Oregon Trails

An Occasional Newsletter

from

The Association of Oregon Counties

Health Care Transformation Moving at Lightening Speed

Timely information enclosed

April 17, 2012

IMPORTANT DEADLINE-According to the OHA CCO Timline the Technical Application from the first wave of CCO applicants is due to OHA by April 30, 2012. This means that counties need to be in communication with the interested entities to discuss the legal structure of the governance of the local CCO. If your county hasn't been discussing its role in governance yet, it is time to do so now. In order to assist you with this process AOC has put together a CCO checklist. AOC highly recommends that commissioners, administrators and legal counsel look through this checklist to help counties with their governance discussions.

Early Learning Council 

Duke Snider visited the AOC Human Services Steering Committee on Friday and praised AOC's HB 4165 Issue Brief. He thanked AOC for being forward thinking and offering commissioners a variety of actions to take moving forward. The issue brief provides suggestions for taking a leadership role in the formation of Early Learning "hubs," what to do with your local commission, and how to ensure that commissioners will have an active role as early learning services move forward.

Early Learning Council Workgroups and Youth Development Council

Duke Snider discussed the workgroups that will meet to shape the ELC. The three workgroups include: Child Care and Early Education Workgroup (Draft Charge), Screening Tools Workgroup (Draft Charge), Community-Based Coordinator of Early Learning Services Characteristics Workgroup (Draft Charge). He mentioned that the governor's office is currently recruiting for these workgroups and for the Youth Development Council. The governor's office suggested using the regular executive appointment application found here, if you are interested in being appointed to one of these positions.

HB 4016, which passed unanimously during the February session, will greatly expand the number of people required to report child abuse. The law, which already included such people as employees of county health and juvenile departments, firefighters, community mental health workers and attorneys, now includes all employees of a public or private organization that provides "child-related services."  Such "child-related services" include youth groups, summer or day camps, scout camps and many other groups. Mandatory reporters are required to report child abuse when there are reasonable grounds to believe abuse has occurred. While the failure to report is considered a class "A" violation, it's important to note that the duty to report is personal to the public or private official, and the organization that employs the mandatory reporter is not liable if their employee fails to report. The effective date of the bill is January 1, 2013, and the Department of Human Services is expected to issue additional guidance on the expanded law. DHS currently has training materials on recognizing and reporting abuse on their Website.

A petition was filed with the Oregon Fish & Wildlife Commission to further restrict trapping in Oregon. The petitioners, including Cascadia Wildlands, Sierra Club, and Audubon Society of Portland, ask the Commission to act at their Friday meeting to adopt rules regarding the use of traps and snares to take wildlife by:

• Requiring all trappers to check their traps and snares every 24 hours;
• Requiring trappers to attach tags to their traps and snares with their name and telephone number;
• Prohibiting traps and snares on public lands within 100 feet of trails and other premises used by the public; and
• Requiring trappers to post clearly visible warning signs on public lands, stating that their devices pose a danger to the safety of humans and animals.

The impetus for this petition is reportedly incidents during this unusually warm winter of unleashed domestic dogs being trapped or snared. ODFW staff states that these rule changes would make no practical difference. Petitioners cite the need to protect non-target wildlife and to reduce suffering.

Opponents point out that the Commission is constrained by House Bill 3147 (2001), and has complied with it by its current rules. In summary, killing traps and snares must be checked at least once every 30 days, and restraining traps and snares at least once every 76 hours. Moreover, opponents cite the resulting increase in wildlife management costs, already deeply strained.

ODFW staff notes that the Commission is already scheduled to enter into furbearer regulation rulemaking in June, 2012. Their likely recommendation to the Commission will be to deny the petition and direct staff to consider matters raised in the petition during the regularly scheduled rulemaking process.

The Commission will take this up on Friday, April 20th, at its meeting beginning at 8:00 a.m., at the ODFW building, 3406 Cherry Avenue, Salem. For those testifying in person, this will reportedly be the last item on the agenda, but we do not know at what time it will occur. For those who prefer to submit comments electronically, email them to Ron Anglin.  

The Curry County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution last Friday self-proclaiming a financial emergency in Curry County. Although HB 4176, passed in the 2012 session, provided a mechanism for a gubernatorial declaration of financial emergency, Curry County chose to self-proclaim the emergency due to the financial burden imposed on the county through the HB 4176 process. The resolution contains a full explanation as to why the county chose to self-proclaim.

The Surface Transportation Bill, Interesting Developments

Previous Surface Transportation (Highways) legislation was extended for 90 days at the end of March. The legislation, first approved in 2008, will remain effective until June 30th of this year. Meanwhile, work continues on a bill to extend Surface Transportation legislation beyond June. The House will consider another extension of the Surface Transportation bill that would run to the end of the Federal FY, September 30th. An evaluation of the SRS amendment in the Senate version of the bill that passed several weeks ago may provide a funding source to meet the House-required offset for its proposed SRS appropriation when House and Senate versions of the Transportation bill go to a Senate/House Conference Committee.

