Page 4A
NORTHWEST
East Oregonian
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Brown, lawmakers have done little to boost transparency
By HILLARY BORRUD
and PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
SALEM — A year after Gov.
John Kitzhaber resigned under the
cloud of a federal criminal investi-
gation, there is waning momentum
for government transparency re-
forms in the state capital.
Federal prosecutors launched
the investigation after news reports
revealed Kitzhaber¶s ¿ancpe &ylvia
Hayes since 2011 worked as a paid
consultant for groups that wanted to
inÀuence state policies. The news
also prompted some people to call
for government to operate more
openly.
After succeeding Kitzhaber as
governor, Kate Brown pledged to
spearhead legislation to strengthen
government ethics and public re-
cords laws.
“It was clear that transparency
was not a priority in the prior ad-
ministration,” Brown said in No-
vember. “I changed that my ¿rst
day on the job and every day since.
Since I was sworn in, my team and I
have worked to increase the level of
transparency in state government.”
Yet 13 months later, Brown and
lawmakers have done little to in-
crease transparency.
Lawmakers have twice failed to
pass legislation that would set lim-
its on the time and fees for respond-
ing to public records requests. And
groups that shape state policies and
laws, including political party cau-
cuses and work groups that advise
the governor and Legislature, rou-
tinely meet in secret.
Jim Moore, a political science
professor and director of the Tom
Mc&all &enter for 3olicy Innova-
tion at 3aci¿c 8niversity, said the
situation was not surprising, given
the trend in Oregon over the last 40
years has been to whittle away at
the state’s open meetings and public
records laws, effectively reducing
transparency.
“Occasionally, there will be a
blip kind of the other way,” Moore
said. “You would think that the
Kitzhaber thing would cause that
reaction, but it really didn’t.”
Journalists’ inquiries late in 2014
into Hayes’ clients and the extent
of her inÀuence on state policies
caused a backlog of public records
requests at the Governor’s Of¿ce.
It took months for Kitzhaber’s staff
to release some of the records, and
other requests remained unful¿lled
Mateusz Perkowski/EO Media Group
Members of Oregon’s House of Representatives are shown on March 3. Neither the Legislature or
Gov. Kate Brown did much in the recent session to bolster government transparency.
when Kitzhaber resigned in Febru-
ary 2015. There is no deadline to
release records under Oregon law.
The public records backlog
prompted proposals to improve the
state’s public records law.
Brown introduced three bills in
2015 as part of her ethics reform
and transparency agenda. The bills,
all of which passed the Legislature,
were narrowly targeted at some
of the issues in the Kitzhaber and
Hayes scandal and did not make
any sweeping changes to govern-
ment transparency.
One bill required an audit of
how state agencies handled public
records requests.
At the same time, a broad public
records bill introduced by Rep. Julie
3arrish, R-:est Linn, died due to
lack of support. 3arrish’s bill would
have required government of¿cials
who conducted public business us-
ing private email accounts, as well
as social media and cell phone texts,
to hand over a copy of those records
to the government for archiving
within 30 days.
Top state of¿cials, including
Kitzhaber and his staff, Hayes and
former Gov. Ted Kulongoski all
used private email accounts to dis-
cuss state business in recent years.
The legislation also would have
required governments to respond to
public records requests within sev-
en days and to waive all fees if em-
ployees were unable to release the
record within three weeks.
Rep. Val Hoyle, D-Eugene, who
at the time was House Democratic
Leader and chair of the committee
where the bill died, said it stalled
because city and county govern-
ments opposed the deadlines and
fee limits in the bill. Hoyle said
she and other lawmakers still want-
ed public records reform, but they
decided they needed more time to
reach consensus with local govern-
ments.
Hoyle formed a bipartisan work
group in May to discuss ideas for
2016. Those meetings, like other
legislative work groups, were closed
to the public and required no pub-
lic notice. Hoyle’s group proposed
House Bill 4130, which would have
required governments to ful¿ll pub-
lic records requests within 30 days
or provide an explanation for why
the records are delayed.
