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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2022
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APPEAL TRIBUNE
Bill to allow college sports betting faces pushback
Connor Radnovich
A Oregon Lottery
sign hangs in the
window of The
Brick Bar & Broiler
in downtown
Salem on
Thursday, Oct. 9,
2014. ANNA REED /
Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
Through the Oregon Lottery and
DraftKings, Oregonians are currently
able to place bets on the outcomes and
achievements of professional sports
games, teams and athletes.
Betting on college sports, however, is
banned.
A bill in the Oregon Legislature would
legalize betting on college sports. But in
its initial public hearing it faced push-
back from tribal representatives and
anti-gambling organizations.
Senate Bill 1503, sponsored by Senate
President Peter Courtney, D-Salem,
would allow the Oregon Lottery to con-
duct gambling opportunities based on
the outcomes of college sports games.
The bill came into the hearing with a
pair of amendments, which would ban
betting on individual athletic perfor-
mance and direct net proceeds toward
funding the Oregon Opportunity Grant
program, the state’s largest publicly
funded, need-based grant program for
college students.
Betting on college sports is already
occurring in the unregulated and fraud-
prone illegal market, Courtney said, and
allowing it to occur within the Oregon
Lottery would protect gamblers.
Furthermore, directing the revenue
toward grants for college students
would have a significant impact on edu-
Permits
Continued from Page 1A
confusing and align the permit season
with when people are typically going.”
Permits are mainly purchased
through Recreation.gov.
Permit season dates change
The permit season will be in place
June 15 to Oct. 15, instead of the Friday
before Memorial Day to the last Friday
in September.
That means anyone entering the
450,000 acres of wilderness back-
country during those dates will need
overnight permits if they plan on
camping, or a day-use permit if they
plan on hiking from 19 of the most pop-
ular trailheads.
“Last year people had permits in
early June that were unusable due to
snow and road conditions,” the Forest
Service said in a news release, “while
the wildernesses were accessible in
Services
Continued from Page 1A
About 8 to 10 “vendors” were to be in
place to provide general health checks,
hair care services, foot care, bike repair
and veterinarian checks on pets.
But cold weather and rain conspired
to keep the Count Fair from happening,
STATESMAN JOURNAL
FILE
cation funding, where there is never
enough money to go around, he said.
Courtney estimated the new revenue
could add up to 3,000 new grants for
college students.
“This will stabilize and permanently
fund Opportunity Grants in a very pow-
erful way,” Courtney said. “This is a ma-
jor source of funding, in the millions of
dollars.”
Courtney said a drafting error led to
the amendment directing all net reve-
nues toward the Oregon Opportunity
Grants (it was supposed to be 50%) but
he actually likes the amendment as cur-
rently constructed.
These amendments garnered some
praise from bill opponents, but not
enough to change their underlying ob-
jection to the bill.
Justin Martin, representing the Con-
federated Tribes of Grand Ronde, said
SB 1503 would pull funds away from
Oregon’s Native American tribes, which
largely rely on casino revenues to fund
essential services.
Some tribes have the ability to offer
college sports betting, but can only do so
on reservation lands, which are primari-
ly located in rural areas and some dis-
tance from the state’s population hubs.
Tribes are already being “inundated”
by gambling expansion, Martin said,
both through attempted expansion by
the Oregon Lottery and out-of-state in-
terests trying to enter the Oregon mar-
ket.
Martin encouraged lawmakers to set
up a task force to study gambling ex-
pansion efforts, advancements in tech-
nology, impacts on key stakeholders
and how other states regulate gambling.
“(SB 1506) would be taking money
out of tribes’ pockets,” Martin said. “We
need to take a pause and study this and
look at the right way to do things in Ore-
gon moving forward.”
Courtney disagreed: “In no way does
early October.”
A large number of people bought
permits for the McKenzie Pass area in
2020, only to discover the highway to
the trailheads hadn’t yet opened.
better idea if they’re going to hike clos-
er to the date, rather than months be-
fore, and can check weather and condi-
tions before committing to buying the
$1 permit. Last year, lots of people
didn’t use permits due to smoky skies
or issues related to the COVID-19 pan-
demic.
Day-use permits only available
10 or 2 days in advance
Last season, the Forest Service re-
leased a large batch of day-use permits
in April. While they were snapped up
fast, more than 50% of them were nev-
er used nor canceled and essentially
went to waste, according to Forest Ser-
vice data.
This season, the agency will not of-
fer any day-use permits that far in ad-
vance and only issue them in a 10- and
two-day rolling window during the
permit season.
For example, at the popular Green
Lakes Trailhead, a total of 90 permits
will be available each day. Of those, 54
will become available 10 days in ad-
vance and 36 will come open two days
in advance.
The idea is that people will have a
although the count itself went on as
planned and normal services went on as
usual.
“With the count going on, it ended up
being no different than what we do on a
daily basis,” Burdine-Rea said.
While the PIT Count Fair itself didn’t
materialize, the resource center was
open and the homeless were able to “ac-
cess our case management services,
supplies, food, hospitality and to get out
Overnight permits now based on
date of entry
Last season, people that went back-
packing and stayed overnight had to
get a permit that blocked out each indi-
vidual night they were in the wilder-
ness. That often led to people reserving
more days than they ended up using.
