The tribal council is taking applications for Election Board volunteers. Even though the Election Board terms expired in June, there have been no notices asking for Election Board volunteers in the Siletz News since May. In fact, two tribal members who did volunteer for the Election Board in early June were told by the Tribal Chairman that they were too late to do so. Clearly, it's not too late for them to apply now. The revised deadline for application is September 30th, but I don't think those volunteers have even been informed by the Tribal Council they have the opportunity to re-apply.

This is Dee Pigsley's answer to an email I sent her today requesting her to write an appeal for volunteers in her September Siletz News Chairman's Report:

from: DELORES PIGSLEY
to: [Lynette Warren]
date: Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 5:29 PM
subject RE: Election Board Applications in Sept. Chairman's Report

The application and notice will be in the newsletter. We have always actively sought volunteers.

I'm happy to see they plan to put a notice back in the paper, but I have to disagree with Dee's claim that they actively seek volunteers. How can Chairman Pigsley claim that she has "always actively sought volunteers" when we've gone for the past three months without a word in the tribal newspaper asking for volunteers?

Tribal Chairman Pigsley has stated on several occasions over the past few years, that no one volunteers for the Election Board. But the fact is that the tribal government doesn't make much of an effort to recruit volunteers for the Election Board. While notices in the Siletz News that volunteers may apply for the Election Board have sporadically appeared in the paper, I've seen little evidence that the Tribal Council actively seeks volunteers for the Election Board. Instead, they seem to favor delegating the power to General Manager Brenda Bremner to handpick an Election Board from her staff.

You can see where there are substantial conflict of interest problems with allowing the General Manager, who is also Chairman Pigsley's niece and her close political ally, to choose the exclusive pool of nominees from her staff. Instead of choosing from Bremner's staff year in and year out, using volunteers from tribal members at large is a better way of minimizing the conflict of interest problem. Selection of an Election Board from volunteers should be the preferred method of appointing a board, but in spite of Dee Pigsley's assertion that they actively look for volunteers, there have been no vigorous efforts on the part of the Tribal Council to recruit volunteers.

I'm hoping this will change and so I've asked Chairman Pigsley to use her September Chairman's Report to inform the membership of just how important it is that we have an independent Election Board. That means we need volunteers instead of staff employees running our elections. We have a large pool of potential volunteers who probably don't know that the Election Ordinance says they may be reimbursed for their expenses if they volunteer for the Election Board. Chairman Pigsley is in the unique position of having an unlimited amount of space in her Chairman's Report every month which she could be using to inform tribal members of the importance of the volunteers AND that they can be reimbursed for their expenses while serving on the Election Board. I'm certain there are a number of people who would be willing to serve from areas like Salem, Portland, Eugene, Brookings, and beyond if the Chairman would make it clear to them how important these volunteer positions are and that they are enabled by law to be reimbursed for their expenses while on the board.

I hope that Dee Pigsley will comply with my request to use her Chairman's Report constructively and to make a real effort this year to recruit volunteers for our Election Board.

Election Board Applications Due
Deadline for consideration for the 2009/10
Election Board is by 4:30 p.m. on September 30, 2009

Any tribal member interested in serving on the Election Board must fill out the following form and return it to the address below prior to September 30, 2009. Please mail or fax your application to Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, Attn: Executive Secretary to Tribal Council, P.O. Box 549, Siletz, OR. 97380-0549; Fax: 541-444-8325. Email and/or phone requests are not accepted.

Name:________________________________Roll No:_______________
Address:____________________________________________________
City:___________________State:________________Zip:____________
Telephone: Day ( )_________________ Evening ( ) _____________

Once applications are reviewed by the Tribal Council, appointments will be made and appointment letters will be sent to selected applicants.

By a predictable 6-2-1 vote, Lisa Brown was expelled from the Tribal Council today.

Those voting to expel were:
Dee Pigsley
Bud Lane
Robert Kentta
Tina Retasket
Jessie Davis
and Loraine Butler

Lillie Butler and Reggie Butler voted no on the expulsion. Lisa Brown abstained, as required.

Chairman Delores Pigsley will appoint someone to fill Brown's seat, presumably within the next few days. I've been informed that Phil Rilatos had already been asked if he was interested in taking over Lisa's seat prior to the February 21st meeting when expulsion procedures began. It remains to be seen, however, who Dee Pigsley will pick to take Lisa Brown's place.

The news today that Lisa Brown has been banned from Chinook Winds by the Siletz Tribal Gaming Commission (STGC) comes as no great surprise.

In a letter to Lisa Brown, Executive Director of the STGC Shawna Gray writes:

The Gaming Commission's investigation concluded that you have a disregard for the authority of the Siletz Tribal Gaming Commission and you are an integrity risk based on your actions in your role as a Tribal Council Member. You have abused your duties and resonsibilities as a member of the Tribal Council by interjecting yourself in the day to day activities/operations of Chinook Winds Casino Resort. You have made statements that are damaging to the Chinook Winds Resort operations. You have made Chinook Winds Casino Resort employees feel uncomfortable and threatened for their jobs and have interfered in the day to day operations of the Casino. Additionally, the racist and offensive statements made by you to the former General Manager have had a negative impact on the reputation and profit of Chinook Winds Casino Resort. Your actions since you became a member of the Siletz Tribal Council have establised a pattern of non-compliance and disregard for the Charter of the Siletz Tribal Gaming Enterprise.

