I'm Lynette Warren and I'm running for Tribal Council....

...but you won't see my statement in your voters pamphlet because, for the first time in our history, a candidate's statement was rejected by the tribal government. You also won't see any details of my candidate's declaration in our quarterly Nesika Illahee, because, for the first time in it's history, the candidate's declarations made at the General Council Meeting were not reported. That is because Tribal Chairman Dee Pigsley, and her niece - General Manager Brenda Bremner, along with Bremner's hand-picked Election Board want to keep you from seeing what you're about to see in this letter. But it's important that you read it.

I've been encouraged and grateful for the support given to me throughout the past year. In May we led a successful drive to block a Constitutional amendment that would have further disempowered the membership. In the the last election I received 177 votes. That's an impressive showing from an out-of-area, first time candidate who was virtually unknown until last year. My friend, ally, and long time tribal activist, Lisa Brown, nearly won, but she fell short by a mere 29 votes. Let's elect Lisa Brown this year! Reggie Butler has spoken out against our failed business policies and against the conflicts-of-interest inherent in the fact that six of our Tribal Council members hold tribal jobs, five of them under Brenda Bremner. I also endorse Reggie Butler.

In this letter, I will explain in detail how our business ventures have become one disaster after another. In fact, the Siletz Tribal Business Corporation has lost millions of dollars of your money and has lost money every year it has existed. But Dee Pigsley's political machine will not allow this to be mentioned in any tribal publication.

I will also explain in detail how our election process has been corrupted. Did you know that before Tina Retasket became a Tribal Council member, she was removed from the Election Board in early 2007 when she was caught campaigning for Chairman Pigsley and Vice-Chairman Bud Lane in the middle of an election she was supposed to be administering fairly? You probably don't , because the details were never published and there was no written record of her removal. And Pigsley's political machine put Retasket back on the Election Board for the very next election! I will also document how Brenda Bremner arranged illegal payments to her hand-picked Election Board through our last three elections. And now that Election Board has rejected my candidate's statement for the voters pamphlet, because I explained all this in my statement.

I am not just a critic, I want to take our tribe in a positive direction. I will push for dramatic increases in your per capita check. The profits of our casino belong to you and every dollar that goes into your pocket is one less dollar for tribal government to waste. It's your money, you should decide how it is spent. I will work to see that tribal members get investment-grade financial reports on our businesses instead of sales pitches full of sunshine and lollipops. I will work to end the practice of having our politicians sit as the Boards of Directors of our businesses – it is proper for elected officials to monitor our businesses but disastrous to pretend they are competent to run them. I will push to have our casino employees get the same cost of living adjustments that tribal staff get. The workers who produce profits for us should be first in line for rewards – not scrambling for crumbs while those in the political machine arrange lavish raises for themselves. I will push to establish an independent Election Director and Election Board. I will push hard for these goals, but above all I pledge to deliver transparency in government. I intend to provide you with the most detailed reporting of the workings of tribal government that you've ever seen.

Lisa Brown and I take a lot of flack publicly because we've been effective watchdogs of an out of control Tribal Council. Don't be fooled by the negative statements about us. The entrenched powers-that-be in the tribal government feel threatened, all the way up to the Tribal Chairman and the General Manager. They know that they are only two members away from real change on the Tribal Council and they are desperate to keep us silenced and powerless. That's because I'm not just campaigning against the other candidate's this year, I'm campaigning directly against the political machine of Tribal Chairman Dee Pigsley. If I am elected I will support Lillie Butler for Tribal Chairman. We can make dramatic changes for the better if you elect Lynette Warren, Lisa Brown and Reggie Butler this year.

Please read this letter, and then read the WHOLE story on the web at www.Siletz.Net

OUR FAILED BUSINESSES AND INVESTMENTS

Siletz Tribal Business Corporation (STBC) is the economic development arm of the tribe and it has always lost money hand-over-fist. STBC was started four years ago to increase the wealth of the tribe, but it has operated deeply in the red every year since its creation. The history of tribal investment under the current Tribal Council, acting also as the STBC Board of Directors, has been dismal. Our Tribal Council doesn't have the expertise, nor has it demonstrated the integrity required to make sound business decisions, yet the Tribal Council majority, led by Chairman Pigsley, have also taken on the role of STBC Board of Directors, with Dee Pigsley as the Chairman of the Board of STBC. This is a disastrous conflict of interest. Tribal government should, of course, be involved in guiding business policies. But appointing tribal politicians to comprise the sole membership of the economic development board leads to micromanagement, nepotism, and the inevitable collision of interests when good business practices conflict with political gain. Our tribal politicians have routinely put their own interests above the best interests of tribal members and the outcome is that our businesses suffer and fail because of it.

