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THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2019
Dispute: Lawsuit could
help other small grocers
Continued from Page A1
Acosta sided with the
argument of McDaniel’s
lawyer, Andrew Tapp, that
he committed no crime
related to dishonesty in an
agreement because he deliv-
ered the drugs as expected.
The judge ordered the agen-
cy’s denial vacated but
did not go as far as Tapp’s
request to reverse the deci-
sion entirely. Instead, he
ordered that the Food and
Nutrition Service review
McDaniel’s
application
again.
Tapp, who specializes in
food stamp-related cases,
has argued that the govern-
ment’s screening of SNAP
retailers is meant to uncover
past fraud and dishonesty
in business, not prior drug
convictions.
“Congress didn’t intend
to bar prior criminal convic-
tions, or they would have
done so,” Tapp said .
If they had, he argued,
than employees at large
businesses like Walmart,
which comprise a large
portion of food stamp
spending, would also face
scrutiny.
Allison Milne, a lawyer
for the federal government,
argued that the Food and
Nutrition Service’s deci-
sion was also based on rep-
utation. McDaniel’s convic-
tions call into question his
reputation, she argued.
But Acosta pointed out
that the drug deal was more
than a decade ago, long
before McDaniel took own-
ership of Astoria Downtown
Market, and did not occur at
the place of business.
The federal government
is more likely to amend its
rules than appeal the case,
Tapp predicted. McDaniel
has said his lawsuit could
help other small grocers
who have been denied under
similar circumstances.
More than 250,000 busi-
nesses are allowed to accept
SNAP benefi ts as of Sept.
30, 2018, the end of the most
recent fi scal year of statis-
tics reported by the USDA.
More than 20,000 retailers
were authorized during the
fi scal year to accept ben-
efi ts. Of the nearly 2,500
that were denied, 101 were
because of business integ-
rity issues.
The ability to honor the
federal benefi ts is key for
McDaniel to serve low-in-
come
customers
and
expand his offerings at the
Commercial Street mar-
ket, downtown’s only gro-
cery source after the Asto-
ria Co+op moved to its new
location at 23rd Street and
Marine Drive.
“I’m ecstatic,” McDan-
iel said. “I hate to see any-
body who’s trying to better
their lives be (stopped) by
the government.”
McDaniel said the
judge’s decision could help
him expand produce and
other grocery options for
people downtown. The
market used to accept food
stamps before he took
ownership.
“Groceries used to be
15% of my sales,” he said.
“Within a month of not hav-
ing food stamps, it dropped
to 5%.”
Wind energy: ‘It’s still very early’
Continued from Page A1
The lease to WPD cov-
ers about 3,600 acres of
timberland south of the
Bradley State Scenic View-
point on U.S. Highway 30,
where a plateau drops off
into hills and agricultural
land along the Columbia
River to the east. It gives
WPD exclusive rights to
generate wind energy on
the property and includes
a 20-year lease extension
that could take the compa-
ny’s presence there through
2085.
“It’s still very early,”
said Jeffrey Wagner, direc-
tor of Portland-based WPD
Wind Projects Inc. “We
have yet to measure the
wind resource on the site,
but we plan to get that
underway, and then con-
tinue evaluating whether
it’s feasible to do a project.”
Successful projects are
about available wind and
proximity to transmission
lines, which can cost $1
million per mile to build,
said Todd Cornett, secre-
tary for the state Energy
Facility Siting Council
overseeing placement of
large renewable projects.
Oregon ranks in the top
10 in wind generation, with
more than 3,000 megawatts
of capacity. As of last year,
there were 34 wind projects
of 10 megawatts or greater
and another 10 facilities
under 10 megawatts.
“The majority of the
wind projects — maybe all
of the wind projects — are
in the mid-Columbia pla-
teau,” Cornett said. “That’s
where there’s a good wind
resource, and that’s where
the Bonneville Power
Administration’s grid is.”
The county’s compre-
hensive plan found sev-
eral suitable sites for wind
power, including Wickiup
Ridge just west of WPD’s
lease. The lease is also in
close proximity to Bonne-
ville Power Administration
transmission lines bring-
ing electricity to the North
Coast and the Wauna Mill,
the county’s largest single
electricity consumer.
