Tae kwon do families • B1
Playoff wins for Bears, Cougars D1 •
NOVEMBER 12, 2011
SATURDAY 75¢
Serving Central Oregon since 1903 www.bendbulletin.com
Deschutes sees rise in mental health patients, staff By Hillary Borrud The Bulletin
Deschutes County is hiring more mental health workers to serve the growing number of patients insured by the Oregon Health Plan and oversee treatment for people living at residential treatment homes that opened
in the past year. The number of residents with state health coverage for their mental health care nearly doubled from January 2008 to January 2011, according to county data. More than 19,000 people in the county had state coverage and were entitled to mental health ser-
vices as of January. “The trajectory continues to be with more people on the Oregon Health Plan,” County Health Services Director Scott Johnson said in a Nov. 2 meeting with county commissioners. “With more members, we earn more dollars and we have more responsibility.”
The county has had difficulty keeping up with the increase in demand for mental health services, in part because officials were reluctant to hire more workers because they worried the state would turn around and cut funding. See Mental health / A4
Buckaroos ready for the rodeo
REDMOND
District sued for $750K in bus crash • A passenger claims the driver fainted behind the wheel while fasting and taking medication By Erik Hidle The Bulletin
Ryan Brennecke / The Bulletin
Rick Stevenson watches his grandchildren, Nathan, 5, Grace, 8, and Josephine, 7, color their cowboys Friday at the Columbia River Circuit Finals Rodeo at the Deschutes County Fair & Expo Center in Redmond. The rodeo continues today, with a family performance at 1 p.m. and an evening show at 7:30. For more, see Sports, D1.
A gold rush of subsidies in search for clean energy By Eric Lipton and Clifford Krauss New York Times News Service
Halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, on a former cattle ranch and gypsum mine, NRG Energy is building an engineering marvel: a compound of nearly a million solar panels that will produce enough electricity to power about 100,000 homes. The project is also a marvel in another, less obvious way: Taxpayers and ratepayers are providing subsidies worth almost as much as the entire $1.6
billion cost of the project. Similar subsidies have been given to 15 other solar- and wind-power electric plants since 2009. The government support — which includes loan guarantees, cash grants and contracts that require electric customers to pay higher rates — largely eliminated the risk to private investors and almost guaranteed them large profits. The beneficiaries include financial firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, conglomerates like General
Electric, utilities like Exelon and NRG — even Google. A great deal of attention has been focused on Solyndra, the start-up that received $528 million in federal loans to develop solar technology before it went bankrupt, but nearly 90 percent of the $16 billion in clean-energy loans guaranteed by the federal government since 2009 went to subsidize these lowerrisk power plants, which in many cases were backed by big companies with vast resources. See Energy / A7
CENTRAL OREGON WEATHER
40-mph wind gusts topple trees, spread controlled burn By Nick Grube The Bulletin Jim Wilson / New York Times News Service
Jacquelyn Brownstein, a biologist, checks the land near installations at the California Valley Solar Ranch in the California Valley near Santa Margarita, Calif. Renewable energy has received exceptional help from the government, most of it as part of the stimulus bill, and although that is ending, some say it has been unnecessary.
Cash-strapped Postal Service tells customers: Give us our stuff back! By Ed O’Keefe The Washington Post
Ever swiped a pen, tape gun, letter tray or a mail tub from a post office? The U.S. Postal Service would like it back, please. Starting today, the cashstrapped delivery service said, it is giving customers two weeks to
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return stolen equipment, no questions asked. The USPS spent nearly $50 million last year replacing equipment that was stolen or inadvertently taken and never returned by customers, officials said this week, labeling such thefts “a serious issue.” “We are in a financial crisis
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Vol. 108, No. 316, 74 pages, 7 sections
and simply cannot afford this type of unnecessary expense,” said David Williams, vice president of USPS network operations. “The equipment is federal property, and we want it back.” The Postal Service is aggressively cutting costs with plans to close thousands of post offices and
hundreds of mail-processing facilities. Observers expect that next week it will announce losses of at least $10 billion for fiscal 2011. It is a federal crime to steal postal equipment, and doing so can lead to up to three years in prison or up to $250,000 in fines. See Postal / A6
INDEX Business Classified Comics
C3-5 E1-4 B4-5
Crosswords B5, E2 Dear Abby B3 Editorials C6
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REDMOND — A former Redmond High School student is suing the district for more than $750,000 for injuries, pain and suffering caused by the 2009 crash of a Redmond school bus in which she was riding. The suit alleges that the driver, who was fasting and taking a medication in preparation for a medical procedure, passed out behind the wheel. In the suit, filed late last month in Deschutes County Circuit Court, Kaitlyn Farasyn claims she suffered several injuries in the Nov. 19 accident. The suit alleges that district officials created a dangerous situation that day by requiring a driver who was preparing for a medical procedure to report to work. The suit doesn’t list Farasyn’s age, but her lawyer, Phil Emerson, said she is now older than 18. According to the lawsuit, district bus driver Nancy Lopez was fasting on the day of the accident and around noon had taken Bisacodyl, a laxative whose side effects include faintness. She had requested and received the day off to prepare for a medical procedure. But on the afternoon of the crash, the suit claims, Lopez was called into work by David Dunlap, the district’s transportation director, and Tamara McKinley, the district’s school bus dispatcher. The district’s website lists Dunlap as the current operations supervisor in the Transportation Services Department and McKinley as a support specialist. According to the suit, “McKinley and Dunlap were aware that Lopez had fasted and taken medication prior to driving the school bus the afternoon of November 19.” See Crash / A4
About 20 feet of ponderosa pine ripped through the roof of a Black Butte Ranch home Friday night when gusting winds tore the top of the tree loose from its base. No one was injured, but it was just one of many wind-generated mishaps that kept Central Oregon emergency response officials busy into the evening. “The winds were just phenomenal,” said Tom Ward, a captain with the Black Butte Ranch Fire District. “We had several trees down, and we were busy.” Ward said there were five people inside the Black Butte Ranch house when the top 20 feet of a 75- to 80-foot ponderosa came crashing down into the vacant living room. He said the force caused the tree to break into two pieces, with one lodging itself vertically in the floor like birthday candle in a cake. “It disappeared into the floor,” Ward said. “There’s maybe 4 feet of it sticking out.” Winds whipped at speeds of up to 40 mph in some places Friday. In Sisters, gusts caused a U.S. Forest Service controlled burn to scorch more than anticipated. See Wind / A7
TODAY’S WEATHER B3 B2 C7
Sports D1-6 Stocks C4-5 TV B2, ‘TV’ mag
Cooler, late snow High 46, Low 31 Page C8
TOP NEWS MEXICO: Crash kills top official, A3 EURO CRISIS: Greece, Italy act, A4