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July 27, 2006
PALCO EXODUS | WILDERNESS
BILL ADVANCES | PROSECUTORS
DEPART
FIRE FEES FLY | COUNTY
LOSES ANOTHER ROUND | ST. JOE
PROS, CONS
PALCO EXODUS: Robert
Manne, CEO of the Pacific Lumber Co. since 2001, has stepped
down from his post, according to a report published late Tuesday
afternoon on the Times-Standard's web site. The report,
which quoted from a Palco press release, said that Manne would
be replaced by George O'Brien, a former executive with International
Paper, who will assume CEO duties immediately. The struggling
company, still one of the county's largest private employers,
had recently sold around 6,000 acres and secured a new $145 million
loan in order to meet a $28 million payment to bondholders.
In addition, the Garberville-based Independent
newspaper reported this week that Chuck Center, Palco's director
of government relations, also left the company in recent days.
— Hank Sims
TOP
WILDERNESS
BILL ADVANCES: The California North Coast Wilderness bill
passed the House on Monday and was headed for near-certain passage
in the Senate. The bill, H.R.233, spans five counties, designates
several wild and scenic rivers and protects more than 273,000
acres, including 42,585 acres in the King Range National Conservation
Area and its long, undeveloped, famously remote Black Sands Beach.
The house bill was a compromise of original legislation
proposed by Rep. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) that would have
protected more than 300,000 acres. Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne
Feinstein pushed a version of that first bill through the Senate
last year, but it then stalled in the House under Rep. Richard
Pombo, who sat on the bill while his off-roading constituents
grumbled in his ear.
The House bill reflects concessions made to the
off-road and mountain biking lobbies: It drops about 35,000 acres
from the original acreage, including 6,500 acres proposed in
the Mad River Butte region, about 15,000 acres in the Siskiyous
and part of Cache Creek in Lake County, said Derek Chernow, spokesman
for the Wild Heritage Campaign. And, it allows for a number of
roads that head into the new wilderness areas to be "cherry-stemmed"
— that is, not closed. The only place where cherry-stemming
(in the past, a sore point with many wilderness advocates) won't
occur, said off-road advocate Don Amador of the Blue Ribbon Coalition,
is in the King Range wilderness. Amador said he is sad that Black
Sands Beach will be off-limits to vehicles, but he's happy otherwise.
"This is precedent-setting," said Amador.
"Traditional wilderness bills have closed any roads that
were inside any wilderness lands. It's a significant number of
routes."
A little extra wheeling and dealing also helped
dislodge the bill from the House: Off-roaders and mountain bikers
convinced legislators to set aside 51,000 acres of BLM land for
their use in the Cow Creek area in Mendocino; and commercial
surf fishermen succeeded in getting the 27 permits currently
issued for vehicle access to certain beaches in Redwood National
and State Parks (namely Gold Bluffs Beach) permanently sanctioned.
Under the parks' general management plan, the beach-driving permits
had been set to be phased out over time, and no new permits were
to be issued.
Despite the concessions and additions, wilderness
advocates seemed exuberant on Monday. "It's huge,"
said Chernow. "I think Congress realized it was a bill with
broad local support. And a lot of the 51,000 acres [in Cow Creek]
was already being used by off-highway vehicles and mountain bikers.
And it wasn't ever in the bill to begin with. In any legislative
effort there's going to be some compromises made."
— Heidi Walters
TOP
PROSECUTORS
DEPART: Two more prosecutors announced their intention to
leave the Humboldt County District Attorney's office last week.
Andrew Isaac, a nine-year veteran of the office, announced that
he would be taking a job in Santa Cruz County effective September.
Prior to the election of District Attorney Paul Gallegos in 2002,
Isaac was one of the two prosecutors who worked with the Child
Abuse Services Team, an interdisciplinary agency that investigated
and prosecuted cases involving juvenile victims. He had since
been assigned to different tasks in the office. In addition,
27-year-old Nicole Hanson, a Eureka native who joined the office
in 2004, recently accepted work elsewhere. Neither could be reached
for comment.
The departure of Isaac and Hanson follow the firing
of Paul Hagen, a circuit prosecutor specializing in environmental
crimes who was based in the Humboldt County DA's office. In June,
Gallegos, who is unpopular amongst the office's staff, was reelected
for a second term.
