I already miss Ron Ross, who was the inspiration for numerous stories I wrote through the years. Ron died two weeks ago, on May 26.
Every few months, Ron would call me with a questioning tone to his voice. He would talk about some city, county or state policy or regulation and tell me how it was working, or not working, and how it was affecting him or someone else.
“How does this make any sense?” he would ask.
Many times, Ron would have the nut of an issue, which would pan out into a story. Sometimes these stories involved property rights, but Ron was never the kind of property-rights advocate who believed a person should be able to do anything he wants with his property. He just wanted government rules to make sense and work for the majority of people.
It drove him crazy when a well-intentioned regulation caused more problems than it solved. Ron was, if anything, a common-sense kind of guy.
If the salmon couldn’t get upstream, he didn’t wait for all the permits he was supposed to get, not while the salmon were waiting. He just got out with some volunteers and moved the fish upstream — not to a place of his choosing, but to exactly the place where they were supposed to go. How could anyone argue with that?
