obligation to ORC. And the mineral sands are yours, which is to say the mineral sands are ours. We want them taken care of for the valuable commodities that they are. They are precious. Treat them that way.
Also, we need to determine what our timber losses and related timber job losses are going to be if we destroy our younger stands. County says an acre of saleable timber produces from $16,000 to $33,000, while ORC says that a mined acre will likely yield $32,000. Based on what? What weight? What sales price? What royalty? Over what time?
Which brings us to the cost of road repairs. The URS Pavement Analysis Report from June 3rd, 2008 suggests all sorts of ways we can spend county money to benefit ORC, one of which was an outlay of some 1.2 million dollars to upgrade the road to industrial grade to accomodate the huge and weighty mining trucks. An outlay of up to one million dollars in the face of a potential income of 1 to 1.5 million dollars doesn’t make any economic sense, especially when the 1 to 1.5 million dollar income figures are drawn from thin air.
Do some of your own drilling and assaying. Know what you have from someone independent. Might not be a bad idea to have more than one assay done of the same core drills. Could be very enlightening.
There is no rush. If ORC won’t mine without the county’s 6,000 acres, so be it. If they have enough to mine the private lands, so be it. ORC is not your concern. We are your concern. Our land and its wealth are your concerns. We want all of this open, above board, and as transparent as a framed space with no glass, no glass to reflect or refract the images seen through the opening.
Ronnie and Jaye
Especially appreciate the reference to counsel and the constant claims of attorney client privilege. Surely privilege cannot be applied when rationalizing a decision to commit public funds to something like road improvements.
Did I just hear you say "little" Trinity? I think not ! She's half-grown !
Congratulations to you all ...
http://www.larryvanelsberg2010.com/index.html 
Thanks, Den, this is very useful 