Oregon town rides digital revolution after timber industry collapses

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Former Oregon lumber town rides digital wave to a comeback

A rural Oregon town that saw its timber industry implode years ago is making a comeback thanks to the digital revolution

By ANDREW SELSKY

Associated Press

PRINEVILLE, Oregon (AP) — It was not long ago that Crook County had five major lumber mills. Timber was king, and the rural Oregon county was the nation's top producer of ponderosa lumber.

But amid restrictions on harvesting from federal lands, logging started to freefall around 1990. The county's mills began closing. The global recession hit a few years later. Unemployment soared to around 20 percent, the highest in Oregon.

"We had the sawmills close, and then the bottom dropped out of the economy. So, kick us when we're down," said Donna Barnes, Ochoco Lumber Co. accounting manager.

Now, the digital revolution is providing Crook County and its main town, Prineville, with a second chance.

Seven years ago, Facebook came looking for a site for its first wholly owned data center. The executives liked that the chilly night air at 3,200 feet (975 meters) above sea level could cool the servers, cheaply and in an eco-friendly way. They liked the 15-year abatement on property taxes, and the fact there was room to grow.

The California-based company completed a 300,000-square-foot (27,870-square-meter) data center in 2011. Within months, it began building a second. Facebook is now building a third on a bluff 400 feet (120 meters) above Prineville. Apple followed suit, and officials recently announced it will also build its third data center in the town of about 9,000.

The future looks sunnier. Unemployment is down to 6.8 percent.

"We were overlogging in the '60s, and now we've been curbed," Prineville Mayor Betty Roppe said. "The pendulum swings the other way. And so we're trying to diversify jobs."

Logging is ingrained in Oregon's culture. A statue of an ax-wielding pioneer tops the state Capitol. Oregonians' favorite local novel is Ken Kesey's "Sometimes a Great Notion," about a logging family. Oregon's professional soccer team is the Portland Timbers, its logo a double-bladed ax over a forest-green background.

But the timber troubles that hit Crook County also affected much of Oregon and the American West.

By September 2014, the pendulum had swung so far that Oregon's high-tech industry accounted for the same number of workers and share of wages as the forest sector did in the 1970s, the state Office of Economic Analysis noted in a report. Most of Oregon's nearly 100,000 high-tech jobs are clustered in the "Silicon Forest" around Portland, said Joshua Lehner, an economist with the office.

That makes Prineville all the more remarkable. The town is a three-hour drive from Portland and light years from its liberal, hipster culture. Locals often wear cowboy hats and boots, not beanies and Birkenstocks.

Other former mill towns also have sought economic alternatives, with varying success. To create a high-tech outpost in the high desert, Prineville and Crook County leaders showed a willingness to cut through red tape.

"Our staff here are really good at bending over backward to help get things permitted," Roppe said.

The data centers spent about $6 million for land that was owned by the town and county. On June 29, the town announced Apple's plans for a new 330,000-square-foot (30,660-square-meter) data center and 70,000-square-foot (6,500-square-meter) logistics building, declaring on Twitter: "We love Apple!"

So many transient construction workers are here that motels and RV spaces are usually filled up. Once the data centers are built, those workers will move on. But locals also are among those building the data centers, and they're being hired to operate, clean and guard them.

The tech giants agreed to pay 150 percent of customary wages in the county, Roppe said. Facebook initially employed around 35 people, and that number has swelled.

"Instead of 35 people, now there are 165 people," County Commissioner Ken Fahlgren said in an interview in the century-old, ivy-covered Crook County courthouse. "Every time they build a new building, they add another group of folks that work for them. We hope that they live here, buy homes here, bring their kids to school here, and we develop an economy around that."

Highlighting Prineville's resurgence, a wetlands is being built on the town's western edge that will increase its wastewater treatment capacity. Some of the water will be filtered and used by Apple to cool its servers.

On the other end of town, Ochoco Lumber is selling the land its mill once stood on, billed as prime real estate along Ochoco Creek. The mill closed in 2001. Only a small building is left that Barnes, the accountant, uses to manage the books of the company's operations elsewhere. On the walls are photos of the mill in full swing, depicting a bygone era.

