OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, APRIL 24, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
OUR VIEW
State Senate
deserves credit
on records reform
O
regon state senators should be praised for overwhelm-
ingly passing a bill last week that sets a deadline for
public bodies to respond to public records requests.
Senators passed the bill 29-0 and it is now being consid-
ered in the House. If passed there, it would set a precedent and
close a beginning chapter of ongoing records reform in Oregon
because governmental bodies effectively have had an unlimited
time to respond to requests. Oregon is one of few states that
doesn’t have a deadline.
The bill was a product of a task force that was convened
by Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum as part of overall pub-
lic records reform to increase transparency and accountability.
The bill requires public bodies to respond to requests within
fi ve days and furnish records within 10 days or provide a writ-
ten statement why the request can’t be fulfi lled. If an agency
doesn’t respond within the deadline, it is considered a denial
and the requester can then appeal to the Attorney General’s
Offi ce.
The legislation also directs the Attorney General’s Offi ce to
catalogue the state’s 550 public records exemptions, so it can
be searched by the public. Comparatively, the federal Freedom
of Information Act has only nine exemptions.
Rosenblum said the task force “heard loud and clear that our
public records laws are in need of reform.” She said the bill is
a step that “begins to address the confusion created by 40 years
of piecemeal exemptions to laws originally intended to pro-
mote transparency.”
State Sen. Lee Beyer, D-Springfi eld, pointed out the leg-
islation can prevent public agencies from “sitting on public
records requests for a long period of time to avoid disclosing
something.”
The House should move quickly to pass the bill, and
Rosenblum and the task force should continue efforts to push
additional records reform legislation to eliminate exemptions.
Rosenblum, the task force and state senators deserve credit,
and state representatives will too when they follow through.
Together, they should look at the passage of this bill as the
beginning of a new chapter, not the conclusion of the book
itself.
It’s time to limit
the Antiquities Act
I
t’s probably not high on the list of priorities, but we’d like
to see Congress revise the Antiquities Act to give legisla-
tive oversight to the creation of national monuments.
The Antiquities Act of 1906 has been used by presidents
starting with Teddy Roosevelt to create national monuments.
The authority comes with few restrictions. The president,
“in his discretion,” can designate almost any piece of federally
owned land a national monument for “the protection of objects
of historic and scientifi c interest.”
Although the act makes mention of protecting historic and
prehistoric structures, there is no statutory defi nition or limit
on what may be found to be of historic or scientifi c interest.
Presidents have used the act to preserve wild areas.
It’s easier than establishing a wilderness area, or a national
park — both of which require congressional approval — but
can impose similar restrictions on how the land can be used.
Local residents and their elected representatives have no say
in the process. At least, they don’t in 48 states.
The creation of the Jackson Hole National Monument by
President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940s so rankled Wyoming
pols that when legislation was proposed to merge most of it
with Grand Teton National Park the Congress amended the
Antiquities Act to prohibit the president from establishing
monuments in that state without its approval.
After President Jimmy Carter created 56 million acres of
monuments in Alaska, Congress amended the act to require it
also approve Alaskan monuments of 5,000 acres or more.
We would not argue that the Antiquities Act has not pre-
served legitimate cultural treasures. We might not have the
Grand Canyon in its current state had TR not protected it by
making it fi rst a national monument.
But that was a different time. The restrictions that can be
placed on ranchers and timbermen throughout the West by
these declarations require oversight.
They should have at least the same consideration afforded
the people of Wyoming and Alaska.
SOUTHERN EXPOSURE
Cannon Beach ‘still pretty
gnarly’ after all these years
By R.J. MARX
The Daily Astorian
n April 11, Cannon Beach
city councilors enthusiasti-
cally endorsed a resolution
that “embraces, celebrates and
welcomes its immigrant and refugee
residents and their contribution.”
The policy is aimed to keep the
roles of local and federal govern-
ment clear and enforceable, rather
than framed as a resistance to federal
deportation practices.
City councilors
passed a motion to
hear the resolution
at the next council
meeting, which was
met with a round of
applause from an
audience of about 30 people.
Why is this an introduction for an
email Q&A with author Ursula K.
Le Guin?
Because only a month ago, the
part-time Cannon Beach resident Le
Guin posted an impassioned plea
for the nation’s immigrants, a strong
rebuke to the Trump administration’s
immigration policies.
“Becoming a s anctuary c ity isn’t
just a matter of words,” Le Guin
wrote in a March blog post. “It takes
real commitment, long and steady
resolve, and determined hope, to
resist and keep resisting the politi-
cians and interests that seek power
by supporting those shameful poli-
cies, and the misguided citizens who
imagine they will gain profi t or status
from them.”
Cannon Beach’s most celebrated
author is and has been a voice for
the disenfranchised and oppressed
throughout her career. In 2014, she
was awarded the National Book
Foundation Medal for Distinguished
Contribution to American Letters.
