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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 30, 2016)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Tuesday, August 30, 2016 OTHER VIEWS Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN DANIEL WATTENBURGER Publisher Managing Editor JENNINE PERKINSON TIM TRAINOR Advertising Director Opinion Page Editor OUR VIEW Back to school means back to unfunded mandates In politics, it’s easy to pass the buck — or the blame — through the age-old practice of unfunded mandates. It’s the practice where one government orders an agency or a lesser governmental entity to take a speciic action to ix a problem, but doesn’t supply the money to make it happen. The mandate makes the agency or the community ix the problem out of their own budgets, which is often nearly impossible to accomplish without raising taxes, cutting services or both. Even more, this practice usually rears its head at election time to give voters the idea that leadership is truly addressing problems rather than letting them slide. But the fact that those leaders have to issue a mandate in the irst place shows the problem did slide. And sometimes, those same state leaders avoid transparency by using mandates as a scare tactic to get legislative or voter approval for unpopular or controversial legislation that they support. That’s the case currently with two state mandates in the past three weeks. And to no surprise, the mandates surfaced as Gov. Kate Brown endorsed Measure 97, the highly controversial ballot measure that would create a 2.5 percent tax for some corporations on gross sales of more than $25 million, rather than taxing those corporations on their proits as now is the case. The measure is expected to bring in $3 billion to be spent on schools, seniors and health care, though the text doesn’t stipulate those uses exclusively. The irst mandate came in early August when the state Treasury announced that the bill for schools, cities, state agencies and other public employers in Oregon will rise by $885 million next biennium to fund the state’s public employee pension system. The $885 million is much higher than was forecast and represents a 44 percent increase from what public employees are currently paying into the pension plan to support it. Next came an order from the Oregon Board of Education after it adopted a new, fast-tracked rule at the behest of the governor that requires testing for lead and radon in schools, public disclosure of problems that are found and the elimination of each problem when discovered. School districts are required by the mandate to have a preliminary plan in place by October and a inished plan by January. While parents and educators all agree that ixing those problems needs to happen and happen quickly, the order came without a funding mechanism in place. The state School Boards Association predicts the mandate could cost districts hundreds of millions of dollars statewide. Districts in Eastern Oregon have ponied up the money over the summer to test their water and are expecting the state to cover the bill for that lab work. Public schools are also facing another challenge that was mandated by the Legislature in 2007. It requires they provide a minimum of 150 minutes of physical education instruction per week for kindergarten through ifth grade and 225 minutes for sixth through eighth grade. Schools must meet the standard by 2017, but less than 10 percent of 1,080 public schools with some or all grades K-8 are in compliance. School advocacy groups are asking lawmakers to either push back the 2017 deadline or to allow a phase-in. Funding for additional PE teachers is one of the reasons the advocacy groups have cited for the poor compliance rate. Real leadership is needed in addressing each of these problems. PERS in its present form simply isn’t sustainable, and there are a number of reform options available. The governor and legislators, however, have been reluctant to attack the problem head on. Lead in drinking water at schools is curable, and the fact that there was no statewide requirement for even testing until 2016 says the state Board of Education and those who oversee the board from the governor’s ofice were asleep at the wheel. The problem of physical education for children in K-8 is even more curable with innovation and creativity at the local level and the proper leadership and focus at the state level. Each of those problems have their own individual solutions, and state leaders, especially those at the top, should be just that. They should be visible to the public and transparent with their motives and actions instead of using unfunded mandates as their method of operation. And importantly, they should quit looking for the easy cure-all ixes for problems the state faces. They should know from experience that easy ixes aren’t always the right ixes. 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. Let them eat trufles R ENO, Nev. — Hillary didn’t But Clinton does not have a normal hang her head and cry, after she opponent. She has one who manages shot a man in Reno just to watch to self-destruct in every news cycle. him die. So instead she was soaring above her She went outside with a big smile own paranoia and mocking Trump’s and sampled chocolate trufles served paranoia, soaring above her egregious messes and gamboling through Trump’s on silver and gold trays by a local egregious messes. sweets shop. In Reno, instead of having to talk After getting steadily bolder at rallies Maureen about the email marked “C,” the ones about puncturing her former friend Dowd classiied as conidential, she talked Donald Trump, Clinton channeled Comment about a very different “C”: Johnny Cash’s song and She recalled the Justice delivered a coup de grâce so Department’s housing devastating that commentators discrimination suit against the predicted it will be known real estate developer and his simply as the Reno speech. father in the ‘70s, charging A senior citizen in the crowd that the applications of black raised his ist as he passed the and Latino residents were press pen at Truckee Meadows “marked with ‘C’ — ‘C’ for Community College and colored.” used a vulgarism to brag that After the Monica Clinton had kicked Trump in a Lewinsky affair, she delected highly sensitive place. questions about Bill’s cheesy “Of course there’s always behavior by summoning up the specter of the been a paranoid fringe in our politics, steeped Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. Now she delects in racial resentment,” Clinton said. “But it’s never had the nominee of a major party stoking questions about the emails and foundation ethical tangles by summoning up the specter of it, encouraging it, and giving it a national the Vast Alt-Right Conspiracy. megaphone. Until now.” Extremists always ride to Hillary’s rescue. In this insane campaign year, Clinton Just as Ken Starr and impeachment-crazed doesn’t even need an oppo-research team conservatives in the House pushed it way too digging up nasty stuff about her opponent’s far and made laughingstocks of themselves, record. She just has to stand there and wait succumbing to Clinton Derangement for Trump to open his mouth. Or wait for his Syndrome, so the alt-right allows Hillary to wacky entourage to weigh in. Asked on CNN have an easy target that occludes the Clintons’ about his undulating immigration position, own transgressions. Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson offered It’s a symbiotic relationship: The Clintons this classic bit of spin: “He hasn’t changed his beneit, hailed by many Democrats and position on immigration. He’s changed the Republicans who regard them as the white hats words that he’s saying.” who will keep out brownshirts. And the alt-right In Reno, Clinton simply pointed out the is jubilant at being given a bigger platform to be obvious: Trump, who has no ixed ideology of his own except winning, has let himself become sulfurous. “Thanks for the free PR Hillary,” tweeted a a host body for an ugly mélange of people and self-described alt-righter. “The #alt-right will groups that spew poison, from Breitbart News long remember the day you helped make us — its chief, Stephen Bannon, is now helping run Trump’s campaign — to white supremacist into the real right.” The only one who doesn’t beneit is Trump, David Duke to radio host Alex Jones. who has been seduced by the roar of the crowd When Anderson Cooper asked Trump on and hijacked by a dark force he doesn’t seem to Thursday if he was embracing the alt-right fathom. Ultimately, the stain will extend beyond movement, Trump replied like a perfectly oblivious vessel: “I don’t even know — nobody a campaign loss to damage his business brand. Clinton is more easily able to continue even knows what it is.” to cold-shoulder the press on serious issues, In the same way that the neocons used the which really is an outrage and will hurt her uninformed George W. Bush as a host body to in the end, because she’s building up a giant instigate the Iraq War, the alt-right has staged bubble of hostility that will follow her into an Occupy Trump movement, purloining his unmoored campaign as brazenly as cat burglars. the White House. When reporters approached Clinton after her Reno speech, she ignored the “Racists now call themselves ‘racialists,’” questions being served up and told the press to Clinton said. “White supremacists now call have some of the chocolate being served up. themselves ‘white nationalists.’ The paranoid “Love the trufles,” she said in a condescending fringe now calls itself alt-right. But the hate let-them-eat-chocolate moment. burns just as bright.” Many people believe that Trump is so She read some headlines from Breitbart, demented and dangerous that any criticism of including “Birth Control Makes Women Clinton should be tabled or suppressed, that her Unattractive and Crazy” and, to the gasps of audience members, “Gabby Giffords: The Gun malfeasance is so small compared to his that it is not worth mentioning. But that’s not good Control Movement’s Human Shield.” for her or us to leave so many things hanging She noted that Trump has retweeted from out there, without her ever having to explain white supremacists and she ran through his herself. greatest hits of bigotry. Letting her rise above everything for the If Clinton had a normal opponent, her good of the country is not good for the country. vulnerabilities would be more glaring. She ■ would have spent the last week getting Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer peppered with questions about how the FBI Prize for distinguished commentary, became a discovered 14,900 more emails from her columnist on The New York Times Op-Ed page private server, which are going to drip out in 1995. through the fall. Letting her rise above everything for the good of the country is not good for the country. Culture Corner ‘Fourth of July Creek’ P ortland-based writer Smith Henderson’s debut novel, “Fourth of July Creek,” was published in 2014. But thanks to the current presidential race, this year’s occupation at the Malheur refuge and the growing tension between government and those who wish not to be governed, the book seems all the more timely right now. Set in the backwoods of northern Montana, it could just as well take place anywhere in the American West where those living on the land — and those making the rules on that land — ind themselves at odds. The main character is a government- employed child welfare worker with a knack for the job, who sticks his nose into the homelife of the American fringe. We see disturbing vignettes of those who need help, and we see vulnerable families go without any. We also meet a mountain man (imagine a long-haired, antisemitic John Wayne) who leads a mysterious family through the wilderness and threatens society both literally and iguratively. Henderson’s writing is sharp and clear throughout, but also reined. You’ll hear rural rhythms in the dialogue. And the narrative moves breathlessly, with Henderson navigating some sharp plot twists without even tapping the brakes. It might seem unsavory to have a Wieden+Kennedy Portlander tell this sort of tale — of the poor and hurt and paranoid and forgotten. Of those content with a cabin in the woods, who could take it or leave it on the running water. Of those scared of vaccines and airplanes and government schools. But Henderson navigated the potential pitfalls to create something engaging and empathetic, something brimming with moral quandaries and light on the easy answers we hold dear. — Tim Trainor is opinion page editor of the East Oregonian. 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.
