A rebuttal to the editor of the Daily Astorian in his article defending his friend, District Attorney Joshua Marquis, Something we didn't ask for: Cutting DA’s salary sends a very strange and negative message
Staying within their norm of biased reporting, reflected in its editorial 28 June 2007, the Daily Astorian has, once again, dismally failed its community.
First, the District Attorney sends a message through his friend in one of the editor's opening paragraphs: When Marquis eventually retires from the job, what will the county commission do? If the commission continues to deny the county stipend, the job will attract a lower caliber of lawyer. If the commission decides: Well, he's gone, so let's continue the stipend, it will prove there was something personal in all of this.
A statement which shows, in and of itself, that Marquis is delivering edicts through his friend. He certainly hasn't given any interviews out saying he plans on staying here until "retirement" however that statement was merely made to stave off the accusations that he is merely biding his time until something better comes along. Next, he presupposes no one is going to beat him at the next elections. Seriously, a big mistake. Finally, it ignores the paper's own reporter. While it most often is what the rest of us do, it doesn't bode well when the paper's editor does so as well. Reinstating the stipend will prove they give the next District Attorney the opportunity to prove her/himself fully capable of cooperating with the board of commissioners, conducting themselves as mature, fully functioning department heads.
According to the Daily Astorian's own staff reporter: Commissioner Roberts ... In a memo to the board Wednesday, Roberts said she had "carefully weighed" the public's input before casting her vote, but was looking out for "proper fiscal management." She said she expects Marquis to "clearly differentiate" between his state District Attorney duties and his responsibilities as county department head, "work to improve communications with the budget committee," and comply with all county financial policies. "Speaking for myself, I cannot support reinstating the supplement until the District Attorney shows willingness and demonstrates progress on these issues," she wrote.
Here, clearly stated, is a way for the DA to get his stipend back, yet the Daily Astorian editor ignores this option. Perhaps reflecting the DA's own opinion of his obligation to the requests of our commissioners?
The editor goes on to rant, This decision devalues county law enforcement. Specifically, commissioners should bury any notion of asking voters for a new jail. Why would this editor completely devalue the hard work that the rest of the law enforcement community has accomplished with the commissioners? Why ignore everything that the commissioners have approved in the budget? And why build a jail if it is proven that the District Attorney has been manipulating the system so that people who shouldn't BE in jail are being FORCED to take plea bargains as they accept the deals their public defenders, being paid $34/hour w/o benefits, quickly urge them to take so they can fill the hour in more equitably? Our jails are full of people who MAY have had better options or may not even be guilty of the crime they are being forced to serve a term of imprisonment for if a wiser, more discriminating district attorney had been in place. The results have led to a waste of our resources in jail space, money, court time and staff management.
The editor rambles on, to the beat of the Marquis' drum, Commissioner Jeff Hazen's surpise attack in the County Budget Committee introduces an element of unpredictability, which is poison to the political process. The first rule of politics is: Don't surprise. Many inside and outside county government will wonder whether they can rely on what commissioners, and particularly Hazen say. Really? A total surprise, eh? Then WHY did part time, unpaid, freelance reporter Tryan Hartill know there was a definite possibility that this was coming up? Could it be because it's on the chopping block every year? Maybe both Forrester and Marquis could use Mr. Hartill as an adviser to help them understand the finer points of politics, of budgets, of cooperation, of responsibility to ones community? Of simply being willing to ask questions, admit to being wrong and do what's right?
We would like to very stringently state here that Mr. Hartill has NEVER aligned himself with any side of this controversy and our using him as an example here is purely because he did, indeed, publish the point that the stipend may very will be discussed at an upcoming budget committee meeting. For first Marquis to bewail he was blind sided, and now the editor to join the caterwauling shows an extreme amount of stupidity of two people who should know better than to put it on public display. If someone looking from the outside in can figure out the stipend will be a topic surely someone on the inside, who deals annually with their own budget, knows the stipend is always "on the block".
The editor's argument spins away from him. He argues: Commissioners have also violated the second and third rules among politicians: Don't pick a fight you don't need or a fight that leads nowhere. And don't let it get personal. The public did not ask commissioners to take this action. The Daily Astorian exhaustively interviewed commission candidates Jeff Hazen, Ann Samuelson and Richard Lee in the last election, and this topic never came up. Now it has become the biggest thing Hazen and Samuelson have done. It will mark their terms in office. Where is he getting his rule book? HIS reporters exhaustively interviewed someone? Yes, we've seen fine examples of that process. The public didn't ask them to take that action? Yes, we did. We asked them to be stewards of our money, or our trust, of our future, of that which we ourselves are unaware of taking place within the borders of our community, to the best of their ability. You think family after family weren't dancing the night of June 27, 2007? And if you think they were the "criminal element" it is you who are sadly mistaken. It is the families who have lived here generation after generation who have been caught up in nets that the DA casts and but for their money their own would have had the fate that so many indigent, having to rely on the $34/hour attorney, have had to suffer.
