By Dick Bernard

Special to the Sentry

    Greetings from triple digit country! This summer has been a hot one in southern Oregon, with several days over a month’s period of temperatures over 100, keeping daytime activity outdoors to a minimum. As they say in Arizona and the southwest, it’s a ‘dry’ heat.

   Translated to Maine that would mean sweltering weather, even worse on the body and the psyche. But heat is heat, so I’m waiting for this coming fall’s respite.

    Meantime, besides a change in the weather, there’s been a noticeable change in the public’s perception of just how things are going. Number one attention is being paid, not to the political races going on, but to the economy. As they say out in the countryside, it’s the ‘K’ word: ‘konomy.’  A recent headline in the state’s leading newspwper The Oregonian put it this way: “America is falling apart, literally.” Translated to the local level, that of the counties, we are in trouble. You’ve heard of the expression, ‘running on empty’: that’s us, especially here in Josephine County … Boom is turning into bust.

   Of the 36 counties in the state, at least 30 are in shaky fiscal condition, and several, including us, could face bankruptcy. Like the American addiction to a dependency on oil, our local dependency is on a long running federal timber payment, federal money as a compensation for  logging on federal lands in the state. We’ve known all along that nature takes a long time to replenish itself, including forests. Well, it’s “comeuppance” time. The federal payments are diminishing and may even disappear. Josephine County has the axe out, not for timber, but for numerous cuts in its budget: no county library, less for social services, less for jails, deputies, juvenile detention, animal patrols. You name it, we’ve cut it.

   What to do? Long term, adapt to other sources like tourism, new age electronic manufacturing and services, etc. Short term: raise taxes. In conservative territory like Josephine County, that’s a first class hackle-raiser!

   This whole episode is similar to catching monkeys in an African forest: carve out the insides of large gourds, leaving an opening big enough for a monkey hand. Place tasty rice inside. Stake the gourds to a chain and watch. The monkeys arrive, spot the rice and reach in. We hunters approach. The monkeys, fists full of rice attempt to pull out, but it means letting go of the rice. Dilemma! Gotcha!

   That’s the average county resident. Tax revenue will be a fiscal rescue allowing us to escape our fiscal mess. We won’t tolerate it. We let the budget cutters take over, It’s hunker down time. Quality of life diminishes. We get closer and closer to little or no government. Devil takes the hindmost.

   This is not news to Mainers. As long as taxes have a negative connotation, resistance is paramount. Change the perception: taxation properly instituted and maintained is an investment in the future. That’s a turn around that’s really difficult to pull off in the face of long held feelings that to impose taxes is the beginning of the end.

   So here we are, back to dependency. It will take a magical moment to turn heads and get us to face realities As Adlai Stevenson put it back in the 1950s when he ran for president, ‘what America needs is a swift kick in the pants!’ I think that kick is coming. Do you?

   Dick Bernard is a former South Portland resident who now makes his home in Oregon.