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Private management suggested for Elliott BY CHELSEA DAVIS The World
COQUILLE — A forest products organization has thrown one management option for the Elliott State Forest on the table ahead of the State Land Board’s visit to Coos Bay. Douglas Timber Operators executive director Bob Ragon presented Coos County commissioners with his organization’s proposal: Stick with the 2012 management plan, but shift management to a private contractor.
Ragon has long been an advocate for the state taking a more aggressive approach to managing the timberlands. The Oregon Department of Forestry effectively let the environmental agencies trample its plan in the settlement of Cascadia v. Decker, Ragon said, by refusing to consider alternatives to the timber sales and not calling on suggested expert witnesses. The settlement went over and above what the Endangered Species Act Section 9 take prohibitions require, wrote attorney Mark
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Rutzick, by modifying habitat to protect endangered species rather than looking into management alternatives. Ragon has one suggestion: Log during the winter months since the marbled murrelet, an endangered species, is only in the forest during the spring and summer. “You can’t harm or harass a bird that isn’t present,” he said. “We got declarations from two (experts) but we were not able to use them because the state went into mediation with the plaintiffs and came
out with a settlement that puts about 80 percent of the Elliott off the table for management.” Commissioner Bob Main said the land board deserves “an earful” at its meeting in Coos Bay on Wednesday. “My opinion is it’s abundantly clear the state of Oregon doesn’t want to log at all,” he said. “If they totally ignore a solution, obviously they don’t want to do it in the first place.” Ragon doesn’t blame the land board; his targets are set on the
Department of Forestry. “The Department of Forestry did not have their act together when they should have known they would be legally challenged,” Ragon said. “They were grossly underprepared.” Main supports Ragon’s proposal, but he’s not optimistic. “They’re not going to find favor with your proposal because they want to lock it up,” Main said. “If you look at the path they’ve gone SEE FOREST | A8
Spinning for dinner
BY ANNE D’INNOCENZIO The Associated Press
Coos Bay, Reedsport decide on pot taxes CB ordinance allows tax up to 25 percent BY DEVAN PATEL The World
COOS BAY — Coos Bay is the latest Oregon city scrambling to discuss the potential tax ramifications of the Control, Regulation, and Taxation of Marijuana and Hemp Act, otherwise known as Measure 91. The Coos Bay City Council reached a consensus Tuesday to enact an ordinance to establish taxes and a resolution to determine the rate on medical and recreational marijuana should the ballot initiative pass on Nov. 4. The ordinance would allow taxes to range from zero to 25 percent for both medical and recreational marijuana, with the resolution setting both rates at 10 percent to start.
The tax needed to be enacted by the Oct. 21 council meeting because the passing of the ballot measure would give the state the sole right to tax marijuana, City Manager Rodger Craddock said. “Many cities and counties are putting a tax on it to get ahead of the legislation,” Craddock said. Taxes enacted prior to the ballot measure passing would conceivably be allowed to stand, although some legal opposition is expected. “There may be legal challenges of any city or jurisdiction to ban any dispensaries,” city Attorney Nathan McClintock said. “More so, with the tax under the ballot initiative, they’ll say you can’t tax because state law usurps that.”
