Anyone have any idea of what this resolution actually says?
GRANT COUNTY CITIZENS TAKE A STAND The Oregonian | 5/19/02 | Michael Milstein
Posted on 5/21/02 4:50 PM Pacific by AuntB
JOHN DAY, Or. Frustration is boiling over in Eastern Oregon's Grant County as logging that has always been the rural county's lifeblood slips away, taking jobs and families with it.
Locals are mounting Oregon's own brand of Sagebrush Rebellion, challenging federal management of surrounding national forests. They know it could spark the kind of angry confrontation that has flared where other Western counties have attempted to take control of public land. But they say Grant County has no choice.
"For us, we have nothing more to lose," says Herb Brusman, a hunting guide and former federal trapper. "It's nothing but a win-win situation. They can't take anything more away from us, so we can't help but win."
Their vehicle is a Tuesday ballot measure authored by Brusman and Dave Traylor, both longtime county residents. They maintain it will give locals license to cut hazardous or fire-prone trees on federal lands in the name of public safety, with or without U.S. Forest Service permission. Others say it is a wildly misguided proposition likely to get unsuspecting citizens arrested and fuel anti-government sentiment.
"Something needs to be done, but not everyone agrees on what needs to be done," says Jennifer Barker of Bear Valley, who with her husband was named Oregon's tree farmer of the year in 2000. "People can't just go out and decide that for themselves." The measure declares that county citizens may "participate in stewardship of natural resources on public lands within the County, when those resources or the use of those resources becomes detrimental to the health, welfare or safety of the people."
A county attorney has found the measure vague and unenforceable, because federal environmental laws overrule county mandates. Federal forest rules do not allow people to freely cut trees on their own.
Measure aims to let citizens step in But the measure says anything that violates the Constitution "will not be considered law." Brusman and Traylor say that mandate, plus a document outlining the county's customs and cultures, will give citizens the right to step in wherever the Forest Service fails to cut dead and dying trees.
"We'll have grandmas, we'll have kids, we'll have so many people when we go out there, it will be like arresting a cross-section of Grant County if they try," says Traylor, a burly Vietnam veteran and jack-of-all-trades who sells powered parachutes, logs part time and likes the Discovery Channel.
An accompanying ballot measure by Brusman and Traylor would prohibit United Nations actions within the county. They claim the United Nations wants to seize private land and firearms, which they see as a precursor to erasing communities in the rural West. The U.N. measure goes so far even the ultraconservative John Birch Society -- which advocates getting the United States out of the United Nations -- disowns it as unconstitutional.
But some local leaders suspect the conservative county of about 7,500 will pass both measures, leading Oregon into the so-called county supremacy movement. A sequel to the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1980s, the movement has led counties in Nevada, New Mexico and other states to claim control of federal lands in their borders.
Authorities turned back most of those efforts, but not before enraged crowds faced down law officers. "It appears to give people a right that they do not have," said Nancy Nickel, the local district attorney before she was recalled earlier this year. "It could create a great deal of trouble for a lot of well-meaning people, and that won't do our county any good."
Jobless rate is twice the state average The county's frustrations can be counted in shuttered businesses on the streets of its small towns, once-humming sawmills that run on reduced shifts and the loss of nearly 200 students from its schools in the last two years. It has the second-highest unemployment rate in Oregon -- twice the state average. Census figures show the county population has fallen by about 500 since 1998.
With its population about 1 percent of Multnomah County's, Grant County covers 10 times the ground -- roughly the size of Connecticut. Almost two-thirds of it, including the scenic Strawberry Mountains and vast reaches of ponderosa pine, falls within the Malheur National Forest.
A 1990 plan by the Malheur predicted cutting of 211 million board feet of timber each year, a number some federal foresters now admit they could never maintain. As endangered species protection for fish and the Canada lynx posed new hurdles, commercial logging fell to 15 million board feet by 2001.
Some local sawmills have closed, while others haul logs from Canada and other states to keep their blades turning. The national forest lost 24 percent of its funding this year and is cutting jobs because it is not cutting timber.
Some locals last year asked the county court -- akin to a county commission in urban counties -- to order U.S. flags flown upside down as a sign of distress.
"The pent-up frustration and the fear people have that they might have to move is very real," says County Judge Dennis Reynolds, who heads the court. "It's a way of life people are trying to fight for. They feel their way of life is being jeopardized by uninformed people who make rules, regulations and laws."
But Reynolds says he cannot back the ballot measure. "It tears me up what's happening to people and this county, but this can't be the way we deal with it," he says. "The way we deal with it is not to thumb our noses at the law."
Locals see jobs in logging forests that are clogged with wood from decades of firefighting -- and now more ready than ever to burn. But the national forest's shrinking staff often needs years to shepherd timber sales through a maze of environmental and endangered species reviews. And every project faces appeals from environmental groups arguing that cutting timber harms the forest more than it helps.
"Things aren't happening, and they aren't happening fast enough," says Malheur Forest Supervisor Bonnie Wood, target of a campaign by local businessmen to have her removed. "For me, it's a hugely personal frustration because I like the place and I like the people. I'm embarrassed about where we are because I thought we'd be further by now."
Environmental reviews required Traylor and Brusman say their measure builds on a trial program set up five years ago to let citizens buy individual dead or dying trees at market value. A big ponderosa could be worth a few thousand bucks to someone who knew how to mill it into siding or molding, they say.
But the national forest halted the program in 1999 when it turned out people were claiming trees and selling them to sawmills at a profit. New rules also would have forced the stretched forest staff to review the environmental impacts of cutting each tree, Wood says.
It makes more sense to advance larger projects where the fire hazard is most extreme, she says. Wood says she wants to work with the community to clean up flammable reaches of forest, but all logging requires environmental reviews and a federal permit or contract. If citizens simply cut trees themselves, as Traylor and Brusman suggest, they will violate Forest Service regulations and probably the Endangered Species Act and other federal laws.
The Forest Service would have to stop them, she says. "What they do dictates what we will do," Wood says. "If people are thinking, 'We pass this and everything will be fine,' that's not true, because this is a national forest, and there are laws and regulations we have to follow."
She fears the ballot measure will drive a deeper wedge between the Forest Service and the community, while endangering forest employees. "Frustration can lead to something else, so in that sense, I am concerned," she says. Others worry that supporters of the measure may use the provision that voids anything contrary to the Constitution as a shield to break laws they don't like.
"Anything they decide is contrary, they're not going to follow, and that's kind of scary," says Tammy Bremner, the town manager in Canyon City. "We don't know who will determine whether something is constitutional."
No one reviews county measures for accuracy or constitutionality. So Bremner spent a Sunday afternoon on the Internet and found that the United Nations Charter does not call for seizing private land, world taxation or other steps the U.N. ballot measure says it does. Brusman and Taylor now acknowledge the error but argue they are still part of the U.N. agenda.
Citizens could insist the county enforce the two measures, Bremner says, while federal authorities could take action against the county if it does. "You have to go through proper channels if you want to change something, you don't just pass laws that make everyone else look foolish," she says. "We're trying to build credibility here, and this isn't the way to do it. We need to work together to turn things around."
You can reach Michael Milstein at 503-294-7689 or by e-mail at michaelmilstein@news.oregonian.com.