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1 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? e-edition | subscribe | newsletter | deals Classifieds Jobs Autos Real Estate FEATURED » NEWS NOW Ashland man admits to laundering pot money ... Pot crash course offered in Ashland ... Animal Control rescues stranded Labrador ... Ashland man admits to laundering pot money ... Pot crash course offered in Ashland ... Animal Control rescues stranded Labrador ... Replace trailer park MailTribune.com Writer Posted Jan. 12, 2001 at 2:00 AM Updated Dec 17, 2010 at 8:21 AM Posted Jan. 12, 2001 at 2:00 AM Updated Dec 17, 2010 at 8:21 AM » Social News Rundown place is no solution to Ashland's housing problem Sure. Ashland needs some affordable housing. Just about every city does. But the affordable housing vs. development issue — on the city's agenda for some time now — will not be resolved by continuing to maintain what virtually are slums on property more appropriate for commercial use. This is the case with the Lower Pines trailer park, a 10-unit development on Ashland Street across from Wendy's. This rundown trailer park has been slated for development by its owners, Galpin LLC and Adams Group LLC. They intend to sell the 0.6-acre site to PremierWest Bank, which plans to build a full-service branch on the Lower Pines property in 2002. Despite protests to the contrary, development of this land for commercial use is as it should be. This low-income housing is — or will be soon — surrounded by other property designated commercial or already in that use. Continued use of Lower Pines and also an adjacent trailer park, The Pines, for low-income housing makes little sense in this growing commercial area. Sale to PremierWest would place a classy commercial bank building in a good spot to do business. The branch would have 4,381 square feet of office space and two drive-through lanes. The residents of these aging parks will soon face the eventuality of their closure as commercial development moves on to the dwindling business property in the city. It would be foolish for city officials to hamstring this project. This being the case, what about affordable housing? Some 27 percent — 2,237 — of Ashland's households had incomes of less than $19,400 in 1998. That's not a lot of money, certainly not enough to afford much of the housing in the city. That comes as no surprise to city officials, who have had ongoing discussions about the inability of many in the community to be able to afford to live in the community. The affordable housing issue is likely to twist in the wind for quite sometime before it is answered — if ever. But it is paramount for those officials to continue their talks — and, better yet, take action — to ensure that the very people who make Ashland the special place it is don't find themselves unable to live there. The finite amount of land available suggests there will be no easy answer to this important question. But we're sure the answer isn't found in a rundown trailer park. - Guest Opinion - Nobody's corrupt? Group's reports show otherwise In the fall of 1999, when the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill was being debated, Sen. John McCain stated that the donation of large sums of money was an obscene and corrupting influence. His opponent, Sen. Mitch McConnell, who pushes for no restrictions whatsoever on contributions, asked, How can there be corruption if no one is corrupt? Since the Senate has established rules to prevent personal attacks, Sen. McCain was unable to reply specifically. Unfortunately for the commonweal, Sen. McConnell did not direct his question to the right person. He should have asked Charles Lewis, the executive director of the Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy group he founded in 1990. In the ensuing 10 years he, along with staff researchers, students, writers and editors, has issued more than 100 investigative reports and eight commercially published books on the subject of what he calls legal corruption. In a speech to the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws given in December, Lewis elucidated what this term means and summarized some of their findings. Among the activities and conduct he includes in this term are such conflicts of interest as sitting on committees that have jurisdiction over legislation affecting corporations and at the same time holding stock in these same companies. One study reported that 40 members of Congress who sat on five key committees considering health-care reform legislation held stock in the affected corporations. Some members, the research indicated, were buying and selling pharmaceutical and other health-related stocks during the markup sessions. This is entirely legal, Lewis pointed out. Another area of legal corruption is quid pro quo activity for campaign contributions. PIRG tracks down these contributions and gifts such as free trips to resorts for the members and their spouses, and compares them with congressional voting records. Listing the highest contributors is revealing. For example, the Gallo wine family gave Bob Dole nearly $400,000. Is it a coincidence the Dole was helpful in getting a tax deduction bill passed that was known as the Gallo amendment and saved the family millions of dollars? Another instance of this kind of activity is the $1.5 million given to Gov. Pete Wilson's campaign by the California prison guards association. Was it coincidental that the guards were the first state employees to get a pay raise after the election? These are just a few of the examples of uninvestigated legal corruption that PIRG has uncovered. Neither the congressional ethics committees nor the appropriate federal agencies have taken any action. One way of controlling any possible investigative action is for Congress to decrease the operating budget of the agency involved. This is exemplified by the reduced funding for the National Highway Traffic Safety Commission, which precluded it from investigating the Firestone/ Ford tire problem when it was first recognized. State PIRGs report on state legislatures as the national does on Congress and the executive branch. This is equally revealing. In many respects the states are even more lax than the federal government. Illinois, for example, has a registered lobbyist for insurance companies sitting in the state Legislature. (Bud Schuster, the outgoing congressman from Pennsylvania, has a lobbyist as his chief of staff.) One-fourth of all Oregon lawmakers have a spouse on the public payroll. The Legislature was recently asked to vote a 60 percent raise for legislative assistants, Lewis points out. In another instance, a Maine lawmaker who is president and CEO of a multimillion-dollar health care claims processing corporation got $10 million in state contracts. The above is only a small part of the revelatory information which PIRG has developed. It is available for downloading on the Web site www.pirg.org . The Oregon state PIRG is located at www.pirg.org/ospirg/index.htm , and there are links available for all the states and all the reports. In creating a well-informed voter, the reports are invaluable. Voters who are aware are the key to electing legislators who will act in the public interest, unmotivated by unmitigated greed. They are the only way legal corruption can be eliminated. F.W. Bud Goodrich is a retired physician living in Medford. 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Address your letters of 250 word or less (150 words for thank you or election letters) to: Letters to the editor Box 1108 Medford, OR 97501 Fax (541) 776--4376. MailTribune.com Writer Posted Jan. 12, 2001 at 2:00 AM Updated Dec 17, 2010 at 8:21 AM » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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