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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 28, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Saturday, January 28, 2017 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor MARISSA WILLIAMS Regional Advertising Director MARCY ROSENBERG Circulation Manager JANNA HEIMGARTNER Business Office Manager MIKE JENSEN Production Manager EO MEDIA GROUP East Oregonian • The Daily Astorian • Capital Press • Hermiston Herald Blue Mountain Eagle • Wallowa County Chieftain • Chinook Observer • Coast River Business Journal Oregon Coast Today • Coast Weekend • Seaside Signal • Cannon Beach Gazette Eastern Oregon Real Estate Guide • Eastern Oregon Marketplace • Coast Marketplace OnlyAg.com • FarmSeller.com • Seaside-Sun.com • NorthwestOpinions.com • DiscoverOurCoast.com OUR VIEW Harsh winter cracks thin ice that schools are skating on Eastern Oregonians have been snowed in for much of the winter, which means that local students have been snowed out of their classrooms. Schools from Ione to Elgin have been hammered by ice and snow and freezing fog, causing them to cancel days of class time and shorten others. Teachers are scrambling to figure out how to deal with the issue, choosing between lopping off chapters from this semester’s curricula or loading their students up with work they missed due to weather. Administrators, school boards, teachers’ unions and the state education department are scrambling, too. There are no good options when Mother Nature throws a wrench in things. But the priority cannot be anything other than education, and everyone should keep that in mind when discussing what steps to take to get out of this hole. A clear problem in Oregon is how many school districts, when laying out their schedule, skate on dangerously thin ice just above the minimum legal requirements of instructional time — even though Oregon’s instructional time requirements are the lowest in the country. If anything goes wrong in the school year — an unusually harsh winter, a busted pipe, or a collapsed roof — the district can quickly drop below legal requirements. This is bad planning, though of course financial realities and union negotiations can force that hand. But padding some additional time into the school year, right from the get-go, would help most emergency situations. Worst case scenario — no school is missed and Oregon children spend more time in a classroom, though likely still below the national average. Once the schedule allows for a few unforeseen circumstances, we have to be smart should those unforeseen circumstances occur. It sure seems foolish for Hermiston and Pendleton to both have a day off this week for an in-service day, wasting a chance to make up a day of missed class time. We support valuable teacher development time, and know that educators with better training add value to each class hour, but many parents are scratching their heads about keeping their kids home on a clear day after a winter riddled with cancellations. On Thursday, the Oregon Department of Education approved a temporary rule to allow schools to opt out of 14 hours of state- mandated instructional time. It won’t make up all the hours lost at most local districts, but it helps lessen the hill most districts had to overcome to arrive back at the minimum instructional hours. Some school districts, such as Hermiston, have already taken action, pushing their graduation back a week. Sure, it causes problems and will upset some parents and students, but as we said above there are no perfect options. And we’re in favor of most options that get class time back to legal requirements, be it lengthening the school day, adding days to the end of the year or reducing in-session, non-instructional time. Pendleton School District has yet to take action to make up the missing time. The district is surveying parents, staff and community members as to how they think the district should go about it. Other school boards are considering their options as well. Oregon has to do better when it comes to education. We’re below average compared to most states. And if we’re doing the bare minimum right now we sure can’t afford to go any lower, no matter the weather. 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 Improving Oregon’s transparency The (Corvallis) Gazette-Times O ne of the interesting sidelights in this year’s legislative session will be the fate of a proposal to create a public records ombudsman. The idea is that the ombudsman’s office would help mediate disputes between state agencies and members of the public requesting public records. Now, your first question might well be this: Why would such an office be necessary? Don’t public records belong to, well, members of the public? Shouldn’t state agencies consistently be bending over backward to help citizens access those records? To be fair, there are agencies where that occurs on a regular basis. But the overall picture is not as bright as it should be — and the number of instances in which a government bureaucracy has blocked legitimate requests for records or has charged unrealistic fees is on the rise, and has been for years. The idea for the ombudsman is the work of a public task force that has been laboring for more than a year on overhauling the state’s records laws. It’s been challenging work; the task force had hoped, for example, to examine the 500 or so exemptions to the public records law that have cropped up in the decades since 1973, when Oregon enacted a law that was at the time considered among the best in the nation. That’s no longer the case, a realization that helped pave the way for Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum to create the task force in the first place. But it became clear to task force members that the work of examining the exemptions will take some time. So, in the meantime, the task force has recommended some smaller steps, including the idea of creating the ombudsman. A bill pending before the 2017 Legislature, Senate Bill 106, does just that, creating a position that will be called the “public records advocate.” Let’s be clear: This isn’t the huge breakthrough in access to public records that Oregon citizens deserve. For starters, the advocate position would not have the authority to compel release of records, but it potentially would have the ability to work with citizens to mediate solutions to records disputes. After initially proposing that the office be housed in the office of the secretary of state, Gov. Kate Brown recently suggested that the office be placed in the Department of Administrative Services. There’s a critical problem there: The director of that department reports to the governor. Why would Brown, a Democrat, change her tune about where the advocate should be located? The November elections may offer a clue: Voters chose Republican Dennis Richardson as secretary of state. But Brown, who has talked about the need to increase public confidence in state government, needs to shrug off whatever political concerns she might have and stick with the original plan. Let’s be blunt: It’s more effective if the governor doesn’t have direct authority over the position. In a legislative session that increasingly seems defined by hard partisan lines, it will be interesting to watch this issue play out. OTHER VIEWS The politics of cowardice T his is a column directed at high Trump was not a coward in the school and college students. business or campaign worlds. He could I’m going to try to convey to take on enormous debt and had the you how astoundingly different the audacity to appear at televised national Republican Party felt when I was your debates with no clue what he was age. talking about. But as president his is a The big guy then was Ronald policy of cowardice. On every front, he Reagan. Temperamentally, though wants to shrink the country into a shell. not politically, Reagan was heir to the J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, “A man David two Roosevelts. He inherited a love of Brooks that flies from his fear may find that he audacity from TR and optimism and has only taken a shortcut to meet it.” Comment charm from FDR. Desperate to be liked, Trump adopts He had a sunny faith in America’s a combative attitude that makes him destiny and in America’s ability to bend global unlikable. Terrified of Mexican criminals, he history toward freedom. He had a sunny faith wants to build a wall that will actually lock in in the free market to deliver prosperity to all. more undocumented aliens than it will keep He had a sunny faith in out. Terrified of Muslim the power of technology terrorists, he embraces the to deliver bounty and even torture policies guaranteed protect us from nuclear to mobilize terrorists. missiles. Terrified that U.S. business He could be very hard can’t compete with Asian on big government or business, he closes off a the Soviet Union, but he trade deal that would have generally saw the world as a boosted annual real incomes welcoming place; he looked in the United States by $131 for the good news in others billion, or 0.5 percent of and saw the arc of history GDP. Terrified of Mexican bending toward progress. competition, he considers When he erred it was slapping a 20 percent tariff often on the utopian side of things, believing on Mexican goods, even though U.S. exports that tax cuts could pay for themselves, to Mexico have increased 97 percent since believing that he and Mikhail Gorbachev 2005. could shed history and eliminate all nuclear Trump has changed the way the Republican weapons. Party sees the world. Republicans used to have The mood of the party is so different today. a basic faith in the dynamism and openness of Donald Trump expressed the party’s new the free market. Now the party fears openness mood to David Muir of ABC, when asked and competition. about his decision to suspend immigration In summer 2015, according to a Pew from some Muslim countries: “The world is a Research Center poll, Republicans said free mess. The world is as angry as it gets. What, trade deals had been good for the country you think this is going to cause a little more by 51 to 39 percent. By summer 2016, anger? The world is an angry place.” Republicans said those deals had been bad for Consider the tenor of Trump’s first week America by 61 percent to 32 percent. in office. It’s all about threat perception. He It’s not that the deals had changed, or has made moves to build a wall against the reality. It was that Donald Trump became the Mexican threat, to build barriers against the Republican nominee and his dark fearfulness Muslim threat, to end a trade deal with Asia became the party’s dark fearfulness. In this to fight the foreign economic threat, to build case fear is not a reaction to the world. It is black site torture chambers against the terrorist a way of seeing the world. It propels your threat. reactions to the world. Trump is on his political honeymoon, As Reagan came to office he faced refugee which should be a moment of joy and crises, with suffering families coming in from promise. But he seems to suffer from an angry Cuba, Vietnam and Cambodia. Filled with form of anhedonia, the inability to experience optimism and confidence, Reagan vowed, happiness. Instead of savoring the moment, “We shall seek new ways to integrate refugees he’s spent the week in a series of nasty into our society,” and he delivered on that squabbles about his ratings and crowd sizes. promise. If Reagan’s dominant emotional note Trump faces a refugee crisis from Syria. was optimism, Trump’s is fear. If Reagan’s And though no Syrian-American has ever optimism was expansive, Trump’s fear committed an act of terrorism on American propels him to close in: Pull in from Asian soil, Trump’s response is fear. Shut them out. entanglements through rejection of the Trans- Students, the party didn’t used to be this Pacific Partnership. Pull in from European way. A mean wind is blowing. entanglements by disparaging NATO. It’s ■ not a cowering, timid fear; it’s more a dark, David Brooks became a New York Times resentful porcupine fear. Op-Ed columnist in 2003. He has been a We have a word for people who are senior editor at The Weekly Standard and is dominated by fear. We call them cowards. currently a commentator on PBS. Trump is on his political honeymoon, which should be a moment of joy and promise. YOUR VIEWS Hammonds deserve pardons and to be sent back home The Hammonds should be home with their families. Seventy-four-year-old Dwight and son Steven were/are respected ranchers in the Burns area. They are presently serving a five year mandatory sentence for arson on federal land. They were labeled terrorists in order to justify this grossly disproportionate sentence for the destruction (burning) of approximately 130 acres of BLM pasture. They stood trial once and served their time. The DOJ came back in federal appeals court and won reinstating the five year sentence. Double jeopardy is mentioned often as I have read the articles reporting the trial and happenings that led to the final outcome, which to me is a gross miscarriage of justice. Mandatory five year sentencing is to discourage terrorists and arsonists who disregard the law. Was this a witch hunt used to send a message to good solid Americans that dissent? Could be; maybe yes. The Hammonds have been described in such terms as respected, great neighbor, salt of the earth ag folks. If this father and son fit the profile of arsonist or terrorist, we are all in trouble. “Remember this is not about me, this is about our country,” were Dwight Hammond’s parting comments as he was taken from home and family a year ago. For goodness sakes, someone has the leverage to get these men out of prison. Unfortunately for the Hammonds, I think they were caught up in what I refer to as “a virus sweep.” Easily labeled as such if you have issues with the BLM and their land management policies. I’m infuriated to see the pardons and commutations being dished out at this time, drug dealers and terrorists, but none seem to be forthcoming for Dwight and Steven. Bring the Hammonds home. Wanda Ballard Baker City 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.