— Hank Sims
TOP
FIRE FEES FLY: If
you were confused by the sizable signs that popped up around
Arcata and McKinleyville shortly after the June election urging
you to vote "yes" for the Arcata Fire Benefit Assessment,
you were not alone. Fire Chief John McFarland said that voter
confusion was one of the main obstacles that contributed to the
failure of a similar resolution in 2004. But this time, apparently,
clarity reigned. A public campaign designed both to educate property
owners and give them an opportunity to voice their concerns led
to a big victory for the fire district this time around, McFarland
said Tuesday.
"The public input was tremendously greater
this time," he said. "They gave us all of their requirements
and we met those requirements." One of the major differences
between this proposal and the 2004 version is the removal of
an "escalator clause," which would have caused assessment
fees to increase correspondingly to the rate of inflation.
The latest, successful proposal also includes provisions
for a citizen review board, which will evaluate the funding and
expenditures of the fire district seven years from now. McFarland
said this advisory board will be able to "decide virtually
everything having to do with funding, except to increase it."
McFarland said that seven years will give the district time to
get "the business side of things" sorted out. By that
time, he said, the district will have paid off the debt it still
owes from the aerial truck it purchased several years ago.
The new fees, which will be about five times greater
than the old ones, will go toward new fire engines (which McFarland
says the District needs "desperately," and which carry
a price tag of between $400,000 and $800,000) and hiring eight
additional full-time firefighters over two years (there are presently
seven firemen, three chiefs and about 63 volunteers). The assessment
also provides for a "revolving apparatus replacement program,"
which McFarland said replaces vehicles "on a revolving cycle"
so that older vehicles will be upgraded every 20 years or so.
Unlike a tax increase, a raise on assessment fees
is voted on by local property owners rather than the general
public. Of the approximately 13,000 ballots that were mailed
out, 5,821 were returned, a number fire district officials call
"incredible." Seventy-one percent of the ballots were
in favor assessment increase, while 28 percent were against it.
— Luke T. Johnson
TOP
COUNTY
LOSES ANOTHER ROUND: The County of Humboldt recently lost
another round in its Tooby Ranch lawsuit, which charges that
the 2000 subdivision of the 13,000-acre south county property
was illegal. On Monday, Judge Bruce Watson of the Humboldt County
Superior Court denied the county's request to push back the case's
trial date, meaning that the case will go forward as scheduled
on August 14.
In arguments filed with the court, Deputy County
Counsel Richard Hendry argued that the county needed the additional
time in order to bring its newly hired attorneys, the Walnut
Creek firm Morgan Miller Blair, up to speed on the case. But
Watson ended up siding with the defendants in the case, who protested
that bringing on additional attorneys to assist in a case was
not sufficient grounds to grant a delay.
— Hank Sims
TOP
ST. JOE PROS,
CONS: On Tuesday, Humboldt County Public Health Officer Ann
Lindsay gave a report to the Board of Supervisors to summarize
the North Coast community's ideas regarding the three options
now available to the financially anemic St. Joseph Hospital —
sell, tough it out or create a public community hospital district.
Lindsay called the community dialog a "healing process"
and a chance to vent frustrations. Over the past two months,
six groups of health care workers and also laypeople (including
journalists) met with Lindsay and Allan Katz of the Community
Health Alliance. Between the groups, Lindsay said, there was
a "remarkable congruence of ideas" concerning St. Joe's
future.
Among those points of agreement: On the pro side,
if the hospital sells there would be new insurance options, a
possible increase in services, tax contributions from the hospital
and a clean slate free of St. Joe's perceived history of "inconsistent
management." The downsides to selling include a lack of
local control, the potential for job loss and a potential reduction
in services.
As for a community hospital district, which seems
to be the favored option, benefits included local control, improved
planning and better recruitment of doctors. Possible limitations
included a politically complicated process, the large debt that
the district would inherit from St. Joe's and the politically
difficult task of obtaining a two-thirds majority vote that the
formation of such a district would require.
Lastly, the perceived pros if St. Joe's continues
in Eureka: the hospital's community programs and the fact that
it already has a relationship with Redwood Memorial Hospital
in Fortuna. The cons focused on poor management, Catholic ownership
and the bad relationship the hospital has with health care workers
and other hospitals.
