The job of County Commissioner: Tam Moore reports.

What does a county commissioner do?

First in a series of reflections by former Jackson County Commissioners.

Commissioners go to meetings. They gather opinions from people and groups. They explain procedures to people. They make decisions.

Tam Moore, journalist, 2012

They oversee planning and development of rural lands. They oversee county roads and bridges. They provide a budget and facilities for the Sheriff patrols and jail, for the assessment and taxation function, for the clerk's functions, the District Attorney and the court system, for surveys and ground water control. They oversee animal control, the airport, restaurant inspections, public health and communicable diseases, mental health, a parks system, and the Expo.

If a dog barks anywhere in the county, it's a county problem. If a teenager breaks a window, it's a county problem. If someone gets lost in the woods near Howard Prairie, it's a county problem.

And in the news now, when the jail is too small, it's a big, expensive county problem.

In 1975, when Tam Moore took office, county commissioners weren't thinking about commercial marijuana grow sites. The new jail they were planning seemed plenty large. The county had what people thought was an ample and reliable source of county income, revenue from timber being cut on federal forests. We had county government without having to levy taxes. What a deal, we thought.

Things change, and decisions commissioners make have long-lasting consequences. That is the point of this series.

Many of the people who saw the changes are still around. Tam Moore was a newsman at KOBI, then a County Commissioner, and then, once again, a journalist. He lives in Medford.

Tam Moore Reports:

"There was one of those 'ah ha' moments a couple of weeks ago when I read in this blog of turmoil in the local Democratic Central Committee. My mind went back to the Republican Party locally, at the state level, and nationally. 

After serving six years of active duty in the army--my last tour was Vietnam in 1967-- I rejoined California Oregon Broadcasting at the Medford TV station, KOBI. We had a full-time news staff of four, Max Chapman, Tam Moore, John Darling, and Anne Batzer. You had to be a jack of all trades.

KOBI news crew

At the local level, conservative evangelicals, led by the trumpet-cry of Walter Huss, a fundamentalist preacher from Bend, were organizing to take over county precinct committees, much to the consternation of the local moderates who 
represented Jackson County's establishment. The Huss take-over succeeded in the summer of 1977; he became chair of the state GOP. 

Those were the times Watergate unfolded, culminating in President Nixon announcing his resignation in a 1974 summer-time TV speech. I was holding a campaign fundraiser at Dave Lowry's home at the very same time. Not a soul except my campaign workers turned up. Everyone else stayed home to watch Nixon.

Voters in Jackson County elected me commissioner in November, 1974. I served from 1975 through 1978, defeated in the Republican primary that year. I found my experience as a news reporter, and the strategic thinking learned through military duty, invaluable in my four years on the Board, including two as Chairman.

This was the time of the Great Inflation of the 1970s. In one 18-month period stocks lost 40 percent of their value. Jobless rates were in double-digits. We joined with Josephine County to create the Job Council, an agency doing retraining and local job development using CETA (federal Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) funds. State law had sanctioned collective bargaining for public employees. We scrambled to make three-year contracts with the fledging county unions to control spiraling payroll costs.

Rogue Valley Transportation District formed in 1975, replacing a cobbled-together public transportation system growing out of the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo. It would be 1977 before they put a couple of vans on the road. It was the May election in 2016 when district voters finally approved a local tax levy most of us had rejected time and again over the decades.

One of the blessings of country finances in the 1970s was the ever-increasing flow of money shared by the federal government, fueled by timber sale receipts from federal timberlands within the county--O & C funds.

**It gave the Road Department funds to do significant work on the near 1,000-mile network of county roads, with emphasis on replacing aging bridges and improving roads getting heavy haul traffic from logging in the uplands.

**It made possible the consolidation of a county-wide library system, which stayed open in the Recession of the 1980s with only two remaining employees and the dedication of several hundred volunteers.

**It funded a network of county parks and boat access points to waterways, and assumed the City of Medford's debt and title to what is now the Jackson County Airport.

**It paid for the first county-wide land use plan created following state land-use goals adopted in 1975, including setting the first city urban growth boundaries. It kept the Assessor's office staffed, it put sheriff's deputies on the road, and it allowed the county to pick up part of the taxes levied by local school districts.

But most of all, that inflow of money made property taxes among the lowest in Oregon, while the Board and citizen advisory groups laid the groundwork for a new Justice Building and county jail. High interest rates earned by funds set aside for future building construction paid professional fees for the design of both buildings. The Justice Building was all but finished when I left office in January 1979. The jail, now termed grossly inadequate, began receiving inmates in 1981.

Tam Moore, writing for the Capital Press

Things were bad in the old jail on the top floor of our 1932 courthouse. A grand jury investigation during my tenure found we had fewer square feet per jail inmate than the minimum specified for each dog in state licensed commercial kennels.

In 1970 county population was 94,500, but despite high unemployment in the decade population neared 132,500 by 1980. The 2010 Census puts our population at 218,500. County voters approved a Home Rule Charter in May, 1978, creating the foundation for the government we know today. The charter has served us well.

Now, how do we deal with the political turmoil created by our own times. What is our political game?

When Walter Huss took over the Oregon GOP in 1977, the Washington Post observed 'Whether Huss is the wave of the GOP future, or as his critics believe, the voice of a hate-filled past, his victory represents one of the striking triumphs of evangelical religious participation in organizational politics. . . . Huss and his followers simply beat the politicians at their own game.'"