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Reedsport tax would be 5 or 10 percent BY STEVE LINDSLEY The World
REEDSPORT — The Reedsport City Council on Monday decided to join with other cities in the state in enacting a tax on marijuana, should Measure 91 pass Nov. 4. That measure will legalize the recreational use of marijuana. The state already allows medical marijuana use. The council enacted a 5 percent tax on medical marijuana and 10 percent tax on recreational p o t . O t h e r Oregon c i t i e s , including
Coquille, Ashland, Forest Grove, Hillsboro, Springfield, Oregon City and Troutdale have also approved similar taxes. Medford has proposed taxes of 6 percent and 18 percent. Fairview, in Multnomah County, has enacted 15- and 40percent tax rates. Some councilors questioned whether the city could amend the rates. “Let’s say, tonight, we do a 5 percent/10 percent tax on this stuff,” Councilor Frank Barth said. “Is that set in stone, or can we regulate that at a later date?” “I think that we could, certainly, choose at a later date to raise or lower it,” Mayor Keith Tymchuk said. “However, it would still have to go to the voters.” Reedsport’s Measure 10-119 requires a public vote whenever council wants to consider raising fees or taxes. City manager Jonathan Wright said, like other cities, the council’s SEE REEDSPORT | A8
Cities scramble to tax pot before it’s legal BY JEFF BARNARD The Associated Press ASHLAND — At least 20 cities and counties around Oregon are racing to approve local taxes on marijuana in case voters in November decide to legalize recreational pot. The number has been growing, despite provisions in Measure 91 giving the state sole authority to tax marijuana, and specifically repealing conflicting local ordinances. The idea for a local tax came to Ashland city administrator Dave Kanner last February, and it
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was approved by the City Council in August. With 400,000 tourists a year coming to Ashland to attend the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ashland has already broken ranks with other Oregon cities and taxed restaurant meals and drinks. Kanner just plugged pot into the same template as meals and beverages. After the City Council approved his idea for a 10 percent tax on pot sales, he got calls from other cities interested in doing it. “It may be up to the Legislature or the courts to render a final decision on whether I’m right
Lucinda Moralez, Coos Bay William Rugh, Coos Bay Frances Rosander, Coos Bay Linda Brodie, Jacksonville Burr Hood, Grants Pass Chester Sturgill, Myrtle Point
Leslie Hunter, North Bend Theodore Brown, Bandon Albert Neiman, Central Point Gordon Hayes, Myrtle Point
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or they’re right,” Kanner said. “Apparently a lot of cities agree with my interpretation.” Kanner hopes that Ashland, on the border with California, will draw pot users along with Shakespeare fans and the new taxes could add nearly $1 million a year to city coffers. Lawyer Dave Kopilak, who drafted the Measure 91, says the provision forbidding local taxes on pot sales stems from similar rules on liquor. “I would think a city council would be wasting their money on a lawsuit there is no way SEE CITIES | A8
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By Amanda Loman, The World
Zach Henriksen, 16, of Coos Bay, fishes for salmon on the bike trail along Isthmus Slough on Tuesday afternoon. Henriksen skateboarded to his fishing spot to search for coho and Chinook salmon.
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NEW YORK — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to eliminate health insurance coverage for some of its part-time U.S. employees in a move aimed at controlling rising health care costs of the nation’s largest private employer. Wal-Mart told The Associated Press that starting Jan. 1, it will no longer offer health insurance to employees who work less than an average of 30 hours a week. The move affects 30,000 employees, or about 5 percent of Wal-Mart’s total part-time workforce, but comes after the company already had scaled back the number of part-time workers who were eligible for health insurance coverage since 2011. The announcement follows similar decisions by Target, Home Depot and others to completely eliminate health insurance benefits for part-time employees. It also comes a day after Wal-Mart said it is teaming up with an online health insurance agency called DirectHealth.com to help customers shop for health insurance plans. “We had to make some tough decisions,” Sally Welborn, WalMart’s senior vice president of benefits, told The Associated Press. Welborn said she didn’t know how much Wal-Mart will save by dropping part-time employees, but added that the company will use a third-party organization to help part-time workers find insurance alternatives: “We are trying to balance the needs of (workers) as well as the costs of (workers) as well as the cost to Wal-Mart.” The announcement comes after Wal-Mart said far more U.S. employees and their families are enrolling in its health care plans than it had expected following rollout of the Affordable Care Act, which requires big companies to offer coverage to employees working 30 hours or more a week or face a penalty. It also requires most Americans to have health insurance or pay a penalty. Wal-Mart, which employs about 1.4 million full- and parttime U.S. workers, says about 1.2 million Wal-Mart workers and family members combined now participate in its health care plan. And that has had an impact on Wal-Mart’s bottom line. WalMart now expects the impact of higher health care costs to be about $500 million for the current fiscal year, or about $170 million higher than the original estimate of about $330 million that it gave in February. But Wal-Mart is among the last of its peers to cut health insurance for some part-time workers. In 2013, 62 percent of large retail chains didn’t offer health care benefits to any of its part-time workers, according to Mercer, a global consulting company. That’s up from 56 percent in 2009.
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