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DALE McDONALD
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KICKS
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THE STREETS
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81/57
TUESDAY, JULY 19, 2016
140th Year, No. 197
One dollar
WINNER OF THE 2015 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
Insurers
pull out,
premiums
to go up
Umatilla County residents
face more limited choices
for health insurance
By ALEXA LOUGEE
East Oregonian
Staff photo by Kathy Aney
The Zac Brown Band performs at the Pendleton Whisky Music Fest on Saturday at the Round-Up Grounds.
Fans f lock to fest
Zac Brown Band performs at fi rst
Pendleton Whisky Music Fest
ready to unleash their power.
Corey and McAnally hatched the
idea of a major music festival about
Doug Corey and Andy McAnally two years ago and planned the event
looked simultaneously wired and for months. Now it was coming
to life and they seemed cautiously
tired.
The men sat in the Pendleton optimistic about the turnout. Ticket
sales were going well.
Round-Up’s
South
The weather forecast
Grandstand
Friday
looked good.
afternoon
watching After party
“We’re expecting
their brainchild come Organizers tally what
a large crowd,” Corey
to life — the fi rst-ever went right, wrong to
said.
Pendleton
Whisky consider next year.
Festival-goers
Music Fest, which Page 8A
would hear openers
would kick off the next
Jackson Michelson and
day. As they looked on,
a guy in cargo shorts unloaded fencing Drake White late Saturday afternoon
from a Penske truck and a couple before the Zac Brown Band took the
dozen other workers erected the stage, stage that evening.
a semi-truck that unfolded Transform-
See MUSIC/8A
er-style. Five generators sat on trailers
By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian
Staff photo by Kathy Aney
Zac Brown performs at the fi rst-ever Pendleton
Whisky Music Fest on Saturday at the Round-Up
Grounds.
Umatilla County citizens will have fewer
health insurance carriers to choose from in
2017, and premiums will increase.
Four of the seven companies that offered
individual coverage to Umatilla County
citizens this year announced they are pulling
out of the county next year, citing insuffi cient
payments by the federal government to cover
losses from high-risk customers.
Bridgspan and Moda will continue to
offer individual coverage plans within the
health insurance marketplace. People who
get coverage through the marketplace may
be eligible for tax credits to offset their
premium costs.
HealthNet also will continue to offer
individual coverage in Umatilla County,
but tax credits will not be available to those
subscribers.
In addition to fewer choices, Umatilla
County faces signifi cant rate increases
for their premiums. In general, Oregon
classifi es insurance plans in three categories
— bronze, silver and gold — depending on
what percentage of medical costs the plan
covers. A bronze plan covers approximately
60 percent of medical costs, silver covers 70
percent and gold covers about 80 percent.
For a single, 40-year-old, non-tobacco
user in Umatilla County on a silver plan,
Bridgespan premiums will go up 23
percent in 2017. Moda Health premiums
will rise 32 percent. HealthNet’s individual
premium rates will increase one percent,
though HealthNet traditionally has very few
subscribers in Umatilla County.
See HEALTH/8A
Corporate sales tax wouldn’t boost Ex-con gets
high school graduation measure
22 years in
ARLINGTON
By PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
SALEM — A proposed
corporate sales tax that would
raise $3 billion a year in new
revenue would have little to no
effect on the amount of funding
earmarked to high school grad-
uation programs under Initiative
Petition 65.
IP 65, sponsored by the
Oregonians for High School
Success campaign, dedi-
required to submit a plan
Boost for districts under IP 65 to the Oregon Department
cates an average of $800
in new state revenue per
of Education for how to
District
ADMw
Estimate
year to each high school
use the money to build
Hermiston
1,818 $1,227,926
pupil for dropout preven-
programs for dropout
Pendleton
1,160
$783,481
tion, career technical
prevention and career
education and college
and
college-readiness
Morrow
896
$605,439
readiness programs.
programs.
Milton-Freewater
672
$454,178
The measure includes
Only about 74 percent
Umatilla
532
$359,633
a safety valve that allows
of
students in Oregon
* High school weighted average daily membership, as
for a smaller prorated
graduate from high school
calculated by the Oregon Department of Education.
SOURCE: ECONorthwest
allocation when new state
in four years, one of the
funding falls below $1.5
lowest rates in the nation.
billion in a particular year,
Andrew Dyke, a
but there is no mechanism for 2017-18 for programs aimed at researcher at ECONorthwest,
increasing the per-student allo- boosting high school graduation. said it’s unclear how the measure
A study by economic would directly impact the state’s
cation above an average of $800,
consulting
fi rm ECONorthwest graduation rate. Researchers
said Ted Nesbitt, an adviser for
the campaign and former chief has parsed out how much money from the fi rm plan to examine
of staff for Gov. Ted Kulongoski, each of the state’s 88 school how the measure would affect
who was a chief petitioner for districts would receive of that six Oregon school districts by
amount.
the graduation measure.
looking at how the schools plan
Hermiston School District to use the money, what programs
Revenue from the corporate
sales tax measure, Initiative Peti- would receive $1.23 million already are in place and the
tion 28, could help keep revenue next year, under the measure, existing graduation rate, Dyke
above that $1.5 billion threshold, Pendleton School District would said.
but it would not bring additional bring in $783,481 and Morrow
The
Oregon
Education
revenue for the high school County School District would Association is not supporting
graduation programs, said Peter add $605,439. Portland Public IP 65 but has not organized an
Zuckerman, a spokesman for the Schools, the largest district in the opposition campaign against it.
IP 65 campaign.
state, would receive about $10.2 Instead, OEA is campaigning for
If passed, IP 65 would allo- million.
passage of IP 28 as an avenue for
cate an estimated $147 million in
High schools would be boosting funding for schools.
kidnapping
East Oregonian
A Tennessee man was sentenced Friday
to 22 years and four months in prison
for a kidnapping and sexual assault near
Arlington last summer.
William Cooter, 46, from Greenville,
Tennessee,
pleaded
guilty in the Gilliam
County Circuit Court
to the crimes of
kidnapping in the fi rst
degree, attempted rape,
sodomy in the fi rst
degree, unauthorized
use of a motor vehicle,
assault in the fourth
degree, menacing and
giving false informa- Cooter
tion to a peace offi cer.
According to a news release from the
Gilliam County District Attorney’s offi ce,
Cooter used a large rock to smash through
the rear window of a car where a woman was
sleeping after she parked at the Arlington
Mall to rest during a trip from Portland to
Montana. He entered the car, bound and
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