"The data centers on the hill have been key to our redevelopment, so things look a lot more positive," Barnes said.

Prineville's metamorphosis is rare for a small town with an extractive-industry-based economy, said John M. Findlay, an American history professor at the University of Washington.

He cited as examples The Dalles, which hosts a Google data center, and Quincy, Washington, which hosts Microsoft, Yahoo and others.

"These successes take some imagination — communities have to be able to see past declining industries and envision new ones," Findlay said. They also require infrastructure and political support, such as tax breaks, he noted.

Other timber-dependent towns like Bend and Hood River have capitalized on outdoor recreation and craft breweries, and attracting retirees.

In Prineville, trickle-down benefits of the data-center boom are noted in the Taqueria Mi Tiendita, where customers include construction workers.

"We bought this shop eight years ago," said Lety Toledo, who co-owns the cafe with her husband. "Those were tough times, but we hung on. Now, it is better."

Lehner, the economist, cautions that the total number of jobs in the county is the same as in the 1990s. Some people left; others gave up looking for work, driving down the unemployment rate.

Still, he believes the labor force is poised to grow in coming years.

"The outlook is fairly bright for Crook County, particularly relative to much of rural America," he said.

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First-ever marijuana growers' fair

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SALEM, Ore. (AP) — People flocked to Oregon's first-ever marijuana growers' fair on Saturday where a competition for best pot plants was being held, with the winners to be displayed at the Oregon State Fair.

The inaugural two-day Oregon Cannabis Growers' Fair underscores how the once-illicit marijuana industry is starting to go mainstream in Oregon, one of four states to have legalized recreational marijuana use, along with Washington, D.C.

Ed Rosenthal, known in pot circles as the Guru of Ganja, poked, prodded, rubbed and sniffed several dozen marijuana plants — some of which were so big they engulfed him in an exhibition hall on the Oregon State Fairgrounds. He and other judges were picking nine winning plants — three in each of three categories — that will be displayed at the Oregon State Fair for two weeks starting later this month.

Rosenthal, wearing a marijuana-leaf print shirt, scribbled on his clipboard as onlookers snapped photos and gaped at rows of pot plants. None had buds, per contest rules.

"The first thing is health and to make sure they don't have infections and then to make sure they ... don't have nutrient deficiencies. Then, we look at the structure of the plant: Has it been getting as much sun as it should be getting? Is it sunburned?" Rosenthal said.

Danny Grimm, owner of Uplifted, a cannabis farm, entered the competition and said that winning it could spur sales.

"It's great to put it on our portfolio and get publicity here and get our name out there," he said. "That is huge for the cannabis industry, and it's definitely a step in the right direction for us. We've been waiting for this for years."

Donald Morse, a pot grower who came up with the idea of holding the fair, was happy with the strong attendance on opening day Saturday. Segments of the industry, from seed providers all the way to a company offering mechanized bud trimmers, were among more than 80 exhibitors.

Reggae music thumped from Savant Plant Technologies' display on Friday as owner James Knox, 38, of Corvallis, set up his do-it-yourself grow package, including peat and microorganisms to stimulate plant growth.

"It's nice for us to be stepping across the line and say, 'Here we are, and we're ready to do business,' " he said. "For those of us who have been doing this a long time, this is a breath of fresh air because we're able to work openly and in the light."

The winning entries of the pot-plant competition will be displayed at the state fair with more traditional items like tomatoes, hogs and horses, but in a translucent greenhouse guarded by extra security. Only those 21 or older will be allowed to enter. It will be the first time cannabis will be exhibited at a state fair anywhere in the United States, organizers said.

"It is an historic event. It's a great opportunity to meet these growers that typically were underground," fair organizer Mary Lou Burton said. "We're trying to get people connected up and networking."

Oregon voters legalized recreational marijuana in a November 2014 ballot initiative. Medical marijuana was legalized years earlier. The Oregon Liquor Control Commission is in the process of issuing licenses and regulations for recreational marijuana, from seeds to sales.

