OR judge proposes militia pay $75000 a day for occupying refuge

Photos taken by OPB from inside the refuge showing the occupiers sitting at government computers with the lights and apparently the heat turned on (the occupiers aren’t wearing coats) have created a growing outcry from former federal land managers.

“There should be a dialogue”, LaVoy Finicum, a rancher from Arizona, said Tuesday while announcing the meeting, The Oregonian reported.

Over the weekend, the federal refuge’s sign was covered with a new sign that reads “Harney County Resource Center”.

Bundy has previously said the occupiers wouldn’t leave until a plan was in place to turn over federal lands to local authorities.

The militia occupying a federal compound in OR may have accessed files on employees, prompting a warning from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “We’re still going to have it. It’s just a matter of when and where”.

Briels said county judge Steve Grasty told him he should distance himself from the committee and the armed group – something Briels said he’s unwilling to do. The group, led by Nevada rancher Ammon Bundy, has been protesting the imprisonment of two local ranchers who torched government land and then were sentenced to return to prison for a longer sentence after they were released.

Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward has asked the group to leave, and called them outsiders who “hijacked” the peaceful protest over the convicted ranchers, father and son Dwight and Steven Hammond, in order to advance their own agenda.

Organizers of the community meeting have said it will go on even if the county does not provide a location.

The protesters want to be viewed as patriots standing up for ranchers and protecting the Constitution.

“These are my public lands, these are your public lands, and what I see is a lunatic fringe of radical extremists who have taken my land over”, said Garrett VeneKlasen, a protester with the New Mexico Wildlife Federation.

Though their case set off the occupation, the Hammonds have distanced themselves from the Bundy’s group. Some people think they should be labeled domestic terrorists. “They are domestic terrorists”. “We’re not going to let all your junk and hate mail sidetrack us and we’re going to continue to do what’s right for our country”. “There is an hourglass, and the fact is that time is running out”, Ward told local residents.