Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 02-06-25_THURSDAY_7AM

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

Legal Eagle John OConnor breaks down the Trump firings and legal issues he should watch out for to get the bad apples OUT. Senator Golden joins in later, SB762 talk, possible amendment, a bit on SB798.

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clouserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Myers. Twelve minutes after seven. President Trump, of course, has thrown out a lot of, or thrown down, I should say, a lot of gauntlets. And in many cases, there are now legal challenges coming back to some of this. And how much soup is in the legal challenges?

I wanted to kind of talk with a, well, not kind of. I am going to speak to a legal eagle about this. John O'Connor is author of Postgate, How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate, and Began Today's Partisan Advocacy Journalism. You know, the kind of journalism like, oh, I don't know, was it Politico getting $8.5 million or so last time I checked from USAID? What could go wrong on such things? And let me tell you a little bit more about John. He's an experienced trial lawyer, tried cases in Fed and state court, lives in the Bay Area, and you served as assistant u.s attorney in

northern california 1974 to 1979 so you've prosecuted the bad guys isn't that right john welcome back well that's right that's right strictly speaking i was there for six years each of those years six years and i prosecuted the bad guys also defended the government in in civil suits when when the government uh was was sued for a contract, an employment violation, for example. I mean, Trump's going to get sued here. And that's what you and I have been talking about. So the games are beginning now. All right.

Now, the latest has been that we have people suing, unions and various other people suing, about Elon Musk and Doge getting access to the Labor Department. And, oh, we don't want anything sensitive information that might go on there. I mean, are there classified documents? I mean, classified documents there at the Labor Department with all the money that goes out there? I don't know. Maybe you you know you help me understand that that you ask him and i'm sorry bill what is the issue there on the labor department oh they don't even want uh the unions don't even want him getting access to the files they don't even want elon musk being able to look at this at this kind of stuff i i

thought oh silly me i'm thinking that these things are more or less with spending public records but i could be wrong about the way this stuff works these days. No, I think Trump as chief executive has the power to give Elon Musk whatever he wants to. Now, he's got a problem with classified information, but even that is a system that really is instituted at the behest of the president. The president could come out today and say, none of this information is classified. I'm sorry, I'm declassifying everything. He's the guy that can do that.

He can do it just by saying it, too. In fact, wasn't that part of what was at stake when there was that raid on Mar-a-Lago about classified documents. And he said, listen, I declassified. I was the president when I brought this stuff in, right? That's sort of what he was talking about. Well, that's right. That's right.

I mean, some of that, frankly, rang hollow because he didn't make a record of it and so forth. The judges are going to look down on that when he's out of office and saying that. But nonetheless, the point is well made that he did have the power to do that. Now, you have a problem of proof. And is he just saying that? Why don't you have a little document you leave behind? That's not the point. The point is that now he is president. He's the chief executive officer. He's in charge of the executive branch. People don't seem to understand that, that he can do what he wants to do. Now, if there's a regulation, he should go through the process of changing it.

In many cases, he can do it by executive order. And remember this. Look at what Barack Obama did. Everybody said, oh, what a cool guy he is. What a dreamer is, is by executive order, he delayed any action on these illegal immigrants, which kept made them essentially immune from prosecution. Well, he could do that because he's his chief executive. So when he does that, all the progressives think that's just wonderful. What a wonderful thing the guy did. But the the fact is it's just an exercise of executive authority now trump is doing the same thing but but with a different slant and he should be able

to do it um now he's going to run into some trouble on damages um yeah yeah what do you think are the legal buzz saws that the trump administration will have to fend off or maybe get some kevlar to deal with the legal buzzsaw. What do you think? Well, that's right. And I think that's a problem. Now, as to the inspectors generally, he fired them without 30 days' notice. Okay, he's going to owe them 30 days, I would say, at least.

