Leaders clarify plan to help struggling economies; Coos County cranberry producers accused of running “shell game” to avoid paying debts.
BY JACOB PALMER | OB DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
One week after the Oregon Business Summit, state leaders are still buzzing about a plan to improve Oregon’s struggling far-flung economies.
From the Portland Tribune:
That goal could have been controversial. One of the priorities of the plan calls for unlocking the state’s natural resources, which includes more logging, a hot-button issue for environmentalists. Oregon U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden said timber is a proxy for virtually every rural economic issue.
“Many elected officials fear the issue,” Wyden said. But the biggest announcement at the summit concerned a $600 million initiative to develop and market a new lumber product that does not require logging old-growth trees — or older trees at all. Oregon State University and the University of Oregon are teaming up to research a new type of laminated wood product that already is being used to build tall residential and office buildings in Europe and Canada. Called “mass timber” and “cross-laminated lumber,” it can be made by certified companies with sustainably grown trees — a green building practice that is better for the environment than manufacturing the steel now used for high-rise buildings.
But while legislators are discussing ways to help rural Oregon, a cranberry producer in Coos County was sued by Banner Bank for allegedly scheming to not pay $743,844 in loans.
The bank filed a lawsuit Jan. 6, saying Allen and Carol Russell, the third generation of a Bandon cranberry-farming family, defaulted on two loans and filed bankruptcy under the Russell Cranberry Company name, without ever mentioning they had created Bandon Cranberry Company LLC to continue selling cranberries.
The lawsuit said the Russells did so “as part of a shell game to hinder, delay and defraud the bank.
Read more at OregonLive.com.