Marquis is several cuts above his recent predecessors. He is a smart prosecutor. Ever read what was said about Nifong, especially by his close friends? Do it. And then read Marquis' profile. Marquis wants people to fall into the fallacy of association regarding Leonhardt and previous DAs, does he like the comparison to Nifong? The editor is slamming many of the former District Attorneys and their staff. Clatsop County has benefited from his skills. Commissioners perhaps underestimate the variety and seriousness of the crime that Marquis and his office prosecute. More serious cases in our courts range from murder to sex abuse to elder abuse to the "collector" phenomenon of animal abusers. There is a steady flow of drunken driving cases. Looking at crime through the Marquis' glasses? We have to pay the price of his insolence when the sensational, and extremely rare, crimes mentioned have more than one lawyer capable of prosecuting them and the rest were/are daily occurrances that Gerttula, Faber and past DA's handled routinely and certainly any one of the present prosecuting deputies, or those attorneys who have escaped that office, could easily handle. The Kittles case was, as are all collectors cases, a colossal waste of money. It got Marquis a lot of publicity, costing the county hundreds of thousands of dollars. How long did she serve without any psychiatric help for what is now known to be a serious mental condition (which incarceration exacerbates and certainly does not make the person ready to re-enter society)? This is the example chosen of why we should be content with Marquis? It serves as one of the many examples of his ineptitude as a District Attorney and why he should remain a second chair with someone else at the reigns, holding him tightly under control.
The editor's final sorry attack: Lacking the foresight of good chess players, commissioners Hazen, Samuelson and Patricia Roberts have taken this dispute to a place that none of us need. The local criminal defense bar is getting a big laugh out of this circus. The DUII defense industry must be ecstatic. But the bottom line is this: Clatsop County voters have been given something they didn't ask for. The chess game is far from over, sir. You count the pieces on the board with your eyes wide shut. Richard Lee, Jeff Hazen, Ann Samuelson, and Patricia Roberts have taken us exactly where we asked them to, towards a responsible accounting (fair and irrespective of that person's prominence, influence or standing) of where our money is going and what it has been used on. It is not an open check book for a media gadfly who collects his articles as if they were notches on a bed post.
Josh Marquis WASTES money. We have asked our commissioners to steward our money. While the $13,500 may not have a huge impact our budget it did say to many of us that our commissioners are doing what they can to call to the public's attention this man's often irrational, noticeably belligerent, and borderline hostile behavior. His lack of ability to provide a performance based budget, to wield the power of his office to the benefit our community, to bring justice to both sides of the law with wisdom, compassion and discretion is something which had to be checked. And it was.
Italicized phrases are excerpts from The Daily Astorian, an editorial and an article.
Staying within their norm of biased reporting, reflected in its editorial 28 June 2007, the Daily Astorian has, once again, dismally failed its community.
First, the District Attorney sends a message through his friend in one of the editor's opening paragraphs: When Marquis eventually retires from the job, what will the county commission do? If the commission continues to deny the county stipend, the job will attract a lower caliber of lawyer. If the commission decides: Well, he's gone, so let's continue the stipend, it will prove there was something personal in all of this.
A statement which shows, in and of itself, that Marquis is delivering edicts through his friend. He certainly hasn't given any interviews out saying he plans on staying here until "retirement" however that statement was merely made to stave off the accusations that he is merely biding his time until something better comes along. Next, he presupposes no one is going to beat him at the next elections. Seriously, a big mistake. Finally, it ignores the paper's own reporter. While it most often is what the rest of us do, it doesn't bode well when the paper's editor does so as well. Reinstating the stipend will prove they give the next District Attorney the opportunity to prove her/himself fully capable of cooperating with the board of commissioners, conducting themselves as mature, fully functioning department heads.
According to the Daily Astorian's own staff reporter: Commissioner Roberts ... In a memo to the board Wednesday, Roberts said she had "carefully weighed" the public's input before casting her vote, but was looking out for "proper fiscal management." She said she expects Marquis to "clearly differentiate" between his state District Attorney duties and his responsibilities as county department head, "work to improve communications with the budget committee," and comply with all county financial policies. "Speaking for myself, I cannot support reinstating the supplement until the District Attorney shows willingness and demonstrates progress on these issues," she wrote.
