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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, APRIL 23, 2018
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
Founded in 1873
JEREMY FELDMAN
Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM
Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
State lacks political will on PERS
O
$2,362
regon has become the national poster child for public pensions gone awry.
A recent New York Times story cast a spotlight on Joseph Robertson, an
eye surgeon who retired as head of the Oregon Health & Science University
last fall and gets a whopping $76,111 per month. More than 2,000 other state retirees
get pensions exceeding $100,000 a year.
Although that number is eye-pop-
tion some Oregonians might raise their
ping, the largess of the Oregon Public
eyebrows about).
Employees Retirement System has been
PERS has an unfunded actuarial lia-
bility of about $22 billion. That’s how
well-documented for years, with a seem-
ingly endless succession of news stories
short the system is of being able to cover
and the resulting editorial outrage.
its projected pension outlays.
Fortunately, that number is also an
Neither the current PERS board and
outlier. The average starting monthly
management, nor most of the current
pension for state employees who retired
politicians, are to blame for the long-ago
in 2015 is $2,362, according to PERS
decisions that led to this fiasco. But Gov.
figures. The thrust of the Times story is
Kate Brown and the 2018 Legislature
that money that could go for teachers,
must bear the responsibility for taking
police officers, firefighters, child-welfare
only tepid steps to reduce PERS’ burden
caseworkers and other public employ-
on more than 900 local governments and
ees instead must be used to prop up the
school districts, as well as state agencies.
bloated PERS system. Oregon’s “expe-
The Legislature did approve Brown’s
rience shows how faulty financial deci-
proposed matching funds to help schools
sions by states can eventually swamp
and other governments pay down their
local communities,” the story said.
PERS liabilities. But unless far more is
Some other states are in worse shape.
done, PERS will gobble increasingly
Oregon stands out because our PERS
larger shares of state, school and local
problems contradict the state’s national
government budgets.
reputation for fiscal discipline (a reputa-
Much harm already has been done.
PERS BY THE NUMBERS
Average starting monthly pension for
employees who retired in 2015
24
Average years of public employment
44%
For 2015 retirees, average percentage of
salary replaced by PERS at retirement
54%
For all PERS retirees during 1990-2015, average
percentage of salary replaced at retirement
134,323
Number of PERS recipients in 2015
213,455
Active, inactive members of PERS in 2015
Source: Oregon Public Employees Retirement
System (bit.ly/PERS-2015)
Consider the public workers whose
jobs became casualties of employers’
needs to put more into PERS. Think
about those employees who didn’t take
vacation or sick days — whose use
would have contributed to overall pro-
ductivity — in order to beef up their final
pensions. Remember Oregon’s abys-
mally short school year and large class
sizes. And on and on.
As the New York Times reported,
“Oregon now has fewer police officers
than in 1970, is losing foster-care work-
ers at an alarming rate and has allowed
earthquake and tsunami preparations to
lapse.”
Solutions exist. Tri-Met, the Portland
area’s regional transit system, righted its
pension system by eventually switch-
ing to defined contributions instead
of defined benefits. The progressive
Portland City Club and other groups also
have put forth reasonable ideas.
The courts have closed off some ave-
nues but not all.
What Oregon lacks is political will
among Gov. Brown and the Legislature’s
Democratic leadership. They pride
themselves on the state’s progressive
reputation.
Maybe Oregon’s tarnished national
reputation will cause them to act.
SOUTHERN EXPOSURE
Lady Gaga slept here! Who knew?
I
Tammy Harris of Moscow, Idaho,
died Feb. 28 at age 55. A found-
ing member of her local Habitat For
Humanity, a certified nurse practitioner
whose family was “of utmost impor-
tance,” she and her husband married in
Cannon Beach in 2007.
Larry and Kathy Morehouse of
Yakima celebrated their 50th wed-
ding anniversary this month in Cannon
Beach — a place they have been visiting
for 45 years, according to the Yakima
Herald-Republic.
’ve added “Cannon Beach” to my list
of news alert search terms, delivering
local, national and international links
to my email inbox. Completely random,
often barely relevant, real news, fake or
otherwise, they nevertheless represent
a mirror on our world we may not
immediately recognize.
The bad and the beautiful
When eight members of the Hart
family were presumed dead after an
SUV hurtled off the side of the moun-
tain in California, a news tie to Can-
non Beach seemed far-fetched, even
unlikely. Both the Oregonian and Bend
Bulletin looped Cannon
Beach into their stories
on the crash — through
Jessica Smith, the
woman who drowned
her toddler in a Can-
non Beach hotel in
2015. “Family annihi-
R.J. MARX lators,” they are called
by criminologists. Does
this mean Cannon Beach will be for-
ever entwined with this clinical subset
of horrors?