Ever wonder what happened to the records of STEDCO, our previous economic development entity? They've been “lost”. Expect the records of STBC to be “lost” at some point, too, if we, as tribal members, don't turn this STBC economic shell game into a transparent organization. Our investment program will be permanently crippled and our tribal services will end up relying completely on handouts from the Federal government.

In an effort to shore up STBC's sagging reputation, our latest STBC Director, Dave Tovey, has written a few articles in the Nesika Illahee highlighting some of our businesses, but his reports offer no specifics from the balance sheets. He has presented you a look at STBC businesses through rose-colored glasses, giving unrealistically optimistic assessments of past performances and future prospects. I have asked the STBC Board if we tribal members can see financial statements for our businesses. We are, after all, shareholders in these businesses, but the STBC Board, which is also our Tribal Council, will not allow it. Lisa Brown, on several occasions, has requested that tribal members be allowed to attend STBC Board meetings. Again, she is answered with denial after denial. They say the information must be kept a secret or else our business will be harmed, but how much harm can tribal member oversight be for the failing boondoggles that our Tribal Council majority invests our money in?

Tribal members deserve investment-grade information about their investments. Instead we get only endless bland assurances that things are really looking up. Meanwhile STBC has lost millions, and continues to waste your money.

The Salem Flex Building has been a $4.5 million dollar white elephant, for which we pay in excess of a $42,000/month mortgage. A small portion of it houses Salem Area Office, but after three years, it's never housed a paying tenant. I've been to the property four times in the past 18 months. There is a very nice bronze plaque with the names of most of the Tribal Council members on it, marking the dedication of the building on April 1, 2006, but I've never seen a sign anywhere on the property advertising space for lease. It doesn't seem like STBC has done much to get a tenant into the building. Lisa Brown and I have brought this concern to the attention of the Tribal Council twice in the past year. They don't seem interested, but say they'll look into it. Maybe 2009 will be the year when we get someone to put a sign out in front of the building that says, “Space For Rent”

River Reclamation Group (RRG) failed spectacularly as a consequence of lack of oversight and due diligence. The plan was to harvest old, sunken timber from the bottom of the Columbia River. It was founded on a bankrupt company, originally owned by Ross Bennett, who was made the president of RRG. Of course our Tribal Council doesn't know anything about salvaging timber from river bottoms, so it's not surprising they didn't do due diligence. RRG failed to secure permits required to harvest the old timber from the river bottom. Lisa Brown warned the Tribal Council about the lack of permits in the November 2006 General Council meeting. At that time Frank Simmons assured tribal members that the permits were in place and that the future was bright for RRG. Five months later the state of Washington shut down RRG for lack of permits. That was the end of RRG. It was a short-lived operation, but the legal ramifications from our involvement with RRG are still ongoing. As I write this, on January 7th, Ross Bennett goes to trial for felony first degree theft of timber. The Tribal Council continues to be non-responsive to questions regarding the Siletz Tribe's liability in regard to this case. They have claimed we have no liability, but it's difficult to see how our tribe would escape legal jeopardy since Bennett was an employee of the tribe while RRG, a company we owned, illegally harvested timber which the tribe sold and received proceeds from. The Tribal Council still won't answer my questions regarding how much timber RRG harvested and sold and what our liabilities to the States of Oregon and Washington have been, in compensation for illegally harvested timber. It's outrageous that the Tribal Council's failure to employ due diligence in the matter has exposed us to the possibility of serious legal sanctions.