The conflict of interest in this matter is stunning. Dee's majority directly hires and fires the Siletz Tribal Gaming Commission. Shawna Gray's job depends on whether she acts to satisfy her direct supervisor, Dee Pigsley and the majority on the Tribal Council, the very people who originally concocted the charges that Shawna cites. They invited the STGC to join the expulsion process. The Same group of people who now seek to expel Lisa Brown have enlisted their subordinates on the Siletz Tribal Gaming Commission to take action against her. In fact, the commission's letter reads like it could have been written by Robert Kentta, himself, Dee Pigsley's point man in the expulsion scheme.

The commission's investigation and conclusions are specious, much of which consists of secret evidence and anonymous witnesses, phantom accusers whom Lisa Brown may not question or even know the identities of, unless by an arbitrary ruling by, you guessed it, Dee Pigsley.

Don't be surprised to see Shawna Gray's admonishment and the news of the banning of Lisa Brown from the casino in the next issue of the Siletz News. The Pigsley-Bremner Political Machine can get news published in a hurry, when it benefits them. I'm sure that Chairman Pigsley will cite the commission's censure of Lisa Brown as independent corroboration to the membership of Brown's high crimes and misdemeanors, but it doesn't take long to connect the dots in this case. The other members of the Commission are Trevor Trachsel and Allison Simmons, who is Vice Chairman Bud Lane's sister-in-law. They report to Shawna Gray. And all of the commission members owe their jobs to the fact that they remain loyal to the Pigsley-Bremner political machine.

In a stunningly naked power grab Dee Pigsley and allies on the Tribal Council voted to expel newly elected Lisa Brown from the Tribal Council at her very first regular Tribal Council meeting.

This happened on Saturday, just two weeks after Brown was elected with the fifth highest vote total in tribal history.

I'm still scrambling for details, but it's my understanding there will be a meeting on March 19th to decide the issue. Six Tribal Council votes will be required to expel Lisa Brown from the Tribal Council.

401 tribal voters propelled her into office just two weeks ago.

The following letter from Tribal Chairman Dee Pigsley was printed today:

This letter is meant to share with you our sadness, disappointment and outrage over the recent inclusion of respected tribal elder and tribal council member Frank Simmons in an inaccurate and unfairly biased article about tribal council elections (“Siletz ready for council elections,” Jan. 23 edition) on the day of his funeral.

In all my years of serving the tribe, reporter Terry Dillman has taken news articles to a new level of thoughtlessness and shows a blatant disregard for the facts. I am so disappointed in the article. To take a statement by a respected member of our community and place it in an article about a controversy that has been created by a willing newspaper editor and a reporter, and to do it on the day we laid to rest our beloved council member is disrespectful and insensitive.

Our tribe has more than 4,500 members, yet only two disgruntled tribal members are allowed an opportunity to discredit our government. Your newspaper lets this happen and never contacts anyone to validate issues or facts.

Terry Dillman's reporting is a detriment to our community and to your newspaper. Newspapers should report in a fair and honest manner. The people in our community rely on your newspaper for actual and factual news that is fair and unbiased.

Dee Pigsley

Siletz Tribal Chairman

Below is the article that Delores Pigsley is complaining about. Terry Dillman seems to have gone out of his way to keep the article in question balanced.

Siletz ready for council elections
By Terry Dillman of the News-Times
Jan 23, 2009

Eleven candidates actively campaign as they vie for three spots

Incumbents Jessie Davis and Reggie Butler Sr. face challenges from Frank Aspria Sr., Lisa Brown, Eva Clayton, Divona Christiansen, Jane John, Monte Kentta, Phil Rilatos Sr., Darlene Smith, and Lynette Warren when voters go to the polls for the Feb. 7 Siletz Tribal Council election.

In letters to the editor of Siletz News, the tribe's monthly newspaper, statements in the voter's pamphlet, and elsewhere, the candidates have shared their ideas and perspectives about what they believe are priorities for the tribe during the next 52 weeks and beyond. Economic development, health care, affordable housing, employment, and education opportunities for tribal members in the tribe's 11-county service area remain high priorities, as does government accountability, which has emerged as a prime consideration for some candidates.
*
Controversy has dogged the run-up to this year's election, with accusations of improprieties alleged by a pair of candidates, along with challenges to a few decisions made by the election board leading up to the annual candidate fair, held Jan. 10 in the Siletz Tribal Community Center on Government Hill.

Brown and Warren, who sought election last year as government reformers, said for the first time ever, the tribal government rejected a candidate's statement (Warren's). And “you won't see any details of my candidate's declaration” in the Nesika Illahee - the quarterly publication for tribal members, Warren added, because for the first time in the publication's history, declarations made at the tribe's general council meeting “were not reported.”

Both Warren, who gleaned 177 votes last year as a virtually unknown first-time candidate, and Brown, who fell just 29 votes short of being elected, say it's time to put integrity back into the tribal election process. Both have remained active advocates of more open government and more accountability from elected leaders and administrative staff. Brown said it's time for a “separation of powers,” with “no more tribal council as boss of everything.”

Brown also criticized the election board's decision to not record the proceedings at this year's candidate fair, nor allow anyone else to do so. In past years, the event was recorded and copies made available to tribal members unable to attend. Brown called it another example of the lack of transparency in tribal government.

Critics of Warren and Brown allege they will say and do anything to get elected. “Every year during election time, folks will try to discredit councilmen who have worked very hard for you, just to get elected,” stated a Dec. 30, 2008 letter to voting-eligible tribal members. “The best people to serve are those who have represented the tribe in a professional manner, who are willing to make the best decisions for the majority of our tribal members.”