Fortunately for the Chamber of Com-
merce and local lodging enterprises, the
good outweighs the bad when receiv-
ing updates from around the country and
around the world.
This headline from the L.A. Times
is resplendent: “Cannon Beach captures
the best of the Oregon Coast.”
San Diego Magazine sent a reporter
to Cannon Beach in 2017, describing
it as “arguably the single most-Insta-
grammed location in Oregon.”
“With boulders rising out of the
waves, tree-covered mountains and jag-
ged cliffs cascading right into the ocean,
this is the Northern Pacific at its finest,”
they enthuse.
No wonder so many Californians
want to move here.
Links pop up for listicles, like one
from Forbes touting “the world’s 50 best
beaches.” Cannon Beach is hanging in
there by a thread at No. 50, but never-
theless it’s on the list, just behind No.
48, Ageeba Beach, Egypt, and No. 49,
Diani Beach, Kenya.
“The Pacific Northwest’s most
majestic creation is Cannon Beach, in
Oregon,” Forbes declared in November.
“Majestic rocks soar far above the pic-
turesque coastline while the watercolor
sky paints the sea in vibrant shades of
blues and teals throughout the day.”
The most beautiful beach in the
world? Whitehaven Beach, Whitsunday
Islands, Australia, says Forbes.
The Thrillist, an online food and life-
style guide, selects Cannon Beach as
“the best small town to visit in Oregon,”
ahead of McMinnville and Carlton.
(Astoria comes in as No. 4).
One day my alerts reported Trip
Advisor’s “16th annual Traveler’s
Choice Awards for the best hotels in
News of the weird
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga and friend as posed on Twitter.
Twitter
You’re as likely to hear about what’s going on in your own back yard from Twit-
ter as you are from your next-door neighbor.
the U.S. for 2018,” bringing our city
into some lofty company. I must say I
do feel some pride to know the Steph-
anie Inn is No. 5, sandwiched between
the Hotel Emma in San Antonio, Texas,
and the Santa Maria Suites in Key West,
Florida.
Family memories
A whole population who have never
lived here consider Cannon Beach part
of their life story, impactful enough to
be included in an obituary or a wedding
announcement.
Consider John Butler Brassfield, who
died March 8, at the age of 95. Accord-
ing to his memorial announcement in
the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, he spent
his early years in Oregon, moving back
to Seattle in 1939.
He served as president of the West
Seattle Monogram Club. He was a golf-
ing member at Meridian Valley Golf and
Country Club, where he shot his age in
his 80s. He and his wife Barbara trav-
eled around the world. And they cel-
ebrated wedding anniversaries at the
Stephanie Inn at Cannon Beach.
On the coast, we’ve read of the fish-
ing boats washed ashore from Japan
subsequent to the 2011 tsunami. One
remains beached at an end of Hug Point.
We received an alert in December
with a new story twist. “Although the
wreck clearly showed the signs of wear
and tear you’d expect, it was also teem-
ing with life, including gooseneck bar-
nacles, which can sell for £90 a plate,”
wrote The Mirror, Britain’s “intelligent
tabloid.” That would be British pounds
sterling or about $128. I was left shak-
ing my head at the innovation of the
writer, who had discovered a completely
new angle to a five-year-old story. Who
would ever think of eating the 7-year-
old barnacles off a boat that had quite
possibly been exposed to radiation after
the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear
reactor?
Those Brits have their finger on the
pulse of Cannon Beach, for sure. It took
this alert from another Brit tabloid, The
Sun, to inform us that we just missed
a visit from Lady Gaga in our own
backyard.
“Lady Gaga is back in the record-
ing studio after health problems made
her axe her latest tour,” wrote The Sun
in early March. “She has teamed up
again with Born This Way and Artpop
producer DJ White Shadow in Cannon
Beach, Oregon — an area with ‘healing
properties.’”
Lady Gaga canceled her last tour due
to fibromyalgia, and the inference is
that Cannon Beach is the Lourdes of the
North Coast. “Back in Malibu after hav-
ing spent some time in Oregon,” Gaga
tweeted.
Links to her Instagram account con-
firm what appears to be the visit, with
pictures of the iconic sea stacks.
If her bassist Jonny Good hadn’t
shared the story with the tabloids, we
would have never known.
I continue to check my alerts, not only
for Cannon Beach and Seaside, which I
cover, but Saugatuck, Michigan, where
my dad lives, and Katonah, New York,
where I lived and worked for a newspaper
for 20-some years. It’s almost like being
there.
R.J. Marx is The Daily Astorian’s South
County reporter and editor of the Seaside
Signal and Cannon Beach Gazette.