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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 3, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Thursday, August 3, 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 Be true to your pool Outdoor pools are a part of every Eastern Oregon summer. And when temperatures spike as they are right now, pools offer critical opportunities to get through a heat wave. They also offer fun and recreation, a place to teach life skills as well as a spot to meet and play with your friends and neighbors. Along with splash pads, pools offer affordable, safe, healthy ways for local families and children to spend their summer months. And as Pendleton learned this month, they can be economic engines, too. The city-owned aquatic center hosted hundreds of families from across the region who filled local hotels and restaurants during the multiple-day Inland Empire Swimming Championships. But the sun-soaked excitement of the weekend was muted by the fact that swim programs throughout the region are in danger. Blue Mountain Community College’s pool — which has long provided a place for the Pendleton Swim Association to practice and compete, as well as other schools in the area and as far away as Hermiston — may never open again. It is being prepped for permanent closure; the pool needs expensive upgrades that the college has no way to pay for. There is a bit of an improvement on the west side now that an indoor pool has opened at the Boardman Pool and Recreation Center. While it is not large enough to host competitions, it can offer swimmers a place to practice and train 12 months out of the year. Hermiston has been without an indoor lap pool since the closure of the Columbia Court Club, which was damaged by fire more than a year ago. Pendleton is where the pool situation is about to get much worse. Members of the swim association have spoken with Mayor John Turner and other city officials about finding ways to make the aquatic center a year-round operation, which would require a temporary cover. Finding ways to pay for that upgrade are key to keeping the Pendleton Swim Association a thriving, volunteer-run group that offers area children a unique opportunity for small town Oregon. And while times are undoubtedly tough for community colleges, BMCC should also look to find ways to continue to provide a community pool. The former pool provided a clear community benefit for decades, and helped ingratiate itself into the wider Eastern Oregon swim community. Keeping that asset going is good for the college and good for the community, if the money can be found to maintain it. We advise to look under all possible rocks for grant and loans, from local to statewide to federal sources. And ask locals to reach into their pocketbooks, too. If the Pendleton Fourth of July fireworks is any example, lots of people are willing to help lend financial support to things they value. A pool is a more expensive proposition than a once-a-year explosion, of course. Designing and managing it requires thought and planning and hard work, though opportunities for advanced planning have grown thin. Once the summer gives way to fall, the Pendleton Aquatic Center will close and there will be no competition swim pools in the county. We should do better. Our hot weather makes municipal pools summer money-breakers (and breaking even is the goal for a government-owned enterprise). Looking for ways to increase the swim season with temporary or permanent coverings should be the goal of both the public and private sectors. Umatilla County needs it, both for its economic success and the thousands of young families who have their fun in the water. 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 Transportation package the 2017 Legislature’s key accomplishment The Eugene Register-Guard T he signature achievement of the 2017 Legislature was its bipartisan approval of a $3.8 billion transportation funding package — a bill notable both for its size and for its innovations in public policy. The bill shows how tensions between opposing parties and between rural and urban areas can be harnessed for productive purposes. No one supports all elements of the package, but it will advance the interests of the state as a whole. This year’s success has its genesis in a failure two years earlier, when a deadlock over the state’s clean- fuels standard killed a plan to fund improvements to the state’s transportation network. Lawmakers then formed a 14-member committee that toured the state and heard the usual demands for repairs and improvements to roads and bridges. There were some unexpected messages as well. Congestion on Portland-area freeways was having an effect on transport and commerce throughout the state. And Sen. Lee Beyer, D-Springfield, co-chairman of the committee, reported strong statewide support for improved mass transit. The transit element of this year’s transportation package is its biggest departure from the past. The state Constitution prohibits the use of gas-tax revenue for any purpose other than to build and maintain the road network. That means state support for transit systems must come from another source. Lawmakers settled on a 0.1 percent payroll tax, which will raise $100 million a year. Mass transit is often regarded as an urban concern, and a new tax of any kind for any reason is a unicorn in the legislative bestiary. But enough rural legislators supported the tax, because as Beyer found, transit services are increasingly vital to mobility in mid-size and smaller communities. Enough tax-averse Republicans supported the payroll tax because it raises a significant amount of money at a low rate. The Lane Transit District can expect an increase of about 15 percent in its general fund as a result of the new state tax. A second innovation is a tiered vehicle registration fee, with electric and highly fuel-efficient vehicles paying the most. Vehicles that use little or no gasoline pay little or nothing in gas taxes, making them free riders on the road network. The differential fee works against the state’s goal of reducing fossil fuel consumption and emissions linked to climate change. But as fuel efficiency improves, gas consumption will need to be decoupled from transportation taxes. And the unwanted effects will be offset by rebates on the purchase of electric vehicles, financed by a 0.5 tax on the sale of new cars. Oregon also will impose a $15 tax on the sale of new adult bicycles costing more than $200. This tax was the price for the support of legislators who believe bicycles are subsidized by the current transportation funding system. Revenue from the tax will be used to create more and safer bike routes — and might even reduce the long-running tensions between bicyclists and motorists. The package’s big-ticket projects are mostly in the Portland area — improvements to Eugene’s Randy Papé Beltline are conspicuously absent. But the Portland projects are likely to be financed in part by tolls. Portland-area lawmakers’ willingness to accept the possibility of tolling shows how serious congestion problems in that part of the state have become. The transportation bill passed by a