Governor to detail health plan expansion Thursday
■ HEALTH: Kitzhaber seeks to extend
health plan coverage using revenue
from the cigarette tax increase
By Brad Cain
The Associated Press
Sen. Lenn Hannon says the waters have
calmed since he took to the floor of the Sen
ate to chastise fellow Republicans for
proposing to cut back general fund spend
ing on the Oregon health plan.
“Shame on you. It is an insult,” the Ash
land lawmaker said during last week’s
speech as Senate President Brady Adams
and others in the chamber looked on.
Hannon and Adams say no hard feelings
linger over the remark.
“We’re still speaking cordially,” Hannon
said Wednesday. “It wasn’t a personal at
tack.”
But Adams made it clear he was stung by
the comment as well as one by Gov.
Kitzhaber’s chief spokesman that Adams
has been using a “bait and switch” maneu
ver to try to cut financing for the health
plan.
“We’re both talking about protecting the
existing plan and expanding it,” the Senate
president said. “What I also want to talk
about is the amount of money we are going
to spend on it.”
On Thursday, Kitzhaber is to announce
more details on how he proposes to expand
the Oregon health plan using money from
a 30-cent-a-pack cigarette tax increase ap
proved by Oregon voters last fall.
Kitzhaber wants to spend $70 million of
the cigarette tax money to help maintain ba
sic services for low-income people already
covered by the plan. Another $70 million
would be used to extend health coverage to
an additional 45,000 people by relaxing eli
gibility requirements and by providing sub
sidies for low-income people whose em
ployers don’t provide health coverage.
Adams said Wednesday that the cigarette
tax money will go to the Oregon health plan
and that he and other Republicans are will
ing to commit to an expansion of the health
plan, though not by as much as Kitzhaber
wants.
The Grants Pass Republican said he can’t
say at this point how many people he
thinks should be added to the health plan,
but he indicated it could be far less than the
45,000 additional people envisioned by
Kitznaber.
“We intend to bring Oregonians into the
plan based on the available revenue we
have,” he said.
Kitzhaber’s communications director,
Bob Applegate, said Wednesday that his
boss is open to discussion about the num
ber of additional people who should be
covered.
“The entire cigarette tax campaign was
about expanding the health plan,” Apple
gate said. “As long as the debate is how to
expand the program — not if — we think
that’s a step in the right direction.”
Seven new categories of endings
to be added to Internet addresses
By Elizabeth Weise
The Associated Press
Just as Internet users got
used to the difference between
disney.com and redcross.org,
seven new sets of address end
ings could appear as early as
May to identify groups and in
dividuals who want their own
online tags.
Demand for Internet ad
dresses is going through the
roof, with about 80,000 new
names being registered a
month.
The need for online identity
is so strong that name disputes
have ended up in court as
trademark infringement bat
tles.
A plan announced last week
would restructure the system
for assigning Internet address
es, or “domain names.”
Right now, all Internet ad
dresses in the United States
end in one of six ways: .com
for commercial businesses,
.org for non-profit organiza
tions, .net for networks, .edu
for educational institutions,
.gov for governmental bodies
or .mil for the military.
Under the proposal by the
International Ad Hoc Commit
tee, seven endings would be
added: .store for businesses of
fering goods, .info for informa
tion services, .nom for individ
uals who want personal sites,
.firm for businesses or firms,
.web for entities emphasizing
the World Wide Web, .arts for
cultural groups and ,rec for
recreational or entertainment
activities.
The committee is made up
of 11 representatives of Inter
net, legal and other interna
tional standards groups. It offi
cially began work two months
ago.
vernonia drug testing done haphazardly
■ SPORTS: Officials admit
the program does not test
student athletes consistently
The Associated Press
A year and a half after the U.S.
Supreme Court upheld the Ver
nonia school district's policy of
mandatory drug testing for stu
dent athletes, the program is ad
ministered only haphazardly.
The wrestling and boys’ basket
ball teams were not tested until
the last week of January, about two
months after their seasons began,
athletic director Scott Finley said.
“The bottom line is, there is no
excuse,” said Finley, who is re
sponsible for making sure all ath
letes are tested. “It should have
been done.”
Finley, who also is the boys’
basketball coach, said he had been
busy this winter with administra
tive and other duties.
“No one purposely messed up
the program,” said Randall Ault
man, the author of the policy and
principal at Washington Grade
School in Vemonia.
Vernonia gained national atten
tion in 1991 when James Acton,
then a seventh-grader going out for
football, refused to submit to the
tests.
The school’s policy reads in
part: “At the option of the district,
all student athletes may be drug
tested at the beginning of any ath
letic season. In addition, random
testing will be conducted weekly
during the athletic season.”
Acton and his parents sued the
school board. The case wound up
before the U.S. Supreme Court,
which upheld the school’s drug
policy in June 1995.
This year, Acton would have
been a senior at Vernonia High,
but he left after his junior year. In
stead, he is home-schooled and at
tends classes at Portland Commu
nity College.
The school district has contin
ued its drug testing policy since
the Supreme Court decision. Test
ing stopped for a time last spring,
after severe flooding in the town
in February, and resumed last fall.
But until the last week in Janu
ary, only the girls’ basketball and
the cheerleading squad had been
tested. No random testing had
been done.
“It is a lot of work,” Finley said
of the testing. But, he added, “It’s
something that is worth doing. ”
Linda Butler, athletic director at
the grade school, said it took her
and an assistant 45 minutes to test
10 girls.
There are 205 students at the
high school, approximately 70 of
whom go out for sports each sea
son. About 80 seventh- and
eighth-graders play sports at
Washington Grade School. The to
tal cost for testing seventh
through 12th-grade athletics is
about $2,600 a year.
At least 10 schools in Oregon
and around the country have
called Aultman to ask about Ver
nonia’s drug testing policy.
Corning Union High School in
Corning, Calif., an 800-student
school about 80 miles north of
Sacramento, adopted a policy sim
ilar to Vemonia’s last fall.
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