Signed by Tribal Chairman Delores Pigsley, Vice Chairman Alfred “Bud” Lane III, Secretary Tina Retasket, council member Robert Kentta, Rosalie Bremner, and Mike Darcy - it urged tribal members to vote for current Treasurer Jessie Davis, and Phil Rilatos Sr., who has served several previous terms on tribal council, and incumbent Frank Simmons. The road to the election took an unfortunately somber turn this week when Simmons, 74, a tribal elder who was seeking re-election, died in Lincoln City Monday.

He provided a few words of wisdom about the tribe's future in his voter's pamphlet statement.

“It is important to remember what is good for the many, and when making decisions, the well-being of those generations yet to come must be considered,” Simmons noted. “It is something that I am very passionate about, and will not falter to ensure that our sovereignty and the rights of our tribal government are protected now and for future generations. I am compelled to work to protect our inherent rights that our ancestors so dearly died for. Our tribal traditions must be upheld. The dignity and integrity of our Indian people will live forever, if we represent our tribal people with respect.”

Election Board Chairman Tracey Worman certified the candidate list Dec. 26. Ballots and voters' pamphlets were mailed out to eligible tribal members Jan. 5, and Jan. 30 is the deadline to request a mail-in ballot. Public calibration of the voting machines is scheduled from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 6, at the tribal administration office in Siletz.

Election Day is Saturday, Feb. 7, with in-person voting from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Tribal Community Center in Siletz. Deadline for returning absentee ballots is 4 p.m. that day. Photo identification is required to vote in person, with no exceptions.

Council members serve three-year terms that overlap, with elections held every year for three of the nine positions.

Tribal council members appointed Kurtis Barker, Felicia Carmona, Teala Rilatos, and Tracey Worman to the 2009 election board. They will monitor the voting and certify results. The top three vote-getters will take the oath of office at 1 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 8, in tribal council chambers at the administration building.

Anyone with questions should call the election board office at 444-8256, or 1-800-922-1399, ext. 1256.

Terry Dillman is the assistant editor of the News-Times. Contact him at (541) 265-8571, ext 225, or terrydillman@newportnewstimes.com.

I see nothing the least bit disrespectful to Frank Simmons in Terry Dillman's article. The funeral happened to be on a Friday, one of the two days a week the News Times is published. This was very shortly before the election and it would have been a disservice to voters to postpone coverage. And they could hardly cover the election without noting Frank's death.

Dee Pigsley is really just upset that there are channels of communication which report on tribal politics that she can't fully control. When Dee was elected in 2007 she characterized the 405 votes she received as "overwhelming support". Lisa Brown received 401 votes this year running a campaign highly critical of Pigsley, but Dee dismisses her today as one of "two disgruntled tribal members".

Note that Dee Pigsley's letter does not contest a single fact in the Terry Dillman's article. Her real gripe is that she and her niece, General Manager Brenda Bremner, did not get to control the coverage.

---

UPDATE (2/22/09): It's now clear that Dee Pigsley's letter was a pre-emptive strike in an attempt to deter news organizations from covering the expulsion of Lisa Brown from Tribal Council. The plan to expel Lisa was obviously already in motion.

There was nothing the least bit disrespectful to Frank Simmons in the News Times article as any fair minded reader can see.

It is absolutely disgusting and shameful that Tribal Chairman Dee Pigsley has attempted to use the death of Frank Simmons to shield herself from political criticism so that she can overturn the result of our election.

I've been asking Tribal Chairman Delores Pigsley for months about the illegal payments to the Election Board in 2007, and receiving few answers. Today I asked her:

We know that the Election Board was paid over the past three elections. This directly contradicted our law in place at the time, which said that "Election Board members shall serve without pay." In the Nesika Illahee you said our elections were fair and legal. How could the payments to the Election Board be legal?

Chairman Pigsley responded:

This was not an illegal election. The election needed to go forward, council agreed to let the staff people receive their pay. Were it not for them the election could not go forward. What would you have done?

I answered:

In answer to your question: I would have obeyed the law.

One thing you could have done was change the election ordinance as you did in September and November of 2008. But I would have made it legal to pay any tribal volunteer to serve on the board, not just hand-picked staff of the General Manager - because we need an Election Board that is independent of the Tribal Council and the General Manager for our elections to be fair and impartial.

You say the Tribal Council authorized paying Election Board members. I have two follow-up questions:

1. How did the Tribal Council have authority to ignore the election law which stated "Election Board members shall serve without pay"?

2. There is was no resolution passed by Tribal Council authorizing such payments. There is no mention in the minutes about Tribal Council authorizing such payments. Where is the record of this authorization?

Our recent elections have been illegal in an even more fundamental way. None of our last three elections was certified by a legally appointed Election Board. Our law clearly states that “The Election Board shall be appointed by resolution of the Tribal Council”, but none of the members of the Election Board for our last three elections were appointed by resolution of the Tribal Council - they were all illegally appointed by General Manager Brenda Bremner, while Tribal Council ignored it's legal responsibility. Chairman Pigsley has tried to cloud this issue, suggesting that Bremner only recommended appointments. That's not true; Bremner made all the appointments for our last three elections herself, in direct violation of our law.

Clearly it could not be legal to pay Election Board members when the law said they must serve without pay. Tribal Council has no constitutional authority to exempt the General Manager and the Election Board from our laws. And isn't it just terribly convenient that this illegal authorization was granted without any mention in Tribal Council minutes or any other public record? Did Tribal Council really even vote on the payments, or was this just a "tacit agreement" with the Tribal Council sitting silently while Brenda Bremner explained her illegal policy?

Last September the Tribal Council amended our election law to allow tribal staff members (only) to be paid for serving on the Election Board. Obviously there would be no need for this amendment if the payments received by the Election Board over the last three elections were legal already. Note that Tribal Council could have authorized paying any tribal member to serve on the Election Board. Tina Retasket was paid over $40 an hour to serve on the Election Board in 2007 - does anyone imagine there would be a shortage of volunteers if that same pay was offered to all tribal members?