Northwest Maritime Industrial, LLC – (RRG, Act Two). We never planned to start this business, we backed into it as a result of getting stuck with all the expensive equipment from the failed RRG. Basically, the Tribal Council needed to be able to claim they had viable business prospects when they really didn't. The company seems to have bids accepted, but earlier this year Frank Simmons pursued the possibility of making interest only payments on Northwest Maritime's equipment. That's a very bad sign - it's what they did when RRG failed the first time. I wondered how well the company could be doing if it couldn't afford to pay the principle on its debts so I asked the Tribal Chairman for more information about the company. My requests to see balance sheets for the company have been denied by STBC Board Chairman Dee Pigsley. It now appears that Northwest Maritime is in dire financial straits. STBC Director Dave Tovey is now talking about layoffs. Expect Northwest Maritime to fail this year.

Depoe Bay Seafood Company – Deadbeat Tenants. It was a restaurant that apparently never turned a profit. We own the building not the business. Our tenants were the owners of the business which operated from September 2007 until late this past summer. They were supposed pay us rent on the building, which we renovated for their business, but according to an STBC source, we didn't get the rent they owed us. Again our STBC property manager seems to have dropped the ball horribly with this deal. We not only allowed our deadbeat tenants to go for months without paying us rent, we paid their debts after they abandoned the business. I asked Dee Pigsley about it. She wouldn't confirm the account from the STBC source. Chairman Pigsley said they paid some rent, but admits that they didn't pay us for most of the time they were there. She had no more to say on the matter. As of this writing the building sits vacant and losing money in Depoe Bay. Oh wait, Pigsley said “They made a lot of improvements!” implying that the tenant improved our property. Actually you paid for those improvements through STBC, for another building with no paying tenants.

Imprints, LLC – The ink is barely dry on the contract to buy this Lincoln City copy/fax operation and STBC Director Dave Tovey is already making excuses for it's under-performance. Tovey characterizes it as a “mom and pop” shop. I've been there. It has a couple of well-worn copiers and a fax machine. Tovey says STBC wants to make it a business center for tribal clientele. I asked for a tribal discount for a copy job and was told there wasn't one. I don't know how Tovey means to develop tribal clientele. I've heard, but cannot confirm, that this purchase was a sweetheart deal for someone friendly with tribal officials. That wouldn't surprise me.

Siletz Aeroteam: When Pigs Fly! – This was an empty promise to bring an aerospace manufacturing operation to Siletz, as part of Dee Pigsley's deal to bail out US Aeroteam, a bankrupt Ohio company. Chairman Pigsley silenced me in the August 2007 General Council meeting for bringing to light information about the lack of viability of this business. It was very quietly put to rest in 2008, but not before costing us a bundle. In 2007 the Tribal Council hired one of their own members to run the company, and they never told tribal members. Phil Rilatos, then on the Council, was made President of the company. For that he was paid $32,000 a year to “manage” one worker in Ohio. (Rilatos was in Siletz.) I asked Phil Rilatos about it at that August 2007 meeting and he replied, "My salary is $32,000 a year, for a job that's supposed to pay $180,000." So in Phil's mind he saved you $148,000. The simple truth is that there was never the slightest reason to think that the Tribal Council was competent to launch an Aerospace business.

US Aeroteam: Man, did they see Dee coming! – We bailed this company out of bankruptcy. in return for 80% of the Pie-In-The-Sky known as Siletz Aeroteam and 20% of US Aeroteam, itself. Now we're stuck with 80% of nothing and 0% control over US Aeroteam, the company we bailed out. This was Dee Pigsley's deal from day one and she got us taken to the cleaners. This year, Dee thought she could get some political mileage when the subject of US Aeroteam came up by telling members that US Aeroteam was making money. That sounds nice, since we own 20% of the company. However, at the General Council Meeting in November I was able to pin her down on the details and Chairman Pigsley admitted that the tribe doesn't get any of the profits. We'll never see a dime of the profits because of the terrible structure of the deal she engineered. You see, Suhas Kakde owns 80% of the company, which gives him 100% control since he owns four votes on the board of directors, while we control only one vote. Four votes beat one vote 100% of the time. I asked the Tribal Council why Kakde would ever give us anything under these terms. They had no answer. Chairman Pigsley says we can sell our 20% shares, but who on earth would buy them from us when they are worth nothing? This entire exchange was omitted from the minutes of the most recent General Council meeting (what a surprise!) but you can see it in living color on the DVD recording. Call the tribe and they'll send you a free copy. US Aeroteam is still attracting business by advertising that they are 20% tribally owned, yet they pass along 0% of the profits to our tribe. It's hard to imagine how this multi-million dollar bailout of a bankrupt company could have been structured worse for the tribe.

