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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 3, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Friday, November 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 We need solutions, not possibilities The best idea to come from Gov. They range from non-starters such as privatizing state universities to Kate Brown’s PERS task force was reasonable proposals like setting up creating a matching fund to help schools and local government pay for the matching fund and selling surplus state land. their pension liabilities. The Oregon Public Employees Except the state doesn’t know what it owns. Individual agencies do, or at Retirement System serves some 900 least they should. But the task force public employers in addition to state discovered there is government. A state no overall inventory match — say, 25 These governments of state-owned land cents on the dollar and property. — could encourage That underscores faster action by those and the state need the weakness of cities, counties, to come up with the task force. It school systems, fire in July districts, community $25.3 billion to convened but no one acted to colleges, public have that inventory universities and fully fund created by the time other entities. task force held These PERS’ obligations the its fourth and final governments and the meeting in October. state need to come to retirees. Meanwhile, up with $25.3 billion the gap in PERS to fully fund PERS’ reserves continued to grow by billions obligations to retirees. Until they act, of dollars. PERS will consume more and more With a complete inventory in hand, of their operating budgets, meaning the task force could have made — or less money for current programs and at least explored — the often-difficult services. decisions of which surplus lands How would the state pay for those to sell and which to hold for future matching dollars? Ah, that’s the rub. use. That work had seemed a key And for local governments role when Brown appointed the task and schools, their current usually force. Members did come up with a overshadow future obligations. How would they come up with the few possibilities, such as selling the State Office Building in Portland and money to gain a state match? That’s replacing it with less-expensive real another rub. estate. In its report delivered to the As Brown and legislators prepare governor on Wednesday, the PERS task force didn’t provide the answers. legislation for the 2018 Legislature, workable ideas may yet develop. But The group of seven financial what the task force provided was a experts emphasized that it was not broad picture of PERS possibilities. making recommendations. What Oregon needed was a deep Instead, it came up with a list examination of PERS solutions. of ideas that could deserve study. 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 Oregon’s education system lacking direction Corvallis Gazette-Times, Oct. 26 e’re still a little puzzled over Gov. Kate Brown’s firing of Salam Noor, the state’s deputy superintendent of public instruction. Brown said that she was not satisfied with Noor’s ability to carry out her vision for Oregon’s education system and asked for his resignation. The firing came a little more than two years after Brown picked Noor to oversee the state’s K-12 schools. Colt Gill, Brown’s education innovation officer, was picked to be Noor’s interim replacement. Of course, we don’t dispute Brown’s ability to fire her cabinet members at will. We were curious, though, about the reference to Brown’s vision for the state’s educational system, so we were pleased to read a copy of a letter the governor sent earlier this month to members of her “education cabinet.” The letter purports to outline Brown’s vision for Oregon education. It’s awfully light on specifics — although, to be fair, it does highlight some promising areas that the governor has consistently supported, such as an emphasis on early education. It also ignores the biggest financial threat facing Oregon public schools, but more about that later. Brown outlines two “overarching guiding principles” in the letter: One asks for a “high standard of accountability” in existing and new programs. The other, which refers to the state’s “equity lens” for education, is a commitment that all children, regardless of race or socioeconomic status, get the full benefit of programs. There’s not much to argue with in those goals, although they’re plenty vague. The specific goals have a little more meat: • Brown wants her cabinet to work W toward developing a unified education budget for 2019-21 that helps improve school readiness, attendance and completion rates. That has promise, but if it’s not implemented properly, it could turn into a major mess. Color us skeptical right now. • She wants to develop a new statewide early learning plan — and it is true that investments in programs such as Head Start and quality preschools could pay off handsomely down the road. • She wants to achieve what she calls “aggressive high school graduation goals.” She’s seeking a 90 percent four- year cohort graduation rate by 2025. In some areas, to be fair, that is aggressive. But it’s a step back from the state’s goal that every adult Oregonian have a high school degree by 2025. • She wants to develop career-con- nected learning that’s aligned with workforce needs. The passage of Ballot Measure 98 freed up some money for these programs, although we still object to the fact that the measure came without a funding source. What goes unmentioned in the letter is any effort to deal with the growing unfunded liability from the state’s public pension system, something that threatens the ability of school districts to provide any kind of service to students. The unfunded liability in Oregon’s Public Employees Retirement System was up to $25 billion at last report. Brown is awaiting a report from a task force that may include suggestions to trim $5 billion from that amount. Let’s assume for the time being that the group is successful in that goal, a highly dubious assumption. But we still would have no plan to manage the remaining $20 billion shortfall. What’s the governor’s vision for handling that? Educators and students around the state will want to know about that. OTHER VIEWS Trump, Niger and connecting the dots I t is easy to ignore the recent story of above preindustrial levels by 2100. four U.S. servicemen killed in Niger, In other words, parts of sub-Saharan the giant state in central Africa, Africa are already at heat levels that because the place is so remote and Paris was supposed to prevent by the the circumstances still so murky. That end of the century — and the region is would be a mistake. Niger highlights heading for a 4-degree rise, which will a much larger problem — just how lead to the collapse of even more small foolish, how flat-out dumb President farms and lead to a mad scramble of Donald Trump is behaving. Thomas refugees toward Europe, competition Trump is