Business is already booming. Oregon's Legislative Revenue Office in May quadrupled its estimate of net state tax revenues, from $8.4 million to $35 million, expected from recreational marijuana through June 30, 2017.

Morse, who is also executive director of the Oregon Cannabis Business Council, said the growers' fair aims to demystify marijuana.

"It's not to tempt people to use marijuana," Morse said. "It is to educate. Cannabis is Oregon's newest farm crop."

Marijuana on ballots in Oregon. Deja vu all over again!

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AURORA, Ore. _ Last year, Golden Leaf Holdings, a leading cannabis company, paid $3.3 million for almost 100 acres of land in Oregon to build a marijuana growing, processing and research site.

The future looked bright: Oregon voters had legalized recreational marijuana in 2014. But Measure 91 gave counties and towns the opportunity to opt out and ban pot businesses.

Days after Golden Leaf signed the papers on the property in Marion County near the town of Aurora, the county banned marijuana businesses in unincorporated areas. So did about 100 other towns and counties.

"That shut us out completely out of the recreational market, which was our original strategy," said Beau Whitney, a Golden Leaf vice president.

Now, Golden Leaf has another chance. Marion County is one of about 50 Oregon towns and counties that will decide in the Nov. 8 election whether to opt back into the marijuana business, according to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, which regulates and licenses the industry.

Other states across America are also grappling with the issue of how to deal with the emerging marijuana business. Recreational or medical marijuana measures are on ballots in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada and North Dakota.

At Golden Leaf's property, in the Willamette Valley between Portland and Salem, valuable machines to process marijuana into potent oils are mostly idle, used only for medical marijuana. One greenhouse was filled with rows of robust pot plants, but about 20 other greenhouses stood empty under rainy skies on a recent afternoon.

Whitney said Marion County will lose $7.5 million in employees' wages per year and in company spending for infrastructure development if voters say no to marijuana, forcing Golden Leaf to move elsewhere.

"We just want a level playing field," Whitney said. "We're just looking for reasonable regulation."

Marion County Commissioner Sam Brentano said he doesn't want the county overrun by pot businesses attracted by its rich soil and highway access, and that he has received complaints about odor, noise and lights.

One recent evening, 16 backers of pro-pot ballot measures gathered in an anteroom of a medical marijuana store. Some volunteered to staff a phone bank. Others said they would hand out flyers to boost voter awareness of the ballot measures.

"This is really the Wild West now," Genevieve Sheridan, an insurance agent representing cannabis businesses, told those gathered at West Salem Cannabis.

A color-coded map published by the Association of Oregon Counties shows how the differing pot policies have created a patchwork. Oregon's more conservative eastern counties are red, meaning they banned recreational marijuana businesses; counties establishing regulations for licensed marijuana businesses are green; those that have a pot vote pending are orange or violet; and others that haven't taken any action are blue. Across the state, people are allowed to grow up to four plants, possess up to 8 ounces of marijuana in their homes and carry up to 1 ounce.

The landscape is likely to change with this election.

Steven Marks, executive director of the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, told The Associated Press that "we will have more licensing and a bubble of activity coming. ... We'll see how many pass."

Some local governments, while perhaps opposed to the cannabis industry, want a greater share of the money if voters say yes to pot. Marion County is one of many jurisdictions that are asking voters to impose a 3 percent local sales tax on marijuana, on top of the 17 percent state tax.

One recent morning, James Knox, president of Savant Plant Technologies, helped a friend harvest marijuana in a greenhouse in rural Benton County.

Reggae music played as a half-dozen harvesters wearing surgical gloves pulled branches from the plants, stripped the leaves and tossed them into buckets, leaving behind sticky buds. The buds were dropped into another bucket and then taken outside and run through a trimming machine.

"It seems like the public has spoken, two years ago," Knox said over the whir of cooling fans. "Now we're voting about it again. I really think the counties, the cities, the municipalities need to respect the voters."