She is nominated for a 2017 Hugo
Award for “Words Are My Mat-
ter: Writings About Life and Books,
2000-2016.”
To Le Guin, literature and polit-
ical action are one and the same. At
87, when she could rest on her lau-
rels — she doesn’t. Her unveering
political voice keeps her on the front
lines.
Be it sanctuary cities, the unique-
ness of her Cannon Beach fi ctional
twin city of “Klatsand” or her outer
realms of Kirien, Anares or Earthsea,
Le Guin celebrates the soul and the
human imagination.
From her home in Portland, Le
Guin granted a rare opportunity of
an email interview to share her views
of art, Cannon Beach and her life
among the crows.
Q: Rex Amos tells me I should
start by asking you about crows and
your love of them. Is that a love of
Cannon Beach crows or all crows,
and what do they teach?
Cannon Beach crows. Here in
Portland they have displaced most of
O
Jack Liu/Submitted Photo
Ursula K. Le Guin speaking at the University of Oregon in Eugene in 2013.
the small birds in our neighborhood,
which is disturbing.
But the crows I got to know in
CB I knew personally, and wow,
what personalities!
For years one couple brought up
their annual child in the big spruce
across the street from us. The whole
process was fascinating, from the
spring courtship (much purring and
beak-clattering) of the couple rejoin-
ing after the winter fl ock broke up,
through the silent time when the
infant is very small and vulnerable,
to the noisy time when the infant is
as big as its parents and spends half
the time yelling “Food! Feed me
before I fall out of the nest from star-
vation and die! Aaarghh!” and the
parents yell back reassuringly, “Com-
ing, darling! Hang on!”
Le Guin
celebrates
the soul and
the human
imagination.
Q: In Searoad’s Klatsand, there
is a fi ctional Cannon Beach referred
to in passing. Does Klatsand supple-
ment Cannon Beach on the map or
are they imaginary doppelga ngers?
I mentioned Cannon Beach in
one of the stories so that people
would know that Klatsand is NOT
(quite) CB. Klatsand has a lot of ele-
ments of CB, but it also has bits of
Seaside and Manzanita and Nehalem.
Q: What were your fi rst impres-
sions of Cannon Beach?
Loved it from the start. Way, way
back, in the ’60s. It was a little art-
ists’ hideaway town. The sculptor
Joe Police was mayor. There were
no megamansions owned by out-of-
state millionaires, no big ugly cement
walls on North Beach, it had its own
hardware stores and indie drugstore
and Osborne’s excellent grocery. It
was more self-contained and a good
deal, well, gnarlier.
But it’s still pretty gnarly, thank
goodness.
Q: At what point did you become
aware of the city’s seismic risk, and
how did it impact you?
They’ve been telling us we are
going to fall into the ocean one of
these days, for the last 50 or 60 years.
I believe them.
Q: Do you see metaphor in the
tsunami?
I see total terror.
Q: If Cannon Beach made one
civic move to create a better world,
planet, utopia, what would it be?
I believe that healing a planet or
anything else begins, and often ends,
at home. So, my answer is: Keep
people with a sense of civic responsi-
bility and the local ecology in charge
of the town, people who take the
long view and will stick to their guns
about controlling “development.”
When a town hands itself over to
R ealtors (as Portland has been doing
lately) it begins losing everything
that makes people want to live there.
Q: Last week, Cannon Beach
voted to put a motion adopting inclu-
sivity before the council at their next
meeting. Do you think such a reso-
lution would make sense in Cannon
Beach, and if so what would you like
it to say? If not, what would be a bet-
ter alternative?
I am glad to know that Cannon
Beach is considering adopting an
immigrant inclusivity resolution, and
hope the City Council passes it unan-
imously.
It is unfortunate that our current fed-
eral government, by attempting to
enforce policies that deny the very
principles our r epublic is founded
on, makes such a resolution neces-
sary. But it is good to see that Amer-
icans still refuse to be bullied into
declaring any element of our com-
munities inferior, unwelcome, or ille-
gal — that we still “declare these
truths to be self-evident: that all
men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their c reator with cer-
tain unalienable rights, that among
these rights are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.”
¡Nadie es ilegal!
R.J. Marx is The Daily Astori-
an’s South County reporter and edi-
tor of the Seaside Signal and Cannon
Beach Gazette.
WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY?
100 words for 100 days of Trump
The Daily Astorian
Saturday marks 100 days of
Donald Trump’s presidency.
To mark the occasion,
we’re asking readers to sub-
mit 100 words on the presi-
dent’s fi rst 100 days. Whether
it’s about the man, his policies,
his approach to the offi ce or his
accomplishments, we’d like to
share your take.
Email your thoughts to
news @dailyastorian.com
or
drop them off at the Astoria
offi ce at 949 Exchange St. or
the offi ce in Seaside at 1555
N. Roosevelt. Please include a
phone number and city of res-
idence so we can verify your
identity.
The deadline is Friday at
noon. And be concise — 100
words goes fast.
AP
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