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Friday, March 11, 2022
Opinion
All other commentary pieces are
the opinions of the authors but
not necessarily this newspaper.
Editor & Publisher
Managing Editor
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com | CapitalPress.com/opinion
Our View
Reviewing two years of COVID-19
O
n Saturday, the indoor mask
mandates imposed by the
governors of Oregon, Wash-
ington and California will be lifted.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has also
announced that the state of emer-
gency that was put in place on March
8, 2020, will expire April 1.
Huzzah!
Officially, the lifting of the mask
requirement reflects declining
COVID-19 cases and hospitaliza-
tions in the West Coast states. Oth-
ers suggest the announcements were
coordinated with other Blue state
governments to suggest a return to
“normalcy” before President Biden’s
State of the Union address and in
advance of the midterm election
campaign.
Whatever the reason, we are none-
theless thankful for the reprieve —
even if it later proves temporary.
Two years and change into the
pandemic, it behooves us to take
stock of where we have been and
Ryan Brennecke/EO Media Group
COVID-19 vaccine. What lessons have
politicians learned from the COVID-19
pandemic?
offer some observations.
• COVID-19 qualified as a clear
and present danger as it unfolded in
the early spring of 2020. Little was
known about the disease when it
arrived in the United States.
In that context, the “two-weeks-
to-flatten-the-curve” shutdown
made some sense. But as those “two
weeks” dragged into more than
three months, this seemed less like a
thoughtful strategy and more like a
desperate effort to outlast the virus.
• While government can quickly
shut the economy down, starting it
back up again isn’t that easy.
• State government was unpre-
pared to deal with the impacts its
measures inflicted on working people
and their employers. Shuttering the
economy left more than half a mil-
lion people on the West Coast scram-
bling for a paycheck.
• We have been told to “follow the
science.” Being strong believers of
facts, we put a lot of stock in science.
But, the exhortation to “follow the
science” has too often been used as a
cudgel with which to beat critics.
Science is not religious dogma. It
is an open question, not a declarative
statement. We don’t say this to bene-
fit crackpots and conspiracy theorists,
but to encourage reasoned debate.
Officials conveying science have
too often failed to concede that the
body of knowledge is ever changing.
We have always been strong advo-
cates for vaccinations, and still are.
Labor union
power-play will
result in job losses
for farm employees
Our View
M
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
The Anderson Ranch Dam in Idaho is slated to be expanded.
Water visionaries
needed in the West
W
ater is the dominant issue in Western
agriculture, yet we have to wonder
whether some folks really get it.
California, by virtue of its climate, has under-
stood the importance of water since European set-
tlers first arrived hundreds of years ago. Much of
the region was a desert. Without water, it would
stay that way.
With water, California would bloom to provide
food to the U.S. and much of the world.
Dams were built, the Colorado River was
tapped and a massive water works was con-
structed to move water from areas that had excess
supplies to areas that were dry.
The problem: During droughts, there is pre-
cious little excess.
That’s why the people of California and the
folks at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation are mov-
ing forward with plans to build more reservoirs to
store water when it is plentiful and redistribute it
when it’s not.
The Los Vaqueros Reservoir in northeast Cal-
ifornia and the B.F. Sisk Dam in Merced County
are slated to be expanded, adding a total of
290,000 acre-feet of storage.
A new reservoir at Sites with a capacity of 1.5
million acre-feet is in the works, and a new res-
ervoir, at Del Puerto Canyon, with a capacity of
82,000 acre-feet, is in the planning stages.
It’s clear that Californians and the Bureau of
Reclamation are serious about providing more
water to the farms and ranches and the people.
Initially, we were told the vaccines
would prevent infections and trans-
mission in most cases. Then we were
told that in most cases it would only
keep people from getting really sick.
That’s still a worthy outcome, but not
what conveyors of science promised
in the beginning.
Policy makers have been the stron-
gest proponents of “the science,” but
have been willing to forego the sci-
ence for political expediency.
• No elected official should be
allowed to rule indefinitely by
decree. Emergency powers should
be limited in duration and subject
to mandatory legislative oversight.
A benevolent dictatorship in all but
name is nonetheless tyranny.
Most people learned to live with
the virus months ago. We are happy
that the governors are learning it, too.
We hope in future emergencies that
they put more trust in the instincts of
their constituents.
Likewise, the people of Idaho and Washington
state have projects ranging from expanding dams
to recharging aquifers to expanded use of Colum-
bia River water.
