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East Oregonian
POLICE: Cuts would close
Oregon State Hospital’s
facility in Junction City
Continued from 1A
said in addition to crime
scene work, the Pendleton
site provides critical drug
analysis for Eastern Oregon.
Packaging and sending
evidence to a lab hundreds
of miles away would eat into
local police budgets, he said,
and raises concerns about
compromising evidence.
State police in 2014
planned to find a way for the
2017-19 biennium to fund a
fully functional lab in Pend-
leton and even talked about
a new building. Edmiston
suggested the governor’s
office should talk with Eastern
Oregon leaders and find out
what might be available out
here to meet the needs for
the lab. He said even the old
notion of moving the lab to
La Grande, home of Eastern
Oregon University, makes
more sense than having no
lab out here.
The local Blue Mountains
Enforcement Narcotics Team
also looks to take a hit in the
upcoming fiscal year. Gov.
Brown proposed cuts to state
police drug detectives and
have the agency pull out of
drug task forces. Three state
police — one supervisor in
Hermiston and two detectives
in Pendleton — work on
BENT. Roberts chairs the
team’s board and said the
three are crucial members.
“We’ve really come to rely
on those resources from OSP
just to sustain the team,” he
said.
Pendleton,
Hermiston,
Milton-Freewater, Boardman
and Umatilla tribal police
provide officers for the team,
along with the sheriff’s
offices of Umatilla and
Morrow counties. But some
departments have not lived up
to the obligation, and others,
such as the city of Umatilla
police, do not participate.
Taking away the three state
police, Roberts said, would
hurt BENT’s ability to take
down drug rings.
Those big cases can
have connections to a range
of crimes, from thefts to
homicides, and Roberts said
that can be where the state
troopers and detectives really
show skills vital to multi-ju-
risdictional teams, including
interrogation
techniques
or drafting search warrant
affidavits. He said the state
personnel bring a certain level
of expertise and experience
that smaller agencies often
lack.
And reimbursement could
come up if the state leaves the
team. Roberts said BENT sent
one of its state members to
learn how to access informa-
tion from certain smartphones
that are difficult to crack and
even bought equipment for
the task. He said that is a
costly resource to lose.
The governor’s budget
also plans for the closure of
Oregon State Hospital’s $130
million facility in Junction
City after the first year of the
2017-19 biennium. Roberts,
who has put a focus on
policing and the mentally ill,
called the proposition trou-
bling. The move would leave
the state hospital in Salem to
treat people suffering from
mental illness. Roberts said
the 620 beds there are not
nearly enough for Oregon.
Roberts and Edmiston
said they have seen the
state propose these kinds of
public safety cuts before,
legislators don’t give the state
everything it wants. But this
year, with such a wide gap in
state resources and expenses,
maintaining the status quo
might be a long shot.
PERS: Lawmakers are restricted
to two options for PERS reform
Continued from 1A
more kids graduate from
high school,” Criteser said.
“It will be invested in paying
existing obligations, and
skepticism about the value of
government will grow rather
than diminish.”
Oregon Supreme Court
rulings
have
restricted
lawmakers to two options
for PERS reform, said Tim
Nesbitt, former adviser to
Govs. Ted Kulongoski and
John Kitzhaber and past
president of the Oregon
AFL-CIO.
“We can reduce benefits
yet to be earned by current
and future employees, or we
can ask employees to pay at
least some of the cost of their
future pensions,” Nesbitt
said.
“These options demand a
shared responsibility among
all stakeholders.”
Several members of
SEIU Local 503 and Oregon
AFSCME gathered outside
the leadership summit at
the Oregon Convention
Center Monday to highlight
how PERS benefits public
employees.
“Many of us are working
for less than we would in the
private sector,” a pamphlet
from the unions states. “We
agreed to that with the under-
standing that we would have
secure retirement. Now we
are facing further retirement
cuts. That breaks the promise
made to us.”
Business leaders gave no
specific proposals they would
support for raising taxes on
business. One example of
a possible revenue source
is a proposal from early
2016 by Sen. Mark Hass,
D-Beaverton, to levy a small
commercial activity tax on
corporations, Criteser said.
Hass said last week that he
is running numbers on how
much revenue could be raised
from the tax. His proposal
last year would have raised
about $500 million.
Gov. Kate Brown, who
gave the keynote speech
at the summit, challenged
business leaders to bring her
revenue proposals they can
support.
“You might think that that
puts a tremendous burden on
me as your governor to find
another way to fund Oregon’s
future,” Brown said, refer-
ring to Measure 97’s defeat.
