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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2018
Funding: Councilors
disagreed over
how the city should
account for inflation
Continued from Page 1A
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
A state law signed into effect by Gov. Kate Brown will require grand jury proceedings to be recorded.
Recording: ‘It’s done in a lot of places’
Continued from Page 1A
In more than 30 years as
a prosecutor, Marquis recalls
just a handful of times he’s
pursued a preliminary hearing
rather than a grand jury in fel-
ony cases. Now, both the dis-
trict attorney and Brown, who
will succeed Marquis in Jan-
uary, expect that preliminary
hearings will be requested
more regularly.
“It’s a bad idea, but it’s the
law now.” Marquis said.
Other states do it
The requirements seek to
address a perceived lack of
transparency in the judicial
system, especially with grand
juries. Every other state in the
country, with the exception
of Louisiana, requires grand
juries to be recorded. Civil
rights groups have expressed
support for the law.
“This is doable. It’s done
in a lot of places,” said Kirk
Wintermute, an Astoria crim-
inal defense attorney. “There
are a lot of issues with the jus-
tice system, and this is one of
them.”
The recordings will also
give defense attorneys more
ammunition when cross-ex-
amining the same witnesses
later in cases.
“People often make very
different statements in grand
jury than they do in trial,”
Wintermute said. “Getting
that extra statement under
oath is really important.”
Prosecutors,
however,
have raised alarms. Law
enforcement groups have
joined them, as well as state
Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scap-
poose, and state Rep. Debo-
rah Boone, D-Cannon Beach.
Victims may be less will-
ing to make recorded allega-
tions without a guarantee of
charges being filed, especially
in sex abuse cases where vic-
tims are more reluctant to
come forward against people
they typically know well.
Adding to the complexity
is the cost of implementing
the system. Three counties —
Multnomah, Deschutes and
Jackson — have had the law
in place since March as part
of a pilot program.
The counties recently
requested $924,837 from the
state to help offset the costs of
reviewing transcripts, draft-
ing protective orders to limit
who can access the recordings
and managing equipment,
among other things.
“What we’re really doing
is, literally, creating another
courtroom. I think it’s kind
of absurd to say you have to
operate this as if you were
making $30,000, $40,000 a
year,” Marquis said of having
to train volunteer jurors to use
the equipment.
New costs
Instead, the district attor-
ney’s office will likely opt for
preliminary hearings in about
half of felony cases, Brown
said. The incoming district
attorney will likely still pur-
sue grand jury indictments
in sensitive cases such as sex
abuse.
Due to the inclusion of
defense attorneys in the pro-
cess, the hearings could
lengthen the proceedings and
create scheduling conflicts in
an already heavy caseload for
the county.
“Any kind of workload
that is going to affect the
caseload is a concern,” said
Phillip Lemman, spokesman
for the state Judicial Depart-
ment. “If the district attorneys
are going to create prelimi-
nary hearings, we need to be
prepared to respond to those
things.”
The three counties that
have been part of the pilot
program have used prelim-
inary hearings to varying
degrees so far, and will offer
reports about their progress
over the next few months.
Counties not currently sub-
ject to the law, like Clatsop,
will be watching.
“It really hasn’t been used
widely enough to know if to
know if there are any effi-
ciencies or qualitative differ-
ences,” Lemman said. “We’re
kind of in a state of flux.”
Hospital: New clinic should reduce wait times
Continued from Page 1A
inland to Columbia County,
with an especially large
demand among Medicare and
Medicaid patients, Baxter said.
There’s “not a lot of pri-
mary care clinics, and I think
we’ve built a good medical
group here,” he said. “People
are gaining faith in it, and they
want to come here.”
Every three years, the hospi-
tal releases a community health
needs assessment in partnership
with Providence Seaside Hos-
pital and the Clatsop
the addition of these
County Public Health
providers for this
Department. The 2016
clinic and the ones
assessment found the
working over in War-
renton,” she said.
county was in the bot-
tom fifth of the state in
Another driving
primary care providers
force behind the new
per capita.
clinic is to shorten the
Elizabeth
A recent third-party
2 1/2 to three-week
Erikson
assessment found that
wait times faced by
five more internal medicine new patients waiting to see
and family practitioners will a provider at the Warrenton
be needed by 2020, said Nicole clinic, Williams said.
Williams, the hospital’s chief
Eventually, the clinics in
operating officer.
