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Reforming the Recall in Oregon

Roger Rocka, a local activist against LNG, treated the people of Clatsop County to a short, crisp reason as to why the recent elections have gone the way they have. “Here is the bottom line, we don’t want LNG on the Columbia River” said Rocka at a recent meeting with the Federal Energy Review Commission in Warrenton as he was awarded by a loud round of applause by the audience. “Yesterday we had an election, the candidates that opposed LNG won, the candidates that supported LNG all lost.”

Who did that mean? Clatsop County Commissioner Ann Samuelson lost her seat on the Jewell School Board in the recall election held the day before Rocka made that announcement. County Commissioner Roberts came in behind contender Jim Scheller and will have to face him again in November for District Two runoff. Cary Johnson lost in the District Four race to Dirk Rohn, both having sat on the Clatsop County Planning commission, Johnson voting to approve land use variances for the Bradwood, LNG development and Rohn voting against.

While Samuelson, Roberts and Johnson have said they don’t run one issue campaigns,, they understand that philosophically people may not agree with how they see issues. “That is what elections are for, deciding who’s philosophy or political agenda you agree with,” Samuelson stated. What she doesn’t agree with is how recall is used when people don’t get their way in regular elections.

Repeatedly, during the recall for Richard Lee, the LNG issue was used to demonstrate what Rocka referred to as Lee not listening to the majority of his constituents. As one looks down the lists of supporters in the last elections that have slammed Clatsop County one sees the same names cropping up.

Two in the forefront are Carolyn Eady and Marc Auerbach. They publicly supported the recall of Richard Lee even though neither of them are in Lee’s district and they both signed the petition to recall Commissioner Ann Samuelson from her position on the Jewell School Board. Tellingly, both Eady and Auerbach support Roger Rocka’s endeavors to stop LNG corporations from placing sites on the Columbia River, at whatever the cost. Both Eady and Auerbach sit on the Recreational Lands Planning Advisory Committee, appointed by the Clatsop County Commissioners.

When recall was first introduced in the newly formed country of the United States it was considered a means by which one part of legislature could sanction another part if the person was seen as not representing the state adequately in Congress. It wasn’t until the early 1900’s that Oregon lead the states by adding the right of recall into the Oregon Constitution, enabling the common voter to sanction the actions of corrupt politicians.

Since that time, however, it has rarely been used against politicians for illegal activities or corruption. It is most often used in local politics, and most often for philosophical differences of opinion with the side which lost in an election saying that they are not being fairly listened to. Recalls seem to appear most often in bitterly contested races.

Arlington, Oregon, Mayor Carmen Kontur-Gronquist was recalled after she was elected and brought the city’s budget back in line. According to her side of it the previous administration got the city caught up in owning a golf course and she had to fire some people which made them made. In retaliation they poked around and found pictures on her myspace account of her dressed in only undergarments posing on the city’s volunteer fire truck. The pictures were taken three years before she became mayor and the Myspace account was only open to invited “friends”. Opponents argued that she tarnished the reputation of the town and she lost the recall by 3 votes.

The largely non-partisan Oregon System, as it began to be called at the beginning of the 20th century, addressed the accumulated social evils that had grown in numbers and complexity through the late 1800s and into the 1900s. A group of Oregonians were determined to make government more efficient, honest, and responsive to human need. The recall amendment to the State Constitution and the Corrupt Practices Act both came about in 1908. The new governmental system was considered monumental, showing the power of a determined citizenry. Since that time the recall has been treated as a perfect tool, enabling the common person to have a direct voice in the affairs of state policy makers.

However, people are beginning to doubt that the tool of recall is being used to monitor the corrupt politician and is instead being used as a second opportunity to grasp the brass ring in a race that has been lost, especially in local elections where emotions can run high over issues that can seem non-issues to “outsiders”. They want the tool of recall to be refined, to be reformed, so that it is once again seen as the tool of the common citizen and not a weapon for a defeated politician or political party.

“It’s frustrating to hear people say that if you vote a certain way you will be recalled, no compromise, that’s it. Their way or no way,” stated Commissioner Ann Samuelson, of the Clatsop County Board of County Commissioners. Samuelson was recently recalled from her seat on Jewell School Board. “I was accused of attending an illegal meeting on a night I wasn’t even in town. I missed that meeting entirely, yet I was accused of meeting illegally.” Samuelson’s accuser, Oly Schockelt, is a former Jewell school board member and has been a political opponent in contention over the direction the school has been taking since the superintendent that Schockelt’s board hired was charged with multiple counts of child abuse and endangerment. Since the initial accusations it has been discovered that the same superintendent reimbursed himself for over $300,000 in expenses for school related items and that the school district is not in compliance with many state mandates including curriculum requirements, materials and policy updates.

Carolyn Eady has also been a part of the same school board that Schockelt was on and a staunch supporter of the former superintendent. Eady signed the petition to have Samuelson recalled and stated in a certified letter to Samuelson that she, along with Schockelt, may sue Samuelson for breaking public confidence. Eady also wrote several letters to a local paper stating her full trust in the financial handling of Jewell school funds by the former superintendent.

Ironically, Eady is also a staunch supporter of Roger Rocka’s anti-LNG agenda. Rocka recently contested Jim Neikes’ ability to be a county commissioner based on the contention that Neikes had a checkered past with drug dealings over 20 years ago and an altercation last year leading to probation. It is surprising then to find that Schockelt’s own past contains sanctions relating to drug abuse. Schockelt was sanctioned by the Oregon State Board of Dental Examiners for multiple counts of prescription drug abuse, abuse of nitrous oxide, and personal use of intravenous drugs as well as trading dentistry services for marijuana and not keeping proper patient records. He lost his dentistry license for a period of time later regaining it for a probationary period of several years until finally having fully restored. As recent as 2003, while a Jewell school board member, Schockelt was again sanctioned by the OSBDE for again not keeping proper patient records resulting in performing an unnecessary procedure on a patient. He was threatened with disciplinary action against his license however negotiated a deal to pay the client restitution and take a board approved class on maintaining patient records.

Local radio talk show host and newsman, Tom Freel, wrote that Roger Rocka had indicated on air early in the Lee recall campaign that it was just the beginning of a process. Rocka had indicated on Freel’s show that the people who formed CFOG picked to recall Lee first because they felt he was an easy target and the one they all could agree on. This is first hand evidence of recall being used by a determined group of people who did not get a representative with their political agenda voted in the first time around and resorted to using recall.

“That is not how recall should be used,” states Samuelson. “I am determined to see something done about our recall process here in Oregon. It shouldn’t be used by one group with a political agenda against an individual. It was meant to be used to recall politicians who have been proven to have acted illegally or unethically.” Samuelson would like to see Oregon have a recall requirement similar to Washington’s where the elected official must have committed a specific act or acts of malfeasance or misfeasance while in office.

The group that led the local recall against the county commissioner, Citizens For Open Government (CFOG), states on their website, “Recall is one way in which Oregon pioneered citizen control of government.”

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