Baker County’s floodwaters have begun to recede, and now begins the wait on various bureaucracies.

We hope it’s a short one.

Although the extent of the damage can’t be tallied until the ground dries, it’s obvious that federal and state aid, both financial and technical, would help to salve the economic sting of the county’s worst flooding in more than a decade.

First, the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest will need help — and potentially millions of dollars — to repair sections of the Wallowa Mountain Loop Road between Halfway and Joseph.

Swollen North Pine Creek chewed off at least half the roadway in four places, and in another the entire two-lane paved highway in essence disappeared.

The Loop Road is a popular recreation route and part of the Hells Canyon National Scenic Byway. The byway is also one of Oregon’s few All-American Roads.

Several other forest roads, including ones in the Eagle Creek recreation area, were damaged by high water, as well.

Although we’re fans of the Oregon law that requires political  committees to regularly report their donations and expenditures, the law is not perfect.

Its purpose is unimpeachable: To ensure that the public knows who bankrolls candidates and citizen-sponsored measures such as recalls and initiatives.

But there’s a peculiar provision in the law that seems to us to work against that basic premise of financial transparency.

Last year’s failed attempt to recall Baker City Councilors Dennis Dorrah and Beverly Calder highlights this troubling aspect of the law.

First, though, the good stuff.

Campaigns that receive more than $100 in cash or in-kind contributions from a person in the same calendar year must list that contributor’s name on the campaign’s forms. Those forms are easily accessible online via the Secretary of State’s Orestar system (https://secure.sos.state.or.us/eim/jsp/CEMainPage.jsp).

Now for the glitch.

The Israeli commando team’s deadly raid on a flotilla delivering aid to Gaza happened, coincidentally, just a couple of days after I started reading a book which influenced my reaction to the tragedy.

The title of the book, by Neal Bascomb, is “Hunting Eichmann.”

In case the name Eichmann is not familiar, the subtitle explains the context: “How a band of survivors and a young spy agency chased down the world’s most notorious Nazi.”

That being Adolf Eichmann.

Although Eichmann did not conceive the Holocaust — that infamy belongs, of course, to a different Adolf — he was beyond question the most prolific practitioner of the Final Solution.

Eichmann was to genocide what Henry Ford was to the manufacture of automobiles.

Among a newspaper’s vital roles is encouraging its readers to express their opinions about important matters.

And so we bristle a bit when we believe that any of our readers might, out of fear for the ramifications, crumple the letter to the editor they had been composing.

Or, more likely these days, press the delete key.

We are concerned that the million-dollar civil lawsuit former City Manager Steve Brocato filed last month could be just such a deterrent to the free exchange of opinions.

Brocato, who claims he was defamed by the four city councilors who voted to fire him, and by a city resident, cites as examples several of their letters published in the Herald and in the Record-Courier.

It is of course up to a jury to decide whether Brocato has proved defamation.

But having read the excerpts cited in the lawsuit, it seems to us that whether or not Brocato succeeds in court, by simply including those letters in his lawsuit he might well persuade people to avoid participating in reasonable public discourse, lest they see their name above the dreaded word “defendant.”

Councilor Aletha Bonebrake, for instance, wrote in a letter to the Herald: “Brocato has been unwilling to accept responsibility for his bullying tactics and displays of temper toward citizens and Councilors.”

We’re trying mightily to muster a shred of sympathy for Oregon state government and its budget mess.

Trying, and in the main failing.

We would likely have more success were the state’s lone problem the recession.

It’s easy to understand how the government coffers suffer when tens of thousands of the taxpayers who fill the bucket aren’t bringing home a paycheck.

But although that’s part of the problem, Oregon’s troubles run far deeper.

It turns out that state tax collectors failed to compare their data on who owes how much with federal reports of the same sort.

Which seems to us an egregious lapse, considering the IRS has a pretty fair reputation for tracking down dollars.

I’d like to believe that Chris Dudley can help to etch a couple more wrinkles on John Kitzhaber’s rugged face before Nov. 2.

It’s not that I’m rooting for Dudley.

I am in fact registered as an independent. My vote likely will remain in play until the cottonwoods have started to tinge yellow.

And anyway blowouts, whether in football or gubernatorial races, bore me.

Yet as much as I pine for a healthy tussle, I just can’t silence the interior voice which insists that Dudley, who couldn’t poll a majority from among his own party in the primary, has little chance to pull the monumental upset over Kitzhaber.

Maybe I could believe otherwise if the Democrats had gone for Bill Bradbury.

Or for anybody, come to that, except the denim-clad doctor who has a deft touch with a fly rod and who leaps to the aid of seizure-suffering debate watchers.

(Neither Karl Rove nor Rahm Emanuel has ever arranged a scene so serendipitous as the one that played out during a Kitzhaber-Bradbury debate in Eugene last month. Although I remain skeptical that somebody actually hollered, verbatim, “Is there a doctor in the house?” after a man in the audience fell ill.)

On the evening of May 11 my black and white English springer spaniel male, Flint, was last seen going down Beaver Creek Road towards Highway 7. I have lost a very faithful and loyal companion and have spent many hours driving and walking, looking for my buddy.

So I’m writing, asking and pleading if someone may have found him to please bring him home. No questions asked. I am offering a reward for his safe return.

I still have his mother, and he has been with me for nine years. He is sorely missed. He can be returned to me or at the Animal Clinic and they will contact me. If you leave your name and address I will see you get your reward. Thanks you.