DailyAstorian.com // WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2018
145TH YEAR, NO. 147
ONE DOLLAR
MEASURE 101
Oregon voters approve health care taxes
Money to finance
Medicaid program
By CLAIRE WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
SALEM — Oregon voters on
Tuesday approved a slate of health
care taxes to help fund Medicaid.
Nearly 62 percent of voters
approved keeping certain taxes on
health insurance premiums, hospi-
tals and managed care organizations,
and about 38 percent voted to over-
turn them, according to preliminary
results posted by the Oregon Secre-
tary of State’s Office.
In Clatsop County, Measure 101
passed 65 percent to 35 percent.
The result lifts significant finan-
cial pressure off state lawmakers
Tsunami
scare an early
morning
wake-up call
as they prepare to enter the short
legislative session that begins in
February.
Rejection of the package would
have meant a $210 million to $320
million loss in state revenue, plus
additional matching funds from
the federal government, that were
anticipated to help the state pay for
Medicaid.
About 960,000 Oregonians are on
Medicaid, which here is called the
Oregon Health Plan.
The campaign pitted public unions
and health care groups against two
Republican state lawmakers who led
the campaign after petitioning to get
certain parts of the 2017 legislation
on the ballot this fall.
The Yes For Healthcare campaign
raised about $3 million more than
the “no” side, according to campaign
finance records.
The “yes” campaign was quick to
celebrate the effort after preliminary
results were posted.
Andy Davidson, president and
CEO of the Oregon Association of
Hospitals and Health Systems, said
the state’s hospitals were “deeply
gratified.”
See MEASURE 101, Page 5A
DROPPING POTS
No local alert was issued
By BRENNA VISSER
The Daily Astorian
After a magnitude 7.9 earthquake in Alaska
prompted a tsunami watch for the Oregon Coast in
the wee hours Tuesday morning, Clatsop County
Emergency Management Director Tiffany Brown
started getting questions about why her office did
not issue a local alert.
A tsunami watch means there is the potential
for a surge to happen but
does not require imme-
diate action. This differs
BE
from a tsunami warning,
which calls for immi-
ALERT
nent evacuation, accord-
Sign up for
ing to the National Oce-
alerts at co.
anic and Atmospheric
clatsop.or.us/
Administration.
em/page/
Confusion about the
clatsopalerts
difference prompted a
flood of emergency calls
to Seaside and Astoria dis-
patch centers. Management at Camp 18 restaurant
on U.S. Highway 26 reported seeing more than 40
cars of people trying to evacuate in their parking
lot at 4 a.m.
Brown is the administrator for the local emer-
gency system, which can send messages to anyone
signed up through ClatsopALERTS! to their land-
lines, cellphones or emails. Many factors, includ-
ing the time of day and severity of the earthquake,
guided her decision not to issue an alert.
Photos by Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Amos Johnson ties crab pots down to a trailer
before they are transported to a fishing boat at
the start of crab season at the Warrenton Marina.
See SCARE, Page 5A
Equipment is loaded onto a fishing boat as crab
season kicked off this week.
James Poulson/Daily Sitka Sentinel
People drive to higher ground early Tuesday
in Sitka, Alaska, after a tsunami threat from a
7.9 magnitude earthquake.
Crab pots are loaded onto a trailer for transport to
a waiting fishing boat.
Fishermen and workers load equipment onto a crab
boat.
URSULA LE GUIN, 1929-2018
Remembering a literary giant
Author’s work
was rooted in
Cannon Beach
By R.J. MARX
and BRENNA VISSER
The Daily Astorian
Euan Monaghan
Ursula K. Le Guin died Tuesday.
Ursula K. Le Guin, a liter-
ary giant who made her home in
Portland and Cannon Beach, died
Tuesday at 88.
The world-famous author was
heralded as a major female voice
in science fiction, but her work
transcended the genre.
Betsy Ayres, of Cannon Beach,
remembered Le Guin as a friend
and inspiration. “Her ability to see
other societies and other worlds
opened up my eyes to different
ways of looking at my own life,”
she said. “She will be greatly
missed.”
She was born Ursula Kroeber
in Berkeley, California, on Oct. 21,
1929, the youngest of four chil-
dren and the only daughter of two
anthropologists, Alfred L. Kroeber
and Theodora Quinn Kroeber.
As a young writer, Le Guin
acutely felt the closed society of
both literary and male-dominated
elites, which stymied her yet also
shaped her own genre-defining
path.
She graduated from Rad-
cliffe College in Massachusetts
in 1951, earned a master’s degree
in romance literature of the Mid-
dle Ages and Renaissance from
Columbia University in New York
in 1952, and won a Fulbright schol-
arship to study in Paris. There she
met her future husband, Charles
Le Guin, who survives her.
Early in her literary career, a
frustrating period of rejections
gave way to a venture into a new
genre.
See LE GUIN, Page 7A