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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (May 12, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Friday, May 12, 2017 OTHER VIEWS 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 Tip of the hat; kick in the pants A tip of the hat to the dedicated, caring and inspiring teachers in our local school districts. This is teacher appreciation week in the United States and a good chance to offer our gratitude for the time spent educating and helping shepherd our children through their formative years. Teaching is often considered a calling, and that’s a fair assessment. Who would take responsibility for a roomful of someone else’s kids every day if they didn’t feel some sort of compulsion toward the duty? But it’s also a serious profession that demands serious professionals. The challenges of education in 2017 are far different from those of past decades, as technology brings new dimensions nearly every day and family dynamics have radically shifted. There’s a lot of talking and planning that can be done at the 30,000 foot level, but as the bell rings each morning it’s the teacher in the classroom who determines the quality of education each student will receive. From the kindergarten teacher giving the first reading, writing and arithmetic lessons all the way up to the high school teacher instilling the deep learning that will inform a pupil’s life and career, the K-12 experience is filled with moments sparked by educators. We’re lucky to have so many good ones in our communities. On Monday the InterMountain ESD will recognize this year’s Crystal Apple award winners, a prize reserved for the very best in the area’s school districts. We will feature those teachers in Tuesday’s newspaper. A kick in the pants to the city of Echo, where city councilors are threatening to use eminent domain to condemn ten acres of a resident’s riverside ranch. We spotlighted the story of Michael Yunker in the paper earlier this week, and most readers came to his defense. It’s easy to see eminent domain as a tool for the powerful and government-aligned to take what they want from us lowly peons in the way of progress. Yes, sometimes eminent domain is necessary to complete the massive infrastructure projects required to fuel our modern world. In those rare cases, eminent domain can be a reasonable use of taxpayer dollars as government attempts to find the most efficient way to build a highway or a energy corridor, an airport or a railroad. But the case in Echo is not that clear. The city has known it has had a problem for a decade off, that whole time running afoul of state rules on effluents and in the process fouling the Umatilla River that snakes through town. Yet the city kept kicking the can down the road, asking and receiving extensions from the Department of Environmental Quality. But the extensions have now likely run out, and the city is facing a problem that needs fixing. There is no easy choice and of course taxpayers will be on the hook either way. They will be tasked with paying off a more expensive debt if the city leaves Yunker’s property be and builds elsewhere. If they condemn and take it, they will usurp the liberty of a longstanding resident and engender a loss of neighborly virtue. It’s poor planning and communication that got us to this position, and that’s worth a pants-kicking. 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. YOUR VIEWS No fluff in the Pendleton fire bond In response to Kelly Temple’s suggestion that the Pendleton’s proposed fire station is inappropriate and overpriced for our community, I invite anyone to make the effort to visit with our fire chief and review what is being proposed. Chief Ciraulo will be happy to answer any questions. Mr. Temple suggests that because Boise’s 2014 bond issue built new and remodeled fire and training facilities for $76 per resident, Pendleton should be able to do the same in 2018. That would get us a new fire station at about $1.3 million, a totally unrealistic figure to design, build and furnish a new facility at today’s prices in a location that will improve response times for our citizens, and provide the necessary lifesaving equipment included in Pendleton’s fire bond proposal. There are numerous variables that go into the cost of any new facility. A few examples include whether land acquisition is necessary for the project or is there city-owned land available for the project; does Boise’s facilities include smaller stations like ours on Southgate, or does it include larger facilities such as what is proposed in our bond issue that is the primary dispatch and administrative center necessary to house the majority of the men and women firefighter/paramedics and reserves; what are the site development and modification to existing infrastructure needs and regional construction cost variables? Boise’s $17 million bond in 2014 included the cost for the training facility at $6.8 million. Current information on their website lists the cost of this facility at $11.5 million for Phase I. The costs for the proposed Pendleton fire station were developed over a year’s time in a public process that included input from citizens, city staff and elected officials. The information is public, posted on the fire station web site, and has been discussed in more than 30 public meetings. There is no fluff in Pendleton’s proposal. Improvements covered in the fire bond issue are reasonable and totally appropriate for our community. Please vote yes for our fire bond. Chuck Wood Pendleton The Comey canning’s easy tells W ith Donald Trump, the tells his own FBI director, it meant are always easy. Rosenstein’s memo was a pro forma, When the president says, pretextual exercise. “I’m, like, a smart person,” you know Tell: When the president boasts he nurses deep insecurities about his about his great campaign, you know intelligence. When he says, “I’m really he’s less than sure about just how great rich,” you know that he knows that it really was. you know that, really, he probably Tell: When the president calls news isn’t. “fake” or a story “phony,” you know Bret And when he writes, as he did in his Stephens the truth quotient is likely to be