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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 7, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Tuesday, November 7, 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 Looking for leadership, not more excuses Bad news keeps rolling out from is disconcerting that, according to the governor’s office, Brown only the Oregon Health Authority. But instead of taking responsibility, Gov. learned of the problem when Allen took over as OHA director. It is Kate Brown not only ducked it but also tried to spin it as positive news. disturbing that Brown, through her press release, tried to spin the snafu The issue is that OHA paid instead of accepting her share of the too much to regional health-care responsibility. organizations, collected too much Indeed, this does sound like money from the feds as a result, Cover Oregon, and might have to but not in the way repay all of it. The OHA Brown suggested. Brown The Cover Oregon announced apparently fiasco stemmed the issue in a overpaid $74 from Gov. roundabout way John Kitzhaber last week, issuing million to 16 appointing the a press release coordinated care wrong people headlined “New to key jobs, not OHA Leadership organizations. keeping close tabs Takes Action Someone must be on the project and to Resolve dubious Overpayments held responsible. accepting progress reports. Made in Wake That also sounds of Cover Oregon like this new OHA Failure.” It fiasco. praised new OHA director Patrick As governor, Brown is CEO of Allen “and his team for acting a multi-billion-dollar organization quickly to bring stability and with tens of thousands of employees. transparency to OHA’s work on behalf of Oregonians. After just two A good CEO develops a solid record of hiring the right people, giving months leading OHA, Allen has them freedom to do their jobs while directed staff to resolve yet another also staying on top of their work. In consequence of the Cover Oregon technology failure. Governor Brown that regard, Brown has a decidedly mixed record, although she did appreciates that Allen is making eventually oust Lynne Saxton as the resolution of these issues the OHA director and bring in the top priority and looks forward to well-regarded Allen. monthly updates on his team’s It’s notable that Saxton was progress in resolving them.” forced to resign in the wake of The overpayments were made another failure of leadership at to coordinated care organizations OHA, as the department sought for patients who were eligible to undermine the credibility of a for both Medicaid and Medicare. Portland health care provider that This occurred from 2014 through was questioning the state’s rate- mid-2016. making process. Saxton denied any Brown is the state’s CEO. She active role in the plan, but stepped is responsible what happens on her down anyway. watch after becoming governor in No one, especially a politician, February 2015. likes to look bad. But a good CEO Mistakes happen. Still, it is builds confidence, trust and respect disappointing that OHA apparently by taking responsibility when things overpaid $74 million to 16 go awry. coordinated care organizations. It 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 Aggressive plan needed to tackle harmful pollutants Mankato (Minn.) Free Press A t a time when attention is being paid to the devastating effects pollution has worldwide — killing more people every year than all war and violence, a major study recently revealed — the U.S. may be dialing back its pollution controls. Just the opposite should be happening. The United States should take its role as a world leader seriously and be aggressive in tackling pollutants that make people sick. Asbestos and flame retardants are among the pollutants that do substantial harm; but instead of putting into place an earlier plan to look at chemicals in widespread use that result in the most common exposures, the new administration wants to limit the review to products still being manufactured and entering the marketplace, AP reports. For asbestos, that means gauging the risks from just a few hundred tons of the material imported annually while excluding almost all of the estimated 8.9 million tons of asbestos-containing products that the U.S. Geological Survey said entered the marketplace between 1970 and 2016, according to AP. That’s an alarming reduction, including to those who actually respond to alarms. Firefighters are put at risk just as much by the hazardous materials unleashed in a fire than the fire itself. A National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health analysis of 30,000 firefighters deaths concluded firefighters contract mesothelioma — caused by inhaling asbestos fibers — at twice the rate of other U.S. residents. Sickness and death attributed to responders working at 9/11 sites are evidence of pollutant risk on a massive scale. In June the World Trade Center Health Program, the federally funded organization that helps provide medical treatment for people affected by the attacks, counted more than 67,000 responders and 12,000 attack survivors as enrollees, the Los Angeles Times reported. Construction workers who work around asbestos during demolition or remodeling as well as low-income residents who live in less-than-ideal conditions also are victims of such chemical exposure. Those in the midst of hurricane cleanup operations right now are exposed to numerous pollutants. The administration’s reason for fighting tighter controls on the hazardous material is transparent. Fewer restrictions and less regulation are equated with being pro-business. Dialing back efforts to make our environment safer, however, will take an economic toll in multiple