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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017
Trump lessens size of two national monuments
Areas include
millions of acres
By CATHERINE
LUCEY and DARLENE
SUPERVILLE
Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY —
President Donald Trump on
Monday took the rare step of
scaling back two sprawling
national monuments in Utah,
declaring that “public lands will
once again be for public use” in
a move cheered by Republi-
can leaders who lobbied him to
undo protections they consid-
ered overly broad.
The decision marks the
first time in a half century that
a president has undone these
types of land protections. Tribal
and environmental groups
oppose the decision and are
expected to go to court in a bid
to stop Trump and Interior Sec-
retary Ryan Zinke.
Trump made the plan offi-
cial during a speech at the State
Capitol, where he signed proc-
lamations to shrink the Bears
Ears and Grand Staircase-Es-
calante national monuments.
Both monuments encompass
millions of acres of land.
State officials said the pro-
tections were overly broad and
closed off the area to energy
development and other access.
Environmental and tribal
groups say the designations
are needed to protect import-
ant archaeological and cultural
resources, especially the more
than 1.3 million-acre Bears
Ears site featuring thousands
of Native American artifacts,
including ancient cliff dwell-
ings and petroglyphs.
Trump argued that the peo-
ple of Utah know best how to
care for their land.
“Some people think that
the natural resources of Utah
AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
President Donald Trump holds up a signed proclamation to shrink the size of Bears Ears
and Grand Staircase Escalante national monuments at the Utah State Capitol Monday
in Salt Lake City.
‘I’ve come to Utah to take a very
historic action to reverse federal
overreach and restore the rights
of this land to your citizens.’
President Donald Trump
should be controlled by a small
handful of very distant bureau-
crats located in Washington,”
Trump said. “And guess what?
They’re wrong.”
Roughly 3,000 demonstra-
tors lined up near the State
Capitol to protest Trump’s
announcement. Some held
signs that said, “Keep your
tiny hands off our public
lands,” and they chanted,
“Lock him up!” A smaller
group gathered in support,
including some who said they
favor potential drilling or
mining there that could cre-
ate jobs. Bears Ears has no oil
or gas, Zinke told reporters,
though Grand Staircase-Es-
calante has coal.
“Your timeless bond with
the outdoors should not be
replaced with the whims of
regulators thousands and
thousands of miles away,”
Trump said. “I’ve come to
Utah to take a very historic
action to reverse federal over-
reach and restore the rights of
this land to your citizens.”
Bears
Ears,
created
last December by Presi-
dent Barack Obama, will be
reduced by about 85 percent,
to 201,876 acres.
Grand Staircase-Escalante,
designated in 1996 by President
Bill Clinton, will be reduced
from nearly 1.9 million acres to
1,003,863 acres.
Both were among a group
of 27 monuments that Trump
ordered Zinke to review this
year.
Zinke accompanied Trump
aboard Air Force One, as did
Utah’s Republican U.S. sen-
ators, Orrin Hatch and Mike
Lee. Hatch and other Utah
Republican leaders pushed
Trump to launch the review,
saying the monuments des-
ignated by the former Dem-
ocratic presidents locked up
too much federal land.
Trump framed the decision
as returning power to the state,
saying, “You know and love
this land the best and you know
the best how to take care of
your land.” He said the decision
would “give back your voice.”
“Public lands will once
again be for public use,” Trump
said to cheers.
Hatch, who introduced
Trump, said that when “you
talk, this president listens” and
that Trump promised to help
him with “federal overreach.”
Patagonia President and
CEO Rose Marcario said the
outdoor-apparel company will
join an expected court fight
against the monument reduction,
which she described as the “larg-
est elimination of protected land
in American history.”
No president has tried to
eliminate a monument, but
some have reduced or redrawn
the boundaries on 18 occa-
sions, according to the National
Park Service. The most recent
instance came in 1963, when
President John F. Kennedy
slightly downsized Bandelier
National Monument in New
Mexico.
Trump’s move against Bears
Ears, covering lands considered
sacred to tribes that long pushed
for protections, marks his latest
affront to Native Americans.
Trump overrode tribal
objections to approve the
Dakota Access and Keystone
XL oil pipelines. He also used
a White House event honoring
Navajo Code Talkers to take a
political jab at Sen. Elizabeth
Warren, a Massachusetts Dem-
ocrat he has nicknamed “Poca-
hontas” for her claim to have
Native American heritage.
“One week ago today,
our Code Talkers were disre-
spected. And one week later, we
get this,” said Navajo Nation
Vice President Jonathan Nez,
referring to the monuments.
Trump signed an execu-
tive order in April directing
Zinke to review the protections,
which Trump is able to upend
under the 1906 Antiquities
Act. The law gives presidents
broad authority to declare fed-
eral lands as monuments and
restrict their use.