Chemawa Station: Dead in the water. We've already spent over $3.5 million on this project, which we own jointly with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, to build a shopping center in Keizer (a few blocks from Dee Pigsley's home, by the way) We've spent untold amounts of money lobbying in Washington, DC to retain the property contrary to the original terms of the deed. As of now we have nothing to show for our investment and the project is making zero progress. Chairman Pigsley sits on the Board of Directors of Chemawa Station. Naturally. She says it's the fault of our Grand Ronde partners that we are no longer making progress on the development.

“You can't go wrong buying property.” -- Frank Simmons, June 2007. Unfortunately, based on that theory, we bought much of our high priced property and financed construction on it during the height of the real estate boom, but that bubble has burst, so our equity in many of our expensive properties is probably very close to zero, even after the millions we've made in payments on high cost properties like Salem Flex, the Portland Stark Building, Hee Hee Illahee, and the Chinook Winds Resort Hotel. We may even be upside down on some of the loans for these properties. Being upside down on a loan is when a borrower owes more on the property than the property is worth. Many have been taken to the cleaners for believing the obvious fallacy that you can't go wrong buying real estate. Frank Simmons may be a good natural resources technician, but as an investor, he leave much to be desired.It's an appalling misuse of the tribal members' money to employ such a misconception while entrusted with the reins of government.

At the General Council meeting in November I asked Chairman Pigsley how much STBC had lost last year. Pigsley is also Chairman of the Board of Directors of STBC. Every board member of STBC was sitting right there. Pigsley claimed not to know. I asked if any of them had a ballpark figure. They sat silently. Finally, Lisa Brown handed Pigsley a copy of the tribe's Annual Report. Pigsley claimed to be unable to interpret the report. In the past Pigsley has often said that the tribe gives members all the financial data they need in that Annual Report, but when pressed she claims not to be able to read it herself. Don't take my word for it, watch the DVD.

How did things ever get this bad? It's really not that complicated. Our politicians are running businesses that they have no competence to run. They have absolute control over the lines of communication that go out to tribal members and they've found it politically expedient for years to send you just the good news and never the bad until it's far to late to do anything about it. In this way they have evaded the oversight of tribal members, the true shareholders of these businesses.

Chairman Pigsley likes to complain about Siletz.Net She says that information gets out which hurts our businesses. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our businesses have failed because she and the Tribal Council have been allowed to run them in secrecy. Competent and honest businessmen are never afraid to open their books for their shareholders.

OUR CORRUPT ELECTIONS

Tribal Chairman Dee Pigsley is fond of telling members that if they are not satisfied with the job that the Tribal Council is doing they can vote them out of office. This is a hollow assertion because our election process has been thoroughly corrupted by Pigsley's ruling block on the tribal council in concert with Pigsley's niece, General Manager Brenda Bremner.

Tina Retasket's Election Board Abuse – Tina Retasket now sits on our Tribal Council, but in January 2007 she was serving on our Election Board in addition to being Assistant General Manager to Brenda Bremner. While on the Election Board, Retasket was caught campaigning for Tribal Chairman Dee Pigsley and Vice-Chairman Bud Lane. She was caught sending out campaign endorsement letters signed by Rose Bremner (Pigsley's sister), Alfred Lane Jr. (Bud Lane's Father), Robert Kentta (then and now a Tribal Council member) and JoAnn Miller (recent tribal council member, and mother of Robert Kentta). Election Board members take an oath to be impartial, but how could Retasket be impartial when she was campaigning for Dee Pigsley and Bud Lane? Tribal Council member Lillie Butler has pointed out that Election Board members have direct access to information that could give an unfair advantage to candidates, but no investigation was done because Retasket is a loyal ally of Dee Pigsley, Bud Lane, and Brenda Bremner. Instead Retasket's abuse was covered up. Brenda Bremner, along with current Election Board Chairman Tracey Worman, and Vice-Chairman Kurtis Barker have all said that this happened very early in the election process, but Tribal Council minutes show that Retasket was caught two weeks before the election – the campaign material was sent at precisely the time when the inside information of the Election Board could be used to greatest advantage.

