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| SEPTEMBER 15, 2010
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Viewpoint
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THE NEWPORT MINER
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LE T T E R S POLIC Y We welcome letters to the editor. Letters should be typed and submitted to The Miner and Gem State Miner office no later than 5 p.m. Friday for publication the following Wednesday. No letter will be published unless it is signed by at least one individual, even if the letter represents the view of a group. The letter must include a telephone number and address for confirmation of authenticity. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. The Miner reserves the right to edit to conform to our publication style, policy and libel laws. Political letters will not be published the last issue prior an election. Letters will be printed as space allows.
Local officials using new meeting language?
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hat are local government officials doing when they are having a tabletop session?; or workshop?; or a first, second or even third touch? We aren’t sure and the public is probably just as confused. But that’s just a piece of the new meeting language being used by officials. It goes along with their new broader interpretation of running a public meeting and making decisions about how to spend public funds. The Pend Oreille County commissioners, for example, will hold table top sessions this year with department heads like the sheriff to discuss his budget. In the past, they held meetings with the sheriff to discuss how much he would cut from his budget and let him defend why he can’t. So why is it a tabletop discussion now? Will they be sitting around a table instead of grilling him from their bench while he sits defenseless from his open chair? There is no table in the public commissioner room so are they going to another room? All the boards governing everything from the utility district to the school district have added this one to their meeting language: Workshop. What is the difference between a workshop and a regular meeting to discuss public business? Do these board members only work in the workshops they hold and don’t really work during the regular meetings? So, are the real decisions made in workshops and the public should just attend those? And why do the elected officials need to go to “retreat workshops”? These are ones where they go someplace like Priest Lake to hold their “workshop.” The Pend Oreille County commissioners have added the first, second and third touch to their meeting language. We don’t understand what it means. Why can’t they just say it like they did in the past and everyone else does: We don’t understand the issue and aren’t ready to make a decision yet? Instead they stall by saying this is just the first touch like the pour citizen at the meeting should have known that. “Hey dummy we always touch everything three times, don’t ask us to decide today.” This touch process isn’t in the state law like public hearings, it’s something they invented. Then there is the new and probably illegal tendency of many local governments to leave items off their regular meeting agendas. “Oh, we didn’t know when we would adopt that resolution to change how we spend our money, it just came up and we voted after lunch.” Or some variation of that we hear all the time. We also hear the public tell us they think they are being kept from the process on purpose. We also find it unusual that in some cases documents that are important to a decision process like a contract aren’t available to the public until the last minute before a vote. There are many more examples. But the point is that the public likes the meeting language and process simple and consistent. Like the newspaper reporter, they can’t be at every minute of every meeting. They rely on the language and agenda driven process to stay informed. Public officials should be happy that the public wants to be this involved with the decision process. They should keep the language consistent without making up new terms with many meanings, give all the documents they have to the public when they get them and put everything on the agenda. If this isn’t possible sometimes, don’t make a decision until the next meeting. Keep it simple and open. --FJW
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R E A D E R S’ P O LL R E S U LT S
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The U.S. has officially ended combat operations in Iraq. The last official American combat brigade withdrew from Iraq in August, leaving behind 50,000 troops attached to what are called “advise and assist brigades.” Nearly 4,300 American troops have died in the war and 30,182 were wounded. Do you think the invasion and war with Iraq was worth the sacrifice? D. It was definitely worth it and I would want troops to go back there if it doesn’t prove stable.
A. No. We had no business in Iraq. The country had nothing to do with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and no weapons of mass destruction were found.
15%
C. Yes. Iraq posed a global threat and the U.S. had every right to invade and defend human rights.
46%
27% B. What’s done is done. Iraq needed intervention and there’s no better country than the U.S. to offer the help.
Web story comments policy
The Miner staff invites readers to comment on select stories on our Web site, www.pendoreillerivervalley. com. Commentators have the option of adding their name or writing anonymously. The Miner staff will review each comment before it is posted and reserves the right to omit or edit comments. If you want to comment only to our writers and editors let us know that you do not want your comment published.