Even with compromises and bi-
partisan support, the proposal ulti-
mately died in committee. As law-
makers prepared to wrap up work at
the end of February, the state Senate
already had a backlog of 80 bills it
was trying to consider before the
end of the session March 3, said
Robin Maxey, Senate 3resident 3e-
ter &ourtney’s spokesman.
Brown had also planned to in-
troduce reforms in the 2016 short
session, based in part on the audit
of state agencies’ handling of public
records requests.
The Secretary of State’s Of¿ce
released the audit in November.
Auditors found that the nine state
agencies they examined general-
ly furnished records in two weeks
or less for routine requests, while
more complicated requests could
take more than 265 days and result
in high and inconsistent fees.
Brown ordered state agencies to
develop standardized public records
fees and procedures, and said she
planned to offer legislation in 2016
“to establish a neutral third party
entity to mediate disputes regarding
public records between requesters
and state agencies.” Brown’s com-
munications director described the
job as an ombudsman.
Brown did not follow through
on that plan. Instead, she asked law-
makers to approve two temporary
positions at the Department of Ad-
ministrative Services to help pro-
cess public records requests. Nei-
ther position has duties involving
helping the public when an agency
denies a public records request.
Kristen Grainger, Brown’s
spokeswoman, said the Governor’s
Of¿ce determined “there was a
more pressing need for technical
assistance helping agencies respond
to requests for electronic records.”
Brown plans to propose legislation
for a public records ombudsman in
2017, Grainger said.
Brown has also committed to
increasing day-to-day transparency
in the Governor’s Of¿ce, for exam-
ple by ordering her staff not to use
private email accounts to conduct
public business.
At the same time, Brown’s of¿ce
has adopted unwritten policies that
preclude the media from speaking
to her advisers and limit the public’s
ability to observe policymaking.
Grainger, Brown’s communi-
cations director, recently told the
EO Media Group3amplin Media
Group &apital Bureau that only she
and the governor’s press secretaries
are authorized to speak to the me-
dia. Since 2015, several of Brown’s
advisers have declined to discuss
their work on issues ranging from
transportation to energy with the
bureau.
Brown also has a number of
work groups and advisory commit-
tees that meet shrouded from public
view. Brown’s legal counsel ad-
vised her that a group that will make
recommendations to the governor,
unlike a legislative committee or
city council, is exempt from public
meetings law, according to &hris
3air, a press secretary in Brown’s
of¿ce. As a result, the governor has
chosen to have most of these groups
meet in private.
The Legislature employs similar
practices, with lawmakers making
critical decisions about legislation
in closed-door party caucus meet-
ings. As a result, the discussions
that take place in committees and
on the chamber Àoors are often pre-
determined.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s a Re-
publican Legislature or a Demo-
cratic Legislature, that pattern is
the same,” said Moore. “That’s
one reason I don’t go to the Legis-
lature anymore, because the major
things they do are decided in cau-
cus. I don’t get to go to the caucus,
so what’s the point? In fact, many
of the committee hearings are pre-
rigged in the caucuses.”
— The Capital Bureau is a
collaboration between EO Media
Group and Pamplin Media Group.
NATION
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
East Oregonian
Page 5A
In :est, region of guns and suicide, outreach to curb deaths
“In the past, people shut up
about this issue because ... they
thought it meant gun control.”
Associated Press
MONTROSE, &olorado
— Keith &arey is a gunsmith
in Montrose, a town with a
frontier Àavor set amid the
mesas of western &olora-
do. He’s a staunch, though
soft-spoken, defender of the
right to bear arms.
Yet now he’s a willing
recruit in a Àedgling effort
to see if the gun communi-
ty itself — sellers and own-
ers of ¿rearms, operators of
shooting ranges — can help
&olorado and other :estern
states reduce their highest-in-
the-nation suicide rates.
“Suicide is a tragedy no
matter how it’s done,” said
&arey, whose adult daughter
killed herself with a mix of
alcohol and antidepressants
a few years ago on the East
&oast. However, he sees the
logic in trying gun-specif-
ic prevention strategies in
towns like Montrose, where
guns are an integral part of
daily life.
