Sean C. Morgan
Roger Nyquist
Linn County Commissioner Roger Nyquist is interested in improving Linn County’s economy.
It hasn’t really recovered, he said. It looks more like it has reset.
Republican Nyquist, who has served for 12 years, is facing Democrat challenger Mark Spence for Linn County Commissioner.
One of the things he has learned during his tenure as commissioner is “you’ve got to execute on the opportunities that present themselves,” Nyquist said. The Western States Land Reliance Trust foreclosed by Linn County for nonpayment of property taxes is one of those opportunities.
When the assessor told the commissioners that property was in arrears, they weren’t thrilled, and it has a number of legal entanglements, Nyquist said, but now the county has the property.
Right now, a portion of that property will be developed as a park in cooperation with the Oregon Jamboree, which is proposing a permanent festival site there.
The property, about 380 acres, is located along the north edge of Sweet Home from the east end of Tamarack Street and Clark Mill Road on the west end.
With the rest of the property, “we’re still having a conversation with Weyerhaeuser,” Nyquist said. “The cleanup of that mill site is their responsibility, and it’s going to get cleaned up.”
The commissioners really can’t have a conversation about what to do with that piece of property until it’s cleaned up, he said. “We can’t sell it today with the environmental problems on the Weyerhaeuser portion. I’m optimistic it will work out well for the community.”
Tax compression, the effect of property tax limitations, “is killing a lot of things,” Nyquist said.
The Sheriff’s Office is compressed by $6 million. Nyquist said. Since 1996, property has appreciated at less than 3 percent per year.
“The solution to all of that is for local government to hunker down and get by because the taxpayers are in the same boat,” Nyquist said. The other part of that is “to pursue policies to the extent we can to improve the local economy,” taking opportunities when they are there.
Nyquist isn’t mourning the loss of timber payments either, he said. “It was really hush money to local governments to have us not object to federal policies that had a devastating effect to local economies.”
While it provided local services with funding in lieu of timber tax receipts, it didn’t really help against the decline of timber, he said. Linn County went from 15 mills to four.
Improvement of property values would help resolve problems in funding county services, Nyquist said.
The loss of timber payments really isn’t a problem, Nyquist said. The counties knew it was coming. Linn County had a plan to avoid budgetary freefall.
“That allows us to be moving, diligently pressing for the right things,” Nyquist said, and there seems no gray area on the issue.
Trees are either a harvestable resource, or they are not, he said. He’s looking for the state attorney to sue the federal government for violating the 1937 act that created partnerships between the local communities and the federal government for management of the forests. He also supports the DeFazio-Walden-Schrader plan to put much of the O&C lands so it can be managed.
“Where we are with federal timber in Linn County and across the state is not rational,” Nyquist said. The county just needs to continue working to help get common sense to prevail.
Nyquist counted several achievements while he has been a commissioner. Among them are the development of a medical school campus and the veterans’ home, which recently broke ground.
The medical school “is the biggest single development that has occurred in the last 12 years,” Nyquist said. Thirty to 40 years from now, the improved quality of life will have increased due to access to medical care as most doctors remain within 50 miles of their school.
But these projects aren’t the only answer to economic problems in Linn County, he said. “As the economy started to turn south, the Planning Department said you need to raise planning fees to stay on budget.”
The commissioners said that the county needs to do the opposite, Nyquist said. For about 120 days in 2009, the county gave away building permits. The resulting permit activity added $25 million to the tax rolls in Linn County.
One of the biggest challenges in Oregon and Linn County is one of the highest teenage unemployment rates in the country, Nyquist said. The county has a program that helps small businesses pay wages, $2 per hour, for teens. His support for this came from conversations with farmers. He asked why the high school students weren’t out working for them. They would tell him that $8 per hour is a lot to pay a student to teach a teen how to work.
“I said, how about $6,” Nyquist said. “I’m proud of these efforts. We’ve employed hundreds of youths and given them the opportunity to acquire a work ethic.”
“I’m concerned about the budget,” Nyquist said. “I’m concerned about those folks in Linn County that are just hanging on and opportunities for them to make a living.”
“There’s really two issues voters are asking me about. One is the local economy, and the other is the proper role of government.”
At the local level, the county needs to assist small businesses, Nyquist said. He has the background to help, receiving multiple calls a week from citizens for help dealing with “agency X,Y,Z.”
Sometimes, he just talks to them, and other times, he contacts state officials on their behalf, Nyquist said.
Most importantly, he continues to work on reducing the time it takes to get projects permitted, he said. Permitting may take three to five years around the state. He wants to see that get down to 12 to 18 months, like more successful areas, Idaho and Utah, for example.
He has worked with legislators to extend the length of wetlands permits from five years to 10 after a Lowe’s project in Albany took so long for other permits that its wetlands permit expired.
“I don’t think it’s government’s job to create jobs,” Nyquist said. The only jobs government creates are government jobs, and Linn County needs private jobs. The county needs to work on removing regulatory roadblocks and allowing market conditions conducive to creating jobs.
The medical campus is an example of that, Nyquist said.
“I enjoy what I’m doing,” Nyquist said. “I think that my values and outlook are consistent with the values and outlook of the citizens of this county.”
Mark Spence
By Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Mark Spence, a historian, sees connections among all kinds of issues, national and local.
Klamath Falls, an area where he has been working, is at the epicenter of a variety of local issues that have national significance, whether it’s tribal rights, fish issues, the Lava Beds National Monument, water rights or a former Japanese internment camp, he said. It has one of the first Native American tribes to be dissolved and then reconstituted.
“It’s the future, past and present,” Spence said. It’s just the same in Sweet Home and Linn County, where the Democrat is challenging incumbent Republican Roger Nyquist for county commissioner.
