Opinion
4A
Tuesday, April 6, 2021
Other Views
Oregon provides
opportunity
to people with
disability
ast month, we joined millions of others across the
country in celebrating National Developmental
Disabilities Awareness Month by reflecting on
the milestones in our fight for equality that have brought
us closer to where we are today.
Twenty-one years ago on March 1, 2000, Fair-
view Training Center in Salem — the largest insti-
tution of its kind in the nation — closed its doors.
It housed thousands of individuals with disabilities.
Data showed high levels of abuse and neglect. Res-
idents were not permitted to leave unless they were
first sterilized.
Housing
babies, chil-
dren, adults
JAKE
and the
CORNETT
elderly, Fair-
DISABILITY RIGHTS OREGON
view was the
only mandated
service available for individuals and their families.
This change didn’t happen overnight. Oregon had
been working on closing institutions and building
community support systems for people with intellec-
tual and developmental disabilities since 1987.
Fairview’s closure created a new challenge — a
wait list of more than 7,000 Oregonians with intel-
lectual and developmental disabilities who needed
support services to live in their own home or with
family or friends and to fully participate in com-
munity life. Disability Rights Oregon filed a lawsuit
against the state, Staley v. Kitzhaber, asking that any
person who was eligible for Medicaid-funded com-
munity supports be provided them swiftly.
A decade ago this June, the terms of the Staley
settlement were implemented. Today, every indi-
vidual with an intellectual or developmental dis-
ability in Oregon is eligible to receive in-home sup-
ports because of the “brokerage” service system the
Staley case helped to create.
In closing this shameful chapter in our state’s his-
tory, Oregon became a pioneer in this facet of the
disability rights movement. In 2012, the National
Council on Disability highlighted Oregon’s suc-
cess in deinstitutionalization, writing, “Oregon is a
national leader in this field.”
Since then, Oregon has again been leading the
way nationally in creating community jobs for
workers who experience intellectual and develop-
mental disabilities.
The percentage of workers with intellectual and
developmental disabilities in Oregon who work in
integrated employment (57%) is nearly three times
greater than the national average (20%), according to
data released in February 2020.
The groundwork for this progress was laid in
2012, when workers with disabilities fought back
against the idea that it was OK to keep them isolated
in “sheltered workshops” and pay them far less than
minimum wage.
Disability Rights Oregon filed the first U.S. class
action lawsuit (Lane v. Brown) to challenge sheltered
workshops that pay subminimum wages. The case
settled years later, creating Oregon’s robust Employ-
ment First program that allows people to find com-
munity jobs.
Then, in 2019, Oregon passed legislation to phase
out the subminimum wage, putting us at the fore-
front of ending the subminimum wage. Congress
is currently considered the Raise the Wage Act that
would end subminimum wage for tipped workers and
people with disabilities nationally.
Substantial work remains. School is one of the
first places that people with intellectual and develop-
mental disabilities experience segregation and iso-
lation. Today, hundreds of Oregon children don’t
attend full days of school for months or even years at
a time.
We’re fighting in the courts for children with dis-
abilities to receive the supports they need to attend a
full day of school.
It’s worth remembering that Oregon was once a
place where if you were a person with an intellectual
and developmental disability, your destiny was insti-
tutional life.
Today, Oregon is a dramatically different place.
More and more of our friends, family members
and neighbors who experience a disability have
the opportunity to build the life that they want for
themselves.
That’s as it should be.
———
Jake Cornett is the executive director of Disability
Rights Oregon.
L
My Voice
We would not in any way benefit from proposed quarry
MICHAEL
HOWARD
LA GRANDE
any local residents are
aware of the proposed basalt
quarry that would be on
Robbs Hill Road just east of Perry.
The large quarry would be con-
structed alongside the Robbs Hill
Creek drainage, leading into the
Grande Ronde River. The proposal
is to remove more than 200 million
tons of rock over the next 89 years (or
100, or 137 years, depending on which
page of the application you read).