Savant sells growing materials for cannabis producers. After Linn County, just a few miles from the greenhouse, imposed a moratorium on pot businesses, the six biggest customers of Knox's flagship store moved away, costing him 40 percent of gross annual revenue. They didn't stick around to see if county residents will vote to allow retail marijuana production and sales.

"They literally vanished within a three-month time period," Knox said. "The commerce they created, the jobs, it's all gone. They're spending their money somewhere else."

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Hazing - football season canceled

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PHILOMATH, Ore. (AP) — The scoreboard at the edge of Philomath High School's football field is dark. The stands are empty. This year, there are no varsity games that brought together many of the town's 4,500 people.

Hazing inflicted by upperclassmen on 11 freshman players at a conditioning camp has led to the season's cancellation, investigations by authorities and the school district, and calls for healing and for the tradition to stop.

Studies show more than half of college students in sports teams, clubs and organizations have experienced hazing. Many were hazed in high school. Just last week in California, three varsity high school football players were charged in a separate incident.

Breaking the cycle is difficult, but Philomath is tackling the issue head on.

"The school district is paying attention to both what happened and what could prevent this from happening again," Superintendent Melissa Goff told The Associated Press. "We're paying very close attention to the mental health needs of our students and how we, as a community, can pull together."

Philomath is a small, sleepy town. Traffic barrels past shuttered businesses on Main Street, a highway heading into the Coastal Range to the west. Corvallis, home to Oregon State University, lies 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) to the east.

The town formed around Philomath College, which existed from 1865 to 1929. Its name is Greek for "lover of learning."

Philomath has little in the way of entertainment, and several people said the loss of the football season will be a blow.

"It's a little bitty town, and there's not much else to do, so there was usually a pretty big turnout there," said Rhonda Lewis, a waitress at the C D & J Cafe, on Main Street. "I don't know what's going to happen now."

Pastors representing seven churches have made themselves available "to listen, pray for and offer counseling to local students, parents and school district personnel," said Jim Hall, senior pastor of Living Faith Community Church. They've had conversations with a broad spectrum of townspeople, Hall said.

The school district contracted an independent investigator, Goff said. That probe is ongoing. The Oregon State Police also investigated, because the incident happened at a state-owned camp.

Benton County District Attorney John Haroldson said 11 freshman players had intimate parts of their bodies targeted during an initiation.

In court Thursday, one of six upperclassmen charged with misdemeanors pleaded guilty to harassment. As part of his sentence, he will speak out against hazing and stand up for the victims.

Haroldson, who advocated for the term, said victims are being blamed for the football season's cancellation and some students' expulsions, and instead should be recognized for their courage.

The hazing existed for years, "instilled as part of the institution," and had gotten worse, Haroldson said.

"The coaches didn't stop it," he told Circuit Court Judge Locke A. Williams. "They chose not to stop it or couldn't stop it."

The judge noted hazing isn't isolated to Philomath and said there must be an "understanding that this is a practice that cannot continue."

A 22-year-old volunteer assistant coach stands charged in the county where the hazing occurred. All the coaches are on leave, Goff said.

The decision was made to cancel the varsity season after other athletes and coaches evaluated the readiness of eligible players. The junior varsity season remains on track.

Brittany Dryden, manager of Wilson's NAPA Auto Parts store, feels the cancellation is "a little harsh."

"I understand people make mistakes ... but I don't see why we have to punish the whole football team, and punish other people that weren't involved, had nothing to do with it," Dryden said. "It's just not fair to those kids."

Goff has a rebuttal: "High school football in Philomath is important, but it is not as important as our kids."

Hazing might be part of human nature, and "it definitely goes back to ancient Greece and Rome," said Susan Lipkins, a psychologist and an expert on hazing.

Victims take the experience to college and the military, primed to be hazed again and again, Lipkins said in a telephone interview from Port Washington, New York.

Over time, they often become perpetrators, feeling they "have the right to do unto others what was done to them," Lipkins said.

Ending the cycle requires breaking the silence.

