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THE ASTORIAN • TuESdAy, FEbRuARy 8, 2022
OPINION
editor@dailyastorian.com
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GUEST COLUMN
Legislature returns with ‘wacky’ reputation
T
he Oregon Legislature came
back to Salem last week and
quickly fulfilled its increasingly
wacky reputation.
On the opening day of the 2022 ses-
sion, the state House was testy, the Sen-
ate more collegial.
The contentious issue of farm-
worker overtime, which I discussed
in last week’s column, illustrates how
the political mood differs in the Senate
and House. Sponsored
by urban Democrats,
House Bill 4002 resides
in the House Business
and Labor Committee,
chaired by state Rep.
Paul Holvey, D-Eugene.
But let’s start in the
DICK
Senate, where lawmak-
HUGHES
ers got down to business
right away while folks
in the House were milling around.
Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Athena, said that
if overtime is to be mandated for agri-
cultural employees, it must be done
right. He gave a remonstrance — a brief
floor speech — in which he thanked
Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Sa-
lem, for meeting with agricultural pro-
ducers from Hansell’s Senate district
to discuss the issue. Hansell pledged to
work collaboratively toward “victory”
and quoted Courtney:
“It really resonated with me and
the (producers) that you said, ‘When
it comes to legislation, you can have a
win or you can have a victory. A win is
when one party crams something down
and it’s not bipartisan when we end
up with a vote. A victory is when we
work on good policy to bring (people)
together and we have a bill that will be
supported on both sides of the aisle and
also in both chambers.’”
Advocates are using the courts, the
Legislature and the Oregon Bureau of
Labor and Industries to push for agri-
cultural overtime. In the House, rural
Republicans pushed back in their
remonstrances.
Rep. Daniel Bonham, R-The Dalles,
said the latest work group on the topic
fell apart because the advocates were
not motivated to find a legislative solu-
tion. Rep. Shelly Boshart Davis, R-Al-
bany, read an editorial from the Capital
Press and echoed a colleague’s call for
an honest, intellectual conversation.
Gov. Kate Brown gave her final State of the State speech via YouTube.
In a lengthy, heartfelt remonstrance
that covered several topics, Rep. Janelle
Bynum, D-Happy Valley, said farm-
workers deserve better treatment and
vowed that the Legislature would pro-
vide it.
Here are more tidbits from the first
week’s wonders and wackiness:
The State Capitol finally was open to
the public for a legislative session. Sort
of.
For the first time, metal detec-
tors greeted anyone entering the Capi-
tol, although Bonham reportedly came
through a different door and acciden-
tally evaded them.
Masks are required in the Capitol due
to the public health protocols, which
led to disagreements between anti-mask
protesters and Oregon State Police. On
Wednesday, officials disputed media
reports that individuals who claimed
religious exemptions were allowed in
without masks.
An email to the “Capitol Commu-
nity” from Legislative Administra-
tion and the state police said: “There is
no religious exemption to the masking
requirement, and no one claiming solely
such an exemption was permitted to
enter the Capitol.”
A small number of people, however,
requested accommodation under the
Americans with Disabilities Act.
House Republicans questioned the
mask mandate, especially that they had
to wear one even while speaking. The
Oregon Capital Chronicle reported that
Rep. E. Werner Reschke, R-Klamath
Falls, “stood off the House floor without
a mask and popped his head in to vote.
But he avoided the kind of showdown
that ended a December special session,
when Courtney had a Senate Republi-
can escorted from the chamber by (Sen-
ate staff) for not wearing a mask.”
That senator, Dallas Heard, of Rose-
burg, was not in the Senate on opening
day.
The public could watch the open-
ing session from the House gallery. In
the Senate, due to COVID-19 concerns,
Courtney reversed course and closed the
chamber to the public.
For the same reason, legislative com-
mittees are operating remotely via video
conference and phone. The legislative
IT system remained intact, but the Cap-
itol Wi-Fi network used by the public
crashed early in the week.
Rep. Dan Rayfield, D-Corvallis, was
elected House speaker with only one
vote to spare. Democrats and Repub-
licans alike then gave him three stand-
ing ovations, including one after his
poignant speech that detailed his rough
growing up.
Courtney has been giving extensive
media interviews about this being his
final session as Senate president before
retiring. Yet the usually voluble poli-
tician abstained from an opening day
speech.
One sign of the changing of the
guard emerged later in the week when
Courtney removed himself from one
of his longtime passions, the Oregon
State Hospital. He appointed Sen. Kate
Lieber, D-Beaverton, to replace him on
the mental hospital’s advisory board.
