The City of Bend needs to crack down harder on panhandlers. Those guys from the Central Oregon Builders Association hanging around City Hall with cardboard signs and tin cups are getting really annoying.

COBA has been begging for handouts from the city at least since the summer of 2008, when it persuaded the city council to give builders a nine-month deferral on having to pay their SDCs (Systems Development Charges, or fees assessed on new developments to help defray some of the costs of growth, such as improvements to streets, sewers and water systems).

Keith Cyrus is chairman of the Deschutes County Planning Commission. There’s no problem with that. He also has a golf course subdivision that he wants to turn into a destination resort — no problem with that either.

But when Keith Cyrus, the chairman of the planning commission, uses his position to push the agenda of Keith Cyrus, the would-be resort developer, that’s a problem. A big one.

Cyrus, whose family has farmed in Central Oregon for nearly a century, has been trying for years to convert his Aspen Lakes subdivision near Sisters into a destination resort. To accomplish that, he needs to have it included in the county’s map of areas designated for such purposes.

The ink was barely dry on the health care reform legislation when 14 attorneys general from states across the country – including Rob McKenna up in Washington – rushed to file a lawsuit claiming that it’s unconstitutional.

To his credit, Oregon Attorney General John Kroger didn’t join the stampede. “Based on a preliminary review of the legislation,” Kroger’s office announced, “the Oregon Department of Justice is of the opinion that the health care reform bill is constitutional and that the challenges to the legislation are without merit. Legal scholars around the nation have expressed similar views. As a result, Attorney General Kroger will not waste taxpayer dollars on filing meritless litigation.”

Like the large intestine, trash receptacles are something you don’t pay much attention to when they’re there, but you sure miss them when they’re gone.

Thanks to the financial hole the City of Bend has dug itself into, downtown trash receptacles almost went away. Thanks to the Downtown Bend Business Association and Bend Garbage and Recycling, they’ve been saved – at least for a while.

About 30 of the receptacles – those big, black steel jobs that stand on the sidewalks – were installed by the Bend Urban Renewal Agency more than a decade ago as part of a program to improve and beautify downtown. But this year the city decided it could no longer afford the $20,000-a-year expense of having them emptied.

A year ago, Jeremiah Masoli was considered a likely candidate to win the Heisman Trophy. Today he looks more like a candidate for an orange jumpsuit.

The Oregon Ducks star quarterback, who led the team to the Rose Bowl in 2010, has been suspended for the upcoming season after pleading guilty to burglary charges in connection with the theft of items from a fraternity house.

The Masoli case was just the capper on a long and ugly series of criminal misdeeds by U of O football players over the past three months. Since the Rose Bowl, nine of them have been charged with offenses ranging from DUI to burglary and assault.