FATHER INJURED
SLEDDING WITH
CHILDREN
WHERE DO
PATS RANK
IN HISTORY?
REGION/3A
SPORTS/1B
33/25
Oregon
joins ban
battle
NATION/5A
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2017
141st Year, No. 81
One dollar
WINNER OF THE 2016 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
Out of Africa
New health director works with NBA star Mutombo to improve Congo health care
By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian
State jobs
recovery
lags in some
rural areas
Overall number is 6.5 percent
higher than pre-recession peak
Jim Setzer’s resume looks a
little like the table of contents
for the World Atlas.
Umatilla County’s new
public health director comes by
way of Namibia, Kenya, Niger,
Zaire, Burkina Faso, Cameroon,
Central African Republic,
Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia,
Ghana, Guinea, Madagascar,
Malawi, Mali, Mozambique,
Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania,
Togo and Zambia.
And those are just the African
countries. He’s also worked in
the Republic of Georgia, Azer-
baijan, Bangladesh, India, Laos,
Pakistan, Vietnam, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Guyana and Haiti.
Setzer, an epidemiologist
who speaks six languages in
varying degrees of fl uency, spent
the past year-and-a-half helping
the government of Namibia
strengthen that country’s health
information system.
“We were trying to create
an
electronic
information
system for the (several hundred)
government-run clinics,” Setzer
said. “Traditionally this was
done by paper. People didn’t
have real-time information.”
Setzer is a numbers guy —
not much makes him happier
than creating a system or
making sense of data — but he’s
also a people person. He tells
stories with comedic timing and
dramatic fl air, though he claims
to have a streak of introversion
lurking within.
Recently, he leaned back
in his new offi ce chair and
described his time in Namibia.
His jobs included everything
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Bureau
SALEM — Oregon now has more
jobs than before the “great recession” but
some rural areas are still lagging behind,
according to the state economist.
After the fi nancial crisis a decade ago,
Oregon lost roughly 8 percent of its jobs,
said Mark McMullen.
Since then, the state has not only regained
all those lost jobs but also increased the
overall number by 6.5 percent from the
pre-recession peak, he said during a Feb.
6 hearing before the House Committee on
Economic Development and Trade.
However, McMullen said those gains
haven’t been felt equally by all regions of
the state.
The Portland metropolitan area has seen
the strongest recovery, with the number of
jobs now 9 percent higher than before the
recession.
There are now 7.5 percent more jobs
in the Columbia Gorge, 6.8 percent more
jobs in Central Oregon and 3.3 percent
See JOBS/10A
Constituents
quiz Walden
on what’s next
for Obamacare
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
See SETZER/10A
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
“George Murdock
is thinking outside
the box. I wasn’t the
average applicant.”
— Jim Setzer, Umatilla
County’s public health director
Contributed photo
A younger Jim Setzer stands
with a group of young boys
during a stint as a Peace Corps
worker in Zaire.
The hot questions on Rep. Greg
Walden’s town hall hotline Monday were
about the fate of the Affordable Care Act at
the hands of a newly Republican-led White
House and Congress.
Questions about former President
Barack Obama’s health care law — passed
seven years ago and commonly known
as Obamacare — dominated a telephone
town hall the Hood River Republican held
for residents across eastern, central and
southern Oregon as he called from Wash-
ington D.C. Monday.
After President Donald Trump and
conservatives up and down the ballot spent
the past year promising voters they would
repeal and replace Obamacare, several
people asked Walden how he and his fellow
Republicans planned to do just that.
Walden reassured callers that he
wanted to keep certain aspects of the law,
like prohibiting insurance companies
from denying patients with pre-existing
conditions and setting lifetime caps, while
See WALDEN/10A
Icy roads strike
again over weekend
Dozens of wrecks reported,
two semis spill some diesel
By PHIL WRIGHT
East Oregonian
Icy Interstate 84 through Morrow
and Umatilla counties again gave
drivers all they could handle and
more Friday and Saturday.
And there could be more on the
way.
The National Weather Service
is warning that a couple inches of
snow is likely Tuesday afternoon
and evening and a wintry mix on
Wednesday.
Umatilla County Fire District
1 on Saturday morning posted this
message on Facebook: “If you have
not left your house today, please do
not. The roads are VERY slick and
are not safe to drive on. If you must
go out, drive slow and extend your
following distance.”
The dozens of wrecks included
two semis that rolled and spilled
diesel near Boardman. The regional
hazardous materials team out,
which operates out of Umatilla Fire
District 1 headquarters in Herm-
iston, responded to the crashes.
The fi rst big rig crashed around
10:20 p.m. on the eastbound side
of Interstate 84 near mile 168,
See ICE/10A
Staff photo by Kathy Aney
A semitrailer remains on its side in the median strip after sliding off of
icy Interstate 84 this weekend near exit 209, Pendleton.