7A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2018
Brown: Wants to increase
Buehler: Would be willing
the number of insured adults to support a carbon tax
Continued from Page 1A
In November, she is up
against a moderate Republi-
can, state Rep. Knute Buehler
of Bend, who she defeated in a
2012 race for secretary of state.
As a Democrat, Brown
enters the race with an advan-
tage among the state’s lib-
eral-leaning electorate. Her
campaign has focused on her
wealth of political experience
beginning in 1991 and has
sought to discredit Buehler’s
claim to support pro-choice
policies.
In response to Buehler’s
outreach to Independents,
nonaffiliated voters and even
Democrats, Brown has high-
lighted the times when she
brought conservatives and
liberals together to address
shared problems. Last year, for
instance, she negotiated with
Republicans to secure their
votes for a $5.3 billion trans-
portation package.
“I’m the only one in the
race that has a track record of
bringing Oregonians together
to tackle difficult issues facing
Oregon,” Brown said during
an editorial board
meet-
ing at Pamplin Media Group
this month. “I’m a consensus
builder and a collaborator. And
that’s the same kind of strate-
gies I’ll use if Oregonians give
me the opportunity to serve as
governor for four more years.”
Here are the specifics on
where she stands on the issues:
Education
One of her top priorities for
another term is to improve the
state’s four-year high school
graduation rate. Only 74.8 per-
cent of high school seniors
earned a diploma in 2016,
making Oregon’s the third
worst on-time graduation rate
in the nation. The first part of
her strategy is to follow the
statute that voters approved
with Measure 98 in 2016.
Brown says she will seek to
nearly double the investment
in high school career and tech-
nical education to $300 mil-
lion in the next biennium. Sec-
ondly, she wants to expand
access to prekindergarten pro-
grams to an additional 10,000
students. She wants to expand
the school year to 180 days.
Finally, she wants to look for
ways to improve teachers’
access to professional develop-
ment and mentoring.
Health care
Another of her priorities
is to increase the number of
insured adults from 94 percent
to 99 percent and insured chil-
dren from over 98 percent to
100 percent.
Housing and
homelessness
Brown has pledged to
request $370 million from
the Legislature for affordable
housing incentives and hous-
ing assistance in the next two
years. Since she became gov-
ernor, lawmakers have allo-
cated $300 million to assist
in building affordable units,
homelessness prevention pro-
grams and rental assistance.
Oregon Housing and Commu-
nity Services has awarded sub-
sidies and tax credits to build
about 15,000 units in the past
three years.
Gun control
Next year, Brown plans to
again introduce legislation to
prohibit transfer of a firearm
for 10 business days if the Ore-
gon State Police is unable to
determine whether the recip-
ient is eligible to receive
the weapon. The proposal is
known as closing the “Charles-
ton loophole.” She supports
raising the legal age from 18 to
21 to purchase an assault rifle
and a ban on bump stocks.
Environment
The governor supports and
her staffers are active in help-
ing to craft legislation to create
what is known as a cap-and-
trade program called “Clean
Energy Jobs.”
Cap-and-trade programs
set an allowance, or a cap,
for the amount of carbon
dioxide industry can emit
free of charge. Any business
that released more than that
amount would be required to
buy credits at auction to off-
set emissions. The proceeds
of those purchases would go
toward investing in projects
aimed at stemming climate
change.
She also was a player in
passing the state’s Low Car-
bon Fuels Standard to reduce
the intensity of carbon in fuel
and the statewide plan to grad-
ually abandon coal-generated
electricity.
Public Employees
Retirement System
Public employers are in
heavy debt over the state’s
generous public retirement
benefits. Brown has spear-
headed some modest changes
to the pension system, such as
incentives for public employ-
ers to pay off debt, but none
so far have made a significant
impact on the state’s $25 bil-
lion unfunded future obliga-
tion to retirees.
