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J.R. Van Tassel's favorite problems are the tough ones
Jan 12, 2009 (Lewiston Morning Tribune - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Ask J.R. Van Tassel to reflect back over 20 years of public service and the word that pops out most often is "fun."
The harder the problem, the more difficult the phone call, the more fun it became trying to piece together a solution, he says.
Change, growth, demands on an underfunded transportation system, safety and environmental issues: "That's the part I like is the worse and worse. Gooder and gooder is kind of boring."
Van Tassel, 61, leaves the Nez Perce County Commission office today after 13 years in office, five of those as chairman. That was preceded by seven years on the Lewiston City Council.
When he was ousted in the November election by newcomer Michael Grow, both Van Tassel and Grow were caught off-guard. But after thinking about it, it became an opportunity to look for new challenges -- as soon as he finishes his wife's list of honey-dos.
He recently discovered the name Jennifer (his wife) means "woman making long lists," he said last week. Today, the commission will finish up any last-minute business that might require his vote, then adjourn briefly to allow Grow to be sworn in and take a seat on the dais.
For the record, Van Tassel says, he doesn't plan to run for the Legislature, the city council isn't as hands-on as he's used to, and his county commission seat doesn't come open again for another four years, too far off to even think about now.
For now, he attempts to count his successes and his failures.
"Commissioners are successful not by how sharp they get their pencils when they do budgets," Van Tassel says, "but by how they look down the line to try to solve problems that haven't happened."
One of the things he was sometimes quietly criticized for may have been one of his strongest points as a commissioner. That was his service on state-level boards and committees that required frequent trips to Boise.
Idaho Sen. Joe Stegner, R-Lewiston, says one of his first experiences after being elected was going to a district meeting of counties that was chaired by Van Tassel, a Democrat. Van Tassel says an important county problem was with indigent mental health care.
"As a brand new freshman senator, I thought I ought to be able to fix that," Stegner says.
After finding out it was, as usual, more complicated than it first appeared, he and Van Tassel and the Association of Idaho Counties set up a task force of medical people, social workers, and other professionals who met for three or four years before coming up with a regional plan that's still in use.
"J.R. played a tremendous role in the development of that particular issue for me and showed, I thought, a tremendous amount of leadership -- unrecognized leadership in a lot of ways -- at the state level," Stegner says. "He didn't get much credit for it ... and he'll be missed."
Every issue had spin-offs, Van Tassel says. From mental health meetings came the teleconference mental health system to get treatment to rural parts of the state, and to accomplish that it was necessary to improve broadband capability.
The Clearwater Economic Development Association now has a package in place that will stretch fiber optic cable from Riggins through Elk City to Grangeville so northern Idaho will have connectivity that doesn't go through Baker, Ore., he says.
On the day he and Stegner visited the Lewiston Orchards site of eight new units of transitional housing for the mentally ill, CEDA had a meeting where it announced the first results of its broadband efforts.
"He gave me a high-five. He said that's you and me, buddy," Van Tassel says, grinning.
Christine Frei, executive director of CEDA, gives Van Tassel some of the credit for the organization's successes while he was a past member of the executive board. He's now on its board and economic development council.
"Certainly, I'd say he's been a cornerstone of CEDA the past 12 years," Frei says.
If he's had successes, Van Tassel says, its from knowing what's going on and taking advantage of situations when they present themselves.
"It's opportunism," he says.
He has served for a dozen years as a member and chairman of the Local Highway Technical Assistance Council, a statewide organization that started out providing assistance with grants and now administers five or six different programs. That put him in position to know when a $1.6 million project in Kootenai County wasn't going to be ready just as Bryden Canyon Road had a $1.5 million shortfall. Two days later, Lewiston had the shortage covered.
The new jail that will open in the next few weeks he counts as an obvious success even though it may have cost him some votes in the last election. Then there was the Gem Plan, a cooperative insurance fund that Nez Perce County doesn't participate in although Van Tassel worked hard on it. "It's created competition and helped drive the price of insurance down," he says.
Sometimes important work was done over a drink. Van Tassel says he was having a beer with Jamie Pinkham, a Nez Perce Tribe official, after an Idaho Transportation Board meeting where the county had just been told there was no money to replace three outdated bridges.
Pinkham said he'd heard of a pool of money administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs that was going away because no one was using it. A week later, talks had begun on how $8 million -- now estimated at $18 million -- could be obtained for Cherrylane Bridge over the Clearwater east of Lewiston. Ground breaking is tentatively planned next year or the year after.
He took the call from Tyrone Mummy of Peck after the devastating floods of 1996. Mummy said the water was up again, just inches from the top of the levee.
When no one wanted to take responsibility, Van Tassel says he and Lynn Rasmussen of the Nez Perce County Natural Resources Conservation Service invited all the agencies with possible involvement to meet on the spot. Someone suggested the only solution would be to widen the creek bed to increase storage and reduce velocity, but it would take a lot of ground.
Mummy was standing there with them and came up with land offers. The state came up with a grant to buy out some people and along the way a national award was won for creating bat habitat. "All by getting all the kids around the sandbox," Van Tassel says.
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