The North Coast has
been a proving ground for
potential offshore wind and
wave energy technologies.
But WPD’s project could
be the fi rst land-based wind
project along the Columbia
River west of the Columbia
River Gorge. WPD is also
developing a 750-mega-
watt wind farm on 40,000
acres of dry agricultural
land along the river in Ben-
ton County, Washington,
near Hermiston.
As of next year, wind
projects rated for more than
150 megawatts will be sub-
ject to state jurisdiction.
Those below would fall
under county review . Either
route results in a robust
conditional use permit pro-
cess with reviews of the
wind turbines and the site’s
geology, archaelogy , wild-
life habitat, endangered
species and other factors.
Cornett said there is a
15 0-day clock to get to
a local land use decision
once the application is
deemed complete .
Even if there is suffi -
cient wind and infrastruc-
ture to make a project near
the Wauna Mill feasible,
Wagner cautioned not to
expect anything soon.
“It’s years,” he said of
developing wind projects.
“It’s not unheard of for a
project to take 10 years or
more.”
Claire Withycombe/Oregon Capital Bureau
Gov. Kate Brown speaks at a rally in Salem in favor of a cap-and-trade bill in June.
Cap and trade: New proposal creates
a staggered system to reduce emissions
Continued from Page A1
But it prompted ire from
Senate Republicans, who
eventually fl ed the Capi-
tol to prevent a vote on the
bill. They maintained the
proposal would hurt their
largely rural districts.
House Bill 2020 also
sparked a protest from tim-
ber companies and logging
truck drivers, who spent a
day in June encircling the
Capitol, blowing horns to
exhibit their discontent. The
timber industry would have
been exempt from regulation
under the plan, however.
But Democrats, who fell
short of the votes in the Sen-
ate, are adamant they’ll get a
policy through next year to
address the growing threat
of climate change.
State Sen. Michael Dem-
brow, D-Portland, a leading
advocate for a climate pol-
icy, stressed on Friday that
the concept is “extremely
preliminary,” and that he
hopes another, updated ver-
sion will become public in
about a week.
“It’s very much a work in
progress,” Dembrow said.
‘Staggered system’
The new proposal cre-
ates a staggered system to
reduce carbon emissions.
It provides most polluters
with emissions allowances.
The allowances would scale
back over a matter of years.
The allowances can be
traded among those busi-
nesses covered by the policy
so that fi rms who don’t use
all their allowances could
sell the excess to those that
don’t have enough.
Unlike the earlier pro-
posal, Oregon would be fl y-
ing solo, rather than con-
necting to cap-and-trade
programs in other places.
“The limit, broadly
speaking, is on our state
emissions, and it’s got to
come down each year grad-
ually in order to get to where
we need to be in the future,”
Dembrow said. “And indus-
tries or sectors that can’t be
below that amount will have
to purchase allowances to
continue to emit above that
amount.”
The earlier proposal
would have created a new
state bureaucracy to man-
Hobbs: ‘I refused to get old. I won’t do it’
Continued from Page A1
industrialist Henry Ford, in
logging camps and in a resort
on Lake Superior.
Hobbs returned to Asto-
ria at 15. She and a friend got
a private room and went to
work waiting tables and cook-
ing aboard the Tourist No. 2
ferrying people between Ore-
gon and Washington state.
She remembers some morn-
ings so foggy the ferry would
end up a mile downriver
from the northern landing in
Megler, Washington.
“Megler was a population
of fi ve — three people and
two dogs,” she said.
Hobbs worked in canner-
ies in Uppertown, downtown
and Uniontown. She fol-
lowed her husband, after he
left the U.S. Marine Corps,
to various jobs in Califor-
nia, back to Astoria and later
in Montana. He eventually
found a job at an aluminum
mill in Longview, Washing-
ton, and their family settled
in Clatskanie. Hobbs said
she stopped working by then,
aside from raising three boys
and a girl.
Hobbs, who turns 90 in
August, keeps herself healthy
with trips to the gym, tai chi
and walks. She’s walked
twice across the Asto-
ria Bridge during the Great
Columbia Crossing.