And I also think that firing FBI agents I'm not sure if they're part of some union if they have some sort of a collective, not collective bargain but some sort of an agreement in place there I would imagine they would not so the question is

is firing the FBI agents or firing the Justice Department people. I think he has the right to do that. I personally wish he did it with a little cooler mindset. How would you have handled this? Because the way I understand it, and I may not be completely understanding it, and that's why I wanted to talk with you about this,

is that essentially if you were an FBI agent and you were involved in the investigation of January 6th and you ended up putting your thumb on the scale, et cetera, et cetera. Tell us everything you did. And if you didn't, then we'll keep you on. If you did, then we're going to fire you. Isn't that kind of the way I heard the story? Well, that's right. And that's what should happen. Someone ought to be able to come in and determine whether this person really violated this oath by unduly injecting political considerations into a law enforcement matter.

But wouldn't that require, but isn't what you're talking about as an attorney, and the fact that there are lawsuits being filed here, John, isn't what you're concerned about then? Is that, yes, you have the right to fire these agents, let's say the FBI agents as an example, but there has to be a process. There is an established process, a due process part of this that you're talking about. Is this really what you're speaking of? That's exactly it. Okay. And what Trump has to watch out for is a judiciary that doesn't like him.

It will bend over backwards. Oh, boy. Hey, now that's a laugh. You just make me want to laugh when I hear about that. You know, anything below the Supreme Court, there's probably a lot of opposition to him. Fair enough, right? Well, especially in Washington, D.C., for whatever reason, that judiciary is very, very liberal compared to the rest of the country, even though you would think, well, gee, the president's same president

disappointed everybody, but they seem to be far more liberal there. And so, you know, he's going to have to watch it because, you know, now he can't discriminate on the basis of race, creed, or color. But, you know, then you've got to look at the remedies. What if a judge decides to order reinstatement of the employee? Boy, that's a tough one. So that's why I say if I were Trump, I would take it much easier, have a system where everybody's looked at and where basically people sort of self-depart. They decide, no, I don't want to work here anymore. Or you use the time-honored custom in the FBI of sending someone to places like Billings, Montana. They'll leave the Bureau.

You have the right to reassign these folks. And that's the way J. Edgar Hoover always did it. He would send an agent from a good place to a bad one if he didn't like him. If someone misbehaves, so to speak, this is what you do. And it's true, it's difficult to fire fire many federal employees right legally fire right right and it should be difficult uh they should get some secret uh uh some some a civil service type protection they're not part of the civil service but they ought to get it but here's the way the way trump can do this. There are many functions within the FBI, for example.

You take a guy that's clearly politicized, take that guy and put him on a team that does background checks. So go around and you start doing background checks, which is a very routine thing for an agent to do, but it's not a wonderful assignment. Yeah, it's a tedious, just, you know, what's a boring assignment, really, right? That's right. That's right. And you send him to North Dakota and have him do background checks out of North Dakota and see how much he likes it, rather than simply coming out and firing him. So it's just really a question of wisdom, in my view.

You know, and then some of these folks, I mean, you think, hey, if a guy is 45 years old, he's got a family, and he's not really a terrible guy, you maybe suspect him. Well, you know, demote him. Send him someplace, but don't necessarily take food off the table. I think Trump is going to run into some legal buzz here, I'm afraid. And I think he ought to go easy on this. It looks, it looks, see. He could be creating more trouble for himself by opening up for this.

Although, I don't know, maybe part of this is inviting legal challenges in order to maybe kick it up to the Supreme Court level, maybe for a higher court calling on that? Might that be part of the strategy? I think it's going to be tough, and I think it's going to be tough for the Supreme Court to weigh in on little cases. As they say, revenge is a dish best eaten cold. And I think that from Trump's point of view, these people were dead set against him and were prejudiced. But now the way it's characterized by the Democrats, they see this as, quote, retribution. Well, you can call it accountability. You can call it retribution. But that's why I say he ought to make it look like there's a process in place. And remember, he got in trouble with James Comey when he fired James Comey in 2017. He made it look like it was an intemperate firing rather than one that went through a process.

Rod Rosenstein had already set up a process where he was reviewing James Comey. He was probably going to recommend his dismissal. And what happens? Trump just willy-nilly fires him and said, no, Rosenstein didn't do it. I did it. Well, you know, he just got himself a special counsel because of that. Everybody got their feathers all ruffled. And, oh, what kind of a crazy guy is Trump?

