MARCHING
BAND
SWEEPS
AWARDS
REGION/3A
FRIDAY, JANUARY 1, 2016
140th Year, No. 55
One dollar
WINNER OF THE 2015 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
More duii arrests in 2015
Hermiston only local agency to arrest fewer than year before Duii arrests by the numbers
By PHIL WRIGHT
East Oregonian
Arrests for impaired drivers in
2015 took a dive for Hermiston
police but jumped for Pendleton
and Milton-Freewater police and
the Umatilla County Sheriff’s
Of¿ ce.
Hermiston Police Chief Jason
Edmiston reported his depart-
ment made 81 arrests for driving
under the inÀ uence of into[icants
from Jan. 1 through Dec. 20.
During all of 2014, Hermiston
police made 102 arrests.
“I truly have no glaring or
obvious reason for the DUII
arrests being down as we still
receive grant monies for DUII
Spout Springs
Ski Area opens
for the season
By GEORGE PLAVEN
East Oregonian
The gentle slopes near Tollgate
sparkled white on a bright, sunny
Thursday at Spout Springs Ski Area,
where snowboarding instructor
Jacquelyn Waggoner prepared to
give her ¿ rst lesson of the morning.
Waggoner, 15, lives in nearby
Weston and has been coming to
Spout Springs since she was 6. This
is her home resort, she said. This is
the place where she was raised to
board.
“It’s amazing to come up here and
call this place home,” Waggoner said.
For two years, Spout Springs
struggled to open, due to mild
weather and lackluster snow. The
1,400-acre resort managed just one
weekend last season before À urries
turned to rain.
But Old Man Winter came back
with a vengeance in December,
dumping 3 feet of snow at the resort
along Highway 204 near Tollgate.
Spout Springs opened on Dec. 26 and
owner John Murray said people have
come from as far as the Tri-Cities and
Enterprise to play in the powder.
“Opening day was just stunning,”
Murray said. “People seem to be very
happy.”
Spout Springs is the closest
downhill ski area to Pendleton and
Hermiston in the Blue Mountains.
Murray, who runs a dry dock in
Portland, has owned the resort since
1999, though he is currently looking
to sell the property for $1.25 million.
Still, Murray promised to open
this winter if conditions allowed. His
standard cutoff is 30 inches of packed
snow to ensure customers can ski and
ride safely. In 17 seasons, he said he’s
enforcement and will have
people out in that capacity over
the holidays,” Edmiston stated
in a recent email. “Addition-
ally, our traf¿ c stops are up 28
percent (6,439 as compared
to 5,039), which could be an
indicator we are e[periencing
See DUII/8A
Agency
Pendleton
Hermiston
Umatilla County Sheriff
Milton-Freewater
Umatilla
Boardman
Total
2014
91
102
30
16
19
11
269
2015
111
81
42
25
20
11
290
Source: Each individual law enforcement agency
provided its statistics through Dec. 23
Fresh snow for
the new year
See SKI/3A
“I was just completely
thrilled when I heard
it was reopening this
year. I think the snow’s
pretty good.”
— Jake Campbell,
of Summerville
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Kyler Lunny of Pendleton carves an edge while snowboarding Thursday at Spout Springs Ski Area
near Tollgate.
Data
breach
worries
remain
Employment Dept.
computers still
vulnerable a year
after data leak
By HILLARY BORRUD
Capital Bureau
SALEM — Computer
systems at the Oregon
Employment Department
remain vulnerable more
than a year after a major
data breach at the agency,
according to a state audit
released this week.
State employees have
taken steps to tighten the
Employment Department’s
cyber security, but auditors
found that problems remain.
These include a lack of
control and tracking of
which state employees can
access data, and ongoing
security À aws at the state
data center where the
Employment Department
systems are housed.
The data breach at the
Employment Department
in October 2014 affected
more than 800,000 people.
An anonymous tipster
alerted the state that hackers
had accessed information
including names, addresses
and social security numbers
of people who were looking
for work. People who
received
unemployment
insurance also received
notices they might be
affected.
Many of the problems
cited in the audit stem from
the Employment Depart-
ment’s use of mainframe
computer programs from
the 1990s, housed at the
Department of Adminis-
trative Services’ state data
center. The agency started
the process to replace the
systems, which it uses to
collect employment ta[es
and disburse bene¿ ts, but
it will take a decade to
complete, said Legislative
and Public Affairs Manager
Andrea Fogue. By then,
the systems will be at least
30 years old. As a result,
employees have to do a lot
of work manually.
“It is a long, ongoing
process so it’s happening
as quickly as it can,” Fogue
said.
See DATA/8A
Home health director ¿ nds Hermiston µjust right’
By JADE MCDOWELL
East Oregonian
After years of living in Oregon cities
that were too big or too small, Margaret
Rystrom thinks she may have found
her just-right “Goldilocks moment” in
moving to Hermiston.
“I don’t belong in a big city, but I
couldn’t ¿ nd the opportunities I needed
in a little town,” she said.
That feeling is what prompted her to
apply for Good Shepherd Health Care
System’s director of home health. She
moved to Hermiston from Enterprise
and started the job in September.
Rystrom said she and her family
adored Enterprise and its natural beauty.
The decision to move was dif¿ cult, she
said, and one that she and her husband
Brian Walker discussed for months. But
the opportunities for career advance-
ment tend to be limited in a town of
Our New
Neighbors
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1,800 and Rystrom was craving an
opportunity to use her master’s degree
in nursing to greater effect.
Becoming the director of home
health allows her to still spend some
time with patients, but also be able
to think more broadly about ways to
implement evidence-based practices to
improve care.
“The government is trying to reduce
the number of inpatient days and returns
(to the hospital), and this is where home
health is really ¿ lling in the gap,” she
said. “The goal is to keep them at home,
keep them healthy, keep them out of the
See NEIGHBOR/3A
Staff photo by Jade McDowell
Margaret Rystrom, director of home health for Good
Shepherd Health Care System, prefers to stand while working
at her desk in Hermiston.