REGION
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2022
THE OBSERVER — A3
Prisons still dealing with COVID-19
A number of Eastern Oregon prisons
had quarantined following an outbreak
of the virus at their facilities
By ALEX WITTWER
EO Media Group
PENDLETON —
Eastern Oregon Correc-
tional Institution and Two
Rivers Correctional Insti-
tution in Umatilla County
still have housing units
in quarantine due to the
spread of the COVID-19
virus throughout their facil-
ities, according to prison
offi cials.
Powder River Correc-
tional Facility in Baker
County is in a heightened
state of alert and testing
according to the Oregon
Department of Corrections
COVID-19 tracker, as cases
rose among the staff and
prisoner population at the
end of January. Seven out
of the 15 prisons in Oregon
as of Tuesday, Feb. 8, had
units under quarantine.
Overall, case numbers
had increased dramatically
through January, peaking
at 286 active cases for
Two Rivers on Jan. 20. In
December, those numbers
were in the single digits.
Those case numbers
fell throughout the week.
As of Feb. 8, Two Rivers
had just one active case of
COVID-19.
As a percentage of total
cases during the entire pan-
demic against the number
of beds at each facility, Two
Rivers ranks the highest
by a wide margin. The
case-to-bed rate is 68%,
while the average across all
prisons in Oregon is 33.3%.
Critic blames prison
staff for virus spread
Corrections offi cials
wouldn’t say whether or
not the COVID-19 cases
that spurred a large spike
at Two Rivers was due to
a staff member, but case
numbers and dates shared
with EO Media Group
show staff at Two Rivers
had tested positive on Dec.
29, just 10 days before
members of the prison
population showed a spike
in positive tests.
“There is no way of
knowing exactly how each
positive case originates
or is spread,” said Betty
Bernt, communications
manager for DOC. “When
an individual comes into
our intake unit, our current
process is to test all adults
in custody.”
Juan Chavez, project
director and attorney
with the Oregon Jus-
tice Resource Center,
disagrees.
“There’s only one way
for the virus to get in, and
that’s through the staff ,”
he said. “It’s abundantly
clear that mask wearing
has been scant in par-
ticular with correctional
offi cers. They haven’t
been enforcing the mask
wearing policy, they just
let it slide. They’re more
afraid of losing staff than
they are of killing people,
in my mind.”
Chavez said only
the bare minimum was
asked from Corrections
regarding safety pro-
cedures in combating
the spread of COVID-
19, including mandatory
masking for correctional
offi cers and implementing
social distancing require-
ments. Those require-
ments, according to a class
action lawsuit fi led in
April 2020, were widely
ignored.
The lawsuit also
described practices where
correctional offi cers would
move from a quarantined
unit to an uninfected unit
without a mask, likely due
to overtime and staffi ng
shortages at the facilities.
“I think the (COVID-19)
situation shakes the entire
foundation,” Chavez said.
“What we were asking for
only sounds extraordinary
if we weren’t in extraor-
dinary times, and so we
needed something grander.
And that didn’t happen. A
lot of people got hurt.”
Two Rivers in
litigation spotlight
Two Rivers has been
especially problem-
atic, according to prison
attorney Tara Herivel, who
has led litigation eff orts for
hundreds of cases against
the Department of Correc-
tions. Herivel said approx-
imately 80% of her cases
are against Two Rivers.
According to Herivel,
despite the litigation and
sea of lawsuits, Two Rivers
in particular is “not afraid
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian, File
A sign stands at the entrance of Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla as the sun rises April 2, 2021. Two Rivers and Eastern Oregon
Correctional Institution, Pendleton, reopened in November for visitation after shutting down visits for four months due to the coronavirus
pandemic.
enough to change.”
“The conversation I
have a lot with my clients
and people I work with is
why?” Herivel said. “Why
is it so horrible? Why don’t
they learn? They’ve been
sued so many times, and
I just don’t think they’ve
been sued enough. I think
they don’t have real con-
sequences, and they can
brush away these indi-
vidual suits like the kinds I
do pretty easily. They just
don’t follow court orders.”
Herivel said in addition
to fi ling a majority of her
prison cases against Two
Rivers, she has had con-
tempt of court motions
against the prison’s med-
ical department for failing
to follow the court’s
orders, leading to the
release of an adult in cus-
tody 11 years before their
sentence expired.
break than it had at the start
of the pandemic, according
to Ron Miles, supervising
executive assistant.
“In addition to masking,
we’ve done our best ability
to maintain social distance
or maintain 6 feet of dis-
tance between everybody,
but the challenge with that
is putting 1,700 people into
a 15.2 acre location,” he
said. “So social distancing
is not going to be easy,
that’s a just fact of prison
life.”
Miles credited pre-
vious experience with the
pandemic as a key factor
for controlling the recent
outbreak.
“Part of it is vaccina-
tions, part of its precau-
tions we’ve taken since the
very beginning and some
of it is experience with
the COVID pandemic,”
Miles said. “No institu-
tion, no prison anywhere
in the world is equipped
for a pandemic, so when
one hits, you have to learn
what you don’t know. We
went through that process
and learned what we didn’t
know and the second time
around we were better pre-
pared for that, and vacci-
nations played a big role in
that.”
As of Feb. 8, EOCI had
zero active COVID-19
cases, according to the
DOC COVID-19 website.