This season, “the overnight permit
quota is now based on the date of en-
try; meaning there is a daily entry quo-
ta for each trailhead allowing new
groups to start their trip each day,” the
news release said. “This simplifies the
reservation system because people
will not have to block out all the days of
their planned trip.”
of the elements,” she said.
Twenty-two people were counted,
she said, which was “slightly less” than
in the last year of the count before the
pandemic hit two years ago.
“With these type of events, we give
the homeless access to services they
don’t typically have the opportunity to
access,” she said. “People who need
these services are not always going to
these events, especially as new people
this bill take away from casinos, casino
betting at all.”
Kitty Martz, executive director of
Voices of Problem Gambling Recovery,
also supported the creation of a task
force to study gambling in Oregon and
the state’s current regulatory frame-
work.
House Bill 4046 would create such a
task force; it has not yet received a pub-
lic hearing.
“We’re becoming widely known in
the gambling industry as the wild west,
where anything goes with gambling in
Oregon,” she said.
Martz said the 24-hour access to
gambling via mobile devices is much
different than the kinds of “traditional”
lottery games that existed when Oregon
voters approved the creation of a state
lottery in 1984.
The current paradigm — which al-
lows for greater gambling availability —
also carries a higher risk of addiction,
she said. This availability would also
impact tribes’ current casino opera-
tions, she said.
“There’s every bit of evidence that it
would, in fact, interfere with what the
tribes are doing with their brick and
mortar facilities,” Martz said.
Reporter Connor Radnovich covers
the Oregon Legislature and state gov-
ernment.
Contact
him
at
cradnovich@statesmanjournal.com or
503-399-6864, or follow him on Twitter
at @CDRadnovich.
How will overnight permits be
distributed?
Forty percent of overnight permits
will go on sale on April 5 for advanced
reservations. Once the permit season
begins, the remaining 60% of over-
night permits will be available in a sev-
en-day rolling window, officials said.
Number of permits slightly
increased for day-use
The quotas for each of the trailheads
in the three wilderness areas was
slightly increased on the day-use side,
and slightly decreased for overnight
permits, although the changes mean
more should be available, officials said.
Zach Urness has been an outdoors
reporter in Oregon for 15 years and is
host of the Explore Oregon Podcast. Ur-
ness is the author of “Best Hikes with
Kids: Oregon” and “Hiking Southern
Oregon.” He can be reached at
zurness@StatesmanJournal.com
or
(503) 399-6801. Find him on Twitter at
@ZachsORoutdoors.
are going in and out at the time. But
when we host things that really encour-
age and draw them in by providing the
services, I think we have better access to
them.
“One of my wishes would be to do a
fair like this every quarter.”
Freelance writer/photographer Geoff
Parks is based in Salem. Have a Silver-
ton story idea? E-mail him at geoff-
parks@gmail.com.
Graduation
Continued from Page 1A
ments,” Oregon Department of Educa-
tion spokesman Marc Siegel said in an
email to the Statesman Journal.
Siegel said Oregon students still have
to meet the state’s “rigorous credit …
and personalized learning require-
ments” to graduate. Students must get
24 credits, including four in language
arts and three in math.
“Currently, no other state requires
more credits to graduate from high
school,” Siegel said. “The only change is
that students do not have to take and
pass an additional state-approved as-
sessment option in reading, writing or
mathematics in order to graduate.”
As of 2018, 11 other states and Wash-
ington, D.C. also required 24 credits to
graduate. All other U.S. states required
fewer credits.
Siegel said the suspension of the re-
quirement “does not appear to be im-
pacting” graduation rates.
“Available information from local
school officials, as well as data regard-
ing fifth-year graduates, suggests that
the Assessment of Essential Skills re-
quirement is not the primary reason
that most students are not graduating in
Oregon,” Siegel said.
Graduation rates for the 2019-20
school year rose 1.3 percentage points.
The rates for the 2020-21 school year fell
for the first time since Oregon began cal-
culating them in 2008. The rate was
80.6%, compared to 82.6% in 2019-20.
Siegel could not provide information
about what specific requirements Ore-
gon students are not meeting when they
do not graduate, referring the States-
man Journal to local school districts for
that information.
Graduates walk out to their seats during McNary High School's 56th annual commencement ceremony at Volcanoes
Stadium in Keizer, Oregon on Wednesday, June 9, 2021. BRIAN HAYES / STATESMAN JOURNAL
The Oregon Department of Educa-
tion does not collect information on stu-
dent credit attainment from districts,
other than a measure where the state
checks how many 9th graders enrolled
in their district for at least half the year
have obtained at least 25% of the credits
they need to graduate.
Siegel said students “are much more
likely to graduate if they enter 9th grade
ready to take Algebra 1, have high rates
of attendance and/or are on-track (for)
graduation at the end of 9th grade.”
Programs “that engage students,”
like music and career and technical edu-
cation, also correlate with a higher like-
lihood of graduating on time, Siegel
said.
This story is one in a series of articles
checking statements in Gov. Kate
Brown’s final annual “State of the State”
speech.
Claire Withycombe is a reporter at
the Statesman Journal. Contact her at
cwithycombe@statesmanjournal.com,
503-910-3821 or follow on Twitter
@kcwithycombe.