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OPINION
East Oregonian
Tuesday, January 31, 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
OUR VIEW
Too much at stake
to bog down session
with usual silliness
The 2017 Oregon Legislature
2017 Oregon Legislature
will convene Wednesday amid
acrimony, political silliness and dire
House and Senate committees
start meeting at 8 a.m. Wednes-
predictions.
day. The House and Senate will
This is all part of the ritual
convene floor sessions at 11 a.m.
dance that launches each legislative
Online: Go to oregonlegislature.
session, as the Republicans and
gov to watch meetings, to read
Democrats, House and Senate, and
bills and to contact legislators.
individual lawmakers jockey for
political leverage.
a fair point when he noted that the
Gov. Kate Brown and legislative
Democratic leaders in Congress
leaders from both parties predict
also employ such “obstructionist”
this could be the most difficult
tactics because their party is in the
legislative session in years, as
minority.
lawmakers struggle to balance
Congress is an awfully low bar
the state budget and develop a
for comparison.
transportation
Oregonians
package.
There is widespread expect more of
At some
their Legislature.
point — probably
agreement that
That includes
late spring, if this
having the
session follows
Oregon must
majority party
the usual pattern
— legislators will
reinvest in its roads make concessions
to work well
begin the difficult
and bridges, and with the minority
compromises on
party, and vice
the budget and
make its public
versa.
other contentious
Republican
issues. No one
transit systems
leaders have
wants a repeat of
admitted that the
the era in which
more effective.
2017-19 state
the Legislature
budget will be
repeatedly was
called back to the Oregon Capitol to untenable without more revenue.
Democrats need Republican votes
revise the state budget.
for any tax increases, which require
As state Senate Majority Leader
a supermajority for passage. In
Ginny Burdick, D-Portland, said
return, Democrats should accept
last week, “I think everybody just
the need for continued reforms to
needs to take a deep breath.”
Legislators can speed the political hold down the cost of government,
including the Public Employees
process by abandoning some of
their political silliness, especially in Retirement System.
Some people want to delay PERS
the House, where Republicans are
discussions, possibly until a special
threatening to slow daily business.
session. That is a very bad idea.
Democrats outnumber
Special legislative sessions come
Republicans 35-25 in the House
with no guarantees.
and 17-13 in the Senate. Those
Likewise, the 2017 Legislature
numbers give Republicans little
should meet both Democrats’ and
influence except on tax measures,
Republicans’ needs in putting
which require a supermajority for
together a transportation-finance
approval.
package. There is widespread
That is why Republicans may
agreement that Oregon must
demand that the House devote
reinvest in its roads and bridges,
far more time to publicly reading
and make its public transit
legislation aloud, word-for-word.
systems more effective. But the
That would slow the legislative
majority Democrats should heed
process to a crawl, ensuring
Republicans’ desire for flexibility in
fewer bills become law, which
the state’s low-carbon fuel standards
some Oregonians might see as a
for vehicles — a flawed program
blessing. But that threat also gives
Republicans a bargaining chip: Give that Democrats rammed through the
2015 Legislature.
us more of what we want and we
Those are real issues. The sooner
won’t slow the process.
that legislators can get past the
Whether that is obstructionism
acrimony and obstructionism, the
or pragmatism is in the eye of the
beholder. House Republican Leader sooner they can make progress on
those real issues.
Mike McLane of Powell Butte had
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
N
Fog of Trump
ormally, at the end of a new
policies harder to interpret. Is his
administration’s tumultuous
administration planning a trade war
first week, it’s the pundit’s job
with Mexico, as his tweets suggest,
to sit back and chin-stroke and explain
or just pushing a wonky border-
everything that the president and his
adjustment tax that’s been part of GOP
aides are doing right or wrong.
proposals for a while? Are we actually
In the Donald Trump era, though,
considering reviving waterboarding,
there’s a distinctive problem: Before he
or is that just an empty executive order
can be defended or criticized, we have
left over from the Romney transition
Ross
to figure out what’s actually happening. Douthat that James Mattis and Mike Pompeo
And for several reasons, that’s going to
have no intention of operationalizing?