So why is the Tribal Council only willing to pay tribal staff to work on the Election Board? Because that staff can be hand-picked by the Chairman's niece, General Manager Brenda Bremner. And a politically loyal Election Board comes in very handy when, for instance, you need to prevent an opposing candidates statement from going out to all tribal members in the voter's pamphlet.

Today I asked Tribal Council member Tina Retasket the following question:

In October of 2007 you were paid for serving on the Election Board in violation of our election law, which said, the Election Board shall serve without pay. Why did you accept these payments when the law said Election Board members shall serve without pay?

She responded:

As you are aware, when we served on the Election Board we were staff members of the Tribe. As you may know, employment law requires that when you assign work to staff members, they must be compensated. We were doing the job we were assigned to do as part of our regular job assignments, and therefore were paid as staff members. As you know, the situation the past couple of years has been unique in that volunteers did not want to serve on the Election Board and the Council was tasked with finding a unique solution to the problem.

No employment law required Tina Retasket to sit on the Election Board. And since our election law clearly stated "Election Board members shall serve without pay", General Manager Brenda Bremner could not lawfully assign Election Board duties to Retasket as part of her job and Retasket could not lawfully accept payment for such duties.

Tina Retasket was a veteran Election Board member; she had served through previous elections. She had a solemn obligation to know our election law and to obey it. Retasket says this was a unique solution to a unique situation, but illegal payments to the Election Board through at least three elections can hardly qualify as "unique".

Keep in mind that Tina Retasket was paid an hourly wage about the same as the Governor of Oregon when she served on the Election Board in late 2007. The Tribal Council could have offered the same pay to any tribal volunteer. Instead they have arranged things so that only the hand-picked loyal staff of Brenda Bremner can be paid to serve on the Election Board. This assures an Election Board loyal to Brenda Bremner, and thus loyal to Chairman Pigsely herself.

Of course it is ridiculous that Retasket was even re-appointed to the Election Board in October 2007, since she had been removed from the Election Board in January 2007 when she was caught campaigning for Chariman Dee Pigsley and Vice-Chairman Bud Lane, during an election that Retasket was supposed to be administering fairly. But Retasket was spared any public announcement of her removal and she was spared any paper trail documenting her removal.

And later the same year she was quietly (and illegally) re-appointed and illegally paid over $40 an hour because political loyalty is what counts in the Pigsley/Bremner political machine, not ethical or even legal service.

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.
Read the rest of this article »

Early on December 24th, I submitted my candidate statement to the Election Board for publication to the Voters Pamphlet. It was submitted on time, as per the Election Board's rules, but the Election Board refuses to print it. Instead they are publishing the words, "No statement available," after my name in the Voters Pamplet. The following is my statement, as submitted to the Election Board last week.

Lynette Warren Candidate Statement

Our tribal elections are being run by individuals who do not follow our laws. At the last General Council meeting Tracey Worman and Kurtis Barker introduced themselves as the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Election Board. In truth, they were not on the Election Board since their terms had expired. Barker said the Election Ordinance gave the General Manager the authority to to appoint them to the Election Board. The Election Ordinance does no such thing, in fact it requires that the Election Board be appointed by resolution of the Tribal Council. But Worman and Barker were appointed to the Election Board by General Manager Brenda Bremner in October 2007, in direct violation of that law. They either don't care enough about our law to know it, or they don't care about breaking it. In November they were again appointed illegally to the Election Board, this time by the Tribal Council which appointed them to the Election Board for a term ending in June 2009, directly violating the Election Ordinance which requires a term of 1 year.

The relationship between the Election Board and Brenda Bremner has been especially troubling. In October Tracey Worman told me several times that Brenda Bremner was overseeing the Election Board, and that they would go to her 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 at the General Council Meeting when she admitted they would consult Bremner first on matters of policy.

Just before the 2007 General Election, Tina Retasket was removed from the Election Board because she was caught campaigning for Tribal Chairman Dee Pigsley and Vice-Chairman Bud Lane. Chairman Pigsley whitewashed the incident by failing to disclose that the Election Board member removed was in fact then Assistant General Manager Retasket. Pigsley also failed to disclose that Retasket had been campaigning for Dee Pigsley and Bud Lane. Brenda Bremner told me that she asked Tina to resign and Tina did.

But since Retasket is a political ally of Chairman Pigsley, Vice-Chairman Lane, and General Manager Bremner, there was no paper trail – there is no written record of Retasket's removal from the Election Board, although the Election Board has the resignations of other members on file. This apparently does not seem irregular to Worman and Barker.

In October of 2007 the Tribal Council illegally ducked their responsibility to appoint the Election Board and passed a resolution to have Brenda Bremner appoint the Election Board. The reason given for authorizing this was that some of the Election Board members recently appointed by the Tribal Council had resigned, including Tracey Worman and Kurtis Barker. They resigned because they were not being paid for their Election Board duties. Bremner re-appointed Worman and Barker and 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 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.

Bremner also took the astonishing step of re-appointing Tina Retasket to the Election Board, even though she had asked for Retasket's resignation that same year when Retasket was caught campaigning for Pigsley and Lane. And it's worse than that – Brenda Bremner told me that she appointed Tina to serve only for the referendum election in December 2007, since Retasket planned to run for General Council. Our law forbids anyone from serving on the Election Board if they plan to run for office during the coming year. Worman has stated that Retasket worked only on the referendum election. Why would that be, if Retasket was appointed for a year like all the other Election Board members? Clearly because it was known Retasket would run. And Retasket did run and win, even though she sat on the Election Board for more than a month after the other candidates had declared.

