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What will be the impact if jail bond passes? Fails? Pilot killed By Erin Golden The Bulletin
ELECTION
With just a few days left before the votes are tallied on a proposed $44 million Deschutes County jail expansion bond, Sheriff Larry Blanton is admittedly anxious. Over the last several months, Blanton has attended dozens of
meetings and spoken with people across the county about why he believes the county needs to double the capacity of its current jail. He’s been telling voters that the region’s growing population has created a growing need for more space — and a risk that inmates could be released early
because of overcrowding. Though Blanton said he’s met with many people with some tough questions about spending so much money during a recession, there has been no substantial organized opposition to the bond. Still, he’s not convinced the bond is a slam-dunk.
“I hope it passes because first and foremost, win, lose or draw here, the main thing I wanted to convey to the public is there is a need,” he said. “There will be a significant public safety issue if we do not expand our bed capacity in the near future.” See Jail / A8
POLE • PEDAL • PADDLE
The race for a good space
Friday had 6 decades in cockpit Investigators of Redmond crash say it’s too early to tell the cause By Erin Golden The Bulletin
REDMOND — Sheldon Arnett began flying more than six decades ago as a 20-year-old pilot with the U.S. Army Air Corps. When World War II ended, he started a family and found success in several businesses in Central Oregon, but he never lost interest in seeing the world from several thousand feet up. Early Friday morning, the 87year-old had plans to fly his Piper Sheldon PA-24 Comanche to Burns, posArnett lived sibly to talk with someone about life to the selling the plane. But just after fullest, family he took off from a runway on the members said southeast end of the Redmond Friday. Airport, something went wrong. Around 7:20 a.m., the small, single-engine plane reportedly pitched up, rolled over and hit the ground, killing Arnett, the only person on board. It was the first fatal crash at Roberts Field since 1978. By late Friday afternoon, officials from the National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Aviation Administration and Piper Aircraft Inc. and an investigator from the National Transportation Safety Board were at the scene, looking for clues in the wreckage. See Crash / A8
Ryan Brennecke / The Bulletin
Pole Pedal Paddle participants scramble Friday afternoon to get their boats into prime position for the paddle portion of today’s race. The 34th annual version of the six-stage race from Mount Bachelor to Bend’s Old Mill District starts at 9:15 a.m. on Mount Bachelor.
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Rob Kerr / The Bulletin
The twisted fuselage and left wing of Sheldon Arnett’s Piper PA-24 Comanche sit where the plane crashed Friday at the Redmond Airport.
Card fee cut: Big banks lose, retailers win, consumers ... ? Hemp backers eye By Binyamin Appelbaum
New York Times News Service
WASHINGTON — Retailers have begged Congress for years, in vain, to limit the fees they must pay to banks when customers swipe credit or debit cards. Bills never reached a vote. Amendments were left on the
table. The Senate did not even grant the courtesy of a committee hearing. That long record of futility ended in a landslide Thursday night. Sixtyfour senators, including 17 Republicans, agreed to impose price controls on debit transactions over the furious objections of the beleaguered
banking industry. The amendment to the Senate’s sweeping financial legislation could save billions of dollars for family restaurants and dry cleaners, Wal-Mart and Amazon.com, and every other business whose customers increasingly pay with debit cards. It does
not address credit card fees directly. Consumers also could save money, particularly at businesses like grocery stores that compete on price. But some experts warned that lower profit margins could lead banks to curtail bank card reward programs. See Cards / A7
past, and Pentagon, to make their case By Manuel Roig-Franzia The Washington Post
TOP NEWS INSIDE TAX BREAKS: Congress close to deal on more than 50 popular ones, Page A3
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The Bulletin An Independent Newspaper
Vol. 107, No. 135, 66 pages, 6 sections
HOUSTON — Can golf balls save the gulf? That question hangs in the air here at a BP crisis center as hundreds of engineers and scientists work to cap the undersea well that for more than three weeks has spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Officials with BP and other companies involved in the effort, who discussed the plans in detail at some of the operations rooms, said the best
Inside • Obama criticizes “ridiculous spectacle,” Page A2 • Mechanics of the junk shot, Page A8 of several options included a “junk shot,” which could be tried within the week. The method involves pumping odds and ends like plastic cubes, knotted rope, even golf balls — Titleists or whatever,
BP isn’t saying — into the blowout preventer, the safety device atop the well. As Rube Goldberg as it sounds, the basic techniques are straightforward and have been used successfully on outof-control wells around the world. “The problem here is they all have to be executed 5,000 feet under the water,” said Pat Campbell, a well-control expert who is working with BP on the project. See Oil / A8
WASHINGTON — Hemp needed a hero. Needed one bad. The gangly plant — once a favorite of military ropemakers — couldn’t catch a break. Even as legalized medical marijuana has become more and more commonplace, the industrial hemp plant — with its minuscule levels of the chemical that gives marijuana its kick — has remained illegal to cultivate in the United States. Enter the lost hemp diaries. Found recently at a garage The Washington Post sale outside Buffalo, N.Y., Lyster Dewey but never publicly released, works with hemp these journals chronicle the cuttings in 1929. life of Lyster Dewey, a botanist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture whose long career straddled the 19th and 20th centuries. See Hemp / A6