Official has a saying for every occasion.

Byline: COUNTY BEAT By Randi Bjornstad The Register-Guard

One thing you don't necessarily expect when you go to a county commissioners meeting is a "quotable quotes" session, but with Commissioner Bill Dwyer on hand, that happens as often as not.

In fine fettle Wednesday, Dwyer regaled the assembly with a series of famous sayings - or at least reasonable facsimiles. Responding to a roomful of residents concerned about possible erosion of fundamental liberties in the USA Patriot Act adopted by Congress, Dwyer first gave a bit of a history lesson.

The people of the new United States of America would not ratify the Constitution until 1789, "until the Bill of Rights - all 10 amendments - was added" to safeguard individual liberties, Dwyer said. "As Benjamin Franklin said, `He who would sacrifice freedom for security, deserves neither.'

Not bad for off-the-top-of-the-head. Franklin actually said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Rural libraries' future

remains on the shelf

In the "nothing is ever as simple as it seems" department, take the Lane Library League's effort to establish a special district to provide library service for county residents who don't have any - about 90,000 people.

That's one-third of the people in the state who don't have access to libraries, and considering that Lane County has only one-tenth of Oregon's population, it's a proportion that's a little out of whack.

But establishing a special service district turns out to be a cumbersome and time-consuming task - the library league had hoped to put a measure on the ballot next year, but jumping through all the necessary hoops may take until 2006.

Those hoops include a positive vote by people in the proposed district, the approval of the Local Government Boundary Commission plus an amendment to the metropolitan area land use plan, adopted jointly by Lane County and the cities of Eugene and Springfield.

Because the plan calls for cities to provide most urban services, it must be amended to allow special districts to form. The amendment process alone can take months.

County commissioners may be able to streamline that a bit. This week, they asked their land-management staff to set aside time in next year's work plan to pursue an amendment to the land use plan that could allow special districts of all kinds - not just libraries - to form without securing separate plan amendments for each one.

If voters want to approve a district and tax themselves for a service, governments shouldn't make it harder to accomplish, the commissioners said.

New county voting

system a little closer

Thanks to a bill passed recently by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Ted Kulongoski, Oregon now has a bank account ready to accept the first installment in federal funds - amounting to $5 million - to revamp its voting system.

Lane County will be one of the primary beneficiaries of the money because it's one of only three of the state's 36 counties still using the old punch-card system of balloting.

The county will switch to an optical scanning system. Instead of punching out tiny rectangles to record their choices, voters will use pencil or ink to fill in spaces on their ballots.

Elections chief Annette Newingham hopes to have the new system up and running in 2005.

Congress passed the Help America Vote Act last October, following serious glitches in the 2000 presidential election, many related to errors in reading punch cards as well as irregularities in voter registration rolls.

Randi Bjornstad can be reached at 338-2321 or [e-mail].