high. letter to the now-former FBI director, And, again, you know he knows you Comment James B. Comey, that “while I greatly know it. appreciate you informing me, on All the more so thanks to reporting three separate occasions, that I am not under from The Times’ Matthew Rosenberg and investigation,” you know what keeps him up Matt Apuzzo, who revealed Wednesday that at night, too. Comey had only recently asked Rosenstein That wasn’t the only tell in “for a significant increase in Trump’s Comey canning. First resources for the bureau’s there was its abruptness. Rod investigation into Russia’s Rosenstein, deputy attorney interference in the presidential general as of two weeks ago, election.” For the record, the delivered his memorandum Justice Department denies the detailing Comey’s misfeasance in claim. the Hillary Clinton email saga on For the administration’s Tuesday. Trump fired the director apologists, the fallback line is the same day. that the Russia investigation will Come again? This is the same continue no matter who succeeds Comey. That administration that waited 18 long days to might be credible if, say, the former New York fire a national security adviser profoundly Police Department commissioner Ray Kelly vulnerable to Russian blackmail. Why? gets the job. And if Chris Christie or Rudy Because, as press secretary Sean Spicer Giuliani gets it? explained earlier this week, the White House In all this, the riddle wrapped in a mystery felt it owed Michael Flynn an “element of due inside an enigma is Russia. process.” Golf courses: Russia. Mike Flynn’s lies For Comey, not so much. He learned of his to the vice president: Russia. Jeff Sessions’ dismissal from a TV screen, while delivering a lies to the Senate: Russia. Paul Manafort, speech to bureau employees. Firings on “The Carter Page and Roger Stone: Russia. Apprentice” had more class and ceremony WikiLeaks: Russia. Donald Trump Jr.: Russia. than this. The Bayrock Group: Russia. Erik Prince’s Then there is Rosenstein’s memo, which diplomatic back channel: Russia. makes a solid case that Comey bungled nearly No one piece in this (partial) list is every aspect of the Clinton investigation — a incriminating. And with Trump, the line revelation to nobody in Washington, left between incompetence and nefariousness, or right, except perhaps Comey himself. misjudgment and misdirection, is usually a Nor was there any mystery about any of blurry one. this when Trump gave the director his very Still, Jim Comey’s firing now brings two public blessing at a White House ceremony points into high relief. First, the administration in January, resisting the advice of prominent is not being truthful when it claims the director conservative voices to fire him back then. was dismissed for what he did last summer. But if the memo broke no new ground, Second, Donald Trump is afraid. A president there was something crassly novel about the who seeks to hide a scandal may be willing to political uses to which the administration was risk an uproar. willing to put Rosenstein and his reputation ■ for ethical behavior. Bret Stephens won a Pulitzer Prize for In a CNN interview Tuesday, Kellyanne commentary in 2013. He began working as a Conway stressed Rosenstein’s service as U.S. columnist at The New York Times in April. attorney in Maryland under Barack Obama, along with the Senate’s 94-6 vote to confirm Editor’s note: Bret Stephens has made him. This is another tell, since the ordinary quite a splash, jumping last month from the practice of this White House is to impugn the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times. motives of anyone suspected of enjoying the Known for his strong neoconservative favor of Democrats. Just look at Sean Spicer’s views, Stephens helped shape the Journal Tuesday denigration of the former acting editorial page, where he was deputy editorial- attorney general Sally Yates as an alleged page editor and, for 11 years, aforeign affairs Hillary hack for her prescient warnings to the columnist. White House about Flynn. Before that, Stephens was editor in chief In other words, the White House needed of The Jerusalem Post. At The Post he the cover of an honorable man making an oversaw the paper’s news, editorial and digital honest case against Comey to disguise its own operations and its international editions, and case against him, which is neither honorable also wrote a weekly column. He has reported nor honest. How do we know? By following from around the world and interviewed scores @realDonaldTrump on Twitter. of world leaders. “F.B.I. Director Comey was the best thing Mr. Stephens is the author of “America that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!” Coming Global Disorder,” released in the president wrote May 2. “The phony November 2014. Trump/Russia story was an excuse used He is the recipient of numerous awards by the Democrats as justification for losing and distinctions, including two honorary the election. Perhaps Trump just ran a great doctorates and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for campaign?” commentary. He will be a new addition to the Tell: After the president publicly impugned East Oregonian editorial page. The riddle wrapped in an enigma is Russia. Fire chief worked hard to craft right-sized bond There appears to be a general consensus in our in our community regarding the need for a new fire station, but disagreement on the best location and design. Our Lions Club has worked with Chief Mike Ciraulo and I have been impressed with his professionalism and dedication. After listening to him talk about the various options for a new fire station, I am also confident that he has done an admirable job in analyzing these options. Unfortunately, there is no perfect answer to this challenge; all options involve tradeoffs. I am confident that Chief Ciraulo has carefully considered current operational requirements, welfare of our firefighters, future needs of our community and responsibility to the taxpayers in recommending this option. Please join me in voting yes for the new fire station. Dwight Johnson Pendleton 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. Send letters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.