Over time, the quarry would obliterate
a mountainside by shipping basalt by
rail to asphalt markets in California
and the Midwest. As many as 46 addi-
tional trains would traverse our val-
leys daily to remove the rock.
The quarry would benefit present
owner James Smejkal by allowing him
to sell his ranch for millions. Mr. Sme-
jkal is 87 and lives in Western Oregon
— he won’t be around to worry about
the environmental devastation caused
by the quarry. The quarry also would
enable local resident Steve West to
purchase the ranch where the quarry
would be located. West intends to
“devalue” the remainder of the ranch
M
Letter
Quarry application a ‘chaotic mess’
I’ve spent several weeks reviewing
the James Smejkal application for the
proposed “Ponderosa Basalt Quarry.”
As an attorney, it isn’t unusual
to encounter difficult and complex
writing. But the Smejkal application
is different. It is incomplete, filled
with internal contradictions and lacks
supporting evidence. It fails to pro-
vide documentation regarding key
issues and misrepresents documents.
It frequently fails to address the issue
by granting a conservation easement
(which incidentally would allow him
to expand or replace any existing
buildings and to lead guided commer-
cial hunts on his private game refuge).
The quarry would also ben-
efit developer Curtis Shuck. One of
Shuck’s prior proposals was the failed
“oil by rail” plan to transport millions
of barrels of North Dakota crude oil
by rail, along the Columbia River, to
the port of Vancouver. Shuck doesn’t
have to be concerned about environ-
mental degradation caused by the
quarry. He moves around, but pres-
ently lives in Montana. The payoff
for our county would be ... five jobs
(or six, or seven, depending on which
page of the application you read), the
degradation of the canyon’s scenic
beauty, and the devaluation of land
values for miles surrounding the
quarry.
Smejkal first submitted a proposal
to develop the quarry in 2018. The
Union County Board of Commis-
sioners rejected it as seriously defi-
cient. Now Smejkal has a new applica-
tion the commissioner will hear April
7. The county planning commission
has denied the application because of
numerous failures to address (some-
times even to acknowledge) critical
regulatory requirements.
The new application raises serious
environmental concerns regarding
air pollution caused by increased
diesel train traffic and quarry oper-
ating equipment; dust, noise, pos-
sible environmental damage to the
Grande Ronde River; and the destruc-
tion of wetlands. It is unclear who
would provide the financial backing
to develop the quarry, or who would
run it. The multimillion-dollar invest-
ment required would certainly bring
in a corporate entity with the money
to ignore environmental regulations,
and any foreign corporation would
be exempt from many environmental
restrictions.
The application itself is filled with
internal contradictions, with unrea-
sonable assertions that simply don’t
compute, and bald assurances based
on no data whatsoever. It flatly ignores
many critical questions and regula-
tions. If these people run their quarry
the way they write an application, we
are in for a company with no regard at
all for compliance with the most basic
regulations.
For all these reasons, the Union
County commissioners should deny
the quarry application at their April 7
meeting.
———
Michael Howard, 75, lives in La
Grande, is a forensic scientist in pri-
vate practice and retired from the
Oregon State Police as director of the
Bend crime lab.
under discussion, or to acknowledge
issues, which are legally required to
be addressed. With no table of con-
tents or index, the application is
exceedingly difficult to reference.
The application fractures regula-
tions into unreadable sections, making
it impossible just to identify the reg-
ulation without external references.
It appears to have been deliberately
written to confuse, as if doing so
might allow Smejkal to get approval
for an application that is so flatly defi-
cient it could never be approved on its
actual merits. This is not how legal
documents are typically written.
Now Smejkal is encountering resis-
tance and requesting additional time
to polish his application. Granting his
request would be an indication of dis-
respect for every person who has been
forced to contend with — to labor over
— the chaotic mess of an application
as presented. Mr. Smejkal should be
forced to live with the result of having
presented an application that has been
written to obfuscate and confuse.
The Union County Board of Com-
missioners should deny the request
for a continuance.
Anne Morrison
La Grande