|| We can do better at recycling To the editor: I wish to address my concern with our solid waste disposal site in north Pend Oreille County. Over the last four months, I have gone to the transfer station on Sullivan Lake Road to dispose of recyclable materials, mostly scrap metal. This is metal that I have found in the ground on my property, left from many years ago. On at least three occasions, I have been turned away as the metal dumpster was too full to accept more material. The last time I went, I wanted to dispose of several gallons of waste oil, along with some metal. I was told that I had to leave my 5 gallon bucket as it was no longer permissible for the oil to be poured into the 55-gallon drum at the site. I am not a builder, contractor or mechanic. I am a homeowner trying to clean up my property and take care of the environment. My point is this: recycling takes some effort on the part of all involved. If our county officials cannot make recycling easy by keeping dumpsters available for the public, providing bulk oil containers at the transfer station, and doing whatever
else they can to facilitate recycling, then many people will not recycle. The result is that scrap steel ends up dumped in the forest, waste oil goes into the ground, and other recyclable materials are lost into our landfills. We can do better. -Bryan Ford Ione
Motorcycle memorial quite a sight To the editor: I was in the Safeway parking lot this morning, Sept. 11, when a lot of motorcycles started pulling in. They were part of a group of 500 who were on their way to Post Falls. They were a group of military veterans and other motorcycle groups who were making this trip in remembrance of the Americans lost Sept. 11, 2001, and the brave men and women of the Armed Forces. It was a wonderful example of American spirit and patriotism. As a retired veteran, I was proud to speak to them and thank them for what they were doing. We video taped them from the intersection of Highway 41 and Old Priest River Road. It was quite a sight to see motorcycles
26 Total Votes
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from the intersection, all the way to the top of the hill and beyond. God bless these sort of people and the American service men and women. -Ron Froman Newport
Regulations mean more government To the editor: The Miner’s story last week on the community’s response to vacation rentals and property development regulations doesn’t match the current cry for less government and government spending. In fact, it sounds like most of the people at the hearing were devout socialists wanting the county government to control the use of other people’s property. Local people apparently want more government regulations and spending when it comes to telling their neighbors want they can or can’t do with their property. I hear that they don’t want the government taking over their health care, but are fine with the government controlling how we live in on our private property. Asking the government for “conditional” use of our property is simply surrendering our
freedom. Well, you don’t get government inspectors and regulators riding around in county cars for free. People at the hearing actually scoffed at the lack of enforcement. I wonder if they are willing to pay for it. One reason for living in a rural community is the lack of government revenue agents patrolling the roads looking for violations of codes and ordinances. Many people have moved here from the big city and expect big city government with rural property taxes. That’s one reason why the county has to borrow to make its payroll. We clearly have more government than we can afford or need. Fifty years ago people used their property without government interference. What happened? Talk about gun control or saving the trees in this community and people get instantly upset. The same people will show up at a hearing and demand the government interfere with someone trying to rent their property to people on vacation. We have a lot of people in this community who call themselves conservative, but they are just closet socialists demanding more government control. -Pete Scobby Newport
Senate election making national headlines Well, look who got a writeup in the Wall Street Journal. Our own Dino Rossi, in a tantalizing top of the page editorial titled “A Washington State Smear Campaign.” “Desperate political environments tend to inspire desperate political tactics,” writes Kimberley A. Strassel. “In Washington State, liberal activists are desperate.” Rossi attracted the Journal’s attention in his race to unseat U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., because if this turns out to be a “wave election” on Nov. 2, meaning a loss of more than 20 seats by the Democrat ma-
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jority, our man could be the 51st Republican vote in the Senate. And now that he is leading in some polls, Strassel said, “the left is unleashing the dirty tricks.” Well, the left knows how to do it. GUEST Rossi went OPINION down in history as having ADELE been elected governor here FERGUSON twice, on elec- CORRESPONDENT tion night and
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Visit The Miner Online to answer our readers’ poll question through Tuesday morning. Find it on the left-hand side of the page at www.PendOreilleRiverValley.com. The results will be printed next week on this page. You need not be a subscriber to participate. If you have ideas for future readers’ poll topics, submit them to theminer@povn. com. The Miner’s Fall Sports Preview section is in this week’s issue. Learn about each varsity team that plays for Newport, Priest River, Cusick and Selkirk. Schedules, team previews and coach profiles are all part of the coverage along with pictures of each player. What high school fall sport is your favorite?
12%
LE T T E R S
A. Football B. Volleyball C. Cross Country D. Soccer
in a machine recount, but never count King County out when it seeks power. They managed to come up with some boxes of uncounted ballots after the polls had closed to give Democrat Chris Gregoire 129 more votes than him. Strassel doesn’t rehash the 2004 race but the rematch in 2008 when activist trial lawyer Knoll Lowney filed a lawsuit against the Building Industry Association of Washington claiming it was using workers comp money to fund political campaigns. BIAW is a big backer of Rossi. Lowney demanded that a judge immediately bar the BIAW from accessing any money it might use for Rossi. The judge said no so Lowney filed another lawsuit claiming BIAW and Rossi improperly colluded on campaign activities. Lowney got a judge to allow him to depose Rossi eight days before the election, an action that put enough doubt in voters’ minds to cost him the election, according to Strassel. The lawsuit was dropped. It wasn’t needed any more. But, by golly, here it comes again. Rossi had no sooner declared for the Senate than Lowney sent a process server with a subpoena to Rossi’s home demanding more documents from the years of both elections, 2004 and 2008. This despite the fact the Public Disclosure Commission con-
ducted its own investigation into the affair and gave him a clean bill of health way last March. The trial for the new lawsuit originally was set for Nov. 1, the day before the election but it was moved until after the election by the judge in the case, Mike Heavey, of the well known Heavey family, which is well established in the Democratic Party. There is no telling what Lowney will ask for in the meantime, reporter Strassel says, (obviously to force the matter back in the public eye in the hope of rekindling doubt as to Rossi’s integrity), “but no one should be surprised when he asks for it. We’re now about to discover whether Washington’s judicial system will again be abused for politics. Washingtonians should watch this one.” We’re not the only ones watching. The Rossi-Murray contest has crept up into the top events of the election. Just this morning, I heard Chuck Todd, NBC’s political analyst, say that President Obama has some busy times ahead. “He’s going to spend a lot of time trying to save Barbara Boxer in California and Patty Murray in Washington State.” Personally, I am so sick of her ads on TV that run all day long wherein she claims credit for everything but the capping of the oil well. She’s being sold as the most powerful woman in Congress. Then why are the D’s worried? (Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville WA 98340)