Philomath seems to be handling its case right so far, Lipkins said. To prevent hazing, schools must encourage victims to come forward, using clearly established methods like the internet and even reporting abuse anonymously so they aren't labeled wimps.

But few high schools and colleges follow through on promises to eliminate hazing, Lipkins noted.

"They react," she said. "They don't prepare for it and don't have a system in place in any meaningful way."

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Oregon's original constitution, and its racist clause

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SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Inside the white-marble state archives building, way in the back of a cavernous room, lies Oregon's original constitution. It's in poor shape, and among its fading pages is a clause from an ugly chapter in the state's history that completely conflicts with its progressive image.

Now, the state is trying to raise funds from schoolchildren and others to restore the leather-bound document, and to buy a special case to preserve and display it, warts and all. They've raised one-tenth of the amount needed so far.

On a recent morning, State Archivist Mary Beth Herkert walked past rows of laden shelves that mechanically shift at the touch of a button. She got to a door, spun a wheel like one on a submarine hatch, and walked inside a vault. There, sitting in a box on a shelf, was Oregon's founding document. Herkert carefully opened the constitution with gloved hands. Some pages were starting to fall out. The vegetable ink on linen paper is fading after 159 years.

It could be even worse, considering how the document was kept for decades. For many of those years, there isn't even any record of where the constitution was stored, Herkert said. She could not confirm one account that the constitution was saved from a fire that destroyed the Oregon State Capitol in 1935.

"That it is not in awful condition, I think, is pretty remarkable," Herkert said. "Until 1990-1991, when we moved into this building, it never was in an environmentally controlled space."

These days, the constitution is kept with 250 million other pieces of paper, all at a chilly 65 degrees with 45 percent humidity in the archives building.

Written by white men in 1857 after a constitutional convention, it contained a clause prohibiting black people from residing in Oregon. That clause was approved in a popular vote, along with a ban on slavery. That made Oregon the only state admitted to the Union with an exclusionary clause in its constitution.

"It is a shameful part of our history, but if you take it in context of what the times were, we were right before the Civil War," Herkert said, adding that Oregon had to strike a balance to achieve statehood, with America becoming sharply divided over slavery. Two years after Oregon became a state in 1859, the Civil War broke out.

The exclusionary clause remained until it was repealed in 1927. That history reverberates even now. Oregon's population is only 2.1 percent black, compared with 13.3 percent for all of America, according to the 2015 U.S. census.

In the county that encompasses Portland, African-Americans "continue to live with the effects of racialized policies, practices and decision-making," a 2014 report said. The report by the Coalition of Communities of Color and Portland State University cited discrimination in housing, school discipline and the justice system, and racial profiling by police.

On a recent Friday, several dozen demonstrators in Portland affiliated with Black Lives Matter accused the police of racism, and complained of excessively rough treatment at a demonstration two days earlier. Demonstrator Nita Kelly described witnessing racial profiling, saying that during the earlier demonstration at City Hall, police assaulted an African-American woman waiting for a light-rail train "simply because she looked like someone who participated" in the demonstration.

In 1984, Oregon students raised over $37,000 to re-gild the golden pioneer statue on top of the State Capitol. In the current fundraising drive, $6,000 has been contributed so far, Herkert said. A total of $60,000 is needed. Officials are also asking adults to donate on behalf of schools. Schools that donate more than $250 will have their names on a plaque next to the display.

"The Constitution helps remind us of our past — both good and bad — just as it serves as the foundational document upon which Oregon's progress has been built since 1857 and continues to be built today," Secretary of State Jeanne P. Atkinssaid. "It should be restored, publicly displayed, and preserved for future Oregonians to learn about."

Herkert doesn't know if the racist exclusionary clause will be highlighted once the constitution goes on display, but she said it won't be hidden either.

"We have to remember it's our history, and we have to learn from our mistakes," she said.

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County jails in the US grim, dangerous

My story on jails
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PRINEVILLE, Oregon (AP) — The noise in the tiny jail, built decades ago to house firefighting equipment, is constant. Voices bounce off the walls.