Comment
be harder in this presidency than ever
Is the administration about to embark
before.
on a racially coded war against
First: This is clearly going to be an
phantom voter fraud based on random
administration with multiple centers of gravity, anecdotes and conspiracy theories ... or is this
with more fractiousness and freelancing than
just a “Twitter promise,” not a real one?
in the relatively tight ships that Barack Obama
Of course, time will bring a certain clarity.
and George W. Bush ran. The Trump White
We’ll find out whether Trump’s refugee
House has a weak chief of staff surrounded by and visa freezes from Muslim countries
rivalrous advisers. The Trump Cabinet is not
are actually temporary, a means to stricter
necessarily on the same ideological page as
screening, or whether they become permanent.
the president’s inner circle. Trump himself is
We’ll move from speculation to reality on
famous for agreeing with the last person who
Russia policy. We’ll find out how far the
bent his ear. So there is no trustworthy voice
president intends to run with the voter-fraud
providing public clarity — least of all poor
nonsense. We’ll see how often his angry
Sean Spicer — in cases where multiple balls
tweets and behind-the-scenes obsessions
and trial balloons are airborne.
cash out, and how often they’re just a way of
Second: The establishment press, as I
venting.
warned last week, is being pressured to lead
But if the fog lifts in some cases, it’s
the resistance to Trumpism, which makes it
likely to chronically shroud the policymaking
more likely to run with the most shocking
process on issues (health care, taxes,
interpretations (muzzled bureaucrats! mass
infrastructure, more) where Trump needs his
resignations!) of whatever the White House
congressional allies to have certainty about
happens to be doing. At the same time, the
their shared objectives. And it threatens to
Trump inner circle clearly intends to lean into
descend more dramatically — with Stephen
this phenomenon, to encourage the press-as-
King-style monsters screaming in the
opposition narrative, seeing mainstream-media mist — with every unexpected event, every
mistakes as a way of shoring up its own base’s unlooked-for crisis, in which what the White
loyalty. And then the technological forces
House says in real time will matter much more
shaping media coverage also encourage errors than it does right now.
and overreach — a dubious story or even a
I ended last week’s column with a warning
misleading live-tweet of a press conference
for the press corps about their potential
can go around the online world long before the contribution to a climate of political hysteria.
more prosaic truth has reached your Facebook But this column’s warning is for the president
feed. (A self-serving suggestion: In such a
and his advisers, some of whom clearly like
climate, the discerning citizen may come to
the fog and seem to imagine that it will help
appreciate anew the tortoise-like pace of print
them govern just as it probably helped them
journalism.)
win.
Third: Trumpism is an ideological cocktail
They shouldn’t be so confident. For
that doesn’t fit the patterns we’re used to in
legislators, too much fog is paralyzing. For
U.S. politics, and Trump has arrayed himself
voters, it’s a recipe for nervous exhaustion.
against bipartisan habits of mind on all sorts
For allies, it’s confusing; for enemies, it looks
of issues. This means, as The Week columnist
like an opportunity.
Damon Linker notes perceptively, that he’s
Trump is not a popular president, he has
guaranteed to do things that seem “abnormal”
not actually built an electoral majority, his
and that take both the press corps and D.C.
team is not particularly experienced. If he
mandarins aback — like, say, actually
can’t provide clarity and reassurance and a
enforcing already on-the-books immigration
little light around his agenda, it will be very
laws. The trick for the public will be figuring
easy for a fog-bound presidency to simply run
where what’s “abnormal” is obviously
aground.
“alarming” and where it makes more sense to
■
wait and see. Which will be hard for reasons
Ross Douthat joined The New York
one and two, and also because ...
Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009.
... Trump himself is a loose cannon whose
Previously, he was a senior editor at The
public interventions tend to make his own
Atlantic.
YOUR VIEWS
Trust us, we have a plan
— or do we?
I hear that the community is
finally going to get the details
from our public works director on
the Eighth Street Bridge project.
