Closing roads: We don’t all get a vote

Let’s be clear on one thing: The Wallowa-Whitman National Forest’s road-closure process is not a democratic one.

Only one person will decide which roads on the Wallowa-Whitman that are now open to motor vehicles will be closed.

His name is Steve Ellis. He’s the Wallowa-Whitman supervisor.

But although no one other than Ellis will make that decision, everyone else has the right to lobby him.

This includes residents of the five counties across which the Wallowa-Whitman sprawls: Baker, Union, Wallowa, Grant and Umatilla.

The counties selected for that task Robert Messinger of Summerville.

Last week Brian Addison, a spokesman for a local group, Forest Access for All, urged Baker County commissioners to withdraw from that agreement.

Addison contends that the agreement limits the five counties’ role in the road-closure process.

By canceling the agreement, Addison argued, “the counties would have an opportunity to submit an alternative that truly protects local interests.”

But the counties can do that now, agreement or none.

So can everybody who lives in one of those counties — or in any other county in the United States, for that matter.

Withdrawing from the agreement would not restore to the five counties some previously unacknowledged veto authority over Ellis. No county, and no person, has ever had such authority as regards the road-closure process.

On the other hand, we’re not convinced that the agreement which county commissioners signed affords them any greater influence with Ellis than they would have had otherwise.

It seems logical, though, that Ellis is more apt to give credence to suggestions from groups which have shown they want to work with, rather than against, the Wallowa-Whitman.

Baker County commissioners have done so — and not just by signing that agreement.

Commissioners also appointed a committee last year whose members surveyed dozens of Wallowa-Whitman roads to figure out which ones people actually drive or ride on, and should therefore be candidates for remaining open to vehicles.

It turns out that many roads are so overgrown with trees and brush, or have eroded, that their “open” status is moot.

The committee’s work is vital because it resulted in a roster of roads which Ellis can close without actually reducing the public’s access to public land.

And those are the roads, we’re certain, that people who do drive on the Wallowa-Whitman would prefer Ellis concentrate on.