To the Editor:
Last week, county commissioner candidate Bruce Lovelin ran a campaign ad criticizing incumbent Commissioner Erin Skaar, and called into question her ability, work experience, and judgment.
In reading Bruce’s inaccurate, patronizing ad, I am surprised. I know Bruce somewhat and consider him to be a good humored, congenial Netarts neighbor and business man. I actually wondered if he came up with all this stuff by himself, or if someone else wrote it and convinced him to publish it. Regardless, he has to “own” what the ad says. He was wrong on the following matters.
First, prior to being elected as a county commissioner, Erin Skaar was Executive Director of CARE, a key county charitable organization. Under her leadership, CARE grew to help thousands of our region’s people who have struggled in dire personal situations: job loss, eviction, temporary help with rent and utilities, homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction. Bruce is a business owner and says condescendingly, “I don’t fault Erin as nonprofit activities is (sic) all she knows.” He feels good about patting the “little lady” on the head.
In my own business throughout many years, I worked with well over a hundred charitable nonprofits, and I know that running both nonprofit organizations and businesses are equally challenging. Perhaps Bruce has only run a business, so feels superior to leaders of nonprofit organizations. If he ever got involved in an organization like CARE that helps so many community people, he quickly would see things differently.
Second, he criticized the County Commission for leasing land (a small, otherwise unusable piece next door to CARE) so that transitional (temporary) housing units for two to three dozen homeless folks can be built. These are people who have had to ask for help to get back on their feet.
They will enter a process of organized assistance while being held accountable for their own efforts, and they will be helped by their peers and CARE’s case managers. Those processes are well-known, successful methods that have assisted many hurting people around the nation. Lovelin’s ad, which says they’re being provided with “nightly lodging,” implies that CARE is merely setting them up on easy street.
Third, in an earlier newspaper article Bruce claimed that too much county money is going to help our homeless population. In fact, every single dime designated to help homeless people in Tillamook County comes from the state and federal governments, from foundations, and from donations made by our neighbors who care about helping people who are hurting.
Fourth, Bruce falsely claims Erin “adopted the largest deficit budget in Tillamook County history resulting in a $4,114,890 projected loss.” That was a preliminary, “hoped for” budget proposed to the commissioners by the county’s department heads. County commissioners have had to cut that back substantially, and will have to use reserve funds to balance the budget.
Actually, the commissioners are legally required to balance that budget each year, like virtually every other local and state government in the nation. In trying to paint Erin as irresponsible, Bruce showed he may not understand the legal requirement to balance the county budget each year.
Fifth, County Commissioners’ salaries are about $92-93,000 per year, not the $125,000 Bruce’s campaign ad claims.
Sixth, Bruce knows that, given the continued reduction in timber revenues, Erin and other county commissioners must continue to look for ways to enhance county revenues so that essential services are maintained. I imagine they are considering a bunch of stuff, but Bruce carefully cherry-picked a few for his campaign ad, ones which would be about as publicly popular as dumping granny in the forest on a winter night. He purposely tried to further anger the people who bought the other inaccurate claims in his ad.
Seventh, Bruce claimed Erin tried to balance the county budget by “defunding our Sheriff department.” That’s a complete falsehood, and Bruce knows that. She was looking for solutions to county budget problems overall, solutions that had zero to do with “defunding” the Sheriff’s office.
Bruce knows this, but he is trying to leverage support from people who vaguely remember the events of two years ago back east, when some naïve folks actually did try to do away with their police departments by “defunding” them. Sheriff Josh Brown and the commissioners did work out their differences on the county budget, and Bruce knows that “defunding our Sheriff department” was never even a consideration.
I’ll vote to re-elect Erin Skaar, and I hope most other voters will do so, too. She has done good work in a difficult job, just as she did when she was the head of CARE.
Mike Randall
Netarts