The Cover-Up by Dee Pigsley and Brenda Bremner – The minutes show that the Tribal Council discussed a motion to remove Retasket from the Election Board, but Brenda Bremner told the Tribal Council that she would take care of the matter. Though Bremner has absolutely no legitimate authority over the Election Board, she privately asked for and received a verbal resignation from Retasket. Resignations of other Election Board members have been submitted in writing and kept as election records. Tina Retasket, a rising star in the Pigsley/Bremner political machine, was spared the political liability of a paper trail recording her removal from the Election Board– there is no written record of it.

Election day in 2007 was also the day of our General Council Meeting. At that meeting, Monte Kentta asked Chairman Pigsley about the fact that an Election Board member had been caught campaigning. Piglsey completely whitewashed the affair: She said the Election Board member had been removed and that she did not know how to sanction such a volunteer, except to prevent her from serving on the election board. (Remember those last words.) Pigsley failed to disclose that the offender was in fact Assistant General Manager Tina Retasket, one of the tribe's highest officials. She failed to disclose that Retasket had been campaigning for Chairman Pigsley herself, as well as for Vice-Chairman Lane. She failed to disclose that the campaign material sent out had been signed by Tribal Council member Robert Kentta, and immediate family members of Pigsley, Lane and Kentta. The election was still in progress as Pigsley spoke; votes were still being cast. Tribal members had every right to know the facts so they could decide for themselves what they thought of it. Chairman Pigsley concealed those facts from the voters, and the rest of the Tribal Council sat by silently, as usual.

Escalating Election Law Violations - In October 2007 the Tribal Council violated our law and ducked it's legal responsibility by passing an illegal resolution authorizing Bremner to appoint the Election Board for a year. Our law clearly says “The Election Board shall be appointed by resolution of the Tribal Council”. Bremner says this was done because Election Board members, including Chairman Tracey Worman and Vice-Chairman Kurtis Barker resigned because they were not being paid. Upon being granted authority to appoint the Election Board, Bremner initiated a policy of paying tribal staff members for their Election Board duties. This was in direct violation of our Election Ordinance at the time which required that “Election Board members shall serve without pay”. The ordinance was changed in September 2008 to allow staff members to be paid, but during our last three tribal elections Election Board members were paid in violation of our law. Worman and Barker, who had a responsibility to know the Election Ordinance, accepted these illegal payments for a year. This is typical of the Tribal Council under Dee Pigsley, by the way - they regularly change laws after the fact to cover up illegal acts.

And now we have a policy where the only people who can be paid to serve on the Election Board are loyal staff of Brenda Bremner, the niece of Tribal Chairman Pigsley. This year the Tribal Council also eliminated the Election Director from our law, the last shred of independent oversight for our elections. Tina Retasket has been advocating getting rid of the Election Director position for years.

Tina Retasket Back On The Election Board (I Kid You Not!) - Astonishingly, Bremner put Retasket back on the Election Board at her earliest opportunity – even though Bremner had asked for and received Retasket's resignation in the very last election, earlier that same year. Chairman Pigsley conveniently decided that Retasket didn't need to be kept off the Election Board after all. This was done when Bremner and Retasket both knew that Retasket planned to run for Tribal Council that year. Our law says “No person shall be appointed who is currently holding elective office, who has an immediate family member or resident of the household (as defined in the tribal management manual) who holds tribal office, or who plans to be a candidate or who has an immediate family member or resident of the household who plans to be candidate in any election during his or her term of service.” In a conversation we had on November 6th 2008, Bremner explained the Retasket appointment to me.

Lynette Warren: Why was she only appointed for the referendum?
Brenda Bremner: Because she had announced her candidacy for Council. So she could be on the General. She got elected last year. She couldn't be on the Election Board to deal with the general election.
Lynette Warren: So she didn't get a year long appointment?
Brenda Bremner: No, she got appointed only for the referendum. In my notes I specifically... in my note, in my memo I gave to them, she was notified and they were notified in Council that she would only be on there for the referendum.