“It’s very expedient for
people to commit suicide by
a ¿rearm, without too much
forethought,” &arey said.
“8nfortunately, it’s generally
effective.”
At the urging of a local
police commander, &arey
agreed last year to partici-
pate in the Gun Shop 3roject,
a state-funded program in
which gun sellers and range
operators in ¿ve western &ol-
orado counties were invited
to help raise awareness about
suicide. It’s a tentative but
promising bid to open up a
conversation on a topic that’s
been virtually taboo in these
:estern states the intersec-
tion of guns and suicide.
&arey’s shop counter now
displays wallet-sized cards
with information about a
suicide hotline. A poster by
the door offers advice about
ways to keep guns away
from friends or relatives at
risk of killing themselves.
&arey says some custom-
ers take materials home, or
ask a few questions. The con-
versations tend to be brief.
“Suicide is one of those
morose subjects that a lot of
us don’t want to talk about,”
— Catherine Barber,
Suicide prevention expert, Harvard
AP Photo/Brennan Linsley
In this Feb. 23, photo, Police Commander Keith Caddy, right, sits with Gun Depot
shop manager Bobby Gray in Montrose Colo, where suicide rates are among the
highest in the nation. Caddy has been around guns since childhood as a hunter,
lawman, firearms instructor and licensed gun seller. Now he’s doing outreach for
the Gun Shop Project, and most of the businesses he has visited agreed to display
the suicide-awareness materials once they were assured it wasn’t a gun-takeaway
program in disguise.
he said. “But it’s all too com-
mon. I believe any method of
suicide prevention is worth a
good hard try.”
———
Across the 8.S., suicides
account for nearly two-thirds
of all gun deaths — far out-
numbering gun homicides.
In 2014, according to federal
data, there were 33,5 ¿re-
arm deaths; 21,334 of them
were suicides. That ¿gure
represents about half of all
suicides that year; but in sev-
eral western &olorado coun-
ties, and in some other Rocky
Mountain states with high
gun-ownership rates, more
than 60 percent of suicides
involve ¿rearms.
Along with Alaska, the
states with the highest rates
form a contiguous bloc —
Montana, Idaho, :yoming,
Nevada, &olorado, 8tah
and New Mexico. All have
age-adjusted suicide rates at
least 50 percent higher than
the national rate of 12.93 sui-
cides per 100,000 people.
Between 2000 and 2014,
gun suicides increased by
more than 51 percent in those
states, while rising by less
than 30 percent nationwide.
Theories abound as to
why such high rates. &om-
monly cited factors include
the isolation and economic
hard times in rural areas of
these states. There’s also be-
lief that a self-reliant frontier
mindset deters some :est-
erners from seeking help
when depression sinks in.
“:e embrace the cowboy
mentality,” says Jarrod Hind-
man, director of &olorado’s
Of¿ce of Suicide 3revention.
“If you’re suffering, suck it
up, pick yourself up by your
boot straps. But that doesn’t
work very well if you’re sui-
cidal.”
8nderlying all these ex-
planations is the fact that ¿re-
arms are more ubiquitous in
the :est than in most other
parts of the country.
&atherine Barber, a sui-
cide prevention expert at
the Harvard School of 3ub-
lic Health, says residents of
gun-owning homes are at
higher risk of suicide than
other people — simply be-
cause a suicide attempt is
more likely to involve a
gun. According to federal
estimates, suicide attempts
involving ¿rearms succeed
85 percent of the time, com-
pared to less than 10 percent
of attempts involving drug
overdoses and several other
methods.
“It’s not that gun owners
are more suicidal,” Barber ar-
gues. “It’s that they’re more
likely to die in the event that
they become suicidal, be-
cause they are using a gun.”
&olorado’s Gun Shop
3roject is modeled after a
program pioneered in New
Hampshire. Barber helped
design the initiative and
hopes collaboration on ¿re-
arm suicide prevention can
spread nationwide.
“In the past, people shut
up about this issue because
they thought raising it meant
raising the issue of gun con-
trol,” she said. “It makes so
much more sense to look at
gun owners as part of the
solution.”
