I write this to express my grave concerns about recent actions by the Columbia Development Authority. The action by the Port of Umatilla, the Port of Morrow and Morrow County, was collusion to take over what other longstanding partners stood together for over 30 years for a powerful partnership to help shape regional economic development to common benefit.

It was a grand vision of regional partnership tossed aside for organizational greed.

I was privileged to have been appointed by former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt to the Umatilla Army Depot Task Force in 1991, joining then Umatilla County Commissioner Bill Hansell, Hermiston attorney George Anderson, Echo resident Joyce Rohde and former Morrow County Judge Louis Carlson.

We worked with the U.S. Army and various state agencies to develop an early site plan with proposed uses that has been relatively consistent over the decades. Fine folks that all had the best intentions and ambitions for our corner of the world and the depot lands.

Later, it was agreed to become more formal, and in 1995 I was appointed by the tribes’ board of trustees to serve on the successor 12-person, multi-jurisdictional organization, the Umatilla Army Depot Local Re-Use Authority. The Congressionally-required process for a local coalition of jurisdictions to request and obtain similar demilitarized military installations at no cost was to form and work through a local re-use authority.

The tribes had four members and two members each to the two counties and two ports. Overall, site plans were refined and a great deal of Army and environmental cleanup had to occur for many years.

During these slow and often rather dull years, the collective LRA enjoyed enormous benefit from the tribes’ participation, in particular a tribal staff member with deep environmental regulatory experience, Dr. Rod Skeen. He was like an “interpreter” for the complex findings and analysis by EPA, Oregon DEQ and Army experts.

I later left the area to work for other organizations and upon my return to work again for the Umatilla tribes in 2011, I was appointed by the board of trustees to serve on the LRA and was immediately elected chairman.

As we knew that the cleanup plans and standards were in place, it was turning time to establish a management organization for future development that became the Columbia Development Authority, with a member from each of the jurisdictional partners. CDA bylaws were crafted that provided for consensus-based decision-making. We then began to advertise for a CDA executive director.

The vision I thought we all agreed to is the continuing shared interest of a local re-use authority with each of the partners being able to market business opportunities for a depot location. It seemed to work logically as each partner jurisdiction could come to the table with their proposed project for lease or sale of needed acreage or let the CDA assume the deal for collective benefit. We knew that the CDA as the collective could advocate and develop site infrastructure of roads, utilities and common area maintenance.

Which brings us to today.

The conspiratorial effort led by the Ports of Morrow and Umatilla is nothing short of a land grab. Certainly, our tribes have had nearly 200 years of this treatment. It is nothing short of open greed that the two ports want to enhance just their own land holdings for valuable industrial and commercial lands and leave nothing or the rest of challenging acreage to the counties and the tribes.

Without a collective platform to advocate and secure infrastructure for current and potential development sites, I can see where the ports would only develop access and infrastructure to current clients resulting in haphazard development. There would be no financing point with a dissolving CDA, as I would guess at least the Port of Umatilla might be past their ability to finance or bond.

The CDA’s memorandum of understanding contemplates the transfer of 4,019 acres to the tribes. From the start, there was a desire to ensure protection of this portion of the depot given its valuable and rare shrub steppe habitat.

Early plans were for overall lease income to help support the management costs but will now be the tribes’ expense. Again, the erroneous — if not condescending — notion the tribes are only interested in conservation rather than development. I seriously object to allusions that only the two ports know how to do economic development. The tribes have demonstrated otherwise soundly.

I remain proud that the Umatilla tribes saw the value in being involved with the various transitions of the Umatilla Army Depot over the last three decades. Internally, we balanced the often equal interests, cultural/environmental protection and economic development.

I feel we brought great expertise and political capital to the CDA. It was a gathering where key regional leadership would collaborate beyond just depot matters and leverage expertise of planners, attorneys, environmental expertise that all the partners brought to the table.

In closing, I hate to be this insulting, but sure seems like the babies just want to take what they think are their toys to go off and play by themselves.