Again, our law says Election Board appointments must be for one year, so there could be no legal basis for appointing Retasket only for the referendum. But Bremner knew Retasket planned to run for Tribal Council so she tried to illegally tailor the appointment. Bremner now denies she said this to me, but her memo to Tina Retasket on October 17th 2007 confirms the gist of it: “Therefore I am appointing you to the Election Board for the Special Referendum Election. I will be addressing appointments for the regular election with the Tribal Council at a later date. By this e-mail I am requesting that Michelle Rowan add Election Board as a funding source, as listed on your timesheet. Thank you for assisting with this special election”. Since Election Board appointments by law must be for one year, why would there be any need contemplate appointments after the referendum? Because they both knew Retasket would then run for Tribal Council. But the Law clearly says that no one who plans to be a candidate in any election during his or her term of service may be appointed. Bremner and Retasket knowingly conspired to break this law. Note that the memo also confirms that Retasket would be paid for her Election Board duties, when the law clearly said “Election Board members shall serve without pay”.

How Well Does Election Abuse Pay? - In her whitewash of this affair Chairman Dee Pigsley said that working on the Election Board is a thankless job. I'm not so sure. Through the Freedom of Information Act, I got a copy of a grant application submitted by the tribe which shows that the salary of our Assistant General Manager was $56,062 in 2006 and then jumped to over $96,948 by 2008. Tina Retasket was Assistant General Manager during those years. The documents can be seen on Siletz.Net. The documents also show that General Manager Brenda Bremner makes over $114,000. That's more than $20,000 higher than the annual salary of the Governor of Oregon, who governs a state with a population of 3,747,455 while Bremner manages a tribe with a population under 5,000. Oregon's state budget is well over $40 billion dollars. Obviously Governor Kulongoski's responsibilities far exceed those of General Manager Brenda Bremner, but she is paid over $20,000 more than the governor. In fact, Bremner's salary is higher than that of 22 state governors.)

Make No Mistake: Brenda Bremner Has Been Running the Election Board – In October 2008 the current Election Board ChairmanTracey Worman told me several times that Brenda Bremner oversees the Election Board, and that they would go to Brenda first with questions about their duties. This was utterly inappropriate since the General Manager has no legitimate legal role in our elections. But the Election Board has considered Bremner their boss, a fact Worman confirmed in public at the General Council Meeting in November when she admitted they would consult Bremner first on matters of policy. Tribal Council minutes over the years clearly confirm that Bremner was running the Election Board. She routinely speaks on behalf of the Election Board to Tribal Council, while Election Board Chairman Worman rarely reports directly to the council. The clearest example of this was when Bremner told the Tribal Council in early 2007 that she would take care of Retasket's removal from the Election Board, even though she has no legitimate authority to do so. And why would Retasket offer her resignation to Bremner if Bremner wasn't running the Election Board?

Election Board Adopts Bremner's Censorship Policies – In the November issue of Siletz News an article by Kurtis Barker announced "The Election Board now will be responsible for accepting and approving all candidate's statements. We have chosen to adopt many of the rules that govern statements in Siletz News. Statements will be limited to 450 words and not contain any personal attacks.” It's hardly surprising that an Election Board supervised by Bremner is trying to impose the rules of the newspaper which Bremner runs, rules which she has used to reject or heavily censor my letters when I've criticized the Tribal Council. Both Worman and Barker confirmed to me that suppressing criticism of the Tribal Council was indeed a purpose of the new rules. Barker put it most bluntly when he said: “We want articles that state why you want to be on Tribal Council, not like an attack mode where you candidates can blame the Tribal Council for what's going on. “ He confirmed this publicly at the General Council Meeting. Bremner's policy of political censorship of letters to the Siletz News has been extended into our election process with this power grab. Bremner is clearly orchestrating our newspaper and our Election Board in concert to muzzle political opponents of the Tribal Council. Barker and Worman imposed these rules unilaterally, without the approval of the Tribal Council, which our law requires.