And we got a special counsel out of it. But there wasn't really a crime. And so he did it to himself. So I would caution Trump, look, if I'm an underling to Trump, I'd say, look, let me handle this, okay? I'll take care of this. And people will leave. If they're bad people, they're going to leave. If they're really ideological folks, they'll leave. And you can deal with them the right way. Is the way that the Trump administration dealt with the emails that went out to a couple

million federal workers saying, hey, you got to come back in to the office. And if you're not happy with this, you don't want to work with us anymore, just reply with resign. Was that an okay way to do this in your view of the world, John O'Connor? What do you think? Yeah, now that's fine. That's fine. That's an executive decision that is very rational, makes a lot of sense. You have the right to set conditions of employment.

There's nothing really terribly discriminatory about that everybody's being treated equally and so it will have the effect of getting rid of some bad employees now the federal system has been set up and the rules for hiring and firing of federal employees a lot of this has been set up because they didn't want it to be back like the way it used to be like like Tammany Hall in New York, right? You know, that sort of thing where everybody got hired or fired based on just who the mayor was at that time, the spoil system, right? Isn't that what this was all about? Right. Okay. Now, because of that, though, have we gone too far in one direction in which you essentially have the unaccountable bureaucracy that says,

I don't care who you are, Democrat or Republican president, because I'm going to be here long after you're gone. You know, that sort of thing. Is there time for it? Well, that's right. And then what that does, though, is it does allow you to use then political motives in doing your job. You can say, okay, I'm protected, and I'm a Democrat, and therefore I'm going to be a Democrat here whether you like it or not. And that's not the intent of the civil service. The whole idea of the civil service is, gee, these people are people just doing their job.

And that's the way it was when I was in government. People were not really ideological they are now and and since you now have ideological uh people within these government positions now is it time for some reform or lessening those protections or are the protections still valid in your legal opinion well i think i think as i, what you should do is set up a standard of really examining these employees and going through what they did to see if there is bias. I think that's legitimate. But don't be hasty. Don't make it look like you're just issuing retribution.

That's what's bad because that looks like you're going the other way. It's like you're being the kind of bad guy that you're accusing them of being okay i'm here i'm going to fire you just because you're a democrat because you're not my supporter that looks like that's bad and in fact trump is against these people because they exercise bias in the in the exercise of their employment and there's a lot of evidence for that from the last administration absolutely no doubt these people because they exercise bias in the exercise of their employment. And there's a lot of evidence for that from the last administration, absolutely no doubt about that. Right, right. But it's going to look, by him coming in and firing, you know, sort of too reflexively,

it's going to look like he's doing the same thing. That they're going to say, oh, we're just good civil servants, but he's firing us because of our political position, because we're not his lackeys. So it doesn't have a good look in terms of someone from outside the government. And so that's why I would say look like you're going through and actually go through a much more deliberative process and get rid of bad employees. And in some cases, like I say, send them to Billings and to North Dakota and put them on menial jobs while you're deciding to do this.

John O'Connor, I really appreciate your legal acumen on this, and thanks for sharing a few thoughts on this. So it's not like you can't fire it, but make sure that you're dotting I's and crossing T's is what I'm hearing then, legally, so that way you're not running yourself into future court problems in which you might have to reinstate bad eggs with a lot of back pay, too, if you don't play it right. Well, that's right. That's absolutely right. If it looks like it's an ideologically based firing somebody can say that you were being fired here because of your political leanings and it and uh you just don't want to do that okay john i really appreciate it john o'connor author of post gate how the washington post our favorite well the cia's favorite newspaper

at least uh betrayed deep throat covered upgate, and began today's partisan advocacy journalism. You say that was really the beginning, early 70s, with the Nixon administration and Watergate, right? Give me a thumbnail of the book for people that haven't heard of this. Exactly. That's what everything turned. The Post did an ideological hit job on Nixon, but everybody went along with it, and everybody thought it was straight, factual reporting. And an awful lot of people decided that because of Watergate, that the only good guys were the Democrats. And it was the time of the Vietnam War. Everybody became a sworn liberal.