Nothing dissipates the dank smell. There's no natural light. Fluorescent bulbs give the green walls a sickly hue.

If a fire broke out, a jailer notes, each cell door must be unlocked individually and someone would have to run outside to unlock an emergency exit.

"I personally think this is an embarrassment to our community," Sheriff John Gautney says of the 16-bunk Crook County Jail in central Oregon.

The county has put a $10 million proposal on the November ballot to build a new jail. But such measures are unpopular among voters.

Inadequate and unsafe jails are problems across the United States, with aging facilities holding an increasing number of people. They often operate independently with little to no oversight, experts say, and with reluctance to spend public money to build jails, it seems unlikely the decrepit structures will see a face-lift anytime soon.

"These are local issues that require local solutions, but the problem is national in its scope," said Laurie Garduque, director of justice reform at the MacArthur Foundation.

From 1970 to 2014, the average daily number of inmates held in the roughly 3,000 county jails in America increased four-fold, from 157,000 to 690,000, according to a report by the Vera Institute of Justice, which works with government and civil leaders to improve justice systems.

Conditions are often wretched, like in the jail in Prineville.

"It's pretty much a dungeon," prisoner Anthony Kinsey, jailed on methamphetamine charges, said over the phone. "There are four people in each cell; it's real crowded. The toilet is right by your head."

David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberty Union's national prison project, calls America's neglected jails "a failure of democracy."

"Prisoners are a small, powerless and despised minority, unable to protect their rights through the democratic system," Fathi said.

The Oregon State Sheriffs' Association inspects all county jails in the state.

John Bishop, the executive director of the nonprofit association, said some jails are so old they can't pass many of the inspection standards.

"Federal law requires so many square feet per inmate," Bishop said. "That didn't exist when jails were built."

Bishop said about half the jails in Oregon can bypass the standards because they were grandfathered in.

"Most of the old jails are extreme fire hazards," he said. "New ones need to have sprinkler systems. Old ones don't have them."

Here in the Western Timber Belt where tax revenues from logging on public lands have all but vanished, many counties are hard-pressed to fund services. Items like schools get priority.

"Many counties are vulnerable to fluctuations in the economy, like the oil industry dropping in Wyoming and North Dakota," Fathi said. "When every little county is solely responsible for funding its own little jail, that's going to maximize the impacts."

As for substandard jails, Bishop said: "If certain counties haven't funded to keep up with those standards, eventually it will be the citizens who pay for that if they have a multi-million-dollar lawsuit."

Lawsuits followed America's last mass-casualty jail fire. It killed eight inmates in 2002 in Mitchell County, North Carolina, according to the National Fire Protection Association. Thick smoke prevented rescuers from unlocking cells. The jail, built in 1955, had no sprinkler system.

In 2003, the families of the 17 inmates housed at the jail when the fire broke out accepted a $1.94 million settlement from the county in exchange for a promise not to sue. The North Carolina Court of Appeals found that the state had breached its duty to inspect the jail, a ruling the state Supreme Court upheld. The state then settled wrongful death claims, according to Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C., a law firm based in Montgomery, Alabama that represented the families. That settlement remains confidential.

Fathi said that, given the decentralized nature of jails in America, there's no database to indicate how many jails are substandard. He said bad conditions more likely go unnoticed at rural jails because they're generally small and remote, but he added that "there are plenty of dreadful large urban jails as well."

Garduque of the MacArthur Foundation said the problem is that many detainees shouldn't have been locked up at all, and instead should be offered programs for mental health and substance abuse issues.

"Jails have become warehouses for the poor and the nation's largest mental health institutions, in some respects," she said in a phone interview from Chicago. She noted that a disproportionate number of low-income citizens who can't afford bail for minor crimes and people of color are in jail.

Fully 75 percent of prisoners are in for nonviolent offenses, she said.

Kinsey, the Crook County inmate, said he wants to stay straight, in particular to help his 76-year-old mother who has multiple sclerosis. He believes that without help, the drugs could snare him once he's out.

"That's what I'm afraid of," he said. "I'm trying to get into treatment."

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