The contrast between those states and Oregon
is stark. While some dams are being expanded
to provide more irrigation water in places like
the Hood River area, and irrigation districts in
northeastern Oregon have built a new expanded
pipeline network, other parts of the state remain
parched. Central Oregon, the Klamath Basin,
Harney County, Eastern Oregon — even the Wil-
lamette Valley — are in need of facilities that will
help them get through dry spells.
We are told that dry spells will be more fre-
quent as the climate continues to change, yet
the major efforts offered by political leaders are
long-range and would have little or no impact for
decades.
We will still need more water in the meantime.
Droughts happen, and being lectured about buy-
ing an electric tractor or truck as a way to address
them is off-putting.
We need someone who will stand up and see
the possibilities. A state with one of the larg-
est rivers on the continent at its northern border
should never be short of water. Pipelines, lake
taps, reservoirs, recharged aquifers and dams can
make sure the people of Oregon will have plenty
of water for not just decades but for centuries to
come.
We’re listening for someone to take the lead in
assuring Oregon’s water future.
andatory over-
time pay in agri-
culture has been
in the works for more than a
year in Oregon. Republicans
have been part of the con-
versation, bringing in stake-
holders from the farm com-
munity to create a unique
Oregon solution.
Our objective has been
legislation reflective of Ore-
gon’s agriculture industry
that protects the ability for
farm employees to work the
number of hours they want
while respecting the strug-
gles small family farms
endure to break even.
Instead of pursuing this
measured approach, discus-
sions on overtime legislation
came to a halt this session
and a union-backed, parti-
san bill was forced through,
passing the House on party
lines.
An abrupt halt to dis-
cussions isn’t new. Earlier
this winter labor advocates
walked away from the nego-
tiating table having decided
to drop a lawsuit they had
been pursuing behind the
scenes all along.
The legal challenge
from the Oregon Law Cen-
ter in December completely
undermined good-faith talks
a year in the making. The
Legislature was threatened
with a draconian version of
overtime from the Oregon
Bureau of Labor & Indus-
tries (BOLI) if we failed to
act. These special interests
prefer to play politics at the
expense of jobs and wages
for farm employees across
the state.
Legislation that could
negatively impact the live-
lihood of workers and farm
owners should not be rushed
in a 35-day short legislative
session. However, Republi-
cans continued to bring ideas
to the table for a workable
Oregon solution.
The final Republican pro-
posal would have guaranteed
increased pay to farm work-
ers for extra hours worked
with a $50 million grant.
Democrats voted this down
in favor of a bill that will cut
the hours and wages of farm
employees while giving tax
breaks to profitable corpo-
rate farms.
Oregon is now sin-
gled out among a hand-
ful of states that imposes
high labor costs on cash-
strapped family farms try-
ing to fill our grocery stores
with local, affordable pro-
duce. Farmers in our state
will compete against farm-
GUEST
VIEW
Rep. Shelly
Boshart
Davis
Rep. Daniel
Bonham
ers in other states that don’t
have overtime requirements
for farm workers. In Califor-
nia, the only state with a cur-
rent 40-hour threshold, these
restrictions have cut worker
hours and pay as farm-
ers have been forced to cap
hours at 40.
Because of Democrats’
decision to pursue a parti-
san solution, hours will be
capped, which means less
pay to workers, automation
and mechanization of farm-
ing will be expedited, which
means less jobs, and small
farms will be consolidated
by corporate conglomer-
ates, resulting in less family
farms in Oregon. There are
zero positive outcomes from
this bill.
Several Democratic legis-
lators recognized these nega-
tive outcomes and supported
a Republican motion to send
this bill back to committee in
favor of an Oregon solution.
This motion narrowly failed.
That is the definition of
failed leadership from the
Democratic super majority,
ignoring bipartisan opposi-
tion to their agenda. They
pursued a partisan, all-or-
nothing approach driven by
labor unions at the expense
of all Oregonians working in
the agriculture industry.
Legislators from both
sides of the aisle have stated
on the record that this pro-
posal will result in job losses
for farmworkers. There is no
appropriate justification for
taking jobs away from Ore-
gonians trying to put food on
their families’ tables.
We will need to fix this
legislation in 2023 to save
farm employee jobs. To
achieve that, we will need
more balance in the Legis-
lature and a majority that
stands up to partisan spe-
cial interests and puts people
above politics.
Rep. Shelly Boshart
Davis represents Albany,
and Rep. Daniel Bonham
represents The Dalles in the
Oregon Legislature. Both
are Republicans.