vote of 39-20 in the House and 22-7 in the Senate — more than the three-fifths majority needed in each chamber. It shows what can be achieved when legislators are willing to listen to people throughout the state and compromise on issues such as the clean-fuels standard. The success contains a lesson for lawmakers in Oregon and elsewhere. OTHER VIEWS Voters love lesbians L ike other minorities, Brown, who won in Oregon last year. LGBT people are seriously She is married to a man but identifies underrepresented in our as bisexual. (In 2004, Gov. James country’s political offices. McGreevey of New Jersey came out But I’ve seen a few signs that one as gay more than two years after his consonant in that cluster is especially election, announcing his resignation well positioned to gain ground. simultaneously.) Lesbians are on the march. And there is only one openly OK, that probably overstates LGBT person ever elected to the Frank things. Let’s say they’re on a brisk U.S. Senate: Wisconsin’s Tammy Bruni crawl. But consider: The Victory Baldwin, a lesbian, who is in her first Comment Fund, which supports LGBT term. In the House of Representatives, candidates nationwide in races however, openly LGBT men have enjoyed ranging from school board to governor, the advantage. There are five in the House recently crunched the numbers on how its now while there’s just one openly LGBT 1,162 beneficiaries over the last decade woman, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who fared, and the results are particularly identifies as bisexual. positive for women. That makes for a current total of seven The results are encouraging overall — openly LGBT members of Congress, and they’re a subtle ray of light following counting Baldwin, or 1.3 percent of the a dark week in terms of the Trump 535 lawmakers in all. According to Gallup, administration’s actions. Despite past roughly 4 percent of statements of affinity Americans identify as with lesbian, gay, LGBT. bisexual and transgender Pat Spearman, a state Americans, President senator in Nevada since Donald Trump hastily 2013, is one of them. announced a ban on “I’m African- transgender people American and a woman in the military, and in and a lesbian: I can’t court filings, his Justice catch a break,” she told Department went out of its way to enunciate me. “You know what I’m the position that gay saying?” She laughed, people are not protected then talked about the by a federal civil rights many decades when law on employment she kept her sexual discrimination. orientation secret, partly because she was in These are steps backward. But the U.S. military and partly because she was voters seem to be moving forward: The an ordained Methodist minister. She’s 62 overwhelming majority of the Victory and came out just seven years ago. Fund’s candidates are prevailing. Not at I asked her if she’d talked about that equal rates, though. journey during her campaign. Yes, she Women in the LGBT community won answered, and many voters, regardless of 70.3 percent of their races. Men won only sexual orientation, seemed to hear echoes of 60.9 percent. And that’s unusual, because their own struggles. “People could relate,” there’s almost no difference in success rates she said, adding that they respected “that I for female versus male candidates generally. embraced all of these: African-American, (There are so many fewer women in office woman, lesbian.” largely because so many fewer women run.) Openly LGBT politicians sometimes Meanwhile, another set of data shows get points from voters for candor and even an increase in the number of openly lesbian character. “There’s a little bit of the dynamic lawmakers in state legislatures. There are that if you’re honest about that, you’ll be 44 — still paltry, but an all-time high. The honest about everything,” Parker said. number of openly gay male lawmakers in “There’s a kind of halo effect.” state legislatures, 61, is significantly down That accrues to gay women and men from a peak of 72 in 2014, according to equally. But what may well distinguish figures compiled by Charles Gossett, a lesbians and explain the success rates that professor at Sacramento State University, the Victory Fund observed is how well and the LGBTQ Representation and Rights prepared they are, political analysts told me. Research Initiative at the University of As women, they’re more hesitant than men North Carolina. The number of openly to run, and that, coupled with being lesbian, trans lawmakers in state legislatures hasn’t may make them pause several extra beats to changed over the four decades that the be absolutely sure that their experience and initiative’s figures cover. It’s zero. mettle can eclipse any bigotry they confront. The figures show that 40 percent of all “It might be that lesbians who have LGBT lawmakers at the state level are made it over all the hurdles to the stage lesbian. In contrast, only 25 percent of of candidacy are just damn impressive all state lawmakers, regardless of sexual community leaders and thus better orientation or gender identity, are women. candidates,” said Andrew Reynolds, a So there’s something much closer to female- professor of political science at UNC and to-male parity among the LGBT lawmakers. the director of its research initiative. “It’s The New York Times is the first pretty rare to find a lesbian in elected office publication to be provided with these who is out of her depth.” selective snapshots, and they’re just Parker noted that by the time of that: snapshots. But they gibe with some her election as the mayor of Houston, politicians’ sense that voters may indeed be she’d worked for many years in the more receptive, or at least less resistant, to energy industry, a vital part of the city’s lesbians than to gay men. economy, and had been a well-known city “We’re less threatening, I think,” councilwoman as well as the city controller. Annise Parker, mayor of Houston from When I asked her which sort of 2010-2016, told me in a recent telephone discrimination — sexism or homophobia interview. She said lesbians don’t deal with — she’d encountered more often along the anything precisely like “the long-dispelled way, she answered instantly: sexism. “I shibboleths about gay men being sexual think at the highest levels,” she said, “the predators.” woman thing kicks in and kicks us in the More gay men than gay women have teeth.” been mayors — including, currently, the And the gay woman thing? mayors of cities as disparate as Santa Fe, Maybe that toughens a candidate. Maybe New Mexico, and Lexington, Kentucky that helps her bounce back from the kick. — just as more straight men than straight ■ women have. But Parker remains the only Frank Bruni, an Op-Ed columnist for openly LGBT person ever elected to lead The New York Times since 2011, joined the one of the nation’s 10 most populous cities. newspaper in 1995. Over his years, he has Similarly, the only openly LGBT person worn a wide variety of hats, including chief ever elected governor is also a woman, Kate restaurant critic and Rome bureau chief. Women in the LGBT community won 70.3 percent of their political races. 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.
