Page 4A
OPINION
East Oregonian
Friday, January 1, 2016
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Publisher
Managing Editor
JENNINE PERKINSON
TIM TRAINOR
Advertising Director
Opinion Page Editor
OUR VIEW
Tip of the hat;
kick in the pants
A tip of the hat to Jane Hill, for her years of service to Pendleton as a
city councilor.
She is off to a better gig — one that actually pays a livable salary! — with
the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla
Indian Reservation.
We wish her the best in the new job, but
will miss her in Pendleton city government.
She was a reasonable, considered voice on a
council that can sometimes lack them. Hill
often helped get council discussion back on
track after it had gone off the rails.
What is Pendleton’s loss will be the
CTUIR’s gain. And Hill’s move is yet another
sign that the balance of power on local issues
is resting more heavily with the Tribes than it
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appoints someone who can bring to the council a measure of what Hill did
the last few years.
A kick out the door to 2015, and a tip of
the hat to the incoming 2016.
We’ve no complaints about the year that
was, but it’s important to welcome this new
era with open arms.
And there is a lot to look forward to in
2016: a presidential election, Olympics,
spacecraft Juno’s arrival at Jupiter, another
Fourth of July. It’s also a Leap Year, which
we look forward to looking back on fondly.
Here’s to 2016, and hope that the year
offers more tips than kicks.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of Publisher
Kathryn Brown, Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, and Opinion Page Editor Tim Trainor.
Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
OTHER VIEWS
Sad demise of Klamath
water compromise
The (Eugene) Register-Guard
T
he omnibus spending bill that
passed Congress recently was
locomotive big and important
enough to pull forward other pieces of
legislation attached to it. One of those
other bills should have been a Klamath
Basin water agreement. But the Klamath
proposal was left on a siding and may
never get back on track.
A Klamath bill was needed to
implement an agreement reached in
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and environmental
interests, government
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& Light Co., Native
American tribes and
others — 45 parties in
all. These sometimes
warring groups came
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of the Klamath River. It was a seemingly
impossible task, akin to pouring eight
quarts of water from a one-gallon jug.
Astonishingly, the talks succeeded.
The agreement involved a series of
tradeoffs. PP&L agreed to remove four
dams from the Klamath River, as long
as ratepayers and California taxpayers
paid for their demolition. Farmers
pledged to use less water for irrigation
in exchange for a guarantee of minimum
amounts of during droughts. Three of
the four tribes accepted diversions of
water for irrigation, provided that water
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populations. These and other aspects of
the complex deal promised to restore a
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rights and put agriculture on a secure if
reduced footing.
Congressional action was needed
before the deal’s Jan. 1 expiration date.
Congress’ support was never assured —
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have opposed the deal, one of the Indian
tribes never signed on and agricultural
interests were always threatening to
back out. The strongest opposition came
from members of Congress, mostly
Republicans, who fear that dam removal
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domino, resulting in dam removals on
rivers throughout the West.
That fear is misplaced. The Klamath
dams don’t produce much electricity,
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and expensive for PP&L to relicense
the dams. Even without
the Klamath agreement,
the utility would be
considering removal as an
option.
Yet to placate critics of
dam removal, Rep. Greg
Walden, the Republican
who represents the Oregon
portion of the Klamath Basin, offered
a bill three weeks ago that did not
include dam removal. Walden’s bill also
proposed giving 100,000 acres of federal
land to Klamath County in Oregon
and Siskiyou County in California as a
source of timber revenue.
The tribes would not support a bill
that left the dams in place. Democratic
Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley said
a federal land grant would go nowhere
in the Senate. So the omnibus spending
bill passed without Klamath water
legislation attached, leaving no hope of
meeting the Jan. 1 deadline.
The parties ought to extend the
agreement in hopes of congressional
action next year. It’s more likely,
however, that some of them will turn to
the courts, arguing that they have a legal
right to river water claimed by others.
The result, particularly in a dry year, will
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or both. Congress will be to blame for
letting an opportunity slip, and Walden
will be accountable for delivering the
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Walden
helped doom
the project.
OTHER VIEWS
Test your savvy about 2016
T
repeal Obamacare, making it a major
hose of us engaged in columny
theme of the 2016 campaign.
usually settle for writing about
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what has already happened.
lack of insurance made it a growing
But today, let’s not follow the easy
embarrassment to the Democratic
course. Instead, take my quiz of
Party.
what’s to come in the year ahead and
C. Amid evidence of its success,
see if we think alike.
Republican candidates dropped the
1. At the end of 2016, Donald
Trump caused a stir by ...
Nicholas subject.
7. In response to the Black Lives
A. Preparing for his presidential
Kristof
Matter movement ...
inauguration by renaming the White
Comment
A. Princeton University
House “Trump Palace.”
announced that it would rename the
B. Raising funds to renovate the
Woodrow Wilson School and invited bids for
Statue of Liberty so that its arms move,
waving immigrants away.
naming rights. Donald Trump bought them.
C. Actually, no stir at all. After being
B. Not much happened: Attention
crushed in the presidential race, he has been
switched to the presidential race.
quietly trying to repair business relations
C. After the election, Obama announced
with Mexicans, Muslims, women — well,
the formation of a National Truth and
with everybody.
Reconciliation Commission.
2. In the Republican presidential race
8. Chinese-U.S. relations ...
...