Dee Pigsley Covers For The Election Board - After I brought this up at the General Council meeting, Chairman Pigsley immediately called an unscheduled Special Tribal Council meeting, in part to approve these election rule changes after the fact. I attended the meeting and Pigsley said that while the proposals of the Election Board had not been approved, they would be approved that day. How could she know they would be approved before the vote? Because she knew she could count on the votes of her power block which includes Vice-Chairman Bud Lane, Tina Retasket, Robert Kentta, and Frank Simmons. The Tribal Council was also there to vote on the re-appointments of Worman and Barker. I gave many reasons why they were not fit to serve but the Tribal Council appointed them anyway. In a bizarre twist, Tina Retasket moved that they be appointed through July 2008, which made the appointments illegal once again since our law says appointments must be for one year. I had already read this law twice during the meeting and I pointed out to Chairman Pigsley that the resolution for a partial year appointment was illegal. Pigsley said I was out of order. At this meeting I also saw Bremner once again speaking on behalf of the Election Board when she has no legal authority over it. No Tribal Council member seemed the least bit surprised. They know Bremner runs the Election Board regardless of the law. It's business as usual.

What You Are Not Allowed To Hear – For the first time in our tribe's history our Election Board has muzzled a candidate for Tribal Council. My candidate's statement was rejected and will not appear in our voter's pamphlet or on the tribal web site. Kurtis Barker said my statement contained personal attacks, which is false. My statement simply contained a 750 word summary of the facts you see here, facts which are well documented in our public records. You can read my statement on Siletz.Net and judge for yourself.

The Other Candidates

Lisa Brown already works tirelessly for tribal members every day. She is an inspiration to me. Nobody has worked harder to to get you the information you need to evaluate the performance of your tribal government. She will do everything in her power to put the brakes on their out-of-control expenditures. Lisa has pledged that she will not hold a tribal job while in office. I join her in that pledge.
VOTE FOR LISA BROWN!

Reggie Butler speaks out against the nepotism, conflicts-of-interest, and our failed business ventures. He is not part of Dee Pigsley's political machine. I think Reggie is the best Tribal Council member we have right now, so I endorse Reggie Butler for Tribal Council.

Monte Kentta has been an effective watchdog. On many occasions he has pointed out unethical behavior in tribal government and ill considered business decisions. Monte Kentta would improve the Tribal Council.

Frank Simmons, Jessie Davis, and Phil Rilatos are cogs in Dee Pigsley's political machine. They have all been endorsed by Pigsley this year in the traditional “Lane Letter” signed by the usual suspects. Simmons told tribal members “All the permits are in place” shortly before our River Reclamation Group was shut down because it lacked those permits. The Tribal Council made Phil Rilatos President of Siletz Aeroteam and didn't tell tribal members about it for over a year. In that job Rilatos pulled down $32,000 while “managing” one employee half way across the country. Nice work, if you can get it. After a year of this, Siletz Aeroteam had to be shut down before Rilatos could hire a second worker. It appears that Jessie Davis is doing a very good job of managing Hee Hee Illahee, and for that she deserves our appreciation. She should continue running that business for us, but on the Tribal Council she is a reliable ally of the Pigsley machine, and thus I cannot endorse her. Jane John is also a traditional ally of Dee Pigsley. If you think tribal government is doing a great job for you and you want more of the same forever, then these are definitely the people you want to vote for.

What is Siletz.Net?

Siletz.net is a web site I created to be a Virtual Community Center for members of the Siletz tribe. It has become more than that. When I began following our business ventures closely I eventually recognized a pattern. Tribal Council would introduce an exciting new business venture with great fanfare. They would talk proudly about it for several months, but then they would start to talk about it less and less. And then they would say nothing more about the business at all, but instead announce a brand new exciting business venture – and everyone forgot about the last business. This was possible because tribal government always controlled the message. I realized that tribal members needed an independent communication channel and a place to keep a permanent record of how the tribe was doing. After keeping a permanent record for a couple of years it becomes clear that most of our businesses are failing.

I can only afford to send you a few pages of information in this mailing. What you see here is just the tip of the iceberg. I go much more deeply into all of these issues, and many more, on Siletz.Net. I invite you to visit Siletz.Net, first to read and then to converse and participate if you choose.

Get The DVDs!

Most members can't make it to many of the General Council Meetings, but you can see all of the meetings going back to 2005 on DVD. Contact the tribe to get your free copies mailed to you. I especially recommend that you view the DVD for the November 2008 meeting where I raised many of these issues with Tribal Council. Compare what you see on that DVD to what the tribe has reported and judge for yourself. Contact me at Siletz.Net if I can be of any assistance.