“Anybody who sniffs the air in Sweet Home understands the connections between the economy, environment and politics. People in Portland don’t understand it the same way.”
Those connections, the ones between social, environmental and economic issues are how he approaches history, and it’s what he would keep in mind in office.
Klamath Falls is the epicenter on some key issues, a never-ending contest between public rights and private rights, Spence said. The only solution is a local solution.
“Eventually, people realize we can blame each other and lose badly, or we can work together,” Spence said.
The issues in Klamath Falls aren’t exactly the same as those in Sweet Home and Linn County, Spence said. Linn County has its history with the spotted owl, for example.
“But they’re really a blueprint for how we can deal with things up here,” Spence said. Looking at each interest in the forest controversy, the environmentalists, the home buyer, the Forest Service, the loggers, everybody, they’re all to blame for the physical condition of the forest. It’s the same with salmon.
“Which means only one thing, everybody’s part of the solution,” Spence said. Those who advocate not touching the forest, leave it a dense forest, an unhealthy firebomb. Cut it, and there may not be a forest.
If he could hang his hat on anything four years from now, it would be that he has brought together all of those interested in the forests, from loggers to environmentalists, managers and other political actors to develop a solution that all of them can support.
The Mid-Valley led the world in forest products and adhesives from World War II into the 1950s, Spence said. He would like to rebuild that leadership in technology and wood products with Oregon State University.
“I have connections with all of these interests, and if there’s anything unique about me is that I respect all of them,” Spence said.
When trying to get timber harvest opened up again, solutions need to include everyone concerned, he said. One proposal to deal with the loss of timber payments is just opening up the woods, cutting as much timber as anyone wants off of O&C lands. An alternative would split the land.
If it’s all opened up, the environmentalists would have it in court, and no one will get anywhere, Spence said. Whether it’s the right policy, it’s the unworkable policy.
Spence supports the governor’s solution released three or four weeks ago, he said. The plan focuses on O&C lands, increasing “harvest levels from where they are now, the whole west slope, not just Linn County.”
The plan would spur local economies and provide long-term production in forests, Spence said. “There is a way to log and put people to work for hundreds of years. I’m interested in what pretty much everybody’s interested in – healthy forests and timber jobs.”
The Clinton Forest Plan was supposed to do this in 1993 and 1994, but that effort has failed. Part of the cause of that failure “is the old timber wars,” Spence said.
Timber payments from Congress in lieu of taxes on timber harvest is the crux of many local budget issues, Spence said. There has been no action to compensate for the inevitable decline of the payments, and he’s tired of nothing being done to deal with the issue.
Spence said he didn’t want to run for the office.
“I really wanted someone else to run for this particular position,” Spence said. “For far too long, this position has been characterized by blame and inaction. More importantly, this country especially needs someone who can and will work full time.”
Spence said he dropped a dream contract because he couldn’t fulfill it if he wins, he said. He would be too busy working, and he would have to quit all of his jobs.
His opponent, he said, owns 11 businesses.
Nyquist said he doesn’t own that many businesses, although looking at Secretary of State filings will show multiple business names.
His bowling center in Albany contains three businesses inside, including the bowling center, a sports bar and a coffeehouse, each of wh ich has a qualified manager for day-today operations, Nyquist said. He hasn’t been involved in day-to-day operations since 1994.
“I do work full time, and furthermore, this is my passion,” Nyquist said. “I care deeply for the citizens of Linn County.”
Spence said he is interested in solutions more than anything. His father was a salmon fisherman. In the 1970s, he stopped fishing for political, environmental and economic reasons.
People used to ask him if he liked fishing, Spence said. He always told them, “No, I’m into catching.”
Like that, Spence said he is not into political posturing. He’d be running as a Republican if Nyquist were a Democrat. He just wants problems solved.
Until enemies are made into allies, problems won’t be solved, he said. Klamath Falls is an example. It still has issues, but the trajectory is better with the water issue, for example. The tribes, ranchers, farmers and environmentalists have developed a plan that the governors and Congress are signing off.
“That’s how you solve forest issues here,” he said. “I really believe people higher up will respond positively to that. I want to see people working in the woods. Any candidate is going to say jobs is our number-one focus. I don’t disagree. Who would? But I’m interested in a plan.”
Spence noted that Oregon is taxed less than California and Washington, and there is no reason that Linn County couldn’t tap into tax refugees from those states.
Spence grew up in Northern California in a small logging town with agricultural and surfing components, he said. “I basically grew up with loggers, farmers and hippies.”
Spence earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in U.S. history in 1996. He taught at Knox College in Illinois. Now, he works at OSU and the University of Oregon part time as well as contracting for specific projects.
He came to the Mid-Valley in 1999, then returned to Illinois for several years. He has lived in Albany for a couple of years.
Spence has two thoughts about Sweet Home in particular, he said. First is that Sweet Home has been Linn County’s sacrifice for 20 years regarding property values and tax levies. No one has ever stepped up to correct the systemic problem with property revenues and property values.
Second, the county’s position on the former Western States Land Reliance Trust property, about 380 acres that the county foreclosed for nonpayment of property taxes, must be singularly about developing Sweet Home’s plan for the property, Spence said. The county should be there to assist in any way it can.
Sweet Home is the big loser with that property not being developed, Spence said. “We’re not going develop this for you. We’re not going to develop the plan. We’ll help you. I think it would be offensive to develop a plan and say, ‘Look what we gave you.’”
Part of the property is currently proposed as a county park and the new site for the Oregon Jamboree.
For more information about Spence, visit his website at markspence2012.com.