The Legislature has so many new
members that two newly appointed sen-
ators lead committees. Sen. Rachel
Armitage, D-Warren, is co-chair of the
Joint Committee on Information Man-
agement and Technology. Sen. Janeen
Sollman, D-Hillsboro, who served in
the House, is co-chair of the General
Government budget panel.
COVID-19 concerns hung over the
Capitol throughout the week. Courtney
canceled the Senate’s second floor ses-
sion, scheduled for Thursday. Two sen-
ators came anyway — Kathleen Taylor,
D-Portland, and Fred Girod, R-Ly-
ons — since the Oregon Constitution
required Courtney to go through the
motions of starting and adjourning the
floor session.
Gov. Kate Brown delivered her final
State of the State speech Thursday live
on YouTube instead of the traditional
appearance before a House chamber
packed with representatives, senators,
judges, past governors, other luminar-
ies, the public and journalists. She also
did not hold a press conference after-
ward, either online or in person, to take
questions.
Brown took the high road in her
half-hour speech, never referring to
her critics. But they tuned in, filling
the accompanying YouTube chat with
often-snarky comments about her mask
mandates and other perceived missteps.
Finally, for a humorous and effective
explanation of this year’s “short” leg-
islative session, check out “Chef Gray-
ber.” Rep. Dacia Grayber, D-Tigard,
created a faux cooking video on Twitter
that explains: “For the long session, we
prefer to slow-cook our bills at a steady
temperature. For the short session, how-
ever, we’ll be using a pressure cooker.”
She demonstrates a recipe that starts
with great ideas and includes a bit of
negotiation, some healthy collaboration,
a bit of legal vetting, a dose of debate
and a dash of compromise.
dick Hughes has been covering the
Oregon political scene since 1976.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Pipe down
R
egarding “Running for governor with
Portland in a nosedive” (The Asto-
rian, Jan. 27): You can say what you want,
but my wife and I go to Portland by train
three or four times a year.
Except for around the Greyhound sta-
tion and a few boarded-up places down-
town, we love it up there, and are plan-
ning on retiring up there in a couple years.
And, it seems like housing prices have
stabilized.
We are of modest means but it looks
like we will now be able to afford a condo
up there. There are even affordable con-
dos in the Pearl District now, although
we may end up near Portland State
University.
Even if you have lived in Portland
before, you don’t now, and maybe you
and the other people outside of Portland
ought to pipe down. Let Portlanders take
care of Portland.
JOHN COLLET
Albany
Degrade
M
any years ago, the city of Asto-
ria decided to buy the old Safeway
parking lot. Concerned community mem-
bers were assured that the lot would be
used to create a downtown community
gathering space.
The members of this community
embraced that vision, and consider-
able private and public resources were
expended in creating the Garden of Surg-
ing Waves.
The space known as “the pit” has been
left as a conspicuous and literal hole in the
ground. Over the years, various proposals
have been made regarding how to best use
this space. The most recent proposition is
what I wish to address in this letter.
The current proposition before the
City Council appears to approve giving
this land to a private developer who will
work with local agencies to create a com-
plex with subsidized housing and perhaps
some office space.
This housing was initially proposed
under the phrase “workforce” housing, but
appears to be unlikely to address the issue
of workforce housing, and is more accu-
rately described as low-income housing.
I am unable to find any engineering,
economic impact, or feasibility studies
related to this proposal. I am concerned
that the proposed use will degrade, rather
than elevate, that block, the Garden of
Surging Waves and the downtown core.
MARY ANN MURK
Astoria
Inaccurate comparisons
We can learn much from studying the
past. Unfortunately, it’s easy to make
inaccurate comparisons to current events,
as a reader did in a recent letter to the edi-
tor (“Desensitized,” Jan. 29).
During this pandemic, the enemy is
COVID-19, not the people working to
protect us and stop it from spreading.
Their mission is to save lives. Vaccines,
masks, treatment and accurate information
exist to protect us.
The Holocaust was genocide. The Ger-
man government’s mission in World War
II was to kill people, Jews especially, and
others, as well.
Several governments around the world,
organizations and individuals, including
our former president, continue to hide the
truth and promote lies about COVID-19.
Their disregard for the well-being of
others mirrors the priorities of dema-
gogues and their accomplices through-
out history. Their mission is to accumulate
wealth and power for themselves, even if
that means sickness and death for others.
Whose mission do you embrace?
My heartfelt thanks to everyone work-
ing to prevent the lethality and spread of
COVID-19, and to everyone following
COVID-19 guidelines to safeguard the
rest of us.
LAURIE CAPLAN
Astoria