Zinke has also recom-
mended to Trump that Neva-
da’s Gold Butte and Oregon’s
Cascade-Siskiyou monuments
be reduced in size, though
details remain unclear. The for-
mer Montana congressman’s
plan would allow logging at a
newly designated monument in
Maine and more grazing, hunt-
ing and fishing at two sites in
New Mexico.
Democrats and environ-
mentalists accuse Trump and
Zinke of engaging in a secre-
tive process aimed at help-
ing industry groups that have
donated to Republican political
campaigns.
“The president’s unprece-
dented and astonishing deci-
sion to shrink the Bears Ears
and Grand Staircase-Escalante
national monuments is based on
faulty information,” Sen. Ron
Wyden, D-Ore., said. “The bat-
tle to safeguard Utah’s national
monuments for all Americans
to enjoy will continue in the
courtroom. The fight must con-
tinue to protect our public lands
across the country, including
the Cascade-Siskiyou National
Monument in southern Ore-
gon, from Trump’s and Zinke’s
erratic and destructive agenda
to restrict access to lands that
belong to all Americans in
order to benefit large corpora-
tions and donors.”
Superville reported from
Washington, D.C. Associated
Press writers Brady McCombs
and Michelle L. Price in Salt Lake
City contributed to this report.
New ordinance: Police can tow noisy cars
Condemnation
power also
granted for
bridge work
By KATIE
FRANKOWICZ
The Daily Astorian
Just when people in busi-
nesses, apartments and artists’
studios near the Commodore
Hotel thought the car alarm
had stopped, it started blaring
again.
It was the end of October
and Astoria police officers
couldn’t reach the out-of-town
owner who had left the car
parked near the hotel for over
24 hours. At the time, city
code didn’t allow police to
tow the car away. Now, with a
new ordinance, they can.
At a meeting Monday
night, the Astoria City Coun-
cil agreed to modify city code
and expand the police depart-
ment’s capacity to tow vehi-
cles and deal with these types
of noise complaints. In addi-
tion to being able to tow the
cars of people arrested for
driving drunk or with a sus-
pended license, police can
now also tow vehicles whose
alarms or horns are “activated
continuously, intermittently or
repeatedly and a police officer
is unable to locate the owner
of the vehicle within 20 min-
utes from the time of arrival at
the vehicle’s location.”
The new ordinance is sim-
ilar to ordinances other cit-
ies have enacted to address
this kind of nuisance, Interim
Police Chief Geoff Spalding
wrote in a memo to the City
Council. Noise complaints
will be prioritized based on
what other calls are coming
in, said Deputy Chief Eric
Halverson. Threats to life and
safety still come first.
In other business, the City
Council:
• Approved a resolution
that will allow City Attorney
Blair Henningsgaard to file
condemnation proceedings
against properties, including
property owned by JB Hold-
ings LLC — developer Joe
Barnes’ company — if an
agreement can’t be reached
over an easement the city
seeks in order to do bridge
work off Seventh Street where
Barnes’ property is located.
The city is in the beginning
stages of a project to replace
short waterfront bridge struc-
tures between Sixth and 11th
Streets along the Columbia
River. The work requires city
staff to obtain easements and
dedication deeds from a vari-
ety of property owners. When
the work is finished, city staff
and crews will either restore
the properties to their previ-
ous conditions or, in the case
of dedication deeds, com-
pensate the property own-
ers for the value of the slivers
of property the city is taking
over.
The City Council met in
executive session to talk with
Henningsgaard and approved
the resolution after returning
to regular session.
• Accepted a bid by Big
River Construction to replen-
ish four slow sand filters at
Astoria’s water supply sys-
tem. Big River’s bid, which at
$1.9 million was the lowest of
the two bids the city received,
came in above the budget for
the project. Public works staff
trimmed the scope of work
to bring the bid down to $1.4
million.
• Approved a resolution by
the Astoria Library Founda-
tion that will help the group
pursue outside individu-
als and organizations with
“deeper pockets” to fund a
renovation of the 50-year-old
building, according to Willis
Van Dusen, president of the
foundation.
The resolution is a “pow-
erful tool highlighting coun-
cil support for a library wor-
thy of the citizens of Astoria,”
wrote Library Director Jimmy
Pearson.
Rising retirement costs drive up college tuition
By CLAIRE
WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
SALEM — Oregon’s pub-
lic universities are devoting
a growing share of spending
to retirement costs, a trend
that factors into rising college
tuition.
Between the 2017 and 2018
fiscal years, public employee
retirement costs for the state’s
public universities grew by
19.6 percent, according to the
Oregon Council of Presidents.
