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THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MAY 21, 2019
Road work scheduled in Seaside
By R.J. MARX
The Astorian
A contractor working
for the state Department of
Transportation will remove
and replace the traffi c sep-
arator island on U.S. High-
way 101 between 10th
Avenue and 12th Ave-
nue in Seaside beginning
Wednesday.
The project also includes
the installation of temporary
traffi c control.
Concrete pours will take
place at night, with sin-
gle-lane closures from
7 p.m. to 4 a.m. Sunday
night through the follow-
ing Friday. During the day-
time, when demolition takes
place, the travel lanes will
be shifted to accommodate
traffi c from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Monday through the follow-
ing Thursday.
Message signs will be
posted to warn travelers of
the construction and poten-
tial delays. Access for
pedestrians, including those
with disabilities, will be
available through or around
the work zones.
A new center turn lane
from Avenue A to K is also
under design, said Dale
McDowell, Seaside’s public
works director.
A project from Dooley
Bridge to U.S. Highway
26 at the Junction is under-
way, to alleviate some of the
uneven roadway surfaces.
Work will be down during
night hours.
Other road projects in
Seaside include pouring and
repaving the Second Ave-
nue sidewalk near the con-
vention center and “putting
the First Avenue sidewalk
back together,” McDowell
said.
“We’re
scheduling
around different events so
we’re not having too much
commotion,”
McDowell
said.
The Astorian
Delays are expected along Highway 101 in Seaside.
Cap and trade takes signifi cant step toward reality
Bill clears a
committee vote
By AUBREY WIEBER
Oregon Capital Bureau
SALEM — Oregon’s
carbon cap-and-trade pro-
posal passed out of its leg-
islative committee on a par-
ty-line vote Friday, setting
it up as the next landmark
piece of legislation to pass
in the 2019 session.
It’s now one step closer
to the desk of Gov. Kate
Brown, who last week
signed the Student Suc-
cess Act into law. If cap and
trade were to pass as well, it
would give her two signifi -
cant wins within months of
her re election.
The bill now goes to the
Ways and Means Commit-
tee, where it can continue
to be tweaked, though the
committee will look at the
fi nancial aspects of the bill,
not the policy.
House Bill 2020 would
set a 52 million metric ton
cap on greenhouse gas emis-
sions. Companies that pro-
duce at least 25,000 met-
ric tons of emissions per
year would have to pay for
every ton they emit by buy-
ing allowances through an
auction. The proceeds from
those sales would go to
Aubrey Wieber/Oregon Capital Bureau
State Rep. Karin Power, D-Milwaukie, left, and Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, leaders of
the cap-and-trade proposal, speak at a rally outside the Capitol.
highway projects, climate
mitigation projects, rural
and minority communities,
and other programs.
Oregon would join Cali-
fornia as the only U.S. states
to implement cap-and-trade
systems. It’s a journey Ore-
gon lawmakers have been
on for about a decade.
The bill’s passage out
of the Joint C ommittee
on Carbon Reduction was
expected. While similar pro-
posals failed in past years,
Democratic leadership has
been adamant that it’s time
to move forward with an
answer to climate change.
The
proposal
has
received strong criticism
from Republicans and the
business community, but
with Democratic superma-
jorities in both the House
and Senate, it was always
expected to have the votes
to pass. It was also some-
thing Brown campaigned
on.
However, there was a hic-
cup when a deal over an edu-
cation package was reached.
In order to pass a $1 billion-
per-year business tax to fund
education reforms, Demo-
crats agreed to kill a couple
of bills and do a “reset” on
cap-and-trade.
For several days, it wasn’t
clear what that meant. That’s
because the specifi cs were
never hammered out.
Democrats agreed to give
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state Sen. Cliff Bentz, R-On-
tario, a staunch opponent of
the bill, more involvement.
That wasn’t much in evi-
dence Friday. Sen. Michael
Dembrow, D-Portland, and
Rep. Karin Power, D-Mil-
waukie, who co-chaired the
committee, allowed Bentz
and other Republicans to
offer their amendments for
a vote — but all were voted
down along party lines.
Dembrow and Power’s
own amendments passed,
again on a party-line vote.
They were essentially tech-
nical fi xes.
Bentz’s
amendments
were largely to lighten the
burden on his district, which
covers much of sparsely
populated Eastern Oregon.
One proposed amendment
would have excluded Mal-
heur County from the pro-
gram altogether.
Dembrow said while he
respects Bentz’s interest in
protecting constituents, the
bill already does that.
“At the end of the day,
we are going to look back at
this program in 10 years and
say, ‘This is a program that
works for Eastern Oregon,’”
Dembrow said.
Bentz said despite the
hard work the committee
put in, the bill is nowhere
close to ready.
The tension on the
six-Republican, eight-Dem-
ocrat committee was often
palpable. Republicans often
used their committee time
to talk about how the bill
will hurt industry and rural
Oregonians while failing to
make a dent in the global
climate change problem.
Democrats talked about how
Oregon needs to be a leader
in this fi ght and argued that
the state is already danger-
ously behind schedule in
taking action.
Rep.
John
Lively,
D-Springfi eld, said he has
recently been refl ecting on
the dire circumstances while
watching student concerns
at his grandchildren’s ele-
mentary school.
“Unfortunately, I feel
we’ve waited too long,” he
said. “But we have to do
something,”
In the 18 meetings held
on the proposal since Feb-
ruary, the two sides have
failed to fi nd much common
ground.
However, a rare moment
of bipartisan work came
when the committee passed
an accompanying bill from
Rep. David Brock Smith,
R-Port Orford. It would
require public universities
to study sequestration of
carbon through forests and
agriculture. Lively was the
lone “no” vote, though other
Democrats shared concerns
with the bill.
After two hours of vot-
ing on amendments, many
committee members took
turns giving their thoughts
and thanking each other for
the hard work put in. It felt
like the last day of school,
as lawmakers took ideo-
logical shots at each other
while also thanking their
colleagues across the aisle
for putting in the time and
effort.
Then, with a bang of the
gavel from Power, months
of work had a conclusion. It
was on to the next step.
“I’m fi lled with a combi-
nation of pride and exhaus-
tion,” Dembrow said.
We gratefully acknowledge
all those who made
our new facility ready
for business!
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Wadsworth Electric
Millenium Design and Construction
Killion Landscaping
Kelly and Josh Shipley
Carpet Corner
Signature Window Treatments
Stan Brawley
Jack Coffey Construction
Advanced Carpet Care
Kevin Lewis
Mark Biamont
George Willse
John Ulshoeffer
Men and Women of Astoria Rescue Mission
Steve Buckelew Graphic Design
Daniel Slivkoff
Columbia Housewarmers
JP Plumbing Company
Dorrie Caruana - Remax
Jan Johnson
Kyle Rea
Alpha Environmental Services, Inc
Checkpoint Home Inspections, LLC
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