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| Art by Soda Head |
We’ve seen the arrogance of power by elected officials on full display in Oregon and SW Washington recently.
Concerned citizens have been gaveled down in Clark County, ignored routinely in Multnomah County–there’s not even a pretense that conservatives should be represented by ANY elected official–and now citizens have been openly laughed at in Clackamas County.
Laughed at.
I remember when the student “leaders” at Western Oregon University laughed behind closed doors after they illegally stripped a former a former Marine of his legal right to carry a concealed weapon on campus.
That was bad enough.
Worse? When elected officials laugh on the record as they gleefully plot a way to short circuit the will of the voters. Wow. It’s a new low.
As we’ve spoken about on the program for the past couple of weeks, the citizens have been circulating an initiative put forward by former Oregon City Mayor John Williams to put large urban renewal projects in unincorporated areas of Clackamas County up to a vote of the people.
According to the Daily Journal of Commerce (here):
Meanwhile, Clackamas County’s legal counsel is working on its own measure that legal representative Scott Sedaris [sic] says would negate the one Williams is spearheading.“If both were approved, we would have a provision in ours that says ours trumps,” Sedaris said, before joining commissioners in laughter.
But that’s not all. The County staff is also looking at other ways to stymie the will of the voters such as gerrymandering the voting areas:
According to Dan Chandler, the county’s newly appointed strategic policy administrator, the preliminary idea is to create a measure that would require votes only from those within the boundaries when a URA is created or amended, and not from the entire voting population.
Urban renewal projects are government’s favorite way of micro managing the planning of an area while being able to plunder the big pot of money that comes with special taxing rules in the URA (Urban Renewal Area).
Urban renewal areas siphon off tax money that ordinarily would go to schools and public safety. Government officials always contend that if it weren’t for them there would be no urban renewal zone and thus no tax dollars. That argument only works, however, if government purposely crowds out private investment.
Efforts to get Mr. Sideras on the program to talk about the strategy to thwart the will of the voters has been met with an increasingly frustrated response to my producer, ranging from, “No thank you,” to responses that could be characterized as, ‘No way, no how.”
I guess coming on my program wouldn’t be fun. The rest of us would get a good laugh, though.
We’ll be watching.
Tell ’em where you saw it. Http://www.victoriataft.com
