NEW CRAFT BREWERY JOINS LINEUP
DailyAstorian.com // TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2019
147TH YEAR, NO. 19
$1.50
State
workers
object
to PERS
changes
Ask for review by the
Oregon Supreme Court
By CLAIRE WITHYCOMBE
Oregon Capital Bureau
Nicole Bales/The Astorian
Hundreds of people gathered outside the Washington County Courthouse in Hillsboro on Monday to call for an end to
immigration enforcement actions at county courthouses.
Civil liberties activists want to
block ICE from courthouses
An arrest in Clatsop County cited as an example
By NICOLE BALES
The Astorian
H
ILLSBORO — Immigrant rights advocates are looking for
legal and political help to prevent U.S. Immigration and Cus-
toms Enforcement from detaining people at county court-
houses. ICE has a policy that discourages enforcement actions at
sensitive locations such as schools, hospitals and churches. Some in
Congress, including U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley and
U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon, want to codify the policy into
federal law and expand it to apply to courthouses.
The American Civil Liberties
Union of Oregon announced Monday
that it would take legal action against
ICE on behalf of Isidro Andrade-Ta-
folla, a U.S. citizen who was ques-
tioned by ICE outside the Washington
County Courthouse in 2017.
At a rally outside the courthouse
in Hillsboro, the ACLU, faith leaders
and activists called for an end to ICE
detentions at courthouses.
One of the examples cited was the
detention of Fabian Alberto Zamo-
ra-Rodriguez inside the Clatsop
County Courthouse in July, where ICE
agents used what appeared to be pep-
per spray against Zamora-Rodriguez’s
mother, partner and immigrant rights
advocates, who were trying to escort
him away.
Zamora-Rodriguez had appeared
in Circuit Court for a hearing on
charges that he encouraged child sex-
ual abuse.
“Every day, people are being
racially profi led at our courthouses,”
said Ron Werner, a pastor and an orga-
nizer with the Interfaith Movement for
Maria Senaida Perez
Immigration agents took Fabian Alberto
Zamora-Rodriguez into custody at the
Clatsop County Courthouse in July.
MORE INSIDE
New rules to deny green cards
to many legal immigrants
Page A5
See ICE, Page A6
SALEM — Nine public employees
are asking the state’s highest court to
review a new state policy that slashed
their retirement benefi ts.
The workers, including a secre-
tary, a fi refi ghter and a water mechanic,
claim the new law is unconstitutional.
They are asking for what’s called a
direct review of the law by the Oregon
Supreme Court.
About 176,000 people working for
state and local government are part of
the Public Employees Retirement Sys-
tem, known as PERS.
In May, lawmakers passed Senate
Bill 1049, which made a slew of changes
to the way the state pays for retirement
costs. The combined changes were esti-
mated to save the state between $1.2 bil-
lion and $1.8 billion every two years.
The lawsuit challenges two of the
changes contained in the law: a tweak to
a savings plan and a new cap on a num-
ber used to determine retirement bene-
fi ts for each employee.
Oregon public employees get a retire-
ment plan that has two distinct parts: a
basic defi ned-benefi t pension, and a
market-based savings account that’s
similar to a 401(k).
Senate Bill 1049 cuts the amount of
money going to the savings account.
Employees will contribute the same
amount of money to their retirement,
but a greater portion will go to fund pen-
sions. As a result, employees say they
will end up with less money when they
retire.
The tweaks to the savings plan affect
the vast majority of public employees in
the state — workers who make $30,000
a year or more.
The law also caps what’s called fi nal
average salary, or, in simple terms, a
number that the state uses to calculate
each employee’s benefi ts when he or
she retires. The fi nal average salary is
capped at $195,000.
In each generation of hires — there
are three tiers of PERS that depend on
when an employee was hired — that
change could reduce benefi ts for a frac-
tion of 1% of workers.
See PERS, Page A6
‘EVERY DAY, COMMUNITIES ARE LIVING IN FEAR
BECAUSE THEY’RE AFRAID TO DO THEIR BUSINESS AT
COURTHOUSES, WHICH ARE SUPPOSED TO KEEP US SAFE.’
Ron Werner | a pastor and an organizer with the Interfaith Movement for Immigrant Justice
BY THE NUMBERS
176,000
the number of people working for state and
local government who are part of the Public
Employees Retirement System.
An adventure in ports
Fattori could return
as commissioner
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Astorian
udy Fattori, a blue-collar
worker who scraped her way
into offi ce management, didn’t
know much of anything maritime
when she applied for administra-
tive clerk at the Port of Astoria fi ve
years ago.
But after leaving Friday as the
longest-tenured member of the
J
administrative staff, Fattori has
plans of one day running for the
Port Commission .
“I learned more I think in the
fi ve years at the Port than at any
other job in my life,” she said.
Fattori, a native Portlander,
moved to Clatsop County in 1988
with her family. She would peri-
odically drive by the Port and once
chaperoned a child on a fi eld trip
when the USS Missouri docked
in 1998. B ut she knew essentially
nothing about the agency when in
2014 she applied for administra-
tive clerk.
“I had been looking for work
for about a year,” she said. “I took
a chance. I did not believe I would
get into the Port, but they called.”
Fattori has spent time in restau-
rants, sewing factories, retail sto-
ries and other jobs to support her
family, but wanted to work in
offi ces. She was on state assis-
tance when she moved to the
coast, qualifying her for the Jobs
Opportunity and Basic Skills
training program, where she
learned accounting and was even-
tually hired to do billing for a
local company.
See Fattori, Page A6
Edward Stratton/The Astorian
Judy Fattori, the Port of Astoria’s executive assistant for fi ve years, has
gone from knowing nothing about ports to having dreams of one day
joining the governing board.