"What people want to talk about is the smoke."

Lanita Witt, candidate for Jackson County Commissioner

First in a series of profiles of local candidates for County Commissioner.

She has hands-on experience with building a fire resilient forest. She created one. 

Dr. Lanita Witt is a physician, businesswoman, rural landowner, and operator of a 455 acre farm, ranch and forest property on Shale City road, east of Ashland. 

Lanita Witt, M.D.

I had asked her about the big issues of concern to county residents. She started off talking about smoke, understory management, small diameter log products and by products, and forest employment. Understory management in essential, she said, and very expensive, but "you've got to start somewhere, reduce understory, do controlled burns, employ fire fighters year round, a long term step by step process to build a fire resilient forest, but I really believe there are some vital economic benefits there, too." 

She cited her own property, the Willow-Witt Ranch, saying that she and her partner started with a million board feet of merchantable timber, have logged and sold a million board feet, and currently have one and a half million board feet of standing timber. 

But what about county issues, I asked. 

She responded, "You asked me what I hear the most about. Smoke is the big one." 

She said the big county government issues revolve around mental health, addiction, jails, housing costs, and family wage jobs. She said they are all related and intertwined. "People cannot get a job if they don't have an address." People with addictions do crimes, get put in jail, but are released because the jail is overcrowded. The county has exactly one psychiatrist and one psychiatric nurse practitioner, she said. "People in crisis often wait six weeks for an appointment. Our mental health services are overwhelmed. The jail gets a lot of people with chronic mental illness who lack continuity of care. The jail is obsolete and there are not enough beds."

Witt on her ranch

Too many people are being released from jail when they really need to be in there, she said. "If you're under a certain point score of risk to the community, and they get someone with a more serious offense, they're going to release the lesser offender." The result is that someone who de-toxes in jail is released, often relapses promptly, then get sent to the emergency room or is re-arrested for some crime.  It is an expensive revolving door, she said, and the system isn't working.

Working poor.  Dr. Witt said there are a bundle of problems facing county residents and that it isn't just people at the very bottom of the income ladder: the visibly homeless, and the people in and out of jail. It involves as much as 40% of county residents, the Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed. These are working poor, people who spend 70% of their income on housing, people who are one paycheck or one car repair away from eviction. The commissioners need to work to create family wage jobs, and some of them will address the smoke issue. This would include more intensive year round forest management, harvest of small diameter logs, and new products like GLULAM beams to use products coming out of better managed forests.

Witt says the county should not dodge its responsibilities. "Our sexually transmitted disease rates have skyrocketed. In gynecology people are seeing primary syphilis and neonatal syphilis and we have insufficient tracking of contacts. That's a county issue, and Danny Jordan said, well, that's a state issue, they fund us on the biennium. That's not true, Mr. Jordan. These are county health issues" because the health and safety of local people are at risk. She said she sees the problems from her own work as a physician, from her observations as a candidate observing county operations, and from physicians and other health care providers who share their observations. 

Jackson County Mental Health

County reserve fund.  Witt said Jackson County can brag about its hundred million dollar reserve fund, but the test of good county government is more than whether it has money in the bank. "Its good that Jackson County is fiscally solvent and in a good position. It is not good that we are not taking care of the needs of the citizens of the country. The position of the county commissioners is to serve all the people of the county, and if we aren't serving the people of the county and working with the cities we are not serving the people well."

She citied homelessness as an example. The county needs to be reaching out and working with the cities. "It's not just a city issue. Its a county issue, it affects your judicial system, your justice system, your jail, your courts. Everything."

"The county wants to be responsible for as little as possible. For example, when the CCOs came in and said they would take over mental health, the county commissioners said OK." But the result is underutilized space in the new Public Health building, and disruption in the mental health system.

She sent a written response to my query on Measure 106. "I am a definite NO." Reproductive health care should be fully funded with all contraceptive options and a woman has a right to her body and decisions she makes with her physician. This is the ultimate insertion by voters to interfere in choice. Health care is just that. HEALTH CARE. If we dictate that some portion of society does not have equality, then who will restore equality to the woman, her children her family? Choice matters. If you do not believe in a woman's right to her body, keep your judgement in the boundaries of your own body."

Lanita Witt will be on the November, 2018 ballot, a Democrat. Her opponent is Colleen Roberts, Republican.

Note and disclaimer: I expect to write profiles of other candidates for County Commissioner who respond to my requests for an interview. I want people to be able to cast an informed vote. I contributed to Dr. Witt's campaign. She was the ob-gyn physician for the birth of my son, I know and like her, and she asked me to contribute. I have never met nor spoken to her opponent in this race, and because there is so little local media coverage of the commissioners' work I know very little about Colleen Roberts. I have written Roberts and asked for her comments on Measure 106 and not yet received a reply.