I was curious about the people who spend $500 to place letters of opposition to Measure 49, so I googled them.

The first comes from Sen. Larry George. On Oct. 24, The Oregonian reported that he was the former executive director of Oregons in Action, the group that brought us Measure 37. He was paid roughly $700,000 for advertising services in support of Measure 37. He is also linked repeatedly to Matt Cyrus, the man who placed the second letter in opposition.

Mr. Cyrus owns land just outside of Sisters, one of the hottest real estate areas in the state. He borrowed $4.3 million from DGF Investment Corp., a Salem firm of two people, to develop Alpine Lakes Golf Course and he aims to further develop the area. He also established an aggregate company.

Under Measure 37, questionable developments bypass regional planning.

A group of lawyers follows with a letter of opposition. Mark Bartholomew, listed first, led an unsuccessful Measure 37 claim to place a 65-lot development on property zoned Heavy Commercial, on the east side of Highway 62.

The Oregonian article cited above stated that, at the time, more than 60 percent of contributions for Measure 37 came from timber money. Now, Timber Service Co. has 33 claims for subdivisions totaling 7,006 acres.

These people will attempt to scare you into believing that this is about big government. It's not; it's about making money by gaming the system through bypassing already weakened planning processes that everyone else would go through to develop their land.

Bill O'Brien

Corvallis

M49 ballot contrived to persuade voters

You don't want to know how laws and sausages are made. It will turn your stomach.

According to "Willamette Week's Oct. 11 article, Ballot Measure 49 has an interesting history.

Ballot titles are generally written by the Secretary of State's office to provide an unbiased title.

However, private e-mails produced in a recent lawsuit disclose that Gov. Ted Kulongoski's Deputy Chief of Staff, Tim Nesbitt, hired consultants to do opinion polls on what ballot title would cause voters to vote for Measure 49.

E-mails between Nesbitt and Bob Stacey, director of 1000 Friends of Oregon, wanted to make sure any prospective ballot title would reflect proponents views, rather than neutrality.

Democratic lawmakers wrote the ballot title, summary and fiscal statement to be sent directly to the voters.

The Legislature bypassed all of the normal rules that would provide unbiased information to the voters. The majority party also prohibited all members of the minority party from participating in any aspect of the formulation of Measure 49. Not surprisingly, not one member of the minority party voted for Measure 49.

If you can't hear the locomotive whistle on the railroading of this measure, then you are politically tone deaf. "If they can't win the vote with the truth perhaps they should not win."

Ballot Measure 49 and the Voters Pamphlet are a lot to wade through. If you would like to see a comparison of Measure 49 and Measure 37, go to www.dennisrichardson.

org/zum37.pdf for a detailed, side-by-side chart.

Charles R. Nelson

Corvallis

Contrary to article, Pap tests effective

Regarding the Oct. 18 front-page article, "New Pap test twice as good":

This article begins with the eye-catching statement "flip a coin," and then goes on to state that Pap smears are insensitive to detect precancerous cells on the cervix. Nothing could be further from the truth. The advent of Pap smear screening in the 1950s is arguably the most successful single intervention in cancer prevention in this century.

You can look at any data and see that deaths from cervical cancer dropped off dramatically after Pap smear screening began. Today, it is exceedingly rare to see a woman in this country with cervical cancer who has had regular Pap screening.

The new HPV test is helpful as an adjunct in triaging patients with abnormal Paps and is being used in women older than 30 in conjunction with a Pap smear to lengthen the screening interval. As the cited study found, many women carry this virus and will never manifest any disease related to it.

Screening all women with this test does nothing but cause unnecessary anxiety in women who have a normal Pap but test positive for the HPV virus. Of course it goes without saying that the manufacturers of the HPV test make money every time we use their test. I believe the author of this article has done a tremendous disservice to women by indicating that the Pap smear is a useless test. That is not what scientific data indicates and is extremely misleading.

Linda Fox, M.D.

Samaritan Gynecology

and Surgical Associates

Corvallis

Measure 50 unfair to minority of smokers

Although I rarely ever vote against a tax that funds social services, I will not be voting for Measure 50. Like most of the other "sin" taxes in Oregon, this measure strikes me as situation in which many voters will be perfectly happy to increase taxes on the minority (smokers in this case) for services that they are not willing to pay for themselves.

If you don't believe me, try to get a measure passed in this state that would require all taxpayers to increase their taxes by $300 per year to pay for health care for poor kids (that's approximately how much this tax will cost a pack-a-day smoker). It would never make it to a vote, much less get passed by the voters. So, my opposition to Measure 50 has nothing to do with the need for social services or with that arch villain "big tobacco." For me it is an issue of fairness. If we want to subsidize health care for poor kids then let's pass a tax in which we all pay for it.

Eric Forsman

Corvallis