The Westgate overpass and the
viaduct on Eastgate are still missing
streetlights because either the high
cost of the designer light poles or
“light pollution,” both claimed by
Public Works. The plan for the
bridge includes the installation, near
the bridge, of those same designer
light poles as there are on Main
Street. Common sense says, how
about completing the area’s most
frequently traveled areas first?
Then there’s the “tunneling
effect” created by the planned street
trees. Since the new bridge will
create a new high-speed arterial
street, ripe for development of the
picturesque hillside building lots,
this “tunnel” of trees will create a
calming effect, slowing expected
heavy traffic to an acceptable flow.
The Public Works Department is
promising to maintain these trees,
trimming branches and raking
leaves, accepting responsibility
for repair of sidewalks and streets
damaged by the trees as they’ve
done on Main Street. I’d suggest
they get that in writing. Remember,
the author of this plan will not be the
public works director in 20 years,
when the damage is really being
done.
In a recent conversation with
our new mayor, I questioned the
wisdom of approving a change in
the previously approved plan to
replace the townhouses in Pendleton
Heights with multi-unit apartment
buildings, as proposed by the
contractor. The change, adding 100
new units, would add to the already
congested traffic on Southgate. City
Hall has consistently denied this
would adversely affect traffic flow.
Perhaps a chat with the outgoing
mayor, having witnessed the
congestion first hand, would change
their mind.
In other news, I thought the
city had a change of heart when I
saw a road grader plowing snow.
It turned out to be ODOT. As the
public works director explained,
the city has no plan or equipment
to plow streets. Wal-Mart, Safeway
and Melanie Square have plans to
combat the snow for continued retail
operation. After all that City Hall
invests in the downtown area, they
have no plan for the business area
or school bus routes. Maybe I’m
dating myself, but I remember when
they at least plowed Main Street and
others. I wouldn’t call this progress.
Just maybe it’s time for a plan.
Perhaps it would have saved me
from a fall and a trip to the doctor.
Rick Rohde
Pendleton
Solutions for the
dispatch center
The Umatilla Dispatch “Funding
Agreement” as defined in Sheriff
Rowan’s memo to the Dispatch
Advisory Committee (all public
employees) dated March 23,
2016, is unjust, not equitable and
ill-conceived. That memo applied to
tax year 2016-2017.
History: Years back, Pendleton
and Hermiston did their own
dispatching. Next, using county
tax revenue, the sheriff’s office did
the dispatching. Shortly thereafter
the sheriff’s office received the
911 funds amounting to $463,258
in 2016-17 and is projected to
receive an estimated $502,000 in
2017-18. The above-mentioned
memo indicates the sheriff’s
office requested from Hermiston
$303,486; Pendleton, $308,419;
Umatilla, $63,869; Standfield/
Echo, $33,485; Pilot Rock, $20,417;
and fire districts, $189,389, plus
$975,056 from Umatilla County
(paid out from Umatilla County tax
revenue).
Therefore:
• Rural Umatilla County, Athena/
Weston, Ukiah and Helix pay
nothing in addition to normal county
taxes and 911 charges.
• The five major cities pay
normal county taxes and 911
charges plus $729,676.
• The fire districts are charged on
per call basis.
• The total Umatilla Dispatch
budget is $2,559,908, or $36.53
per citizen. A family of four
would pay $146.12 for dispatch
alone — considerably more than the
surrounding counties.
• The charges are computed on
net assessed tax value, which has
absolutely no relationship to the
number of calls received for service.
Suggestions/recommendations:
• In tax year 2017-18, established
a Umatilla Interagency Dispatch
Center to be funded and managed in
a fair and equitable manner by those
who use the services.
• Place all the CSEPP equipment
donated to Umatilla County in the
center.
• Strongly consider charging by
the call — that’s the service being
offered.
• Add total cost of dispatch to
the sheriff’s budget (indirectly
the Umatilla County Budget), to
be approved by Umatilla County
commissioners.
John Taylor
Pilot Rock
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 resi-
dence 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.