Bulletin Daily Paper 02/19/12

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Serving Central Oregon since 1903 www.bendbulletin.com

STATE CHAMPS: Summit captures 2 swim crowns • D1

Onetime rivals for treasurer job form alliance By Lauren Dake

“Really, nothing’s off the table as far as we’re concerned. We have a striping truck, and they have a striping truck. Is there a way we can get rid of a striping truck?” — Chris Doty, Deschutes County Road Department director, about the possibility of consolidating some services with Bend

Time to merge? Tough times spur agencies to ask

REDMOND PROFICIENCY ACADEMY

School director jailed in sex case • Michael Bremont has led the charter school since ’09

The Bulletin

By Scott Hammers and Ben Botkin

SALEM — Not too long ago, they were pitted against each other in the race for state treasurer. But now, Sen. Chris Telfer, R-Bend, and Treasurer Ted Wheeler have let political bygones be just that. IN “I like Ted, SALEM I really do,” Telfer said. And Wheeler’s assessment follows a similar vein. “She’s smart. She’s a Telfer bright person. We had indepth debates (during the campaign) that I believe people apWheeler preciated,” Wheeler said. “I like to think she learned from me and I learned from her.” The two have since joined forces on several issues, including the socalled Oregon Investment Act. The idea is to let a new board, the Oregon Growth Board, coordinate the state’s economic development efforts. The board would combine and coordinate existing state economic development programs. Its aim would be to help businesses raise capital by using state money to help them leverage private funds. The goal, of course, being to create jobs. “Some aspects of this Oregon Investment Act, we campaigned on together,” Telfer said. “How do you take state money and help businesses?” The act follows along the lines of several themes in this abbreviated February session: job creation, consolidation and streamlining the state’s stretched resources. “There are so many pots of money for business development, it’s unwieldy,” Telfer said. The bill, House Bill 4040, remains in a committee. It has bipartisan support, with Telfer as one of the chief co-sponsors. The former campaign foes also joined forces on one of Telfer’s priorities this session. See Rivals / A6

The Bulletin

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Rob Kerr / The Bulletin

Deschutes County Road Department maintenance employees Clarence Lamping, left, and Scott Jacob, back right, work on a Caterpillar earth scraper Thursday at the road department service area near Knott Landfill in Bend. County and city officials will probably meet sometime in the next month to discuss the possibility of sharing vehicle fleet maintenance, says interim County Administrator Erik Kropp. By Hillary Borrud The Bulletin

The recent clash between two local tourism agencies over competing triathlons has revived a long-running discussion about the possibility of merging them and, perhaps, consolidating other government services as well. Following the conflict involving the Leadman and Ironman triathlons, said Bend City Councilor Tom Greene, “quite a few”

people contacted him to suggest that Visit Bend and the Central Oregon Visitors Association be combined. “They’re curious why we have two entities because to them, it seems like the same thing,” Greene said. The two tourism bureaus are private nonprofits, but they are funded largely by tourism taxes. Bend and Deschutes County are mandated to dedicate roughly a third of such tax revenue on tour-

ism promotion, but the city councilors and county commissioners decide how, exactly, to spend the money. Visit Bend receives tourism taxes collected by the city of Bend and promotes tourism in the city, while Central Oregon Visitors Association receives lodging taxes from unincorporated areas such as Sunriver and markets the region to visitors. See Consolidation / A6

The director of the Redmond Proficiency Academy was arrested and jailed Saturday evening on multiple allegations of sexual contact with a student and official misconduct. In a news release issued late Saturday, Redmond Police said they began investigating Michael Bremont, 39, on Friday after learning of the allegations against him from officials at the school. Bremont has been the director of the academy since it opened in 2009. He had previously been an assistant principal at Redmond High School, and before coming Bremont to Redmond, principal of Central Linn High School near Eugene. Bremont has had a teaching credential in Oregon since 1996, and has no record of complaints or sanctions, according to the website of the state Teacher Standards and Practices Commission. Greg Scott, assistant director of the Redmond Proficiency Academy, said he would not provide any comment on the situation Saturday evening. Late Saturday, the school’s board of directors issued a news release through the Redmond Police Department stating that the school will be open as scheduled on Tuesday, with counselors available for students or staff. Monday is Presidents Day, a school holiday. “I am confident in the ability of our staff to help our students and families though this troubling time,” board President Patrick MacKelvie said in the release. “We remain committed to ensuring the growth and well-being of all our students. The safety of our students is paramount.” Contacted late Saturday, Redmond School District Superintendent Shay Mikalson said the district is cooperating fully with the investigation and aware of the situation. The Redmond School District has general oversight over charters in its district. Bremont could not be reached for comment. By 8 p.m. Saturday, Bremont’s biography had been removed from the RPA website. The profile of his wife, health teacher Tamara Bremont, remains. Michael Bremont has been placed on paid administrative leave. See RPA / A4

With space a mess, NASA seeks broom

A string of kindness: 30 kidneys, 60 lives

By Kenneth Chang New York Times News Service

By Kevin Sack New York Times News Service

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Rick Ruzzamenti admits to being a tad impulsive. He traded his Catholicism for Buddhism in a revelatory flash. He married a Vietnamese woman he had only just met. And then a year ago, he decided in an instant to donate his left kidney to a stranger.

In February 2011, the desk clerk at Ruzzamenti’s yoga studio told him she had recently donated a kidney to an ailing friend. Ruzzamenti, 44, had never even donated blood, but the story so captivated him that two days later he placed a call to Riverside Community Hospital to ask how he might do the same thing. See Kidneys / A5

The Bulletin An Independent Newspaper

Vol. 109, No. 50, 46 pages, 7 sections

Monica Almeida New York Times News Service

Rick Ruzzamenti of Riverside, Calif., donated a kidney to a stranger, expecting nothing in return. The act led to the longest chain of kidney transplants ever constructed.

INDEX Business Books Classified

G1-6 F4-6 E1-6

Community C1-8 Crosswords C7, E2 Local News B1-6

Milestones Obituaries Opinion

The most obvious sign that there is a lot of junk in space is how much of it has been falling out of the sky lately: a defunct NASA satellite last year, a failed Russian space probe this year. While the odds are tiny that anyone here on Earth will get hit, the chances that all this orbiting litter will interfere with working satellites or the International Space Station, which dodges

TODAY’S WEATHER C6 B5 F1-3

Sports D1-6 Stocks G4-5 TV & Movies C2

Mostly cloudy High 42, Low 20 Page B6

pieces of debris with increasing frequency, are getting higher, according to a recent report by the National Research Council. The nonprofit group, which dispenses advice on scientific matters, concluded that the problem of extraterrestrial clutter had reached a point where, if nothing was done, a cascade of collisions would eventually make low-Earth orbit unusable. See Space / A7

TOP NEWS SYRIA: March in Damascus, A3 HOUSTON: Singer mourned, A3


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