Ideology once again trumps compassion

Cowlitz commissioners deny $10,500 disaster grant to disabled Longview woman

Strike three.

For the third time in less than a month, Cowlitz County Commissioners Arne Mortensen and Rick Dahl have whiffed on a chance to show a scrap of compassion.

Tuesday, they rejected a $10,500 state disaster grant to help a disabled 67-year old woman pay for repairs to her private gravel driveway off Abernathy Creek Road.  It washed out a year ago on Jan. 6-7. She was seeking reimbursement for the repairs.

The grant would come from $7.5 million the Legislature reserved for individual assistance grants to repair damage from extreme weather events and natural disasters during the last two years. To qualify, a household must have less than 80 percent of the county’s average income.

Although approved by the state, the grant required commissioner OK, which is standard practice for most grants funneled through the county. This was a big fat meatball pitched to the commissioners. It should’ve been approved as a routine matter. 

Dahl, however,  said this is the kind of effort that should be undertaken by volunteers and charitable groups, not the government, which he called an “inefficient middle man.”  

Mortensen agreed.

Hold on here. If it’s not the role of government to help people recover from disasters, would Dahl and Mortensen have rejected federal disaster relief directed at Cowlitz County following the eruption of Mount Saint Helens, the 1995-96  floods, the 1998 Aldercrest landslide and other disasters? The feds helped individuals as well as public agencies.

It’s fine to debate the role of government and how it spends taxpayer money. Admittedly, the amount involved here is small, though it is significant to the woman. And, yes, it would be nice if church congregations and volunteer groups had helped repair the woman’s driveway. But they often find it hard to muster volunteers, and those who do come forward often are maxed out.

This was the wrong platform to have this debate and get on the soap box. The commissioners’ decision shows the total lack of compassion and common sense.

“I was shocked and dismayed to find out that the (commissioners) would make a determination,” said Donna Alija, explaining that she was unaware that the commissioners even needed to approve the grant. “Had I known I would have shown up in person to speak for myself.”

Alija, who said she was disabled and temporarily rendered a quadriplegic by a spinal cord injury, is able to walk now but has a full-time caregiver, Dale Dimmick. She and Dimmick, who also is Alija’s partner,  paid $8,400 to repair the driveway. (The state would have retained the $2,100 difference between her costs and the grant amount). Her  insurance did not cover the damage to the 75-foot-long driveway, because homeowners policies typically exclude flood damage.

“‘I had to have it fixed.  We couldn't get to the house,”  Alija said.

She said the county insurance pool last winter declined to cover the damage, which she attributed to a clogged county road culvert and a county revision of the drainage system. The rejection surprised and angered her,  because the county did repair the damage when the same problem washed out her driveway in 2008. (County Public Works officials did not immediately return a call for comment Wednesday.)

After the county denied her claim, Alija approached Larry Hembree, the county’s director of emergency management, who set in motion the state grant application for individual disaster assistance. In a November workshop,  the  county commissioners informally cleared county staff  to apply for the grant. (Dahl was not yet on the commission, though he was elected on Nov. 8. )

The commissioners’ action Tuesday leaves Alija worried about her cash flow.

“I am 67. My caregiver is going to be 68.” The driveway repair “used most of (Dimmick’s ) savings. … It will leave us short. We’re here … aging in place, and you just never know what issues are going to arise.” 

Asked about her next step, she said she is resigned to the outcome.

“It has been hard on me. Its saddening me —  all the time and effort and the outcome of this. For my peace of mind I just can’t focus on it any more.”

If Dahl and Mortensen want to advocate for their kind of thinking,  they could set an example by designating a portion of their county salaries to help the victim. Or they should get out there with shovels themselves.

This is further evidence that they lack compassion for the needy. Dahl and Mortensen twice in the last month rejected the city of Longview’s request for funds to operate the Hope Village pallet home park for the homeless, even though the county has the money and it can only be used for homeless programs. 

Dahl never explained why he says such pallet home parks fail when there is plenty evidence that they are succeeding in other communities. 

We are, unfortunately, stuck for a while with this kind of ideologically driven county leadership. Mortensen is from Commissioner District 1 (south county) and Dahl is from District 3 (north county), both of which have become entrenched Republican strongholds.  

Returns from the November election , for example, show that Republican Joe Kent got 65 percent of the vote in the five Woodland precincts  — even though he preached division and obstruction and associated with racists and excused the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.  

I hope Woodland voters whose homes were inundated in the February 1996 flood remember the federal disaster aid that came their way when they read about Mortensen’s Tuesday vote.

And the commissioners need to remember that history shows that governing by rigid adherence to ideology is bound to fail. It failed Lenin in Russia. It failed Hitler in Germany. It failed Reagan in the 1980s. It failed the Johnson-era liberals. 

To be sure,  ideology and common sense need to temper compassion. But this was an awful place to draw a line.