The county commissioners are flustered (Commissioners flustered with Legislature, March 9, 2022), as ever, by legislative actions in Salem, bemoaning the passage of an agricultural overtime bill that ensures workers a decent wage earned in an ever hotter, more hostile environment.

They say the law will hurt ranchers because of their special lifestyle, but provisions exempt salaried employees and provide tax credits for overtime pay, and requires the state to make recommendations for establishing grant, loan or other programs to assist employers in mitigating costs of complying with the law.

All farm operations are special in their own ways, and livestock producers need to step up for their workers like everybody else.

Commissioner (Todd) Nash was bitter at the failure to add $1 million to the wolf compensation fund (in addition to $400,000 recently added and as-yet unspent). This $1 million was earmarked for full market compensation for cattle claimed “missing” by livestock producers, relying on assertions unsupported by verifiable evidence in a process lacking transparency. And these funds would be applied to claims going back years. “Missing” cattle compensation opens a loophole as big as 12 barn doors to the mistaken or the unscrupulous, and it’s a good thing for taxpayers and the integrity of the compensation program that this bill failed. As it is, taxpayers fully compensate ranchers for all confirmed and probable losses to wolf predation, for extra work entailed in stock management due to the presence of wolves, pay for tools and equipment and pay for state-funded range riders.

Oh, the commissioners then went on to beat up the “urbanites” for not thinking we had libraries, conveniently forgetting that in 2017 our commissioners actually voted to close the Wallowa County Library. And then later on did the same with the recycling program, like we’re happily marching backwards. Slamming west siders is a cheap trick, when it’s their tax money and their tourist and investment dollars that provides our infrastructure and quality of life.

Wally Sykes

Joseph