Here, clearly stated, is a way for the DA to get his stipend back, yet the Daily Astorian editor ignores this option. Perhaps reflecting the DA's own opinion of his obligation to the requests of our commissioners?
The editor goes on to rant, This decision devalues county law enforcement. Specifically, commissioners should bury any notion of asking voters for a new jail. Why would this editor completely devalue the hard work that the rest of the law enforcement community has accomplished with the commissioners? Why ignore everything that the commissioners have approved in the budget? And why build a jail if it is proven that the District Attorney has been manipulating the system so that people who shouldn't BE in jail are being FORCED to take plea bargains as they accept the deals their public defenders, being paid $34/hour w/o benefits, quickly urge them to take so they can fill the hour in more equitably? Our jails are full of people who MAY have had better options or may not even be guilty of the crime they are being forced to serve a term of imprisonment for if a wiser, more discriminating district attorney had been in place. The results have led to a waste of our resources in jail space, money, court time and staff management.
The editor rambles on, to the beat of the Marquis' drum, Commissioner Jeff Hazen's surpise attack in the County Budget Committee introduces an element of unpredictability, which is poison to the political process. The first rule of politics is: Don't surprise. Many inside and outside county government will wonder whether they can rely on what commissioners, and particularly Hazen say. Really? A total surprise, eh? Then WHY did part time, unpaid, freelance reporter Tryan Hartill know there was a definite possibility that this was coming up? Could it be because it's on the chopping block every year? Maybe both Forrester and Marquis could use Mr. Hartill as an adviser to help them understand the finer points of politics, of budgets, of cooperation, of responsibility to ones community? Of simply being willing to ask questions, admit to being wrong and do what's right?
We would like to very stringently state here that Mr. Hartill has NEVER aligned himself with any side of this controversy and our using him as an example here is purely because he did, indeed, publish the point that the stipend may very will be discussed at an upcoming budget committee meeting. For first Marquis to bewail he was blind sided, and now the editor to join the caterwauling shows an extreme amount of stupidity of two people who should know better than to put it on public display. If someone looking from the outside in can figure out the stipend will be a topic surely someone on the inside, who deals annually with their own budget, knows the stipend is always "on the block".
The editor's argument spins away from him. He argues: Commissioners have also violated the second and third rules among politicians: Don't pick a fight you don't need or a fight that leads nowhere. And don't let it get personal. The public did not ask commissioners to take this action. The Daily Astorian exhaustively interviewed commission candidates Jeff Hazen, Ann Samuelson and Richard Lee in the last election, and this topic never came up. Now it has become the biggest thing Hazen and Samuelson have done. It will mark their terms in office. Where is he getting his rule book? HIS reporters exhaustively interviewed someone? Yes, we've seen fine examples of that process. The public didn't ask them to take that action? Yes, we did. We asked them to be stewards of our money, or our trust, of our future, of that which we ourselves are unaware of taking place within the borders of our community, to the best of their ability. You think family after family weren't dancing the night of June 27, 2007? And if you think they were the "criminal element" it is you who are sadly mistaken. It is the families who have lived here generation after generation who have been caught up in nets that the DA casts and but for their money their own would have had the fate that so many indigent, having to rely on the $34/hour attorney, have had to suffer.
Marquis is several cuts above his recent predecessors. He is a smart prosecutor. Ever read what was said about Nifong, especially by his close friends? Do it. And then read Marquis' profile. Marquis wants people to fall into the fallacy of association regarding Leonhardt and previous DAs, does he like the comparison to Nifong? The editor is slamming many of the former District Attorneys and their staff. Clatsop County has benefited from his skills. Commissioners perhaps underestimate the variety and seriousness of the crime that Marquis and his office prosecute. More serious cases in our courts range from murder to sex abuse to elder abuse to the "collector" phenomenon of animal abusers. There is a steady flow of drunken driving cases. Looking at crime through the Marquis' glasses? We have to pay the price of his insolence when the sensational, and extremely rare, crimes mentioned have more than one lawyer capable of prosecuting them and the rest were/are daily occurrances that Gerttula, Faber and past DA's handled routinely and certainly any one of the present prosecuting deputies, or those attorneys who have escaped that office, could easily handle. The Kittles case was, as are all collectors cases, a colossal waste of money. It got Marquis a lot of publicity, costing the county hundreds of thousands of dollars. How long did she serve without any psychiatric help for what is now known to be a serious mental condition (which incarceration exacerbates and certainly does not make the person ready to re-enter society)? This is the example chosen of why we should be content with Marquis? It serves as one of the many examples of his ineptitude as a District Attorney and why he should remain a second chair with someone else at the reigns, holding him tightly under control.