“But I’m here today to state
that the price of victory is
responsibility — both for me
and for you.”
Brown and House Speaker
Tina Kotek, D-Portland, both
endorsed Measure 97 during
the campaign.
At last year’s leadership
summit, Senate President
Peter Courtney, D-Salem,
urged lawmakers, unions and
business to reach a compro-
mise on Measure 97 before
the election. On Monday,
he continued his message of
collaboration.
“A state whose political
and economic forces are
always at odds will never be
all that it can be,” Courtney
said.
The leadership summit
marks the Oregon Business
Council’s release of its annual
Oregon Business Plan. The
plan makes recommendations
for statewide policy on issues
that affect business, including
taxes, state spending, labor
regulations and educational
outcomes.
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Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Obama legacy: Handing Trump
a broad view of war powers
WASHINGTON (AP) —
After eight years as a wartime
president, Barack Obama
is handing his successor an
expansive interpretation of
the commander in chief’s
authority to wage war around
the globe. And that reading
has continued to grow even
as Obama prepares to pass
control to Donald Trump.
In his final weeks in
office, Obama has broadened
the legal scope of the war on
extremism, the White House
confirmed Monday, as it
acknowledged for the first
that the administration now
asserts it is legally justified to
take on the extremist group
al-Shabab in Somalia.
The determination is
based on an expanded appli-
cation of a 9/11-era use of
force authorization, a statute
Obama has repeatedly
leaned on to justify military
operations. That rationale has
raised concerns about how
Trump might use Obama’s
precedent to justify other
overseas entanglements —
without consulting Congress.
The
White
House
staunchly defends Obama’s
use of military power,
arguing in a detailed report
Monday that all operations
have been firmly grounded
in domestic and international
law. White House counsel
Neil Eggleston called the
report — the first of its kind
— a demonstration of how
Obama has ensured “that all
U.S. national security opera-
tions are conducted within a
legal and policy framework
that is lawful, effective and
consistent with our national
interests and values.”
Yet the report, which
Obama said should be
updated annually, also
reveals how his administra-
tion has relied overwhelm-
ingly on the 2001 authori-
zation, which even Obama
acknowledges is outdated.
Though the law’s targets
were al-Qaida and the
Taliban, a clause in the bill
includes “associated forces”
of al-Qaida, in Afghanistan
or beyond. That clause is
now being used as a catch-all
for military action in Yemen,
Iraq, Syria, Somalia and
Libya, the report shows, plus
the basing of U.S. troops in
other countries.
Trump has promised a
more muscular and mili-
taristic approach to coun-
terterrorism,
occasionally
using expletives to suggest
he’d aggressively bomb ISIS
militants, although he has
been vague on details.
Deborah
Pearlstein,
a former White House
official and international
law professor at Yeshiva
University, said it’s likely the
next administration will use
Obama’s framework as its
starting point. “By practice
and long history, those opin-
ions tend to stand,” she said.
For Obama, the heavy
reliance on 9/11-era authori-
ties is a powerful illustration
of how his campaign pledges
to construct limits on the
president’s
war-making
powers were confounded by
difficulties of dealing with
Congress and the pressures
of rapidly evolving threats.
Obama came into office
aiming to reverse what he
argued were the overreaches
of his predecessor, George
W. Bush. In the first days
of his presidency, he signed
executive orders prohibiting
secret CIA “black site”
prisons and ending harsh
interrogation
techniques
considered by many to be
torture.
Yet Obama quickly
discovered that imposing
strict constraints made it
harder to pursue his preferred
approach to counterter-
rorism.
Wary of major overseas
entanglements, he turned
increasingly to surgical,
stealthy operations like drone
strikes that have traditionally
operated under a murky legal
framework.
FIRES: Family extremely grateful for the support
Continued from 1A
their two Jack Russell terrier
mixes with them when they
went out.
“I didn’t have time to
be tactful, because I was
worried about the dogs,”
she said. “I called and said,
‘Your house is on fire; do
you have the dogs?’”
The answer was no.
The family arrived at the
burning house, fearing the
worst about the beloved
family pets. But firefighters
emerged from the home
with the dogs in hand and
deposited them into the arms
of their overjoyed owners.
“Everyone was crying,”
Poulin-Foster said.