Hindman said that when
he joined the state health
department in 2004, talking
about the role of ¿rearms in
suicide was discouraged. It’s
still a sensitive topic, he said,
but there is some funding for
gun-speci¿c initiatives.
In Montrose, 3olice &om-
mander Keith &addy has been
around guns since childhood.
Now he’s doing outreach for
the Gun Shop 3roject — and
most of the businesses he
has visited agreed to display
suicide-awareness materials
once they were assured it
wasn’t a gun-takeaway pro-
gram in disguise.
“It’s my duty to protect
the community I serve,” &ad-
dy said. “If I can go out there
and spend a little time talking
to the gun shops, maybe the
reward will be saving some-
one’s life.”
———
Suicide presents a distinc-
tive challenge for shooting
ranges Occasionally, some-
one will rent a gun, then use
it to commit suicide.
At the Family Shooting
&enter in Denver, there have
been three such incidents,
including two since Doug
Hamilton began managing
the range in 2004. Hamilton
is open to letting his staff get
suicide-prevention training,
though he’s unsure it would
help. Those who killed them-
selves at his range exhibited
no signs of stress beforehand.
“Suicide prevention bro-
chures aren’t something that
anyone’s going to pick up
who has come out to our
range to kill themselves,” he
said.
Such challenges are fa-
miliar to Dr. Michael Victo-
roff, a Denver-area physician
whose leisure-time passion
is competitive shooting. He
was at the Family Shooting
&enter in Denver when one
suicide occurred there. Victo-
roff belongs to the American
Medical Association and the
National RiÀe Association,
and has qualms about both.
“The medical community
has been content not to know
anything about gun culture
and gun safety,” said Victo-
roff. As for the NRA, he’d
like to see suicide prevention
highlighted in its training
materials.
Over the years, ¿re-
arm suicide has not been
a high-pro¿le issue for the
NRA; it worries that the top-
ic might be used to advance a
gun-control agenda. Though
the NRA has no position on
&olorado’s Gun Shop 3roj-
ect, it has endorsed a bill in
:ashington state encourag-
ing gun dealers to participate
in suicide prevention efforts,
said spokeswoman Jennifer
Baker.
———
Throughout
&olorado,
prevention efforts are fueled
to a large degree by peo-
ple who’ve lost friends and
loved ones to suicide.
&indy Haerle, a teacher
and board member of the
Grand Junction-based :est-
ern &olorado Suicide 3re-
vention Foundation, grew up
in “a real gun family” in Sal-
ida, &olorado, and had her
own gun by the time she was
5. But she gave up shooting
after her brother John killed
himself with a pistol in 1980
at age 29.
“Nothing is as ¿nal as a
gunshot,” said Haerle, who
was 13 at the time.
In the northwest counties
of Routt and Moffatt, the
Gun Shop 3roject is coordi-
nated by Meghan Francone,
who constantly reassures
gun owners and sellers that
the outreach program poses
no threat. She got involved
after her 15-year-old brother-
in-law fatally shot himself in
2010.
“Keep your guns. Keep
a dozen. I don’t care. But
please make sure they are
locked and out of the reach
of someone who’s in crisis,”
she said. “I’m not asking any
gun shop owner to be a psy-
chologist. I’m asking them to
be their brother’s keeper.”
Spring Cleaning?
Recycle at
“The Blues and Beyond”
Pendleton Book Co.
New photography by
Debbie McIntosh through April
125 S. Main St., Pendleton, OR 97801
(541) 276-9292 • penbkco@eonet.net
36 SW Court Ave, Pendleton • 541-276-3617
Mon - Fri 10 am - 5 pm, Sat 10 am -2 pm
Safeco Insurance • Allstate
Mutual of Enumclaw • Chubb • Travelers
121 S. Main, Pendleton, OR
541-276-1418 • 800-303-0419
• Farm • Business • Home
• Ranch • Auto
• Life
Main Street Service
Where One Call
Insures it all
• Health
• Crop
www.bisnett.com
Office locations: Pendleton • Baker City • Milton-Freewater
• Medford • John Day • Hood River • Lake Oswego
• Ketchum, ID • Scottsdale, AZ
45926DS
NATIONAL SMALL BUSINESS WEEK
MAY 1ST TO 7TH
FREE WORKSHOPS FOR CHAMBER MEMBERS!