We need to clean up our elections.

There is much more I need to address as a candidate but the Election Board has now imposed a word limit on what you can be allowed to hear in these statements. You can read the rest of what I have to say on Siletz.Net.

----

I sent the above statement at 12:53 AM, Dec 24. Election Board Chairman Tracey Worman confirmed that she received the statement at 8:12 AM the same day. Later that day, Election Board member Kurtis Barker sent out the following email. He didn't specify what he thought was a personal attack.

From: Kurtis Barker
Date: Wed, Dec 24, 2008 at 12:14 PM
Subject: Re: Lynette Warren 2009 Candidate Statement
To: Lynette Warren
Cc: Tracey Worman

Lynette,
Your Candidates Statement "as is" below will not be approved by the Election Board.
It violates the following rule: "Candidates Statements shall not include personal attacks on individuals."
This rule was approved by Tribal Council November 8th, 2008 with Resolution No. 2008-424.

You have three options:
1. Revise your statement and have it to the Election Board by 4pm today.
2. We can approve the last 2 paragraphs. The paragraph stating "We need to clean up our elections" and the paragraph that follows. (Let us know if you want this by 4pm today)
4. You could withdraw your whole candidates statement from the Voters Pamphlet.

If your statement is not re-submitted by 4pm today, it will not be included in the Voters Pamphlet.

As a friendly reminder- you have until 4pm today to submit a photo for the Voters Pamphlet and ballot, and you have until 4pm December 29th to withdraw your candidacy and not be included in the Voters Pamphlet.

If you have any questions, please let Tracey or I know.
Kurtis Barker
Election Board

From our tribe's annual reports it appears that the Siletz Tribal Business Corporation lost over half a million dollars in 2007, and that it lost almost $2 million dollars from 2005 to 2007.

At the November 1st General Council meeting I asked Tribal Council how much money STBC lost in 2007. Tribal Chairman Dee Pigsley, who is also Chairman of the Board of STBC, claimed she did not know.

I pointed out that all Tribal Council members were on the Board of STBC and asked if any of them could come up with a ballpark figure for how much STBC lost last year. The entire board of STBC remained stone silent in response to this inquiry.

Lisa Brown supplied Chairman Pigsley with the tribe's Annual Report for 2007, which had recently been sent out to tribal members. Chairman Pigsley and other Tribal Council members claimed to be unable to interpret the financial data presented in there.

It appears that STBC lost $519,311 in 2007. That figure is found on page 25 of the 2007 Annual Report, in the column for Siletz Tribal Business Corporation, on the row for Increase (Decrease) in Net Assets. The $519,311 is shown in parentheses which means it represents a negative value, a decrease of assets in this case. This figure is arrived at by subtracting STBC's operating expenses from it's revenues, both of which appear on that page.

Looking at the same figures in our annual reports for 2006 and 2005, it appears that STBC lost $629,754 and $765,906 respectively in those years. That would mean that STBC lost a grand total of $1,914,971 over those three years. And I would not be surprised to learn that our real losses are even much higher than that.

In the tribe's confidential quarterly Nesika Illahee we are currently getting regular updates on the status of STBC. Sharon Edenfield provided the update in January 2008 and Economic Development Director Dave Tovey has been providing the updates since April. I encourage all tribal members to read these quarterly updates. These reports are overwhelmingly positive and optimistic, there is nothing in them to suggest that STBC is continuing to lose money hand-over-fist.

But that's how all our tribal publications work - much fanfare is given to every optimistic plan and to every positive development, and little or nothing is said about the many failures of our tribal officials.

Tina Retasket

Dee Pigsley

Bud Lane

Robert Kentta

Tina Retasket departed from the Election Board in early 2007 because of the ethical scandal associated with the campaign letter shown below. Read the rest of this article »

Tina Retasket and Brenda Bremner
As a consequence of my recent presentation at the General Council Meeting, there was a Special Tribal Council Meeting today to consider appointments to the Election Board. The Tribal Council voted to re-appoint Kurtis Barker and Tracey Worman to the Election Board, as well as Felicia Carmona.

I gave the following presentation to the Tribal Council, just before they voted:

---

I'm here today to address growing ethical problems with the Election Board. I intend to explain why our General Manager Brenda Bremner is ethically unfit to recommend appointments to the Election Board and why Kurtis Barker and Tracey Worman are unfit to serve.

In late 2007 Brenda Bremner and Tina Retasket conspired to break our elections laws, apparently with the tacit approval of the Tribal Council.

The Election ordinance states: “Election Board members shall each serve for one year from the date of appointment and may be removed only for cause.”

And it says that no person shall be appointed 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.”

This was our law in 2007 and it remains our law today. The ordinance clearly states that no person shall be appointed who plans to be a candidate for tribal office in ANY election during their term, and it clearly defines that term as one year.

But Brenda Bremner appointed Tina Retasket to the Election Board in October 2007, and Tina accepted that appointment, even though both knew very well that Tina planned to run for Tribal Council just two months later.

I spoke with Brenda Bremner two days ago, on November 6th. She told me that Tina had only been appointed to the Election Board for the duration of the referendum election which was held on December 8th, 2007. Brenda told me that she gave Tribal Council a memo which explained that Tina would only serve on the Election Board through the referendum because Tina planned to run for Tribal Council.

Our Constitution says that Election Board members must serve set terms of office and our Election Ordinance defines that term as one year. There is nothing in our laws that authorizes Brenda to redefine that term of office.