Astoria and Warrenton will
“We’re almost there with each have four doctors, one
nurse practitioner and a physi-
cian’s assistant seeing patients.
One of the new arrivals at the
Warrenton clinic, Dr. Elizabeth
Erikson from Montana, said she
was drawn to the North Coast
by family ties and by an interest
in being part of the front line in
promoting wellness.
“With Columbia Memorial,
in particular, they sort of started
as more of a hospital with some
specialty clinics,” she said.
“They realized, ‘Oh gosh; we
kind of need more of this foun-
dation of primary care.’”
The change comes amid
debate within the community
about how tourism-restricted
dollars should be used, and
whether the city should
invest more in promotion.
Adjusting the contract
was initially motivated by
the chamber’s request to have
a multiyear contract earlier
this year –– a measure Jim
Paino, the chamber’s execu-
tive director, said makes plan-
ning ad campaigns easier and
more economical.
But the idea to reduce
the actual amount that goes
toward marketing came
during budget season, when
the city was looking for ways
to be more stringent with
transfers out of a shrinking
general fund.
In the past, the city has
fully funded the information
center out of the general fund
at about $160,000, City Man-
ager Bruce St. Denis said.
Using lodging tax dollars
to pay for half of the Visitor
Information Center frees up
money in the general fund for
other city needs, he said.
Capping how much is dis-
tributed to the chamber also
allows the city to start build-
ing a reserve for the promo-
tional fund in the event of an
economic downturn.
“It’s important to have a
rainy day fund, because that’s
when we’ll need more promo-
tion than ever,” St. Denis said.
The
contract
also
addresses other areas of con-
cern the City Council had
with the arrangement, includ-
ing a lack of communication
between the two entities about
certain projects — most nota-
bly the branding guide, which
included a city logo that drew
criticism from some residents
and council members.
“I got the message from
the council that we needed to
have more control over this
money,” St. Denis said. “But
we need to be careful to not
put them in a position where
they can’t succeed.”
The contract now requires
quarterly status reports from
the organization.
“There was not that kind of
interaction in the past,” Paino
said. “I think it’s important
to do this so we’re all on the
same page about where we’re
going.”
Accounting for growth
While the contract was
approved 4-1, city councilors
disagreed over how the city
should account for the costs of
inflation in the coming years.
One option, which was
ultimately adopted, was to
increase payments allocated
to the chamber based on the
consumer price index –– a
percentage that shows the
average change over time in
the prices paid by urban con-
sumers for consumer goods
and services — plus an extra
2 percent each year.
This is an effort to try and
account for rising costs within
the program with a univer-
sally recognized method
to account for inflation, St.
Denis said.
“We didn’t want to have it
stuck at $300,000,” St. Denis
said.
Though the chamber
agreed to the council’s deci-
sion, Paino said the CPI is
not a good marker for infla-
tion for the tourism industry.
The index is based on what
the average consumer would
spend on food and beverages,
housing, clothing, transporta-
tion and more for West Coast
states in general, and there-
fore does not reflect higher
cost-of-living prices found in
tourist destinations like Can-
non Beach.
“The products (Bureau
Labor and Statistics) use
to calculate it… they don’t
include tourism promotion in
their calculation,” Paino said.
City Councilor George
Vetter, the one dissenting vote,
agreed with Paino, and voted
against the contract because
of it. He argued the council
should increase payments to
the chamber to mirror lodging
tax revenue projections from
the city. If the city projects a
6 percent increase in lodging
tax revenue for the next fiscal
year, then the chamber should
get a 6 percent of $300,000
more, as well.
“We are not spending
money here. We are investing
money,” Vetter said. “There’s
no more important investment
than making sure the lodg-
ing tax will stay the same or
go up. That’s our lifeline ... If
you want to get the results you
want in a contract you need
to build in rewards for suc-
cess. And their success is our
success.”
City Councilor Mike
Benefield argued the oppo-
site, advocating that the cham-
ber should present a proposed
budget like other city depart-
ments and have its allocation
based on fixed costs from the
previous year.
Paino said that approach
would be difficult, as the des-
tination marketing organiza-
tion is designed to facilitate its
program based on the set fig-
ure they can expect from the
city.
Although the chamber
still has reservations about
the consequences of a tighter
marketing budget, Paino said
he is ready to move forward
and work with the city.
“The chamber felt and
still believes that we are good
partners with the city and
came to these negotiations
with an attitude of partnership
for the betterment of Can-
non Beach,” Paino wrote in a
statement.