Lindsay added that many participants were relieved
when Hospital Partners of America backed out of due diligence
talks with St. Joe's because of what Lindsay called the "peculiarities"
of HPA's ownership model. Forum participants agreed that Kaiser
Permanente was the health care provider they wanted most to take
over St. Joe's, despite the fact that the company has never expressed
interest in the venture. "Practices are having a very hard
time recruiting doctors," Lindsay said. But Kaiser, on the
other hand, has a constant flow of applicants.
Physicians just do not want to relocate here, Dr.
Ellen Mahoney of the Humboldt-Del Norte Medical Society explained
to the supes, because docs are paid up to 30 percent less than
in other areas of the state and so they work more to compensate
for the wage gap. The average doctor in the area is 50 years
old, and as they retire their positions are not filled. To improve
the situation, Mahoney is suggesting the creation of nonprofit
"multi-specialty" clinics, composed of most or all
local doctors, where support staff and technology would be shared
among primary care physicians, who could then spend more time
seeing patients. If St. Joe's becomes a community district, this
new model could be integrated into the public hospital system.
Mahoney said she has received positive feedback from doctors
thus far. Discussions with physicians will continue until mid-August.
— Helen Sanderson
TOP
Barstow or Big Lagoon, what's it gonna
be?
by HEIDI WALTERS
Big Lagoon is a lilting side dish of freshwater
loveliness
30 miles north of Eureka, separated by a narrow
three-mile strip of sandy land from the crashing ocean which,
ideally, breaks across the barrier once or twice each winter
to flood the lagoon with saltwater and allow anadromous fish
to enter and find their way up a tributary to spawn. The isolation
and occasional breakthroughs make the lagoon unique, exotic and
home to a mix of species. It's recognized officially as an important
stop for migrating birds within the Pacific Flyway.
The lagoon and its wooded environs is also home
to a small, jointly-operated community of cabin owners, some
individual residences, a county park, state park lands and the
Big Lagoon Rancheria's reservation. The tribe is made up exclusively
of the 27 members of the Moorehead family.
But although there is a tribe at Big Lagoon, there
is, as of yet, no casino, nor any real commercial development
to speak of, these days. And in a settlement reached last August
between the rancheria and the state, the tribe agreed never to
build a casino or commercial development there alongside the
lovely lagoon.
Or maybe it will. It all depends on Arnold, you
might say, and how much he's willing to risk for the Big Lagoon
Rancheria's plans for a different casino, way down south in the
desert town of Barstow.
But first of all, nobody said it's easy getting
into the casino business. For the Big Lagoon Rancheria, its bid
to put down a gambling hall — anywhere — can perhaps
be described as similar to a gambler-with-bad-luck's fervent
desire for the jittery little ball on the spinning roulette wheel
to land on his numbers. Sometimes the ball lands where the tribe
wants it to, but so far it hasn't stuck. Or maybe the tribe itself
is the little ball, getting tossed around. For a decade. You
might say the fate of the actual lagoon, north of Eureka about
30 miles, is getting bounced around as well, at least as a natural,
recreational and semi-residential backwater devoid of commercial
development.
On June 28, the state legislature's Assembly Governmental
Organizational Committee voted to reject a compact signed last
September between Governor Schwarzenegger and Big Lagoon Rancheria.
The compact would have allowed the rancheria to build a big,
Las Vegas-style casino/resort in the San Bernadino County town
of Barstow, in tandem with a casino/resort planned by the Los
Coyotes Band of Cahuilla and Cupeno Indians of San Diego County.
Despite its rejection, the committee left the matter open to
reconsideration, which means the rancheria gets one more spin
sometime before the end of August, when the legislature enters
recess.
Funny thing is, it was the state — the governor,
actually — who told Big Lagoon to seek its fortune in Barstow
in the first place. Last August, the rancheria and the state
reached a settlement in which the tribe agreed to not put a casino
or anything commercial on its Big Lagoon tribal lands —
something the tribe had proposed doing 10 years ago, to great
opposition from the state, environmentalists, neighbors and biologists
who said the lagoon is far too ecologically rich for  such a development. In exchange,
the tribe could embark on the Barstow venture. Both tribes are
hundreds of miles from Barstow, and the plan requires a few more
hoops to tumble through — the biggest one labeled "reservation
shopping," whereby tribes build casinos outside of their
historic lands. It's a term embraced with righteous repugnance
by the big-time gambling tribes, according to Big Lagoon chairman
Virgil Moorehead.
Right: Virgil Moorehead.