So even though Brenda sought to create a term tailor-made to accommodate Tina's campaign for Tribal Council, Tina's term was legally one year, a year in which both Tina and Brenda knew perfectly well that Tina would run for Tribal Council.

Again, the Election Ordinance clearly states that no person shall be appointed who plans to be a candidate in ANY election during their term of office.

Brenda and Tina both knew the law. But they violated the law in order to get Tina on the Election Board and still accommodate Tina's campaign for Tribal Council. This is punishable by up to 6 months in prison or a fine of up to $5000, or both.

Tina was sitting on the Election Board at a time when it was already engaged in it's duties supervising the 2008 General Election - the very election in which Tina planned to run.

Our campaign for that election began on November 3rd, 2007, at the General Council Meeting. Robert Kentta, Lorraine Butler, Cynthia Farlow, Lisa Brown, Eva Clayton and I declared our candidacies that day. Tina Retasket did not declare her candidacy then because she was still on the Election Board. And Tina was still on the Election Board a month later - a full month into the campaign for Tribal Council. Obviously it is unethical for a candidate to sit on the Election Board during a campaign in which she intends to run. That's why we have laws against it. The result was that Tina won a seat on the Tribal Council, edging out Lisa Brown by only 29 votes. Of course, Lisa Brown did not have the advantage of sitting on the Election Board during the campaign.

The ethical problems with Brenda's appointment of Tina run much deeper. Earlier that same year Tina had departed from the Election Board due to an ethical scandal. When we spoke two days ago, Brenda told me that she, herself, had asked Tina for her resignation at that time, and that Tina had agreed. I asked why Brenda had called for Tina's resignation. Brenda said: “There was the appearance of a conflict because she wrote a letter and sent it out “

Brenda also said that the letter had endorsed certain candidates.

We know that those ”certain candidates”were in fact Tribal Chairman Dee Pigsley and Vice-Chairman Bud Lane.

Brenda told me Tina wrote and sent out the letter. This the same thing Chairman Dee Pigsley told the General Council in February 2007, although Dee failed to name Tina and she failed to disclose that Tina had been campaigning for Dee Pigsley and Bud Lane in the letter.

Brenda told me that she did not know if Tina had actually done anything unethical, but that Brenda had asked Tina to resign because of the appearance of unethical conduct.

I hardly know what to say about someone who claims not to know if it is unethical for an Election Board member to be campaigning for the Tribal Chairman and Vice-Chairman during an election she is supposed to be supervising fairly.

I can only say that such a demonstrated lack of an ethical compass should disqualify Brenda Bremner from any further involvement in our election process. Given all of this, the Tribal Council should never again consider her recommendations for Election Board appointments.

Today Brenda is recommending that Kurtis Barker and Tracy Worman be re-appointed. I will now present further reasons why these two individuals are unfit to serve.

I spoke with Tracey recently. I was astonished to hear her say that Brenda oversees the Election Board. She repeated this several times. She told me, for instance, that if the Election Board had an issue with a candidate's statement they would first contact the candidate to try to clear up any problems, then they would consult Brenda and then the Tribal Council if necessary. I asked another question about Election Board policy and Tracey told me she would have to ask Brenda, and that Brenda was away for a few days.

The problem here is that Brenda has no legitimate authority whatsoever over Election Board policies and decisions. It is an egregious violation of fair election practices for Brenda to be running our Election Board. I asked Jessie Davis about this and she told me “it would not be kosher” for Brenda to be overseeing the Election Board on such matters. Lillie Butler told me much the same thing.

But at the General Council meeting last week, right in front of the Tribal Council, Tracey confirmed that the Election Board would consult with Brenda first on matters of election policy. They don't see anything wrong with that.

On page 4 of the November issue of Siletz News there is an article by Kurtis Barker which states: "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. One photo (optional) can be accepted with statements. Candidate's statements cannot be posted on Tribal property."

On the other hand, the Election Ordinance clearly says that the Election Board may propose rules regarding candidates statements, but the Tribal Council must review and approve such rules.

Tribal Council members Lillie Butler and Jessie Davis have both confirmed to me that the Tribal Council has not reviewed or approved the rules that Kurtis has attempted to impose on candidates. This article was of course published in our tribal newspaper by Brenda .

It is unlawful for the Election Board to impose rules that have not been reviewed and adopted by the Tribal Council. And it is utterly inappropriate for Brenda to be publishing such illegal pronouncements.

But it's hardly surprising that an Election Board which thinks it is supervised by Brenda is trying to impose the rules of the newspaper which Brenda runs, rules which she has used to reject or heavily censor my letters when I've criticized the Tribal Council.

Both Kurtis and Tracey confirmed to me that suppressing criticism of the Tribal Council was indeed a purpose of the new rules. Kurtis 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. “

Brenda 's policy of political censorship of letters to the Siletz News is being extended into our election process with this power grab to control candidates' statements. Brenda is clearly orchestrating our newspaper and our Election Board in concert to muzzle political opponents of the Tribal Council. And Kurtis and Tracey have attempted to impose these rules unilaterally, without the approval of the Tribal Council, which our law requires.

For these reasons, Kurtis Barker and Tracey Worman are unfit to serve on the Election Board. Tribal Council should not re-appoint them.

If you do re-appoint these two to the Election Board, I want to be put on the agenda for the next Tribal Council meeting where I will present additional evidence of more violations of the election ordinance by Brenda Bremner, Tracey Worman, and Kurtis Barker. Also, expect to see me back in Siletz on election day explaining to the General Council why these two are unfit to serve on the Election Board and how Brenda Bremner is using them to corrupt our election process.