She said they weren’t
sure what had caused the
fire, but it left the Holcombs
with nothing but the clothes
they had been wearing when
they went to the store. They
are currently living with
Poulin-Foster and she said
while they have appreciated
offers of new furniture and
household goods they won’t
have room to store the bigger
items for at least a few days
until they find a new place to
live.
Pauline-Foster
said
family friend Roxann Fisk
has set up an online account
for monetary donations
at
www.gofundme.com/
richard-and-roxanne-needs-
our-help. If people have
Staff photo by Jade McDowell
Umatilla County Fire District 1 put out an RV fire at Pioneer RV Park in Hermiston
on Monday afternoon.
clothing, household goods,
food or other items they are
interested in donating to
the family they can email
roxiracoon@gmail.com.
She said the whole family
is extremely grateful for the
support they have received
from family, friends and
community members and
want to show their thanks
for the fire and police depart-
ments, which have been
doing extra patrols around
the house to make sure
people don’t try to trespass.
“The
community
outpouring
has
been
phenomenal,” she said. “The
police and fire department
were amazing. They did
everything they could as fast
as they could.”
Umatilla County Fire
District 1 also responded
to a second structure fire
on Monday shortly before
1 p.m. at Pioneer RV Park,
1590 W. Highland Avenue
in Hermiston.
The RV was fully
engulfed when fire crews
arrived.
The owner, who was
staying at the park tempo-
rarily, was inside the RV
at the time of the fire but
escaped uninjured before the
fire trucks arrived.
A cause has not been
determined.
———
Contact Jade McDowell
at jmcdowell@eastorego-
nian.com or 541-564-4536.
LEAD: City to hire certified lead tester to re-assess building
Continued from 1A
of the test results until a local
radio station contacted him
about the article on Friday.
Corbett said he followed
up on the newspaper report
by speaking with a repre-
sentative from the Oregon
Health Authority, who further
elaborated that because the
basement wasn’t used as a
child care facility, apartment
complex or some other
function where children or
adults would regularly come
in contact with it, the city
wasn’t creating a health issue.
Lead is a neurotoxin that
can cause brain damage,
especially in young children.
Corbett said he has directed
city staff to hire a certified
lead tester to re-assess the
convention center and verify
whether there’s elevated lead
levels in the basement.
“I don’t know what’s a lot
of lead and what isn’t a lot of
lead,” he said.
Although there’s isn’t a
set timeline on the testing,
Corbett said the results will
help determine if the base-
THANK YOU
ment is a health hazard to
maintenance staff or anyone
else who uses the room.
The city passed a $1.7
million bond in 1990 to
acquire the armory from the
Guard and remodel it into a
convention center.
Previous to coming under
city ownership, the armory
was already used for commu-
nity events for the Pendleton
School District and Blue
Mountain
Community
College, among others.
The city has made
additional renovations to the
facility since 1990, one of the
most recent coming in 2015,
when it made an $897,000
expansion to the east side of
the center.
The convention center
hosts dozens of events per
year, including well-attended
mainstays like the Pendleton
Festival of Trees, the 2A high
school basketball tournament
and Goldie’s Bar at the
Canyon during Round-Up.
———
Contact Antonio Sierra at
asierra@eastoregonian.com
or 541-966-0836.
to our Sponsors, Auction Donors,
Basket Donors & those who attended
Grillin’ for Grants on November 5th.
Our community raised more than $22,000 for Pendleton students
through the Education Foundation of Pendleton
Scholastic Sponsors $1000
CHI St. Anthony Hospital
Gordon’s Electric
Kirby Nagelhout Construction
Umatilla County- Economic and
& Community Development
Academic Sponsors $500
Alder Family Dental - Pendleton
Barhyte Specialty Foods
Coldwell Banker Whitney
& Associates - Jef Farley
Columbia Bank
Dan and Barbara Ceniga
Dr. Andrew Bower & Susan Bower
Edward Jones - Ben Buchert
(SW 1st Street)
Edward Jones - Robert Blanc
& Casey Hunt (Main St.)
Grocery Outlet - Pendleton
Hill Law Offi ce
Kelly Lumber Supply
Jim and Karen Kullnat
Les Schwab Tires
RDO Equipment Co.
Riverside Veterinary Clinic
Round-Up City Plumbing
James and Julianne Sawyer
Kirt and Annette Skinner
Swire Coca-Cola
Thews Sheet Metal
United Grain Corp.
Vern’s Food Service
Wenaha Group
In-Kind
CAPPS Broadcast Group
East Oregonian
Hill Meat
Safeway
Sodexo
Starbucks
www.educationfoundationofpendleton.org