Renaming foes seek initiative

A local group opposed to the state renaming Belt Line Road for late Eugene businessman and former Oregon Transportation Commission member Randy Papé has filed an initiative petition with the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office to gather signatures and put the issue to a statewide vote in November.

Scott Reynolds of Springfield, a member of one of two Facebook groups opposed to the renaming, said he drove to Salem on Thursday to fill out the paperwork.

The group will initially need to gather 1,000 signatures, said Don Hamilton, a spokesman with the Secretary of State’s Office. If those are gathered, the Oregon Attorney General’s Office would come up with a ballot title, there would be a public comment period, and the group would then have until July 2 to complete the difficult task of gathering 82,769 signatures to place it on the November ballot.

“We’ve got our work cut out for us, but I think we can do it,” said Eugene resident Kevin Prociw, administrator of one of the two Facebook pages.

The group will begin gathering signatures Saturday at Eugene’s Saturday Market, Prociw said.

The pair’s measure would bar the state from renaming state property without voter approval and would reverse any name changes the state has implemented since Jan. 1 of this year.

The news last month that the Oregon Transportation Commission, which oversees the state Department of Transportation, was planning to rename Belt Line Road the Randy Papé Beltway quickly prompted a trickle of protest that turned into a flood when the commission voted for the name change and confirmed that the state would spend $250,000 to replace 50 signs with the new name.

Hundreds of critics wrote or called the state, many more signed up on the two Facebook pages that now claim more than 14,000 members combined, and scores showed up at roadside picketing in protest. Critics said the state’s move was wasteful and had been carried out secretively.

The transportation commission then shifted course, saying it would instead rename the 10-mile stretch Randy Papé Beltline, spend just $1,500 upfront to replace one sign at each end of the freeway, and replace the rest of the signs as they wore out.

Some critics, such as Reynolds and Prociw, say that’s still unacceptable and plan to protest at the commission’s April 20 meeting in Florence.

“I don’t think it’s been resolved,” Reynolds said. “Much of the initial concern was about the costs. But now it’s clear there was a lack of transparency and a lot of arrogance around this.”

ODOT spokesman Patrick Cooney said Thursday that he doubts that critics will have much luck getting a measure on the November ballot. “It’s a state highway,” Cooney said. “The Oregon Transportation Commission has the authority to name state transportation facilities.”

Jack Roberts, executive director of the Lane Metro Partnership, a Eugene-based economic development group, agreed. “Someone needs to do some research before they go too far,” Roberts said. “The courts have said you can’t put administrative questions on the ballot.”

Roberts last fall was quietly involved on behalf of the state in sounding out Eugene sentiment on the possible renaming, state Transportation Department e-mails show.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski had re-quested the renaming in honor of Papé, who died in 2008. The state made the proposal public only days before the commission’s vote on March 11 — though commission and Transportation Department e-mails obtained by The Register-Guard under the state’s public records law show that state officials and the Papé family began quietly discussing the renaming more than a year ago.

Commission members and a Papé family spokesman maintained that the renaming idea originated with the governor. But last week Kulongoski said he wrote the request letter because commission Chairwoman Gail Achterman had asked him to. The Papé family has said it is honored by the renaming but did not suggest it, and that the decision is the state’s. A family spokesman could not be reached for comment Thursday.

E-mails obtained by the newspaper earlier this week show that within two days of Papé’s death on Nov. 6, 2008, Transportation Department director Matthew Garrett and Achterman came up with three choices for what to name after Papé: the Interstate 5 bridge under construction across the Willamette River, the I-5 bridge across the Mc­Kenzie River, or Belt Line Road.

About six weeks later, Achterman listed the options to the family, which quickly settled on Belt Line Road, according to Achterman’s e-mails. In a December 2008 e-mail to Garrett, Achterman wrote that she had talked with Susie Papé — Randy Papé’s widow — and that Susie Papé wanted the Belt Line renamed, not a bridge.

“Susie wants to have a name that fits with Randy Papé, not just Papé, so that it doesn’t get mixed up with his dad. She was thinking of The Randy Papé Parkway, or the Randy Papé Beltway,” Achterman wrote.

But state officials quickly began getting feedback from within the agency that the Belt Line renaming would be likely to stir public controversy, the e-mails show.

Over the following months, the e-mails show, state transportation officials and several local public figures quietly fretted and strategized over how to talk the family out of the Belt Line choice, and instead agree to have a bridge named after Papé, but to no avail.

Last fall, on ODOT’s behalf, prominent Eugene landlord Dan Giustina sounded out the family about accepting a bridge name instead of Belt Line, according to a Sept. 11 e-mail from Roberts to Achterman.

But Susie Papé rejected that, Roberts wrote.

“Her reaction apparently was, ‘Who remembers a bridge?’ ” he wrote.

Roberts wrote that even a top executive at the Papé family’s company, the Papé Group, thought “it makes a lot more sense to rename the I-5 Bridge than Belt Line, but it seems like no one really wants to be the one to tell Suzy that.”

Roberts said Thursday that he and local transportation consultant Rob Zako were asked by the state last fall to put out “feelers” to see if there would be broad-based community support for the name change. “And what we really found was no, there wasn’t,” Roberts said. “There was no strong support. And it wasn’t a problem with naming it for Randy, but with renaming an existing roadway.”

In an e-mail last fall to the Transportation Commission’s Achterman, Roberts suggested that he could try to put together a group of high-­profile local people to support renaming Belt Line for Papé. But if all he was able to do was line up some predictable pro-business politicians, and there was no broad community support, “then the challenge will be to explain to the Papés that the 1950s are over and we can’t do things that way anymore.”

Cooney on Thursday stressed that the renaming idea did not originate with the Papé family.

“Were they involved? Yes.” he said. “I know there are some people who think there’s collusion there, but that’s not the case.”

Senior Editor Christian Wihtol contributed to this report.