Lynette Warren
November 8th, 2008

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note:

I spoke with Brenda Bremner two days ago, on November 6th. She told me that Tina had only been appointed to the Election Board for the duration of the referendum election which was held on December 8th, 2007. Brenda told me that she gave Tribal Council a memo which explained that Tina would only serve on the Election Board through the referendum because Tina planned to run for Tribal Council.

Even though Brenda told me this just two days ago on the phone, Brenda now denies knowing that Tina planned to be a candidate at the time of Tina's nomination to the Election Board in October 2007.

At this afternoon's Special Tribal Council Meeting, Tina also wouldn't admit that she planned to run for Tribal Council during the time she served on the Election Board for the pay raise referendum last year.

Here is what I said Saturday at the General Council Meeting in my candidate's declaration:

At the General Council Meeting in August of 2007 I tried to alert tribal members to grave problems associated with our Tribal Council's bailout of the bankrupt U.S Aeroteam. I also expressed grave doubts about the viability of Siletz Aeroteam.. I presented documents showing that, at a time when US Aeroteam was 100% owned by the tribe, US Aeroteam Chief Financial Officer John Busch submitted false and misleading information to the state of Ohio in order to qualify for a minority loan for over $1 million. The application stated that our tribe would remain 100% owners of U.S. Aeroteam, when in fact the officers of U.S. Aeroteam and all members of our Tribal Council knew that 80% ownership of U.S. Aeroteam would soon be returned to Suhas Kakde and his partners. John Busch also submitted statements saying that U.S. Aeroteam had a facility in Oregon and that they were considering moving their Ohio business to Oregon, trying to secure financial incentives from Ohio to keep their business there. Our tribal council knows U.S. Aeroteam has never had a facility in Oregon and says there were never any plans to move the Ohio business here. So how can we explain these false statements presented to Ohio by U.S. Aeroteam on behalf of our tribe? Clearly tribal council was asleep at the wheel again, and was failing to do due diligence as they failed to do with River Reclamation Group. I further informed tribal members that one year earlier, in 2006, the Tribal Council had quietly made Phil Rilatos, one of their own members, the President of Siletz Aeroteam. Rilatos was paid over $30,000 a year while managing one employee half way across the country. Phil had been drawing this salary for over a year but Tribal Council had never seen fit to reveal this to tribal members.

For this I was silenced at the by General Council Meeting via a motion that Chairman Dee Pigsley ramrodded through in 20 seconds without allowing for any discussion on the motion. That was 15 months ago and the Tribal Council has still shown no interest in finding out why false statements were made to the State of Ohio on our behalf. We've seen that Siletz Aeroteam was never anything more than a pie-in-the-sky plan sold to the Tribal Council by our U.S. Aeroteam partners Suhas Kakde and Jeff Maag. Siletz Aeroteam is dissolved. There was never any reason to think our Tribal Council was competent to launch and run an aerospace company.

From the very day I was silenced in August 2007 General Council, my letters submitted to Siletz News have been regularly rejected or heavily censored by the authority of the editor Brenda Bremner, who, of course, is also our General Manager and the niece of Chairman Dee Pigsley. My letters have often been rejected without comment, in those cases I only find out when the paper arrives and my letter isn't there. I have sought clarification for over a year on why my letters are rejected and only once did I get the editors to indicate what specifically they felt was unacceptable in a letter I submitted to them early this year.. Here is the largest passage that they was deemed unacceptable for the paper:

“The Editor-in-Chief of the Siletz News is Brenda Bremner.  Brenda, as the General Manager of the Tribe, is an appointee of the Tribal Council and she is also the niece of the Tribal Council Chairman.  There are major conflict of interest problems with this arrangement.   “

I was told this passage violates the policy which says letters may not contain “profane language, libelous statements, personal attacks, or unsubstantiated statements”. No one would ever tell me how that passage I wrote violates the policy. This is censorship of a critic of tribal government, plain and simple. Tribal members need a newspaper where criticism of tribal government can be freely expressed, but we don't have one. I showed this and other examples of censorship to every member of tribal Council and none have shown the slightest interest.

Silencing tribal members in our newspaper is bad enough, but now there is a plan in motion to muzzle our candidates for tribal office. In the October issue of Siletz News you will find an announcement from Election Board Vice Chairman Kurtis Barker which announces that he will now be approving all candidates statements and they will be applying the editorial rules of Siletz News, which apparently means there is an excellent chance that my candidates statement will not be accepted. They even intend to limit candidates' statements to 450 words for the first time in our history.

I called our Election Board Chairman Tracey Worman and asked who had decided that the election board would now have authority over candidates statements. She said, “That was brought forward to council mainly because they were afraid that instead of people telling us what their qualifications were, and their stance on different platforms, that they were gonna bash other people."

Election Board Vice Chairman Kurtis Barker who was even more blunt about the new policy on candidates statements. He told me, “We want articles that state why you want to be on Tribal Council, not like an attack mode where you can blame the Tribal Council for what's going on.“

The new policy is clearly intended to prevent candidates from criticizing Tribal Council.

As I tried to learn the source of this new policy from Election Board Chairman Tracey Worman, I was shocked to hear her say that General Manager Brenda Bremner oversees the Election board. She confirmed this several times in no uncertain terms. She told me that if the Election Board had an issue with a candidate's statement they would first contact the candidate to try to clear up any problems, then they would consult Brenda Bremner and then the Tribal Council if necessary. I asked another question about Election Board policy and the Election Board Chairman told me she would have to ask Brenda Bremner, and that Brenda was away for a few days.

