The Daily Astorian, Editorial.

Corruption wins at Clatsop County CH
Northern Star LLC seems to own a majority of commission votes
Once corruption creeps into an organization, it becomes an alternate center of gravity, sucking up the honest and enabling the dishonest.

Corruption typically is associated with money, but intellectual corruption is just as viral. Last week's revelation about the Clatsop County Commission's doing the bidding of Northern Star LLC was a stark reminder of how deeply a majority of commissioners have lost their way. They actually believe that doing Northern Star's work is more important than serving the county's citizens.

In a nutshell, commissioners withheld a letter from the state Department of Justice, because the Bradwood Landing people asked them not to release the county's response until Bradwood released its own finding. Thus the county's answer to the state Department of Justice is months old.

Former County Commissioner Helen Westbrook has asked the question of when commissioners decided to hide Clatsop County's response. Was that decision made in public? Or was it made in a private meeting that should have been public?

Interim County Manager Andy Anderson is fond of proclaiming that he's only a temporary employee, and he doesn't expect to make big decisions. But every time Anderson cooperates in the shenanigans of the tarnished let's-do-favors-for-Northern Star gang, he loses a bit of the integrity he had going into his interim job. One of former County Manager Scott Derickson's shortcomings was that he did not draw a moral boundary in public and tell the commission that it was straying into activities that looked bad and were unethical.

During the recent election, Joe Gamm wrote an article about campaign fund-raising by the two candidates for commission District 2, Patricia Roberts and Jim Scheller. Roberts' fund was striking for the size of its gifts and the purity of purpose represented by the donors. The great bulk of Roberts' money was from those who will benefit financially if the Bradwood LNG terminal is built. It is clear what those donors expected from Roberts.

If Roberts was being bought and paid for by Northern Star LLC, so apparently are her cohorts who have kept up a ridiculous charade that was exposed last week.

It has fallen to Commissioner Sam Patrick to speak the truth to commissioners who forgot the public trust. With Patrick leaving office, it will be important that the incumbent Commissioner John Raichl not be naive about what's going on. And Patrick's replacement Dirk Rohne will be an especially welcome new set of eyes and ears on the commission.