Our universities rapidly became liberal. And so what we have in our universities are 90% Democrats. The bureaucracy is 90% Democrats. The media is 90% Democrats. Everyone swung that way as a result of Watergate, in which the whole group together got rid of a president they didn't like. And that's what's magical about what Trump's done. He's finally broken that cycle. Yeah, well, there are other ways to get rid of a president besides assassination, right? You know, that kind of thing. Well, but there are other ways to get rid of a president besides assassination, right? You know, that kind of thing. Well, that's right. They always thought that, and they tried. When Trump came into office, the notion was, we're going to watergate him. It didn't work this time.

He managed to get through, and I think he broke the backs of that whole cabal, which is the liberal press, the bureaucrats, and the faculty. So there's still much work to be done to get us back to the middle. But I think the country is freed up in terms of ideologies here. Everybody doesn't have to be progressive. Everybody doesn't have to believe in DEI or whatever. It doesn't mean you can believe in DEI, but you don't have to. Okay. John, thank you so much for having joined the show.

We'll have you back, and we'll put all your information up again, as always. You take care. Fantastic, Bill. Take care now. Thank you. Good talk, as always. 7.30 at KMED. This is Brent with Home & Built Deck & Fence. It's automotive service where we service your vehicle, but take. Thank you. Good talk as always. 7.30 at KMED. This is Brent with Home and Built Deck and Fence.

It's automotive service where we service your vehicle, but take care of you. Hi, this is Mark from Jay Austin, and I'm on KMED. 7.36, State Senator Jeff Golding rejoins the program, and of course, he is chair of the Senate Natural Resources and Wildfire Committee. And news to say, a lot of incoming still coming with you this morning here, Senator. Welcome back to the show. Good morning. Thank you very much, Bill.

I'm curious, how much snow do you have on the ground down there? You know, actually, it's only about, it's still about four or five. It's come down a little bit, gotten a little smooshy, but we're starting to get a melt off. I don't know if you haven't been down in Southern Oregon for a few days, I would imagine, with the legislature. That's right. I'm looking at dry pavement up here, so I don't know how that works. Yeah, yeah.

And we still have most of the schools. Most of the schools are still closed because they're dealing with more snow and dangerous conditions in the higher elevations. I think that's what's going on right now. Gotcha. I think that's what's going on right now. Hey, since we last spoke a couple of weeks ago here, and, you know, people are still really getting ready. They're filing their appeals for Senate Bill 762. There are workshops being formed. People are talking about suing over this. You ended up having a remonstrance.

I think you call it a remonstrance, right, the other day? Basically a floor speech. Yeah, and you gave a floor speech, and you were talking about the Senate Bill 762, and you even made it clear that government can't possibly solve it on its own, and we're facing calls for all hands on deck. And have you had any change of opinion on the wildfire mapping program the way it's been done the way it's being implemented give me your basic take from that please yeah i did send you that speech and you're right the core of this is we have discovered every state has discovered that the weather-related catastrophes that are getting bigger every

single year are beyond government's ability to solve by themselves. If they don't have some kind of alliance with citizens, community groups, local governments, we're going to fail. So we keep saying in one way or another, all hands are on deck. But there is a problem with the map. There is no question, and a lot of people have had a point. I'm going to try to be very specific about it. I don't agree with those who say the map is 100% utter nonsense.

But we are – let me get right to the core of this, Bill, and to what I said on the Senate floor. We cannot use this map to assign a hazard designation to individual properties. And the reason is this, this map, and I got to say there's been like 30 years of research that went into a lot of different programs and practices of Senate Bill 762, which has coursed way more than wildfire maps. And we took the best thinking in our bill about sort of kind of the parameters of how you make a map. We had nothing to do with making a map. We just signed that out to Oregon State University. And basically, but I don't want to get too in the weeds here, but basically it says that the hazard level on your property isn't really related to what's going on on your property.