'The big tribes don't want that," Moorehead
said last Friday. "'Reservation shopping' is a made-up term
by the big gaming tribes. They don't want the competition. But
since 1988 there have only been three [off-reservation] casinos
that have gone into business. It's a hyped-up frenzy. It's been
built up as a chronic, gonna-take-over-the-world thing."
Moorehead and many following the Barstow casino
saga, accuse big gaming tribes of influencing the assembly's
decision — including the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla
Indians, which has two big casinos in the Coachella Valley. Agua
Caliente's chairman, Richard Milanovich, testified against the
Barstow project. Milanovich (whom an LA Weekly story dubbed
"Greedovich," noting his tribe's massive lobbying expenditures
and connection with the disgraced Jack Abramoff) told the committee
that the Big Lagoon/Los Coyotes project "opens the door
to labor. It opens the door to disgruntled city councils to take
advantage of the tribes," because their compacts allow for
union negotiation and require them to pay a certain amount of
their profits to the City of Barstow to help pay for police and
other services. When the big tribes' own compacts come up for
renewal some years hence, the reasoning goes, they'll likely
be held to the stricter regulations placed in these new compacts.
Moorehead said he's waiting to get a list of big-gaming
tribes' contributions "to the people who killed the project"
to draw a more definitive picture of the politics involved. In
the meantime, he said, he's wondering where the governor was
when the vote was going down. "What surprises me is that
we weren't able to get the governor to push for us more,"
he said. After all, the governor signed Big Lagoon's compact
last September, touting it as a measure boosting a poor tribe
while at the same time preserving an ecological wonder in Northern
California.
If the assembly approves the compact, the Big Lagoon/Los
Coyotes double casino/resort project would still need the federal
government to take the land in Barstow into trust for the tribes.
That process has already been launched, and Moorehead said he
doesn't see any reason for it to not happen. As for Barstow,
it's gung-ho for the side-by-side casino/resorts. The city signed
municipal services agreements with both tribes two weeks ago.
But if the state assembly committee again rejects
the Barstow project, refusing to ratify Big Lagoon's compact,
the project would likely die. That, says Moorehead, would mean
that Big Lagoon would return to its original plan: building a
casino at Big Lagoon. It would mean the legal tangle with the
state would resume. Eventually, perhaps, it would mean a casino
at Big Lagoon — not the big-bucks kind as envisioned down
in Barstow, but a casino nonetheless. "We'll go back to
our lawsuit," said Moorehead. That lawsuit, launched about
a decade ago, accused the state of acting in bad faith for refusing
to sign a compact for the Big Lagoon casino and sought to force
a signing. Similarly, said Moorehead, "the governor and
us, we signed an agreement. And if that can't go through, then
the state again acted in bad faith."
For some of his neighbors, it would be a disappointment,
although they seem to have given up hope of a fight should the
casino come back to their shores. The Big Lagoon Park Company
— a consortium of 76 private cabin owners who jointly own
the land the cabins sit on — fought the casino project
10 years ago, but gave up when it ran out of money, said Don
Tuttle, a cabin owner and president of the company.
"Most of our members were concerned about
the potential increase in traffic," Tuttle said on Monday.
"They estimated there'd be between 300 and 600 [cars] a
day. We also worried about the impact to the fishery and wildlife."
Tuttle bought his cabin in 1972. "To me and my wife, it's
our place to escape."
He was happy when the Barstow plan emerged. "We
thought that would be beneficial to all people, including the
rancheria. They would maintain their natural environment here,"
and make better money down there.
But Tuttle said he "figured Virgil would"
revisit the Big Lagoon site if the Barstow plan fell through.
"That's natural. But he would have to find an investor.
I've talked with Virgil about our fears, and I think he understands.
But it's their chance for economic opportunity." Still,
he said, "a casino just seems completely out of place in
this semi-wild, park-like place. If a casino happens, everything
depends on how it's built — how they mitigate for noise,
and the glare of lights. Water is a big issue. They'd have to
build a small treatment plant."
In the end, what happens in Barstow — and
at Big Lagoon — might come down to what happens at the
Governor's office. So what does the Governor's office have to
say? Hard to know. Repeated calls were answered by a machine
that intoned every few seconds: "Thank you for holding.
We look forward to serving you. A member of Gov. Schwarzenegger's
staff will be with you shortly. Please hold during the silence."
TOP
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