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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2018
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
Founded in 1873
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
JEREMY FELDMAN
Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM
Business Manager
Water
under
the bridge
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
Both sides won something at the conclusion Thurs-
day of the state’s case against a Seaside development group
before Tillamook Judge J.S. Bohannon in Clatsop circuit
court.
Judge Bohannon’s ruling, termed the most equitable deci-
sion possible by interested lawyers listening periodically to
the arguments, was as follows:
• Defendants may continue excavating sand in the disputed
beach area but not beyond the marked “500-foot line.”
• Defendants may not lower the beach under the “six-foot
level.”
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago
this week — 2008
75 years ago — 1943
DeLaura Beach. Those are fighting words for some folk.
More and more people along the North Coast are frustrated
that the 423-acre parcel owned by Clatsop County has for 25
years come right to the edge of being sold, and then the deal’s
fallen through.
The frustration comes from the county having a suitor for
the property — one that’s desirable to many folks.
And, last year when the Oregon Parks and Recreation
offered $1.32 million for the property, it almost looked like a
done deal. The plan was to add the parcel to its neighbor, Fort
Stevens State Park. That would have been the perfect groom
for this old-fashioned shotgun wedding.
But the deal hit a snag, and fell off the radar for a while.
Not enough? Looks like there might be a blood feud brew-
ing between the Clatsop County Recreational Lands Planning
Advisory Committee and the Board of Commissioners.
Members of the board directed the committee to give input
into what they’d like to see in the request for proposals.
In essence, it responded, “Naw, not gonna do it.” The cit-
izen committee’s argument is that it’s been studied enough.
KNAPPA — The work of a logger is not for
the faint of heart. There are dangers at every turn
involved in felling a tree at a remote location. How-
ever, there are some experiences that cannot be
found in the forest.
For example, speaking in front of judges armed
with stop watches and taking detailed notes or scal-
ing a tree with a crowd circled around shouting your
name as you try and concentrate on the job at hand
could hardly be considered part of your daily tasks.
For the first time, Knappa High School hosted a
forestry skills competition Thursday with an esti-
mated 150 students from Sweet Home, Scio, Phi-
lomath and Sabin–Schellenberg Center in Clacka-
mas County competing in a variety of physically and
Knappa’s Chad Arnold, 18, sends chips of wood flying
as he quickly ascends one of two towering poles in
the tree climbing competition as Knappa High School
hosted its first forestry skills competition in 2008.
mentally challenging events.
It was Knappa’s second forestry skills competi-
tion in its first year as a club since Jeff Skirvin, a
world champion in lumberjack sports and Clats-
kanie graduate, joined the school to teach art and
forestry.
50 years ago — 1968
SALEM — Atty. Gen. Robert Y. Thornton left today for
Astoria to file suit enjoining a developer from further removal
of beach sand at the Necanicum River.
Thornton left following a telephone conference with
agency heads concerned with natural resources and Gov. Tom
McCall.
The suit will be filed to “find out what rights belong to the
public” in the area being excavated.
Pacific Development Co. has excavated 450,000 cubic
yards of sand as fill for a subdivision at the mouth of the
Necanicum.
The Daily Astorian has obtained confirma-
tion from unidentifiable but highly reliable sources
that Mitsubishi Company, a $500 million Japanese
industrial giant, has joined other sponsors of North-
west Aluminum company as guarantor of the pro-
posed $152 million bond issue to build a plant in
Warrenton.
SEASIDE will be featured in the “Eyes Aloft”
program that will be broadcast Monday at 6 p.m.
over the NBC network, according to a commu-
nication received by Mike Cosovic, chief aircraft
observer for the county. The program is dedicated
to the voluntary aircraft observers.
More than 250,000 civilians were stabilized in their war
industry jobs in Washington and Oregon today, with the priv-
ilege of switching jobs only if they have a certificate of avail-
ability issued by their employers.
The plan was drafted along the lines of procedure already
in force in the shipbuilding industry, at Boeing aircraft com-
pany, and in agriculture, lumber, and non-ferrous metals
industries.
The Astoria Marine Construction company’s
sixth minesweeper slid into the Lewis and Clark
River this week, marking the company’s sec-
ond launching in a week on their second series of
minesweepers.
An urgent call for laborers, carpenters, plumbers, painters
and auto mechanics is being made by the local United States
employment office in connection with building expansion
plans at the Tongue Point Naval Air Base.
A Clatsop County boy, Ted Anderson, son of Mr.
and Mrs. B.C. Anderson of Hammond, was featured
in Captain Eddie Rickenbacker’s thrilling story of
the South Seas in last week’s Life magazine.
Senior nursing students at St. Mary’s hospital are the first
of any school in Oregon to sign 100 percent with the Amer-
ican Red Cross student reserve, Margaret Woodruff, nurs-
ing consultant for Oregon, here from San Francisco revealed
today. These young women will enter the armed forces upon
their graduation.
Different
playbooks
on carbon cap
Medford Mail Tribune, Feb. 4
regon House Speaker Tina Kotek
pulled out a Super Bowl analogy in
calling for lawmakers to push ahead
with an ambitious carbon tax proposal despite
the brief 35-day legislative session.