Critical Habitat For The Northern Spotted Owl

Hearings for the proposed Critical Habitat for the Northern Spotted Owl rule are tentatively scheduled for Redding, California (June 4th), Tacoma, Washington (June 12th) and Portland, Oregon (June 20th). The June dates should allow for comments on the Economic Analysis of the proposed rule, which is expected to be available sometime in May. The proposed rule will impact 23 counties in Oregon, 18 counties in Washington and 13 counties in California. The Association is currently working on a strategy to respond to the 360-plus pages in the document. The Association plans to submit written, as well as coordinate oral, comments on the proposed designation of critical habitat.

New Round of Planning for BLM's O&C Districts and Resource Areas

The BLM has begun the process of revising Resource Management Plans (RMPs) for 2.5 million acres of forested lands across six BLM Districts in Western Oregon. In response to the Association's request for "Cooperating Agency Status for O&C Counties," the BLM has agreed to insert a paragraph in an invitation letter to all O&C Counties, offering them Cooperating Agency Status and reminding them that the Association acted as the designated representative for most of the O&C Counties during the last planning process. The Association has offered the following language to be included in the BLM's letter: "During the last BLM planning effort begun in 2004, the Association of O&C Counties served as the representative for most individual counties that chose to be cooperating agencies. The Association negotiated terms of the template MOU with the BLM, coordinated completion of the necessary paperwork by each county, and then attended the planning meetings on behalf of the counties, reporting back to each of them as planning progressed. Under the 2004 MOU, each county also retained the right to attend and participate on its own behalf if it chose to do so. The Association of O&C Counties has informed the BLM that the Association will once again seek to coordinate county cooperating agencies in the planning process now beginning. You can therefore expect to be contacted by the Association regarding your county's possible participation." The BLM's letter is tentatively scheduled to go out this week. Timing is critical because the public scoping period began on March 9th and will end June 7, 2012.

Rocky McVay and Kevin Davis

The Infrastructure Finance Authority met on April 13, 2013 and approved financing for the City of Coos Bay Wastewater System Improvements and City of Astoria Storm Sewer project. Lynn Schoessler, IFA Director, observed that they are seeing activity picking up after the past several years. 

On another matter, we're looking to fill some big shoes after Lincoln County Commissioner Don Lindly announced his retirement. If you are interested in serving on the Infrastructure Finance Authority which reviews and recommends Oregon Business Development Department infrastructure loans and grants, please contact Ann Hanus, 503-585-8351.

Human Services Subcommittee

Chair Bobby Green and AOC held the first GETF Human Services Subcommittee meeting last Friday. The committee discussed crisis diversion funding and programming and transportation brokerages. During the crisis diversion discussion, the technical advisors stated that while issues have improved tremendously in the past two years there were still a number of barriers that are in place to becoming more efficient. It was mentioned that a number of barriers in the transportation brokerage world are perceptions, rather than actual rules. Often times the concept of "that's how we have always done it" rules the decision making. In both areas a number of ideas to explore were discussed. The next human service sub-committee meeting is slated for May 11th at 3 PM.

General Government Subcommittee

The General Government Subcommittee, chaired by Greg Wolf, will hold its first meeting on Wednesday, April 18, 10 am - 12 pm in the Governor's conference room at the Capitol.

Criminal Justice Subcommittee

The Criminal Justice Subcommittee, chaired by commissioner Mary Stern, will hold its first meeting on Tuesday, April 24, 1 - 3 pm at the Local Government Center.

Natural Resources Subcommittee

The Natural Resources Subcommittee, chaired by Dick Pedersen, will hold its first meeting on Monday, April 30, 10 am - 12 pm, at the Local Government Center. 

The Oregon Department of Transportation and the Department of Land Conservation and Development have created the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Toolkit (toolkit). The toolkit is intended primarily to help local jurisdictions identify and explore the kinds of actions and programs which can be implemented to help reduce GHG emissions from transportation. For example, how do parking permit programs impact emissions? What kinds of investments in bike or pedestrian infrastructure are best suited to help achieve local goals? The Categories of the Toolkit include: Pricing, Land Use, Bicycle and Pedestrian, Public Transportation, Transportation Demand Management, Operations/Intelligent Transportation Systems, Capacity Expansion/ Bottleneck Relief, Fleet, and Freight.

The toolkit can be used in conjunction with a scenario planning exercise or on its own to explore the potential effectiveness and benefits of different actions and programs.
 　
The toolkit has several components which can be used together or alone: Database, Modeling and Analysis Tools Report, Case Studies, and a Communications Guide.

For more information, check out the toolkit or contact Stephanie Lawson Miller at (503) 986-4224.

On March 23rd, the Department of the Interior released voluntary guidelines designed to help wind energy project developers avoid and minimize impacts of land-based wind projects on wildlife and their habitats. The voluntary guidelines are intended to assist with shaping the smart siting, design and operation of the nation's growing wind energy economy.

Growing Sustainable Communities: Western Region Conference, Sonoma County, California, May 2-3

Annual Oregon Alliance Program: Retrofitting Suburbia, The Governor Hotel, Portland, April 19

Small Wind Site Assessors Training, Portland, May 14-18

NW Biogas Workshop, Oregon Convention Center, Portland, April 27

Brownfields Conference and Awards/Call for nominations, Portland, June 13-14