A. Were set back after a naval clash in the
A. Ted Cruz built on his Iowa caucuses
South China Sea near the Spratly Islands.
victory to make further gains on Super
B. Deteriorated because of President Xi
Tuesday and win the nomination.
Jinping’s nationalist policies in the South
B. The failure of any candidate to win
China Sea and oppressive human rights
enough delegates led the convention to draft
policies at home.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan.
C. Improved because undetected Chinese
C. Marco Rubio overcame his failure
government hackers wrote glowingly about
to win either Iowa or New Hampshire to
China in the President’s Daily Brief.
narrowly win the nomination.
9. The technological breakthrough of
3. Hillary Clinton ...
2016 was ...
A. Dropped out of the race after a series
A. The Amazon-Uber joint venture to
of scandals, and a last-ditch effort to draft
send a drone to pick you up and carry you to
Joe Biden came too late. Bernie Sanders
your destination.
won the Democratic nomination and became
B. The spread of bloodstream bots that
$PHULFD¶V¿UVWGHPRFUDWLFVRFLDOLVWSUHVLGHQW roam your arteries and veins, looking for
after Ted Cruz split GOP votes with the
cancer cells to destroy.
independent candidacy of Donald Trump.
C. The formation of a company to operate
B. Easily won the Democratic nomination self-driving taxis.
but then lost in November as Sen. Marco
10. The refugee crisis ...
Rubio and his running mate, John Kasich,
A. Ameliorated as Europe guarded its
portrayed her as a crony capitalist whose
borders more tightly.
time had passed.
B. Deteriorated but received less attention
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as Europe bribed Turkey to curb the passage
president.
of refugees to Greece and make the problem
4. In Russia, President Vladimir Putin
less visible.
ended 2016 ...
C. Worsened as hundreds of thousands of
A. By appearing in a television
Iranians, Nigerians, Ethiopians, Afghans and
documentary riding bare-chested across
others left for Germany.
Siberia on a dragon borrowed from “Game
11. Democracy ...
of Thrones.”
A. Was the title of a smash Broadway
B. By dispatching provocateurs to
show about early America by Lin-Manuel
instigate unrest in Estonia, then dispatching
Miranda, who also created “Hamilton.”
troops “to protect Russian lives” there.
B. Retreated in central Africa, as leaders
NATO responded by holding meetings.
of Burundi, Rwanda and Congo all tried to
C. By crushing growing anti-government
cling to power.
demonstrations across Russia.
C. Came to Belarus, often described as
5. President Barack Obama’s 2016
the last dictatorship in Europe.
Syria strategy consisted of ...
ANSWERS: We’ll see in a year how
A. Persuading Sunni Arab countries to
ZHDOOGLG0\FKRLFHIRUWKH¿UVWVL[LV&
battle the Islamic State in conjunction with
for the remainder it’s B. May our hopes be
Kurdish forces.
realized and our fears prove unwarranted.
B. Reluctantly dispatching 10,000 ground And happy New Year to all my readers!
troops into northern Syria to destroy the
Ŷ
Islamic State capital, Raqqa.
Nicholas Kristof grew up on a sheep and
C. Really? You think he has a Syria
cherry farm in Yamhill, Oregon. A columnist
strategy?
for The New York Times since 2001, he won
6. Regarding Obamacare, in 2016 ...
the Pulitzer Prize two times, in 1990 and
A. Republicans voted 23 more times to
2006.
YOUR VIEWS
Measure 11 too costly,
needs to be reformed
I am writing in response to the letter
written about the mess our police departments
are in across this area and, I imagine, across
the state.
The Legislature, or a lot of them, do not
seem concerned with the lack of police,
lack of their equipment, and inability of the
police to be able to cover Pendleton, Milton-
Freewater, Hermiston, etc. They appear to not
be worried over the safety of the citizens of
their districts.
They have shown no interest in cutting
back on prison costs, by reforming Measure
11, and while to many it may sound ridiculous
to cut prison costs by reforming M11, for
police presence we badly need to do it. There
are 4,300 out of over 6,000 inmates that are
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criminal background. That costs $137 million
per year to cover those 4,300.
I am not saying that we should just release
every one of those, but M11 was for repeat
and violent offenders and not all of those
4,300 are violent offenders.
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time offenders with no criminal background
be heard, reviewed, and decided by the
judge, not the District Attorney. The judge
can use M11 if he so chooses, but he can also
determine another sentence if he feels that the
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with no criminal background be given a
second look halfway through their sentence,
and no time or charges can be added.
We need to work on prevention of crime
and education (Oregon pays for more prisons
then education, second in the country for that),
We need more drug and alcohol treatment
centers, good ones — shoving everyone into
prison does not work. There is no rehab in
prison, none.
If even 1,000 were able to be released, after
a thorough review, and on probation, strict,
that would be $32 million per year that could
be utilized to build up our police forces across
the state, education, etc.
I believe Oregonians deserve safety. I am
not soft on crime, I do not want violent and
repeat offenders to be let out. I do want checks
and balances and justice put back into our
system, where the judge makes the decision
— otherwise, why do we have judges?
Barbara Dickerson
Milton-Freewater
LETTERS POLICY
The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues
and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper
reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and
products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must
be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number.
The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send
letters to Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801
or email editor@eastoregonian.com.