The Legislature, she said, is like the New
England Patriots, famous for quickly scoring
points when time is short.
“We’re going to work hard on the field,
and we’re going to get that ball across the goal
line,” Kotek said.
The analogy falls apart, however, when you
realize that the House and the Senate, while
both under Democratic control, are operating
with different playbooks.
Senate President Peter Courtney and Major-
ity Leader Ginny Burdick suggested holding
off on passing the cap-and-invest legislation
known as the Clean Energy Jobs Bill until the
full-length 2019 session. They have a point.
The bill would set a cap on greenhouse
gas pollution statewide that would decrease
every year, and establish a price for every
ton of emissions. The state’s biggest pollut-
ers — energy utilities, fossil-fuel corporations
— would be required to hold allowances for
each ton they emit, by reducing their emis-
sions below the cap, purchasing or trading for
allowances or arranging for offsets. The pro-
ceeds, estimated at $700 million a year, would
be spent to promote clean energy projects, train
workers and provide utility bill relief.
That’s not necessarily a bad idea, but it’s
complex legislation to push through in 35
days, and it’s not the only major initiative
on the table. Lawmakers also have vowed to
tackle health care reform, gun control, state
employee retirement changes, bond funding
for Oregon State University’s Cascades cam-
pus in Bend. All in a short session originally
designed to make budget adjustments and
other tweaks that couldn’t wait for the next
long session.
Supporters of the Clean Energy Jobs Bill
worked throughout the 2017 session putting
it together, and have worked since to drum
up support. But without a buy-in from Sen-
ate Democratic leaders on a push to pass it this
session, it could stall. It also would go back on
a deal made with voters when short sessions
were added in 2010.
For years, Oregon did its legislative busi-
ness only in odd-numbered years, passing a
two-year budget and wrangling over every-
thing else in marathon sessions that sometimes
stretched for more than six months. Courtney
was among those lawmakers who urged voters
to allow annual sessions to help the Legisla-
ture be more efficient. The measure that passed
capped short sessions at 35 calendar days and
long sessions at 160 days.
This year, it’s possible the Legislature could
O
face a budget shortfall of $200 million to $300
million because of the federal tax reform bill
passed by Congress, but state economists have
yet to predict precise figures. If that’s the case,
that should be lawmakers’ top priority, and
balancing the budget could get in the way of
many items on the wish list.
Courtney has said Clean Energy Jobs
should pass in 2019, and vowed not to wait
any longer than that, but he fears a divisive
battle this year could “tear us up.”
A last-minute touchdown drive may be
exciting on the football field, but it leaves the
losing team bruised and angry. Rather than
throwing up a hail Mary on cap-and-invest,
lawmakers might be better off listening to
Coach Courtney, taking a knee and going to
overtime in 2019.
Don’t ration
Medicaid
Eugene Register-Guard, Feb. 7
proposal by the Trump administration
to impose lifetime limits on adults’
access to Medicaid coverage is a
recipe for disaster.
Medicaid, which is a joint state and fed-
eral program, provides health care coverage to
low-income and disabled people. Recipients
A
are the working poor, children, the elderly and
people with disabilities. They have no other
option for adequate care.
Oregon’s Medicaid program, which is
called the Oregon Health Plan, covers about
1 million people, 40 percent of whom are
children. (Eligibility for Medicaid is high-
est among children and pregnant women in
Oregon.)
Another 17 percent of the people receiv-
ing Medicaid are elderly and disabled. They
account for a disproportionate share of Med-
icaid costs — 41 percent, according to a study
by the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation.
The vast majority of people receiving Med-
icaid in Oregon are the working poor. Eighty-
one percent of the people on the Oregon
Health Plan are in families with at least one
member who is working. These families just
don’t have access to health care through an
employer and can’t afford to buy it on the pri-
vate market.
Cutting off Medicaid at an arbitrary limit
would result in a sentence of suffering, and
potentially a shortened life span, for people
whose only crime is to be ill and poor.
Some with serious ailments or injuries
would no doubt show up in emergency rooms
in search of relief, as was more common in the
past, creating the double negative of increasing
health care costs for everyone while depriving
these patients of the comprehensive care they
need to become, or stay, healthy.
Setting aside the sheer inhumanity of this, it
makes no economic sense.
People who have no health care coverage
and so resort to hospital emergency rooms as
their only recourse impose higher costs upon
hospitals. By extension, other patients see
increased charges for the services they receive,
and insurance premiums go up as a result.
Rising health care costs are a problem —
locally, statewide and nationally. There have
been increasing calls for a complete over-
haul of the U.S. health care system to contain
costs and improve service, including growing
support for some sort of single-payer system,
which has problems of its own.
There also have been some problems that
need to be cleaned up. For example, Oregon
found last year that tens of thousands of people
who were not eligible for Medicaid, or were no
longer eligible, were receiving it. This needs to
be dealt with, quickly.
But rationing health care to the most vul-
nerable Americans — primarily poor peo-
ple with chronic disabilities and illnesses that
require expensive care — is not the way to
reform health care. It raises the specter of cit-
izens of one of the richest countries in the
world growing sicker, or suffering from wors-
ening disabilities, even dying, because their
government says they have reached the limit of
their health care benefits.