“I may have to look old,
but I refuse to get old,” she
said. “I won’t do it.”
‘WE THINK THAT TRYING TO RUN
THESE HUGE POLICIES THAT’LL
AFFECT EVERY OREGONIAN IN
FIVE WEEKS IS CRAZINESS.’
Senate Republican Leader
Herman Baertschiger Jr., of Grants Pass
age the program. The cur-
rent concept, instead, puts
the oversight role under the
state Department of Envi-
ronmental Quality, Dem-
brow said.
It also takes a different
approach to a major point
of contention last year: its
impact on prices at the gas
pump. Republicans argued
rural Oregonians would feel
the effects of a carbon pol-
icy more acutely because
of the longer distances they
must drive to get to work,
school and to other duties of
everyday life. Fuel suppli-
ers would have faced added
costs under the original pro-
posal that would have been
passed on to consumers.
The new proposal would
instead mean that compa-
nies importing gas into the
state would only adhere to
the emissions system in the
Portland area at fi rst, start-
ing in 2022, and then, three
years later, metro areas with
populations of 30,000 or
more.
“That’s a big change,”
Dembrow said.
While the details aren’t
“quite there yet,” he added,
it’s generally an idea he
supports.
“I think it really does
address a lot of the con-
cerns that we heard that the
bill would put inordinate
costs on our rural residents,”
Dembrow said. “So delay-
ing the implementation for
the most rural parts of the
state is an acknowledgment
that we’re trying to address
those concerns.”
Labor concerns
Dembrow said the cur-
rent concept doesn’t include
what he feels are import-
ant aspects of last year’s
proposal, such as worker
retraining for those who
could be impacted by eco-
nomic changes wrought by a
new climate policy.
The Oregon AFL-CIO, a
federation of unions repre-
senting about 300,000 Ore-
gon workers, issued a rejoin-
der to the draft on Friday.
Graham Trainer, Oregon
AFL-CIO president, said the
draft doesn’t help workers
whose industries could be
affected by a climate policy
and doesn’t direct proceeds
from the policy to creating
“family wage, quality jobs.”
“We have always believed
that workers must be at the
center of policy when debat-
ing how their work could be
impacted, and especially in a
cap-and-invest program that
has the potential to produce
major shifts in Oregon’s
economy,” Trainor said in a
written statement .
“Any climate action that
leaves behind workers and
communities disproportion-
ately impacted by the effects
of climate change is a policy
and a process that should be
rejected,” Trainor said.
Sen. Fred Girod, R-Stay-
ton, considered to be a point
person for Senate Republi-
cans as they negotiate a new
climate policy, couldn’t be
reached for comment .
Sen. Cliff Bentz, R-On-
tario, who is resigning in
January to run for Congress ,
has taken a step back from
his previously front-and-
center role in carbon pol-
icy for Republicans, and
said when reached Friday
that he hadn’t seen the latest
proposal.
Senate
Republican
Leader Herman Baertsch-
iger Jr., of Grants Pass, said
he hasn’t been involved in
the discussions over the pol-
icy, and said he hadn’t got-
ten very far into reading the
60-page proposal Friday.
But he said that it was
“madness” to consider
sweeping climate legislation
during the fi ve-week legis-
lative session. The session
starts Feb. 3.
“We think that trying
to run these huge policies
that’ll affect every Orego-
nian in fi ve weeks is crazi-
ness,” Baertschiger said.
Brad Reed, a spokesman
for Renew Oregon, a coali-
tion of businesses and non-
profi ts pushing for state
policy to address climate
change, emphasized the
concept is an early “starting
point.”
But Reed said the con-
cept is missing key compo-
nents that the group pushed
for last session, and doesn’t
go far enough to make all
major polluters pay or invest
in moving the state to a clean
energy economy.
“I want to stress that we
consider this as where they
will start negotiating,” Reed
said. “This is not a piece of
legislation that the Renew
Oregon coalition would be
able to support.”
The Oregon Capital
Bureau is a collaboration
between EO Media Group,
Pamplin Media Group and
Salem Reporter.
“Gritty to Pretty”
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