Brown said she wants cov-
ered workers to have “skin in
the game,” and noted that after
recent rounds of collective
bargaining, 98 percent of state
workers will pay 6 percent of
their salary for their pension
side accounts. That’s known
as the “employee contribu-
tion,” but had long been paid
by the state.
The Capital Bureau is a
collaboration between EO
Media Group, Pamplin Media
Group and Salem Reporter.
Continued from Page 1A
partisan labels” that have
increasingly polarized the
nation.
“Oregon is hungry for an
independent-minded leader
who is able to close a lot of
these divides … and is a gov-
ernor for everyone no matter
who you are, where you live,
who you love or even how
you are registered to vote,” he
said during a recent editorial
board meeting of the Pamplin
Media Group.
Since his election to the
state House in 2014, Bue-
hler has voted both with and
against his party.
This is the second time he
has challenged Kate Brown
for state office. That last time
they faced off was for secre-
tary of state in 2012, a race
won by the Democrat.
Here are the specifics on
where he stands on the issues:
Education
Buehler released an ambi-
tious outline earlier this year
to boost the state’s public edu-
cation system from bottom
five among the states to the
top five in five years.
Health care
Buehler, an orthopedic
surgeon, has pledged to pro-
tect Oregonians from fed-
eral cuts to the Medicaid pro-
gram, which provides health
care subsidies for low-income
residents, and to advance the
state’s innovative coordinated
care organizations. He said
he wants to integrate men-
tal health care into the Ore-
gon Health Plan — the state’s
version of Medicaid — and in
health care delivered by those
CCOs. He says he supports a
woman’s right to choose but
has been criticized for voting
against the state’s Reproduc-
tive Health Equity Act, which
bans a co-payment for repro-
ductive health care and also
requires the Oregon Health
Plan to provide that care to
undocumented
without charge.
residents,
ble to receive the weapon. The
proposal is known as closing
the “Charleston loophole.”
Housing and
homelessness
Buehler has proposed cre-
ating 4,000 emergency shelter
beds statewide to get home-
less residents off the streets,
partly with state funding and
partly with federal and phil-
anthropic contributions. He
supports measures to fast-
track housing development
and offer property tax abate-
ment to incentivize the con-
struction of affordable units.
He also is a proponent of
tweaks to the state’s land use
laws to make it easier to build
affordable housing in areas
that are now outside the urban
growth boundary.
Gun control
Buehler supports a ban
on bump stocks and raising
the legal age to purchase an
assault rifle from 18 to 21.
In 2017, he voted for
Brown’s legislation to con-
fiscate firearms from domes-
tic abusers.
He voted against a bipar-
tisan bill designed to pre-
vent suicides and other gun
violence by creating a way
to petition the courts to tem-
porarily confiscate a fire-
arm from a family member
or loved one who is at risk of
harming others or themselves.
“ … if you are going to
take away someone’s funda-
mental right in regards to the
Second Amendment, in my
opinion, they need due pro-
cess,” Buehler said. “They
need to have their time in
court, too, to make their case
why they shouldn’t have their
firearm taken from them, and
most other states have that
due process component in the
legislation.”
He also opposed a pro-
posal by Brown to prohibit
the transfer of a firearm for 10
business days if Oregon State
Police are unable to determine
whether the recipient is eligi-
Environment
Buehler opposed a pro-
posed cap-and-trade program
in Oregon earlier this year
but says he would be will-
ing to support a carbon tax to
address climate change.
Cap-and-trade programs
set an allowance, or a cap, for
the amount of carbon diox-
ide industry can emit free-
of-charge. Any business
that released more than that
amount would be required to
buy credits at auction to offset
its emissions. The proceeds
of those purchases would go
toward investing in projects
aimed at stemming climate
change.
Buehler says he opposed
that plan because the revenue
went to the Department of
Environmental Quality rather
than bolstering the state’s
general fund.