It's a function of topography, weather, vegetation, climate over a large landscape. So this computer model says, you know, puts all those inputs in and designates that what comes out is a designation of zones and particular properties. So as I walked properties over the years, after the first map came out, which we were through, because after, you know, walking properties, my district, other legislators went, this just doesn't make sense. And they went back and took another crack at it. But, you know, you'd walk properties and I was really uncomfortable from the beginning because people would say, I walked all kinds of properties. Some I would say are pretty hazardous,

but a lot of them, people are taken really good care of. They were in, you know, irrigated zones. They had, you know, all kinds of things. And I couldn't say, I can't explain this to you. And at one point, I had the OSU mapmakers come down and walk properties with me. And a couple of them said, yeah, based on what we're looking at, I can't explain it to you either. So here's the bottom line for me. If you have a map to kind of guide where you're going to deploy resources, and that was the original purpose of it because we don't have enough resources.

We have to be smart about where we put them. And your formula for it is 100% these large landscape factors and 0% what's actually happening on the particular property. You don't use that to designate a particular property. You know, if you want to designate particular properties, you've got to factor in somewhere. Maybe it's not the dominant factor. Somewhere, what is the vegetation, what are the surroundings, what's the water situation, what's the availability of a hydrant, any number of things. What's it surrounded by concrete?

You've got to factor that in to at least part of the equation. Yeah, but from the way I understand here, Senator, is that the wildfire mapping system does not account for that. That's right. In fact, if I understand correctly, the way ODF has referred to it is that coming out and saying, hey, I'm going to appeal my rating because, hey, I have everything cut down, everything's green, we've got everything hardened, et cetera, et cetera, and it doesn't change anything. But the law doesn't seem to speak to this is that a fair assessment okay that's that is fair i i think it flunks a common sense test okay we got to have in there now i want to be clear bill i do not believe you can walk a piece of property and just based on

what you're saying even if you're kind of experienced in this kind of thing just on what you're seeing on the property give it a a hazard designation. I do think there are larger landscape issues. But I think when we say to people, we're not considering that 1% what's on your property in this formula, we're asking them not to believe their eyes, and we're asking too much. We shouldn't be asking that. And I'm damn sure we're not going to get much of a good all hands on deck response if we do that. So I am committed to changing that this session. And my speech started that conversation in the legislature. In which you would be going to a more granular individual property rating. and how and how do you have the uh no bill i let me let me be realistic about that at least for as long as we can proceed we wouldn't uh there wouldn't

be hazard designations on individual properties because when you think about it when i talk about this and some people say well in the real world how do you do that? Are you going to send out official people to every single property in the state and assess it and look at it? And how the hell do you have resources for that? And beyond that, if you do it this year and someone, for whatever reason, kind of gives up on maintaining it, dies or whatever, and there's all kinds of stuff growing back. What happens in three years? What are the practicalities of that? And it may not be practical or workable. So the question becomes, and I'm talking to all my colleagues about this, do we have an effective program that can protect communities without putting hazard designations on individual properties.

I believe we can. And I believe, you know, whatever you think theoretically what could work, how do you get money for this function, that function, it's an ask of people that's too much. If I were one of those landowners, it would be too much for me to say, you know, we're designating you based on a system that does not consider anything about your property. And once again, that's what I really want to emphasize. But what is the real, what is the true purpose of Senate Bill 762 in the first place? Because

I've detected, I'm just going to give you my take on it. I've seen very little that seems to be able to stop the real wildland wildfire problem because it's coming mostly from publicly owned lands. You know, the big forest burn in Senate Bill 762 seems to be saying that, OK, you are supposed to encase your land in concrete so that U.S. forest service or blm can burn through you i mean where am i wrong about that and what helps yeah i think i i disagree with one part of that i've heard it a lot you know just about all these come up from federal lands there are three sources of of our fires basically one is utility lines and that you know dropped utility lines that's happened all over the place one is um fires that come off of our forest lightning strikes basically to come over for our forests and the majority of our forests are federal forests so that's what you know that's what you're talking about um and the third is in the home ignition zone where people live and it's

been all kinds of things burn barrels getting out of control, hot mufflers of cars on dry grass. I mean, there's a bunch of stuff where people more and more we've been living in the woods. And that is one of the things, too. So, you know, I'll say the Almeida fire. They're just one that we're more familiar with. That was in a vacant lot. People, you know, argue, was it arson or not? It was either arson, could have been, or it was a homeless, you know, campfire that got out of control.

