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THE ASTORIAN • TuESdAy, FEbRuARy 2, 2021
OPINION
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
DERRICK DePLEDGE
Editor
Founded in 1873
JEREMY FELDMAN
Circulation Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
GUEST COLUMN
A bad start for transparency
2
021 is starting badly as far as
transparency in state government.
A quick recap of just the past
few days:
• The Oregon Health Authority
abruptly announced it no longer would
disclose information about individual
deaths from COVID-19 before Gov.
Kate Brown reversed the decision.
• Thirty-two thousand
vaccine doses destined
for elsewhere in Oregon
were redirected to the
Portland metro area by
the governor’s order, but
officials did not explain
where those doses were
DICK
being taken from.
HUGHES
• A week ago, Brown
held a lengthy press
conference that supposedly was “to
discuss her legislative agenda as out-
lined in her State of the State address,
as well as Oregon’s ongoing response
to COVID-19.” Instead, most of the
time went to Brown and her invited
guests praising her controversial deci-
sion to prioritize vaccinations for
school employees ahead of senior citi-
zens. That consumed so much time that
only three reporters could ask questions
before Brown ended the press confer-
ence. Meanwhile, Brown’s post-State of
the State press conference that had been
scheduled for the previous day had been
canceled “due to scheduling changes
and changes to the legislative calendar
this week.”
• The names, titles and email
addresses for the governor’s staff have
been scrubbed from her office website
because of security concerns. Fortu-
nately, the public index of state agency
employees remains viable (as of this
writing).
• Unlike Washington state and Cali-
fornia, Oregon’s Employment Depart-
ment will not release information about
the number of COVID-19 benefit claims
being investigating for unemployment
fraud or how much has been paid out in
potentially fraudulent benefits.
• Because the Oregon Capitol
remains closed to the public, legisla-
tive leaders promised unparalleled pub-
lic access through technology. That new
system turns out to be geared toward the
technological literate, exacerbating the
divide between the technology haves
and have-nots.
I’ll focus today on that public inter-
action with the 2021 Legislature,
because most of the other issues have
been covered widely in the news media.
Legislative staff put together an
excellent selection of Citizen Engage-
ment resources. However, the technol-
ogy can be challenging, to say the least.
State Sen. Michael Dembrow,
D-Portland, alluded to that in his
Romeo Ceasar
People are encouraged to submit testimony to the state Legislature online because of virus restrictions at the Oregon Capitol.
WRITTEN TESTIMONy CAN bE SENT
THROuGH OLd-FASHIONEd MAIL, OR by
uPLOAdING A PdF OR SubMITTING TEXT
THROuGH AN ONLINE PORTAL. NO LONGER CAN
PEOPLE EMAIL THEIR TESTIMONy, ALTHOuGH
EMAILS MIGHT bE ACCEPTEd IF THERE IS A
PubLIC HEARING ON A TOPIC INSTEAd OF A bILL.
Wednesday evening newsletter. He
chairs the Senate Education Committee,
which conducted a public hearing that
afternoon on reopening public schools.
More than 100 pieces of testimony were
submitted online. However, many peo-
ple who had signed up to speak did not
do so.
“I’m not sure if the problem was
technical or they decided to rely on their
written testimony,” Dembrow wrote. “In
case it’s the former, I decided to sched-
ule a ‘second chance’ hearing for Fri-
day, 3:30 to 5, to give those who had
signed up another chance to testify.”
To testify before a committee, peo-
ple must register in advance. Registra-
tion closes at the start of the meeting,
unlike past years in which the commit-
tee chair often would look around the
room and say, “Is there anyone else here
who wishes to testify?”
The Legislature uses Microsoft
Teams videoconferencing for its virtual
meetings. Testimony also can be given
by phone. Registration is different for
the two methods.
Once a committee arrives at public
testimony on the agenda, people in the
queue are supposed to stop watching
online and instead listen on their phone
or through Microsoft Teams, so they
don’t miss their name being called. That
is because the “live” video streaming on
the Oregon Legislative Information Sys-
tem is more than a few seconds behind.
People may turn on their camera
while testifying, if desired, so others can
see their face. However, unlike Zoom,
Microsoft Teams shows only a few
meeting participants. Brett Hanes, the
interim legislative administrator, says
Microsoft has been asked to fix that.
In addition, some legislators turn off
their computer cameras except when
speaking. The cumulative result is that
people testifying – or anyone watch-
ing online – cannot pick up the visual
clues of legislators’ reactions, includ-
ing whether legislators are paying atten-
tion at all.