‘We learned the
hard way’
A spokesperson for Two
Rivers declined to com-
ment on the COVID-19
situation at the facility,
citing a need to go through
the Oregon Department
of Corrections for a uni-
fi ed response. Two Rivers
offi cials did not respond to
an emailed list of detailed
questions about the out-
break at the facility.
EOCI saw a milder out-
“We learned the hard
way, but we did learn,”
Miles said.
Powder River, Baker
City, saw an outbreak of 21
cases by Jan. 29, which fell
to eight cases on Feb. 8.
Herivel said Powder River
is one of the best prisons
in Eastern Oregon when
it comes to COVID-19
safety.
On the other hand,
nearly 15% of the Two
Rivers adult popula-
tion tested positive for
COVID-19 on Jan. 23.
Miles said EOCI off ers
vaccines to the adult in
custody population, as well
as off ering vaccine booster
clinics from time to time
for prisoners to keep up to
date with the COVID-19
vaccines.
TRCI tops prisons for
COVID-19 deaths
Previous reporting
by the East Oregonian
through numerous inter-
views with lawyers rep-
resenting clients at Two
Rivers, as well as inmates
themselves, had shown a
lax regard for COVID-19
safety at Two Rivers.
Inmates cited improper
mask wearing by staff
members and mixing
of COVID-19 positive
inmates with the general
population for work.
The number of in-cus-
Blue Mountain Community College president says more layoff s likely
would like to make future
“adjustments” to the col-
lege’s collective bargaining
agreement with the BMCC
faculty union.
“We’ve got to jump
ahead of it to where we
can be a little more fl ex-
ible and be able to adjust in
a better fashion and hon-
estly, it’s going to take an
adjustment in the collective
bargaining agreement,” he
said. “Because, right now, I
can’t go and eliminate one
instructor in one program
and one in another and just
adjust the program that
way. You have to shut the
program down. That’s how
it has to be done and I think
that’s a really poor approach
to business.”
Previous rounds of lay-
off s and budget cuts have
come with pushback from
the faculty union, and in a
statement, union President
Pete Hernberg struck an
optimistic tone.
“The college’s enroll-
ment has begun to stabi-
lize — in fact our enroll-
ment is doing much better
than many other commu-
nity colleges around the
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
East Oregonian, File
Blue Mountain Community College President Mark Browning said on
Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022, the Pendleton-based college is early in its
budgeting process, but leaders are anticipating eliminating positions
as enrollment continues to fall.
to make cuts.
Browning attributed the
impending reductions to
outside factors — a strong
job market that was leading
many prospective students
to the job market instead of
community college and lin-
gering uncertainty from the
coronavirus pandemic.
“I can go to Wendy’s and
make $18 bucks (per hour),”
he said. “In some ways,
we’re overperforming.”
While the college will
outline its cost-cutting
strategy in the coming
months, Browning said he
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come from. But for BMCC,
it portends another year of
pink slips and tough budget
conversations.
Under former President
Dennis Bailey-Fougnier,
Blue Mountain eliminated
23 positions, including 11
layoff s in 2019. His suc-
cessor, interim President
Connie Green, recom-
mended laying off another
11 employees as a part of a
16-job contraction. When
the Oregon Department of
Corrections restructured its
prison education program,
the college also was forced
RD
PENDLETON — Blue
Mountain Community
College is anticipating
employee layoff s for the
third year in a row.
BMCC President Mark
Browning said Thursday,
Feb. 10, the college is early
in its budgeting process,
but leaders are anticipating
eliminating positions as
enrollment
continues to
fall.
Browning
said Blue
Mountain’s
$44.2 million
budget was
Browning
based on the
college enrolling the equiv-
alent of 1,000 students. But
BMCC’s actual enrollment
during the fall and winter
terms has been below that
number and the college’s
administration now is pro-
jecting a 3% enrollment
decline for next year.
Browning said it’s too
soon to know how many
positions the college needs
to cut or where they will
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state,” he said. “Because
of how the state’s funding
formula works, this means
we’ll get a bigger piece of
the pie. Although we have a
far smaller faculty than we
used to, we’re proud of the
work that everyone is doing
to rebuild enrollment.”
FEEL THE SPEED,
EVEN AT PEAK TIMES.
tody deaths across the
state also appears to be
increasing, with four
reported deaths between
Jan. 27 and Jan. 31, though
none of those deaths cited
COVID-19 as the cause.
Since the start of the pan-
demic, 45 adults in cus-
tody have died after testing
positive for COVID-19,
according to DOC data.
Seventeen of those deaths
are from adults in custody
at Two Rivers, the highest
out of any of the other
prisons in Oregon, despite
being the third largest
prison in Oregon. EOCI,
which has a similar popu-
lation size of adults in cus-
tody, has had four deaths
throughout the pandemic,
while Powder River has
had none.
The Department of Cor-
rections keeps a spread-
sheet of positive tests for
COVID-19 on its website,
but it has not been updated
since Nov. 12, 2021.
Corrections offi cials
said staffi ng issues and the
tediousness of entering
the data by hand made the
task too resource inten-
sive. Daily COVID-19 sta-
tistics and active cases are
on the Oregon Depart-
ment of Corrections web-
site through its COVID-19
tracker at www.oregon.
gov/doc/covid19/Pages/
covid19-tracking.aspx.
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