a person who doesn’t Friedman for food and more unemployed males connect dots — even when they’re big, ready to join ISIS for $50 a month. Comment fat polka dots that are hard to miss. Barbut, as I reported, reinforced her Rather, he thinks inside narrow little point by showing me three maps of boxes built from his own simplistic impulses Africa with dots concentrated in the middle of and applause lines — and that tendency is the continent. Map No. 1: the most vulnerable leading us into a web of contradictions abroad. regions of desertification in 2008. Map No. 2: Niger is a perfect example. conflicts and food riots in 2007 and 2008. Map I know something about Niger because I No. 3: terrorist attacks in 2012. All the dots did a documentary there last year for National of all three maps cluster around Niger and its Geographic’s “Years of Living Dangerously” neighbors. Hello? climate series and wrote several columns about And what is Trump’s response to this it for The New York Times. To understand reality? It’s to focus solely on using the U.S. why groups affiliated with the Islamic State military to kill terrorists in Africa while offering and al-Qaida are popping up in that region a budget that eliminates U.S. support for global of central Africa, you have to connect a lot contraception programs; appointing climate- of dots and recognize the linkages between a change deniers to all key environmental posts; number of different problems — not just say, in pushing coal over clean energy; and curbing effect: There are bad guys there. I will call “my U.S. government climate research. generals.” They will kill them. I will take credit. In short, he’s sending soldiers to fight a As defense systems expert Lin Wells once problem that is clearly being exacerbated by put it: To ameliorate problems in places like climate and population trends, while eliminating Niger, you must never think in the box. You all our tools to mitigate these trends. must never think out of the box. “You must That’s just stupid, reckless and irresponsible always think without a box.” — and it evinces no ability to connect the dots Why? Because what is destabilizing all of or think without a box. these countries in the Sahel region of Africa But this is not only in Africa: Trump was and spawning terrorist groups is a cocktail of obsessed with defeating ISIS in Syria and Iraq climate change, desertification — as the Sahara — but with as few U.S. troops as possible. The steadily creeps south — population explosions only way he could do that was by tacitly allying and misgovernance. with Iran, Syria’s regime, Russia, pro-Iranian Desertification is the trigger, and climate Shiite militias and pro-U.S. Kurds, who were change and population explosions are the the main anti-ISIS forces on the ground. We amplifiers. The result is a widening collapse of could not defeat ISIS or stabilize Syria and Iraq small-scale farming, the foundation of societies without all of them. all over Africa. And that collapse is leading to And what is Trump’s strategy now? I have a rising tide of “economic migrants, interethnic no clue. We’ve distanced ourselves from the conflicts and extremism,” Monique Barbut, Kurds, moved to tear up the nuclear deal with who heads the U.N. Convention to Combat Iran and added U.S. troops in Afghanistan, a Desertification and guided me in Niger, country we also can’t stabilize without the tacit explained. help of Iran next door. If you know how these A few numbers: Niger, with rampant dots connect, please write. poverty and poor access to contraception, has Nothing Trump ever says has a second one the highest birthrates in the world: 7.6 paragraph. His whole shtick is just a first children per woman. I met a man there who paragraph: Build a wall, tear up the Iran deal, boasted of 17 kids. Neighboring Nigeria is tear up TPP, defeat ISIS, send troops to Niger growing so fast it will replace the U.S. as the and Afghanistan to kill terrorists, kill climate third-most-populous country in the world by policy, kill family planning, cut taxes, raise 2050. Nigeria is a third bigger than Texas. military spending. Every box just marks an Meanwhile, climate change in the region applause line he needed somewhere to get is so severe that nearby Senegal’s national elected. Nothing connects — and we will pay weather bureau says that from 1950 to 2015, for that. the average temperature there rose two ■ degrees Celsius and the average annual rainfall Thomas Friedman, a New York Times declined by about 2 inches. The Paris climate columnist, was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes for accord was designed to keep global average international reporting in Beirut and Israel and temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius one for commentary. YOUR VIEWS City manager explains compost policies In response to Beverly Stoddard of Echo regarding her letter to the editor about Stanfield’s “garden waste dump” being closed to non-residents, please let me explain our policies regarding access to our Compost Yard. Ms. Stoddard requests that access to the site be given to all who pay Stanfield taxes. This is already our policy. Anyone who wishes to have a permit to access the site need only show proof of residency or property ownership within Stanfield city limits. This can be in the form of a utility bill or property tax bill, and proof of identity. However, I suspect that what Ms. Stoddard really wants is access given to all who have the word “Stanfield” appearing on their property tax bill. Properties that pay taxes to the Stanfield School District or Cemetery District may have the word “Stanfield” on their bill, but may not pay taxes to the city of Stanfield. Similarly, persons with a mailing address with the 97875 ZIP code, like Ms. Stoddard’s friend, will have the word “Stanfield” in their address, but this may be news to them: They don’t live in Stanfield. At least, not within the city of Stanfield. The city of Stanfield only receives taxes from properties within Stanfield city limits. These properties will have the “City of Stanfield” listed among the entities that their property taxes go to. If Ms. Stoddard owns property within Stanfield city limits, we would be happy to issue her a permit and gate code. The city is the sole owner of our compost yard. We receive no funding from any other agency to pay for the maintenance of that site. Last year, use of the compost yard shot up exponentially, causing our costs to balloon. We have addressed this by closing the site to residents only, or to paying commercial customers. We regret that this step was necessary, but unfortunately, a few bad actors have made it necessary to restrict access to the site. I should add, however, that even though access to the compost yard is restricted, we are still giving away the compost to whomever wants it. Just give us a call at City Hall and we will arrange for you to get some. W. Blair Larsen, city manager Stanfield 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.