Here's a big problem - under our laws Brenda Bremner has no legitimate authority whatsoever over Election Board policies and decisions. Our Election Board is supposed to be an independent body, which, by law, only reports to the Tribal Council. It is utterly inappropriate for Brenda Bremner to be supervising our Election Board. How did we arrive at a point where our Election Board Chairman, Tracey Worman believes that Brenda Bremner oversees the Election Board?

As I went through the minutes of the Tribal Council meetings from the past few years, trying to discover how our new election policies came about, I saw that Brenda Bremner often reported to the Tribal Council on Election Board recommendations and decisions – she spoke for the election board. No wonder they think she's their boss!

One of the few occasions where Election Board Chairman Tracey Worman and Vice-Chairman Kurtis Barker met with the tribal Council to discuss proposed changes to election policy was in April 2008. Surprisingly this discussion took place entirely in secret executive session.. Election Board Chairman Worman told me that Brenda Bremner was also present in this session, though the minutes failed to record this. The session lasted over 90 minutes. I can't imagine any legitimate reason why the tribal Council and the Election Board should discuss election policy in secret for 90 minutes. Nor can I think of any legitimate reason why the General Manager should be present for 90 minutes of secret Election Board discussions.

I found another shocker. At the General Council Meeting in Feburary 2007, on election day, Monte Kentta asked the Tribal Council about a campaign letter sent out by an Election Board member. Chairman Dee Pigsley said the person hadn't broken any rules but had been removed because of the appearance of an ethical problem. I had seen this exchange long ago on one of our DVDs and had not thought much about it. Now I was inclined to dig deeper and I discovered that Chairman Dee Pigsley's account of the matter was extremely self-serving. In fact it was a cover-up.

What Chairman Pigsley should have told tribal members, even before the election, was that the Election Board member who had been removed was none other than the Election Board Chairman, Tina Retasket and that she was removed because she had campaigned on behalf of Dee Pigsley and Vice-Chairman Bud Lane. During the very election she was supposed to be administering fairly, Election Board Chairman Tina Retasket, who was also Assistant General Manager at the time, sent out letters endorsing Dee Pigsley and Bud Lane in the Election. The letters were signed by Tribal Council member Robert Kentta, his mother JoAnn Miller (a recent Tribal Council member), Bud Lane's father, and Rose Bremner (the sister of Chairman Pigsley and the mother of Tina's boss, General Manager Brenda Bremner). You can see a photocopy of the letter on Siletz.Net.

All of these people should have known better than to sign this campaign letter by the Election Board Chairman, but Robert Kentta's involvement is the most troubling because he was a sitting member of the tribal Council that put Tina Retasket on the Election Board.

Every member of the Tribal Council knew this had happened; they knew weeks before the election. They may think that this was not a serious matter. But that was not for them to decide, that was for voters to decide. Every Tribal Council member had a responsibility to investigate the incident and to disclose the facts of this case to the voters. But they don't care much about what the members of this tribe deserve to know, they're mostly concerned about what they can get away with. Chairman Pigsley will tell you that it's really no big deal that the Election Board Chairman was campaigning for Dee and her nephew, Bud Lane, that it's really no big deal that Robert Kentta signed that campaign letter. But what's indisputable is that she didn't give voters the chance to decide for themselves just how big a deal this was, because she didn't give voters the facts.. And we can't let any Tribal Council members off the hook on this one, they all let the tribe down.

Astonishingly, the minutes of the tribal council eight months later, in October 2007 show Brenda Bremner telling Tribal Council that Tina Retasket was back on the Election Board.

You can't make this stuff up.

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. (Copies available upon request.)

I've told you how my letters to the paper started getting rejected after I criticized the tribal government. I live out-of-area so that's the worst that's happened to me so far. I know it can be a lot worse for people who live here when they criticize the tribal council. I've heard from many tribal members that they cannot afford to come forward with criticism for fear of retaliation. And they have good reason to be afraid.

Lisa Brown has been an outspoken critic of tribal government for years. Earlier this year she was in the Culture Office and asked if she could get some copies made of a petition aimed at making it easier for tribal members to register to vote. A tribal employee made ten copies of the petition for Lisa. Tribal Council Vice-Chairman Bud Lane came in and expressed displeasure that Lisa was getting copies for such a purpose and said he would report her. Lisa offered to pay for the copies if there was a problem, but this did not satisfy him. Lisa reported this little altercation on Siletz.Net the next day. Weeks later Lisa's boss called her in and handed her a reprimand charging her with theft for using the copier in the Culture department. This charge was obviously initiated by Vice-Chairman Bud Lane and it is a brazen example of harassment of a political opponent. You can read the reprimand at www.Siletz.Net. After ridiculously charging Lisa with theft for asking for copies, it says that Lisa would have 30 days to improve her behavior at which time she would meet with her supervisor for review. This happened on May 2nd and the General Council Meeting was the next day. Lisa brought the matter to the attention of the Tribal Council. She was fired upon returning to work the next week – fired for requesting copies in Bud Lane's department. On Friday she was given 30 days to shape up, but after speaking of this at the General Council meeting on Saturday she was immediately terminated. The message is clear - tribal employees cannot criticize tribal government if the want to keep their jobs.

Tribal Voters need to clean house. I urge you to vote for Lisa Brown and against the incumbent tribal Council members Frank Simmons, Jessie Davis, and Reggie Butler. They are not representing you as you deserve.

Finally I want to point out that Chairman Dee Pigsley just introduced Kurtis Barker as a member of our Election Board. In fact, his term has expired and he is not on the Election Board at this time. Kurtis Barker just said that the election ordinance gives the General Manager the power to appoint him. In fact, the election ordinance grants no such power.