Sustainable snow Mt. Bachelor’s efforts to help the environment • GREEN, C1
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So, what’s a twenty-niner, anyway? Hint: It has to do with mountain bikes. To find out more, see Cycling Central • SPORTS, D1
High-tech flirting turns explicit, and young lives are altered
Keeping an eye on
parking in Bend
DESCHUTES
Flaherty, county face mediation or lawsuit As 3 fired prosecutors allege bias, deadline looms for DA, officials to decide how they will proceed By Hillary Borrud
By Jan Hoffman
The Bulletin
New York Times News Service
Three prosecutors fired by Deschutes County District Attorney Patrick Flaherty have threatened to sue him and several county officials over alleged sex discrimination and unfair labor practices. The former deputy district attorneys — Brentley Foster, Jody Vaughan and Phil Duong — gave Flaherty and county officials until Thursday to agree to enter mediation and try to resolve the matter out of court, according to a March 18 letter from their attorney to Flaherty and the county. If Flaherty and county officials agree to mediation, the former prosecutors have offered to postpone filing their lawsuit for one month. Patrick Duong, Foster and Vaughan in- Flaherty tend to seek more than $21 million in economic, punitive and other damages, according to a draft complaint, which along with the letter was released Friday by Deschutes County in response to a public records request. The county could face steep legal bills even before the outcome of any potential mediation or lawsuit is factored in. County officials are considering hiring multiple attorneys to represent them in the matter. In the draft complaint, Vaughan, Foster and Duong allege that county officials aided Flaherty in his plan to fire them by delaying a ratification vote on the Deschutes County District Attorneys Association’s contract until after Flaherty took office. See DA / A4
LACEY, Wash. — One day last winter Margarite posed naked before her bathroom mirror, held up her cellphone and took a picture. Then she sent the fulllength frontal photo to Isaiah, her new boyfriend. Both were in eighth grade. They broke up soon after. A few weeks later, Isaiah forwarded the photo to another eighth-grade girl, once a friend of Margarite’s. Around 11 o’clock at night, that girl slapped a text message on it. “Ho Alert!” she typed. “If you think this girl is a whore, then text this to all your friends.” Then she clicked open the long list of contacts on her phone and pressed “send.” In less than 24 hours, the effect was as if Margarite, 14, had sauntered naked down the hallways of the four middle schools in this racially and economically diverse suburb of the state capital, Olympia. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of students had received her photo and forwarded it. In short order, students would be handcuffed and humiliated, parents mortified and lessons learned at a harsh cost. Only then would the community try to turn the fiasco into an opportunity to educate. Around the country, law enforcement officials and educators are struggling with how to confront minors who “sext,” an imprecise term that refers to sending sexual photos, videos or texts from one cellphone to another. See Sexting / A4
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INDEX Abby
C2
Local
Calendar
C3
Movies
B1-6
E1-6
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B5
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C4-5
Oregon
B3
Crossword C5, E2
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C2
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B6
Green, Etc. C1-6
Armed with a camera, one resident is documenting violations By Nick Grube The Bulletin
very day before he leaves his house on Bend’s north side, 61-year-old Vern Budd attaches a small digital camera to his belt. Whether he’s going to the grocery store, post office or simply headed down the street to run an errand, it’s always with him. He uses it only when he sees something he doesn’t like, and for the most part there’s one thing that irks him more than anything else: illegal parking. “It’s rampant in this town,” Budd said. “It doesn’t matter where you go, it’s rampant.” For at least the past couple of months, Budd has been training his lens on illegally parked vehicles and sending the photos to city officials and the Bend Police Department. He’s looking for a
E
“It’s rampant in this town. It doesn’t matter where you go, it’s rampant.” — Vern Budd, of Bend, on illegal parking
Parking tickets Bend Police officers issued 15 parking tickets from Jan. 1, 2010, to March 15, 2011. Its volunteers issued 1,089 in 2010, many for parking in disabled parking zones. Here are the types and numbers of citations officers issued:
9 3 1 1 1
Illegal stopping, standing, parking Parking in a disabled zone
Rob Culpepper / New York Times News Service
Former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy’s racing jacket has a potential buyer at a yard sale over the weekend.
Scrushy yard sale: Hunting for deals after a titan’s fall By Campbell Robertson
Prohibited parking or standing Misuse of a disabled permit Blocking a disabled parking space
Source: Bend Police Department
New York Times News Service
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his casserole dish? These are the wages of sin for Richard Scrushy, who rose from working-class roots to become one of the highest-paid CEOs in the U.S. and fell to become federal prisoner No. 24463-001. In the two years since he was ordered by a judge to pay $2.87 billion to HealthSouth, the company he started in 1984, his 19 cars and his wife’s jewelry collection have been auctioned and his houses sold. Then, over the weekend, came perhaps the final indignity: a yard sale. See Scrushy / A4
D1-6
Washington cuts coal use, but soon may be a chief exporter By Craig Welch
We use recycled newsprint
The Seattle Times
The Bulletin An Independent Newspaper
Vol. 108, No. 87, 30 pages, 5 sections
MON-SAT
meaningful response, but in his estimation the reaction has been minimal. While he takes pictures of cars and trucks parked against the flow of traffic or in handicap spaces, he has spent a lot of time around the Third Street corridor, especially on streets like DeKalb and Irving. In those places, cars and trucks line both sides of the narrow roads, leaving barely enough room for a single vehicle to pass. Because of the cramped space, many people have started parking on the sidewalks, keeping only two wheels on the road. This is unacceptable to Budd, a member of the Central Oregon Coalition for Access. Those who park on the sidewalk create potential barriers for disabled people, many of whom must use wheelchairs or cannot see. See Parking / A4
C3
Classified
B4
Ryan Brennecke / The Bulletin
Vern Budd, a member of the Central Oregon Coalition for Access, takes a photo of a vehicle parked on the sidewalk near the intersection of Northeast Kearny Avenue and Second Street. The license plate information has been blurred out.
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Thinkstock
A debate about the future of coal is raging in Washington state.
The sandy black gold arrives by rail every day, and piles up in giant mounds on a spit just off shore. From there, it’s loaded onto ships bound for Asia. Last year, the seaport just across the U.S. border in Delta, B.C., shipped 27 million tons of North American coal abroad. It’s the busiest coal-export operation on the continent, the only one along the West Coast outside Alaska.
Perhaps not for long. Two companies are pushing to make Washington state a major player in the international coal trade. One has sought to ship up to 60 million tons of coal a year from refurbished docks near the Columbia River’s mouth. The other plans to build a major shipping terminal near Bellingham, and has a contract to export 24 million tons of Rocky Mountain coal a year. Gov. Chris Gregoire, striving to reduce Washington’s carbon footprint, this month
signed a deal with owners of the TransAlta power plant in Centralia to shut down its two coal-fired boilers by 2025. Those boilers account for 10 percent of Washington’s share of the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. But just as Washington weans itself from coal, it could be positioned as the nation’s leading exporter of the fossil fuel. The possibility has sparked a fierce debate. See Coal / A4