No forests there. And we know what that did. So that's one example. But let me tell you, you know, I think you're asking, so what has 762 done? It is a comprehensive bill to try to protect and prepare our state. Let me give you one example that relates to the federal forests. That bill has built out a network of early detection video cameras. It's not complete, but it's pretty complete in areas that actually the map used to decide where to place.

And I'm not going to get these numbers exactly right. But in the last couple of years, those early detection cameras, and they have technical ability to see a lot in the dark, have detected in the low thousands of ignitions in a fire season, seen the smoke, and as soon as possible, got an aerial response to put it out. So we recorded with those cameras something around 1,500 ignitions a year. And because of the early response, and this is all 762, something like, you know, fewer than 10 fires get to a size of 10 or more acres. That's never happened before. So just to, you know, I can talk all day. Okay. Yeah. I mean, detection, that's good. good i mean i'm not going to argue with that that that would actually be a public good you know that you've talked about

but you know everything else about this seems to be that your property is guilty and and it and it fuels speculation and i and i don't blame them senator that essentially state of oregon doesn't want you living there. And we can almost talk about Senate Bill 79, which I think is something that you've been a part of also. I know that's a joint resolution, isn't it, SJR? Okay. No, no. 79, I don't know if you get into this, but there are some bills. There's a little, I think, three bills that have been introduced, the goal of which is to protect, to stop the loss of prime farmland,

our best soil acreage. You know, I think maybe I'd like to come on another time to talk about that if you're interested. But to your point, I heard it, you know, the town hall that I had three weeks ago, a couple of people said right here i read it that there's an agenda to drive people off their lands and this is part of it i don't know what i can say that can be convincing about this i know well the states of oregon's official policy is that of sustainable development whether we call it a climate friendly equitable

community or or you know some equitable community or some other term. You know, there was a Senate Bill 100 passed in 1973. It's been 50-something years. Back then in the 70s and the 80s, in the 80s I was a Jackson County commissioner. There was a big fight because basically, without, again, going into the weeds, it was Oregon has a state policy that we're going to do what we can to protect our most valuable farm and forest lands for those uses. What that meant was the state put more limits on the uses of private property than other states do. Very controversial.

A lot of people to this day don't like it. But I would submit as somebody who grew up as a little kid in the San Fernando Valley long enough ago to see orchards become concrete, that it has served us in some ways. Hasn't been perfect. That's probably a separate argument. Not everybody agrees with that. I get that. So the bills you talked about, the farmland protection bills, are kind of a revamp. I really, it would take a bunch of time to go into it. But it's on the same lines of we're losing prime farm acreage and putting the price of prime farm land out of the reach of farmers much faster than other western states are. Well, I'm looking at some of the points of it, which, and maybe we'll have to have a different talk on this particular bill, but anytime you're talking about no new dwellings, if it meets any of the criteria such as high wildfire hazard within the wildland urban interface.

That's been amended out, by the way. Oh, that's gone. Okay. Yeah, that's gone. I mean, What's Online still has that, because you can't post amendments until you actually hear a bill, but there's an agreement that that's gone. Okay, in a high-priority wildlife movement or habitat connectivity area. And, you know, that sounds to me like something which has, you know, so many loopholes as to drive any kind of control. All you have to do is have some critters and then nothing, you can't do anything with your land is what it strikes me. It's not that open. There are rules rules about what that means and there's public involvement about what the rule should be but i guess the main point is a non-farm dwellings god i don't

know if we have time for this yeah the non-farm dwellings are a special category basically back at what senate bill 150 years ago said is we don't want residential use of our prime farmlands, breaking up farms and making farming very difficult in Oregon. And then over the years, we said, well, there are these exceptions where we kind of want to be more flexible and let people live on those lands. And that created non-farm growings, which with a bunch of rules. But still in those prime soil areas, it's still the policy of the state that we don't want. We want minimal residential development. We want residential development as we grow to be on poorer soils. I'm talking about subdivisions, that kind of thing, to be closer to city limits. So we're not saddled with building yet more highway systems when we're not able to