That brings the total amount
that universities will devote to
retirement costs in the 2018
fiscal year to $166 million, or
nearly 10 percent of the uni-
versities’ total education and
general expenditures.
The annual amount univer-
sities pay toward the state’s
Public Employees Retirement
System as a share of overall
payroll is expected to continue
to rise in the next several bud-
get cycles as well.
PERS is faced with obli-
gations to retirees that exceed
the system’s current assets by
about $25.3 billion.
Oregon State University
Oregon’s public pension
unfunded liability is putting
pressure on tuition at the
state’s public universities.
University pension costs
account for nearly 10 per-
cent of their budgets.
Most employee benefits are
generated by investing, and
the system’s funded liability
tanked when the stock market
took a tumble starting in 2008.
So public employers started
having to pay more money to
help the state meet its obliga-
tions to employees.
A certain percentage
increase in retirement costs
doesn’t mean an equivalent
increase in tuition, but officials
say retirement costs and health
benefits are factors that can
drive up undergraduate tuition.
“Combined our cost drivers
create a situation where uni-
versities have to balance the
realities of our state appropria-
tions, increased costs and cuts
in services to students in deter-
mining tuition,” Dana Rich-
ardson, executive director of
the Oregon Council of Pres-
idents, wrote in an email to
the EO Media Group/Pamplin
Capital Bureau.
Undergraduate tuition at
Oregon’s public universi-
ties has increased, on aver-
age, 6 percent, in the past year,
according to the council.
That increase is the merely
the most recent.
Adjusted for inflation, aver-
age tuition and fees increased
by about 38 percent for
in-state residents between the
2005-06 and 2015-16 school
years, according to the state’s
Higher Education Coordinat-
ing Commission.
And tuition is among the
limited funding sources for
universities.
“Community colleges and
K-12 get local property taxes,”
said Brian Fox, vice president
of finance and administra-
tion at the Oregon Institute of
Technology. “For us, it really
is state appropriations and tui-
tion dollars.”
There’s not quick solu-
tion. Much of the $25.3 bil-
lion unfunded liability is taken
up by benefits already earned,
which the Oregon Supreme
Court has said cannot be
rescinded or reduced.
That will continue to put
financial pressure on public
employers, including univer-
sities, in the next several bud-
get cycles — longer if there is
a recession, Fox said.
“It gets really hard to bal-
ance the books when you have
really massive cost increases,”
Fox said. “And you see those
coming, for, you know, we
probably have eight years of
this.”
University
administra-
tors say that they are also cut-
ting costs elsewhere in their
budgets.
Higher education funding
and rising tuition costs were
highlighted in the most recent
legislative session.
Tiffany Boothe/Seaside Aquarium
This sea turtle found by a Fort Stevens ranger was trans-
ported to Oregon Coast Aquarium for rehabilitation.
Ranger finds sea turtle on
Columbia River beach
The Daily Astorian
A 20 to 30 pound juvenile
green sea turtle was found on
the beach Sunday morning
by a ranger from Fort Ste-
vens State Park.
“When we arrived the tur-
tle was quite active, which is
a good sign,” Tiffany Boothe
of the Seaside Aquarium
said. “But knowing that this
poor turtle went through the
Columbia River Bar and
the fact that its shell looked
pretty beat up, we knew that
if this turtle had any chance
of survival it would be a
rough road.”
The turtle was taken to the
Oregon Coast Aquarium in
Newport, one of two licensed
rehabilitation facilities in the
Pacific Northwest for sea tur-
tles. The other facility is the
Seattle Aquarium, which is
rehabbing a turtle found in
early October on the central
Oregon coast.
The Oregon Coast Aquar-
ium is also in the midst of
rehabbing an olive ridley sea
turtle found in Illawco, Wash-
ington, in late November.
Coal terminal backers
file second lawsuit
Associated Press
LONGVIEW, Wash. —
The backers of one of the big-
gest coal terminals in North
America have filed a second
lawsuit against Washing-
ton state over a $680 million
coal export terminal.
Millennium Bulk Ter-
minals-Longview filed the
lawsuit Monday in Thur-
ston County Superior Court
against the state Department
of Ecology.
The lawsuit alleges Ecol-
ogy violated public records
laws by withholding the
basis for its findings in a
key environmental impact
statement.
A county hearing exam-
iner last month relied on that
statement when he denied
two shoreline permits that
Millennium Bulk needs for
its Columbia River coal
dock.
Ecology described 10
adverse impacts from the
coal dock in its report, from
noise pollution to an impact
on tribal resources.
Millennium says the state
didn’t provide the model-
ing data it used to estimate
greenhouse gases and partic-
ulate emissions.
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