He voted for the state’s
Low Carbon Fuels Standard
to reduce the intensity of car-
bon in fuel in 2015 and for a
statewide plan to gradually
abandon coal-generated elec-
tricity in 2016.
Public Employees
Retirement System
Buehler says he would
move the pension program’s
$25 billion in unfunded obli-
gations to retirees to the top of
his agenda.
“I won’t sign any new
spending bills until I have
a PERS reform bill on my
desk,” he said. Reforms he
would like to see would cap
annual payouts to future retir-
ees at $100,000 per year;
require public employees to
contribute to their retirement
fund; and transition the pen-
sion plan to a 401(k) retire-
ment plan.
The Capital Bureau is a
collaboration between EO
Media Group, Pamplin Media
Group and Salem Reporter.
A RE
Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is moving into phase two of a plan to control cormo-
rants on East Sand Island.
Cormorants: Observers have not recorded
any issues with the island colony this year
Continued from Page 1A
The Oregon Department
of Environmental Quality is
reviewing a proposal from
the Army Corps to excavate
portions of the island and
make other changes to further
restrict where the birds can
build nests.
A large Caspian tern col-
ony on the island has long
been managed by limiting the
amount of quality nesting hab-
itat available.
“The whole point of our
phase two activities is to lean
toward a long-term solution
that limits the need for human
presence out there that could
cause dispersal for the birds or
disruption,” said Kris Light-
ner, an environmental special-
ist with the Army Corps.
This year, the Corps’ con-
tractors tried to keep the sea-
sonal double-crested cormo-
rant nesting on one side of a
privacy fence.
The agency also received
a permit to destroy up to 500
double-crested cormorant eggs
this year in an effort to further
reduce the massive colony.
In prior years — over objec-
tions and legal challenges by
environmental and conserva-
tion groups — contractors shot
adult birds.
As of mid-September, the
Army Corps had only taken
three eggs, all from nests built
on the wrong side of the fence.
It is possible the agency
may request another permit
from the U.S. Fish and Wild-
life Service to allow con-
tractors to destroy eggs next
year, too, but the Corps has
not made a firm decision yet.
The Corps typically requests
a renewal of the depredation
permit in January, said Miel
Corbett, a spokesperson for
Fish and Wildlife Service.
Double-crested
cormo-
rants abandoned the island and
their nests in 2016 and 2017 —
years when contractors were
shooting adult birds. These
events prompted the Audubon
Society of Portland to demand
that the Fish and Wildlife Ser-
vice not issue a depredation
permit to the Corps earlier
this year until there could be
a thorough investigation into
why the birds left.
At the time, the Army
Corps blamed bald eagles and
potentially other predators for
the disturbances. But, later,
they also looked into the pos-
sibility that people working on
or around the island as well as
the culling caused the cormo-
rants to leave the island.
“We don’t have any way to
firmly say one specific action
caused the abandonment,”
Lightner said.
Observers on the island
have not recorded any issues
with the double-crested cor-
morant colony this year.
Reports note the progression
from the arrival of cormo-
rants on the island to breed-
ing and nesting behavior and
the appearance of eggs then
chicks.
By mid-August, a mix of
small, younger double-crested
cormorant chicks and larger,
older chicks were seen on the
island.
Another thing the Army
Corps knows for certain is that
contractors monitoring the col-
ony are seeing even more cor-
morants nesting on the Astoria
Bridge.
Cormorants often nest
on the bridge, but observers
counted a population boom
there in 2016 and 2017. Where
people were used to seeing an
average of 75 to 100 nests each
season, they found around 600
at one count in 2016.
“This colony has doubled
or nearly doubled in size every
year since (double-crested cor-
morants) began nesting here
and it looks like that pattern
will continue,” Lightner said.
It is possible the Oregon
Department of Transporta-
tion will have to get a per-
mit to remove nests and eggs
in several years to complete
scheduled maintenance on the
bridge.
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