afford the ones we have now. Long policy debate. But it's not like we're coming in now and say, wow, how can we really restrict living on rural lands? It's a tweak in what's been a 50-year sort of principle on this that not everybody agrees with. Commissioner Roberts, I was copied on an email that she sent to you about the possibility of having a town hall specifically for these particular issues that we've been talking about, Senator Golden. And I think if it was put on by the county, let's say, it might be a little less problematic than or a little more orderly. And maybe we could actually get a good conversation

on that? Would you be willing to entertain this? I have on my call list today, I have a call with Commissioner Roberts. We haven't talked yet. I want to know. I think, you know, Bill, I don't know if people know, you and I go back more than 20 years and made a stab cooperatively to kind of host events where people of very different political views could talk. So that's kind of where I've come from this whole time. So, you know, I am very favorably leaning towards that. What I have discovered over time is that some people are so angry that, you know, they basically we have a trust problem here. And there are folks who I think I'm probably not going to win the legislator of the year award in your audience, fair to say.

So, you know, there are all kinds of folks and some are really angry. And, you know, I would say abusive. And if they think I'm dishonest and aren't telling the truth, kind of nothing I say matters and just sort of makes them more angry. So in that kind of setting, I kind of think I'm wasting both of our times because they're not going to believe anything I say anyway. But, of course, there have been, even at that kind of hot town hall, there were a number of people who stood up and made very thoughtful comments. And, you know, I would start to respond, but then there were so many other people who wanted to ask questions. Long answer to say, yeah, probably. I want to hear more about what Commissioner Roberts has in mind. Okay. I'll tell you what we'll do.

And so you're not looking at any major changes, any kind of amendment to Senate Bill 762, or are you looking at an amendment to work on that landscape versus individual property rating? We are definitely looking at an amendment. There will be a conversation about a major amendment. It will be higher than my pay grade. I will participate, but legislative leadership and the governor's office will be involved in it. Because this is a big deal, Bill. You know, a lot of people and agencies and local advisory groups and county commissioners put years into where we are now. And one of the reactions to my proposal that we don't designate individual properties is,

can we just finish this and see how it works with all we've done for this? So you've got to have a bit of conversation with the folks who've invested so much in it before you jump. But I can't say anything 100% certain in this legislature. I can say it is my strong intention and belief that this will change in an amendment before this session is over. All right. Senator, I appreciate you coming on. Keep the lines of communication. You are welcome back. And maybe next time we give a little love to what's

going on with Senate Bill 79, because a lot of people are concerned about that, too. Bill, do we have one more minute? Sure. No, I'll give you the minute. Times, I know you turned into a pumpkin at eight. I knew that. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that. It's, um, it's sort of an overarching comment kind of about who, where we are in the world. I hope it's not too philosophical. There are a number of folks who are looking to government would like government to fix things in a way that they're not negatively impacted in terms of their expenses, um, their household budgets, all of that. Not enough public leaders are saying this, but we can't do that.

The world has changed, and it's close to 100% certain that we're all going to be paying more in insurance going forward. We're going to be paying more in utilities going forward. We're going to be paying more in utilities going forward. We're going to have problems and maybe more expensive regard to our transportation system going forward because we've let it decay so much over the last 40 years. And a number of issues come up beyond wildfire on this. And that's where we are in the year. My belief is that political leaders, in order to thrive and succeed in office, have not asked hard things of their citizens. And we have kicked cams down the road for most of my adult lifetime. And we are out of road to kick cams down. So anybody who's saying, you know, elect me, I'll fix this. I'll get you back your household budget back to where it was five, 10 years ago. They're not telling the truth. And I, you know, it's not a cheery message,

but it applies to this wildfire situation and so much more. And, you know, it's all hands on deck time. Senator, appreciate the call. Thank you very much. We'll have you back. Good talking to you, Bill. Bye. Thank you, Jeff.

It is 757-KMED-993-KBXG. KBXG grants pass in KMED and KMED HD1, Eagle Point, Medford.