The clock is ticking for Governor Kate Brown on a billion dollar logging bill

When you lose a billion dollar lawsuit, should you pay up or keep fighting for years at a cost of a quarter million dollars a day?  I figure most of you would say “what kind of idiot would keep fighting when the cost could easily run to half a billion dollars”. And so i give you, Oregon Governor Kate Brown. It’s really her call.  You see, for decades Oregon promised to manage timberland owned by the state’s 36 counties for all the good stuff…jobs, taxes, timber, lumber, recreation. Good stuff. Only at some point, environmental extremists said “to hell with logging, let the forests grow so they can burn down”. That leaves 13 counties without the income and jobs they were promised in a contract.  So, they sued. And they won. Kate Brown has been offered an alternative…start logging again, avoid the billion dollar bill, put people to work, get big timber revenues and income taxes from all those grateful loggers and mill workers and people in rural Oregon and they will love you. Or not. It’s your call Kate. How much do you want to hurt citizens of your own state to keep faith with the tree huggers in metro Portland.  A Judge has given the state 30 days to decide…and the clock is ticking.

 

-Lars Larson

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