May 2nd • Facebook Level 1
May 3rd • Google Business & Map Listing
May 5th • Facebook Level 2
May 6th • Google Business & Map Listing
All Classes Being at 8:30 a.m. the
Pendleton Chamber of Commerce Office.
Max 6 per class: RSVP to (541) 276-7411.
Tues - Fri 9am - 5:30pm
Saturday & Evening by Appointment
311 SW 6th • Pendleton
541-278-8099
Pendleton Area “Listen to Her” Town Hall
Wednesday, April 27, 2016 from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m.
Blue Mountain Community College
Science & Technology Room 200
2411 NW Carden Ave, Pendleton, Oregon
We are Looking for Volunteers to Join the Chamber’s
Welcome Posse!
Call (541) 276-7411 for more info!
23+
Joe Meling, Owner
201 SE Court Ave, Pendleton
(360) 600-6038 • melingjoe@yahoo.com
On Facebook as “23plus”
RAYMOND JAMES
FINANCIAL SERVICES, INC.
Member FINRA/SIPC
Serving Eastern Oregon & Washington for over 24 years
Alder Family Dental
Graham McEntire, DDS, Partner/Owner
809 SW Court Ave, Pendleton
(541) 276-3241
Our Professionals Offer:
• Retirement Cash Flow Planning • Consolidating Assets
• Investment Management • IRA’s ~ Roth IRA’s ~ 403b’s ~ 401K’s
John Cimmiyotti ~ Branch Manager
305 SW Dorion Ave. ~ Pendleton, OR 97801
8797 W. Gage Blvd., Ste. C-103 ~ Kennewick, WA 99336
541-276-9184 • 800-276-9184
Oregon Grain Growers Brand Distillery
Rodney Bullington, Proprietor
511 SE Court Ave, Pendleton
(541) 276-0070 • rodney@oregongrain.com
www.oregongrain.com
On Facebook as “oregongrain”
Web Site: www.RaymondJames.com/JohnCimmiyotti
RAY
1980
Premier Jets, Inc.
Roger B. Kelsay, President
2140 NE 25th Ave, Hillsboro, OR 97124
(5093) 640-2927 • (800) 635-8583
operations@premierjets.com
www.lifeguardairambulance.com
On Facebook as “Premier Jets/Lifeguard Air Ambulance”
36
years
2016
249 S. Main, Pendleton • 541-276-6988
Cari Broker
www.deansathletic.com
Visit the finest
Thai Restaurant in
the West.
Located in the
shadow of the
County Court House
The Speakeasy Salon
Katie Jones, Owner
215 SW 10th St, Pendleton
(541) 969-2654 • virnochek@gmail.com
www.thespeakeasysalon.com
On Facebook as “SpeakeasySalon”
Open 7 days a week • 541-278-4182
210 SE 5th Street, Pendleton, OR 97801
thaicrystalrestaurant.com
$POUBDU1FOEMFUPO(SBJO
(SPXFST*ODGPSBMMZPVS
BHSJDVMUVSBMUSBOTQPSUBUJPO
BHSJDVMUVSBMBOESFTJEFOUJBM
FOFSHZBOEHSBJONBSLFUJOH
OFFETUPEBZ
Elite Guns & Bows , LLC
213 S.E. 2nd St., Pendleton, OR 97801
P 541-276-1243 • F 541-276-1253
For all your
shooting needs &
Gun Smithing - Reloading
Im ag ine Better H ealth ...
PENDLETON GRAIN GROWERS, INC.
pggcountry.com
(800) 422-7611
2801 S T . A NTHONY W AY , P ENDLETON , OR 97801
We aim for the
lowest prices
www.elitegunsandbows.com
• Highest quality
• Excellent product knowledge
• Friendly Service
Advertise in
this space,
Call Dayle Stinson
541-966-0806
dstinston@eastoregonian.com