LYBRAND STANFIELD,
GETS 15 DAYS PENDLETON
JAIL TIME ADVANCE
REGION/3A
67/44
SPORTS/1B
THURSDAY, MAY 25, 2017
141st Year, No. 158
WINNER OF THE 2016 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
One dollar
MILTON-FREEWATER
County upgrades buildings
to serve north end residents
By PHIL WRIGHT
East Oregonian
Residents in the north end of
Umatilla County soon will have
options for getting county business
done closer to home.
The county is renovating two of
its buildings in Milton-Freewater.
County Commissioner George
Murdock said building a new service
center for the area was on the table,
but the county is under the fi scal
crunch to save money, so improving
properties the county owns makes
more sense with taxpayer dollars
than starting new.
The county budgeted $128,987
for the work at 418 N. Main St. and
707 E. Broadway Ave., according to
data from Dan Lonai, administrative
services director. The project has
cost $61,550 so far, with more than
$36,000 for the heating, ventilation
and air conditioning.
Improvements at the Main Street
site include facade and roofi ng work.
The building has served as a home
to the sheriff’s offi ce and the Oregon
State University Cooperative Exten-
sion. Sharing the space will continue
when the work wraps up in July,
Murdock said, but the building will
have an offi ce for commissioners
See UPGRADES/8A
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Umatilla County maintenance supervisor Mark Tanner
installs a new light fi xture in the county offi ce Wednesday in
Milton-Freewater.
23M more
uninsured
with GOP
health bill,
analysts say
Bipartisan CBO report
shows $119B reduced
from federal defi cit
By ALAN FRAM and
RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR
Associated Press
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Pendleton senior Tommy Alberti cuts the fat off of chicken thighs while working in the kitchen Wednesday at the Prodigal Son Brewery
in Pendleton.
Classroom in the workplace
School to Careers program puts Pendleton students in real-life job training
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
Pendleton School District
budget woes or not, the School to
Careers program intends to press
on.
A work training program for high
school students in the Pendleton
School District, School to Careers
offi cials are looking toward outside
grants to continue operations.
School to Careers was
established a year ago through a
$390,745 career technical educa-
tion grant from the state to the
school district. The district used
the grant to contract with Eastern
Oregon Business Source and hire a
program coordinator.
The program aimed to hone
students’ professional skills by
placing them at internships and job
shadows at local businesses.
At a recent presentation to the
Pendleton School Board, Susan
Bower, the president of Eastern
Oregon Business Source and the
project manager for School to
Career, and program coordinator
Christina van der Kamp, shared
the results from the program’s fi rst
year.
According to their presentation,
School to Careers made 43 work
placements across 23 work sites,
fi ve times more than the year
before. Work sites included Wtech-
link, Riverside Veterinary Clinic,
Interpath Laboratory the Oregon
State Police Crime Lab.
More than 50 businesses and
organizations participated in the
program in total, whether it was
through work placements or the
career days tours and panels the
program sponsored.
Bower and van der Kamp
reported that 100 percent of the
businesses who partnered with
See SCHOOL/8A
House approves ballot measure for
state executive impeachment process
By PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
SALEM — The Oregon House
of Representatives voted 49-to-5
Wednesday to send a constitutional
amendment to voters to create a
process for impeaching the governor.
Oregon is the only state in the
nation that has no mechanism for
executive impeachment.
Rep. Jodi Hack, R-Salem, has
been working on the joint resolution
since 2015, the year Gov. John
Kitzhaber resigned amid an infl u-
ence-peddling scandal.
Hack and other lawmakers intro-
duced the proposal to address the
lack of an impeachment process. The
proposal was not a direct reaction to
the Kitzhaber debacle, said Preston
Mann, a spokesman for the House
GOP.
“I think most Oregonians would
be surprised to learn that our state
does not have a mechanism for exec-
utive branch impeachment already in
place,” Hack said. “In fact, Oregon
continues to be the only state in the
nation without this kind of protection
against executive branch misconduct.
I am of course hopeful that we would
never need to pursue an impeach-
ment proceeding, but we should not
pretend that Oregon is immune to
potential political scandals.”
The measure would allow the
House to impeach a statewide offi -
cial on the grounds of malfeasance
in offi ce, corruption, neglect of
duty, felonies or misdemeanors. The
process would require a three-fi fths
majority vote in the House. The
offi cial would then face a trial in
the Senate, where conviction would
require a two-thirds majority vote.
The proposal was fi rst offered in
2015 but stalled in the Senate, Mann
said. The resolution now heads to
the Senate. If approved, the measure
would appear on the 2018 general
election ballot.
Senate Majority Leader Ginny
Burdick, D-Portland, told The
Oregonian in February that she won’t
support adding an impeachment
process to the state constitution.
WASHINGTON — The
health care bill Republicans
recently pushed through the
House would leave 23 million
more Americans without insur-
ance and confront others who
have costly medical conditions
with coverage that could prove
unaffordable, Congress’ offi cial
budget analysts said Wednesday.
Premiums on average would
fall compared with President
Barack Obama’s health care
overhaul — a chief goal of many
Republicans — but that would
be partly because policies would
typically provide fewer benefi ts,
said the report by the nonpartisan
Congressional Budget Offi ce.
In some regions, people with
pre-existing medical conditions
and others who were seriously
ill “would ultimately be unable
to purchase” robust coverage at
premiums comparable to today’s
prices, “if they could purchase
at all,” the report said. That was
a knock on 11th-hour changes
Republicans made in the bill
to gain conservatives’ votes by
letting states get waivers to boost
premiums on the ill and reduce
coverage requirements.
The report said older people
with lower income would dispro-
portionately lose coverage. Over
half of those becoming uninsured,
14 million people, would come
from the bill’s $834 billion in
cuts to Medicaid, which provides
health coverage to poor and
disabled people, over 10 years.
Democrats cited the analysis
as further evidence that the GOP
effort to repeal Obama’s 2010
law, a staple of Donald Trump’s
presidential
campaign
and
those of numerous Republican
congressional candidates for
years, would be destructive.
It comes three weeks after the
House narrowly passed the
legislation with only Republican
votes, and serves as a starting
point for Senate Republicans
trying to craft their own version,
which they say will be different.
“The report makes clear that
Trumpcare would be a cancer
on the American health care
system,” said Senate Minority
Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.,
using the nickname Democrats
have tried pinning on the bill.
Schumer said the legislation
would end up “causing costs
to skyrocket, making coverage
See HEALTH/8A