The editor's final sorry attack: Lacking the foresight of good chess players, commissioners Hazen, Samuelson and Patricia Roberts have taken this dispute to a place that none of us need. The local criminal defense bar is getting a big laugh out of this circus. The DUII defense industry must be ecstatic. But the bottom line is this: Clatsop County voters have been given something they didn't ask for. The chess game is far from over, sir. You count the pieces on the board with your eyes wide shut. Richard Lee, Jeff Hazen, Ann Samuelson, and Patricia Roberts have taken us exactly where we asked them to, towards a responsible accounting (fair and irrespective of that person's prominence, influence or standing) of where our money is going and what it has been used on. It is not an open check book for a media gadfly who collects his articles as if they were notches on a bed post.
Josh Marquis WASTES money. We have asked our commissioners to steward our money. While the $13,500 may not have a huge impact our budget it did say to many of us that our commissioners are doing what they can to call to the public's attention this man's often irrational, noticeably belligerent, and borderline hostile behavior. His lack of ability to provide a performance based budget, to wield the power of his office to the benefit our community, to bring justice to both sides of the law with wisdom, compassion and discretion is something which had to be checked. And it was.
Italicized phrases are excerpts from The Daily Astorian, an editorial and an article.
7 comments:
Well said! And thank-you for puting in print points that many of us have thought.
2nd the compliment of writing, you wrote just how I feel!
Outside of family I have been afraid to talk about how much I distrusted our DA especially after reading the Daily Astorian and hearing KAST endorse him. I didn't really understand what the commissioners were doing since the paper doesn't say much. I am so relieved to finally read a well written opposing viewpoint. Thank-you, you don't know how grateful I am to see this.
Is what you write any less biased?
I'll comment on what I read. I thought it was a fair request to be fair and very well written.
Marquis is like one of those doctors who think surgery is the answer to everything. He thinks prisons are the answer to everything when about 70% become career criminals re-entering our society trained to disrupt it even more. Local jails are merely holding cells w/o the tools or funds to help the person. He is about punishment which would be okay if that punishment were reserved for the scant few but with him prosecuting 7200 cases and saying only 1/3 of them are out of towners (totally his own calcs w/o corroboration) that leaves 4800 of our own locals that he is prosecuting, people with a possibility of serving jail terms! He says he has such high numbers because we are a tourist county, but then he confesses that only 1/3 of over 7000 have out of town addresses, so he is still prosecuting double what other counties our size or even double and triple our population are prosecuting! He says its because ALL those other counties have quit prosecuting whole classes of crimes, like personal and property, the ones that he like to scare people into thinking they'll loose protection over. Yet in the last five years those crimes haven't shown any increase in police filing reports on them whatsoever while behavior crimes have skyrocketed. Behavior crimes are crimes where the officer or the DA's office makes a judgment call as to whether or not a crime has taken place. While DUII and drug charges may (or may not) be cut and dry it is hard to differentiate between fish and wildlife violation and disorderly conduct with the other "crimes" since the DA is reluctant to broadcast the information.
Crimes Against Property: Reported fraud, embezzlement, burglary, larceny, vehicle theft, arson, forgery and vandalism is most often associated with tourist activity so it would be expected that this is where Clatsop Co. would excel over all the other counties yet we are below the state norm. These activities are also associated with high drug activities, yet again if there is a correlation it would mean we have less than state norm on drug activity.
Behavior crimes are drug, liquor, weapons, game, runaways, prostitution, gambling, disorderly conduct offenses filed by the be police or taken directly by the DAs office to be investigated and prosecuted. This is where the DAs office should use their discretion and this is where our money is being wasted. The DA doesn't HAVE to cut out prosecuting property and personal crimes. He can cut out prosecuting disorderly conduct, runaways, prostitution, game, and so forth. Commit Kittles instead of prosecuting her, etc...
Evaluate the damn "crime" and quit wasting our money!
Thank you for the article, whoever you are. It was right to the point and I think represents the way many of us feel about all the drama going on down at the courthouse.
And anonymous' thanks to for your reponses. I know many people who would like to write on these forum things, but are afraid of using their names because of hte way that the DA may go after them. Like picking on that commissioner whose kid is sick. That was low.
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