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FORMING A UNION
Thanks to the Deschutes County Historical Society, Bend woman who was buried in the wrong grave is now
Deschutes deputy DAs putting job protection at top of list
Resting in peace
Group wants contract to require ‘just cause’ for discipline, dismissal
Courtesy De schutes Co Historical So unty ciety
The Bulletin
WASHINGTON — A group of Oregon counties is proposing selling off more than a million acres of federal land to help fund a 10-year extension of the county timber payment program, which funnels federal funds to rural counties including Central Oregon. With the expiration of the Secure Rural Schools and County Self Determination Act looming at the end of 2011 and no extension in the works, 18 Western Oregon counties, not including any Central Oregon counties, decided they needed to craft their own plan to keep federal money flowing. The plan includes selling about 1.2 million acres of federal land to fund about half of the cost of the program. It would also set aside 1.1 million acres of U.S. Bureau of Land Management land as off-limits to most development or logging and continuing county timber payments for 10 years. The group, the Association of O & C Counties, said the plan is a creative way to break the impasse over how to fund the benefit for rural counties, especially in a tight budget year. Oregon’s U.S. Senators applauded the effort, but refrained from endorsing the plan, while Rep. Peter DeFazio, DSpringfield, said the proposal appears unlikely to gain much support in Congress. See Timber / A5
The Bulletin
The Deschutes County prosecutors who voted to form a union are looking to negotiate a deal that could prevent them from being disciplined or fired without cause, the group’s attorney said Wednesday. The 10-5 vote of the county’s deputy district attorneys was tallied this week by the Oregon Employment Relations Board. The vote comes at a time when a new district attorney is preparing to take office for the first time in more than two decades — a transition that seems to have made hiring and firing a big concern among some staff at the District Attorney’s Office. DA-elect Patrick Flaherty has notified one chief deputy district attorney that he will be fired, and e-mails and letters between county officials indicate that there could be a larger shake-up in the office. Flaherty has said he believes he has the right to select or dismiss his deputies and wants to have a staff that supports his goals. None of the prosecutors who backed the union have spoken publicly about their intentions, but Becky Gallagher, the Eugene attorney representing the group, said it’s clear the main concern of the prosecutors is their own employment. “They are allowed to bargain for wages, hours and working conditions,” Gallagher said. “And the most important part of the working conditions is a just cause provision for any form of discipline.” See DAs / A5
Photos by Rob Kerr / The Bulletin
Niswonger-Reynolds Funeral Home employee Dana Makepeace places an urn containing the remains of Tot Pringle, shown at top in an undated photo, into the grave she was supposed to share with her husband, Arthur Pringle, at Greenwood Cemetery on Wednesday.
lot Butte Cemetery — instead of beside her husband, Arthur Pringle, and their
Christine O’Donnell’s win in Delaware’s primary may have been a tipping point for the tea party.
young son in the Greenwood Cemetery just a stone’s throw away.
Rob Carr The Associated Press
T
According to Becky Gallagher, the attorney representing the unionizing Deschutes deputy DAs, under a “just cause” provision, an employer must demonstrate that he or she went through several steps — including a fair investigation and review by an impartial person — before disciplining or dismissing an employee, and must show a reason for discipline or dismissal.
hree decades ago, Tot Taggart Pringle was buried in the wrong place. With apparently no family in the area to catch the mistake, her cremated remains were interred alongside Charles C. Pringle in Bend’s Pi-
From left, Vanessa Ivey, Bonnie Burns, Kelly CannonMiller and Barbara Buxton place flowers on the grave of Arthur and Tot Pringle at the Greenwood Cemetery Wednesday. For 30 years, Tot Pringle had been buried elsewhere with another, unrelated Pringle until Ivey uncovered the mix-up.
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A N A LY S I S
By Kate Ramsayer • The Bulletin
‘Just cause’
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Oregon counties propose selling federal land to extend program By Keith Chu
By Erin Golden
The Bulletin
New plan floated to save timber payments
Abby
E2
But Wednesday morning, after months of digging through photos and journals and delving into the mystery of what happened to the woman who lived in Bend a century ago, volunteers and staff with the Deschutes County Historical Society helped return Tot Pringle to where she belonged. “And they’re together,” said Vanessa Ivey, a volunteer at the society’s museum, as she shoveled dirt over the identical bronze urns containing Tot and Arthur Pringle’s remains. The puzzles that drew in the historical society started in the spring, when Ivey, a new volunteer, was given the task of sorting through some of Tot Pringle’s photo albums and journals, which had been donated to the historical society. See Grave / A4
GOP pulled along in tea party’s wake By Dan Balz The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Call it a civil war, an insurrection or merely an insurgency. By any measure, the establishment leadership of the Republican Party has lost control and is now being pulled along toward an uncertain future. What happened Tuesday in Delaware, where conservative Christine O’Donnell shocked moderate Rep. Michael Castle in the Senate primary, may have been the snapping point inside a party whose leaders have watched nervously as tea party activists delivered a series of embarrassing rebukes to establishment-backed candidates in primaries across the country. See GOP / A5
Kicking coal habit causes withdrawal pangs Coal miners wait to descend into the Markushegy mine in Oroszlany, Hungary, earlier this summer. Tamas Dezso New York Times News Service
Hungarian town’s story illustrates the challenges By Elisabeth Rosenthal New York Times News Service
OROSZLANY, Hungary — When the directors of Hungary’s last remaining coal-fired power plant announced that they would close the coal mine and begin dismantling the plant at the end of this year, the news sent shock waves through this weathered industrial city, where a statue of three miners stands in the square.
It was well known that the legendary Vertesi plant and its mine were kept afloat only by more than $30 million in annual state subsidies. But more than 3,000 of Oroszlany’s 20,000 residents work in industries related to coal. The government-owned plant is one of the town’s biggest taxpayers. And the area’s 5,000 homes, its stores and factories all get their heat from the Vertesi plant. See Coal / A4