Written testimony can be sent
through old-fashioned mail, or by
uploading a PDF or submitting text
through an online portal. No longer can
people email their testimony, although
emails might be accepted if there is a
public hearing on a topic instead of a
bill.
To add to the confusion, you can-
not click on the links listed in commit-
tee agendas in OLIS. Instead, you must
copy and paste that link into a browser.
Or click on the PDF version of the
agenda, which does have hot links.
The bottom line is that find-
ing one’s way can be confusing and
time-consuming.
dick Hughes has been covering the
Oregon political scene since 1976.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Octogenarian wisdom
W
e have had a lot of questions and
concerns in the newspapers about
the slow delivery of the vaccine to states.
The answer is very clear to us oldsters.
For next day delivery, have Amazon.com
ship out this vaccine.
DeLORES MAY RICHARDS
Astoria
Renewed hope
O
n the evening of the inauguration of
Joe Biden as president and Kamala
Harris as vice president, I think I heard
a collective sign of relief. Given the hor-
rendous riots at the U.S. Capitol just two
weeks earlier, there was legitimate concern
for their safety.
What we saw instead was a joyful cel-
ebration of the return of good, smart and
truthful public servants to our federal gov-
ernment, after four years that will go down
as among the worst in our 200-year history,
especially with the pain and many losses of
the pandemic.
We yearn to a return to a sense of nor-
malcy in our lives. What encourages me
is that because of what we have been
through, and what we have seen up close
on our TV screens, our new normal may be
better than before.
For example, we now know that peo-
ple of color were not exaggerating the fear
of their men being stopped by the police.
At the same time, we saw police being bru-
tally attacked by far-right groups. We have
also begun to realize the needs and vulner-
ability of the elderly, whether living alone
or in group settings.
Correcting these, and other long-stand-
ing problems in our society, will take a
lot of hard work and involvement, but I
believe that many of our citizens will be
willing to make the investment of their
time and energy.
Hopefully, future generations will rec-
ognize that at this point in our history, the
people worked to create a more perfect
union.
CAROLYN EADY
Astoria
Scam alert
I
was recently the victim of an email
scam. While I am embarrassed, and the
fault for being duped is entirely mine, I dis-
covered that the Oregon Department of
Justice offers a scam alert network, which,
had I been signed up, might have raised my
level of alert.
The nature of the scam was a request
from someone I considered trustworthy,
whose email account had been hacked and
the address book hijacked. Because the
source was trusted, I suppressed my usual
alarm bells.
I am hoping that this letter might help
others avoid being similarly victimized.
The Scam Alert Network can be found at
bit.ly/ORScamAlert
The Astoria Police Department was very
helpful in this process of filing a complaint
and getting signed on to the scam alert
network.
BARRY PLOTKIN
Astoria
Huge payback
I
’ve got them “Where’s My Vaccination
Blues.” After supporting everything Gov.
Kate Brown has done and said in this last,
very difficult year, I can no longer do so.
Putting the teachers ahead of the old-
sters in the line to get COVID-19 vaccina-
tions looks to me like nothing but a huge
payback to the teachers’ union, the most
powerful backers of her career.
We geezers are already dying like crazy
to get out of this place. We don’t need cal-
lous, hollow platitudes about how valuable
teachers are echoing in our ears as we do
so. Many of us are ex-teachers.
Look out your window, and we’ll be
gone.
JOSEPH WEBB
Astoria
Political civil war
I
have opposed the one-sided conserva-
tive rant of the Rush Limbaugh show
since its beginning, proposing that equal
time be aired for other opinions. Over those
years, I was told that he made money for
the owners, and because he was on daily
for three hours, he had growing numbers of
believers.
In those early days of Rush, if anyone
tried to correct him on fake news or false
statements, he’d claim that he was an enter-
tainer, and nothing else. I chose to not lis-
ten to that type of entertainment, but I do
occasionally turn him on for a few minutes
to get the slant of his day.
Being an optimist, and hopeful that as
a nation we could move beyond that sedi-
tious takeover attempt, I turned him on.
His words said all Democrats were work-
ing to destroy America, that the election
was rigged and Republicans had to oppose
democratic programs. I turned him off.
I sent an email to KAST suggesting that
his generic hateful accusations didn’t need
airing. Tom Freel, the program director at
KAST, wrote back, “That’s his job.” What
Rush and other nationalistic entertainers
are doing further leads us to political civil
war. We should work to be better than that.
SARA MEYER
Astoria