ways from public health costs to loss of productivity to future cost of cleanup. Beyond the financial cost is government accountability. Intentionally exposing the public to known carcinogens is ethically irresponsible. LETTERS POLICY The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters. Letters must be signed and include city of residence and a phone number. Email letters to editor@eastoregonian.com. OTHER VIEWS A conspiracy of inaction on sexual abuse I caught the journalism bug in The magnitude of the awfulness,” high school. I was fortunate to be a Rosenberg continued. “But we knew scholarship student at a rigorous New something.” York private school with a weekly And yet no one did anything about newspaper, and some of the older it. People were afraid to, or didn’t students I admired taught me the know how. So they — we — became power that the written word could part of an unwitting conspiracy of have. inaction. When we complained verbally This conspiracy has spanned the David to teachers or administrators about a relatively powerless, like interns, Leonhardt problem, they could ignore us. When secretaries and teenagers, to the Comment we put our arguments in writing, wealthy and famous, as well as they tended to pay attention. So we every level of power in between. Jill became teenage crusaders, inveighing against Abramson, my old boss, is one of the toughest perceived injustices. Sometimes, the subjects journalists I know. Still, as a midlevel manager were sophomoric (“censorship” of the talent two decades ago, she didn’t go over the head show), but often they were of her old boss — Oreskes serious (inequality, racism, — to report his behavior at South African divestment). The Times, as she regretfully Three decades later, I said last week. look back on the experience Post-Weinstein, the with deep gratitude. I also emphasis has been on look back with haunting holding other abusers regret. accountable. So far, each seems to deserve his For all of our crusading, we ignored the delayed consequences. (And, yes, the severity biggest story at the school. We were aware of the various abuses varies.) I hope the of the rumors — the teachers who made exposés continue. comments about girls’ bodies, the teacher But post facto truth and punishment are suspiciously friendly with female students, the not enough. We also need to figure out how music teacher solicitous of male students. to prevent future abuse. We need to make But we never wrote about it. As best as inaction feel unacceptable. I can remember, we didn’t even talk about Doing so will require changes from writing about it. We didn’t know how. It both organizations and individuals. Every seemed too dark, too uncertain. workplace and school should be asking In 2012, the truth came out. My school itself: Do people here know how to report a — Horace Mann — had tolerated sexual suspicion of abuse? Do they feel comfortable molestation for decades. Administrators whose doing so even when, as is typical, they have most solemn responsibility was protecting only an incomplete sense of it? children instead chose to look the other way At most places, the answers remain no and and protect child abusers. The music teacher, no. a cultish figure named Johannes Somary, was Organizations need “multiple, accessible the worst abuser during my time. One of his avenues of complaint,” as a federal task victims later committed suicide. force concluded. These avenues should be The current torrent of harassment blazingly obvious, not buried in a corporate revelations — following Jodi Kantor’s and policy that nobody reads. They should include Megan Twohey’s New York Times exposé of anonymous reporting options. They should Harvey Weinstein — has caused me to think feed into a process that’s confidential and fair, back on high school again, because every including to the accused. big case has had something in common with Every leader should also read case studies, Horace Mann. to understand how frequently other leaders, People knew. at Horace Mann, NPR and elsewhere, have Even if they didn’t know the details — I bungled these situations, usually through didn’t know what Somary was actually doing cowardice. Often, a victim or someone else — they knew that something was wrong. At did summon the courage to come forward, Fox News, many knew that Roger Ailes and only to have the institution do little or nothing. Bill O’Reilly mistreated women. At ABC, But the changes can’t be only about The New Republic and NPR, respectively, policies and organizations. They need to be people talked about the harassment by Mark personal, too. I’m guessing that you get angry Halperin, Leon Wieseltier and Michael when you think about the abuse committed Oreskes. In Hollywood, people talked about by Weinstein, O’Reilly, Trump or Somary Weinstein and Kevin Spacey — not to — about the long-lasting misery they have mention Donald Trump, who nonetheless inflicted on other human beings. I certainly do. became a heavily promoted reality star. The next time I see something that doesn’t As the screenwriter Scott Rosenberg has seem quite right, I’m going to remember that written about Weinstein, “Everybody knew.” anger. One conspiracy of inaction is more than (The full quotation includes a colloquial enough for a lifetime. adverb of emphasis between “everybody” and ■ “knew.”) David Leonhardt is an op-ed columnist for “Maybe we didn’t know the degree. The New York Times. I look back with haunting regret. YOUR VIEWS Commissioner Givens should focus on his own county This is an open letter to the citizens of Umatilla County regarding Commissioner Larry Givens’ editorial in our local paper opposing a home rule charter in Douglas County. One would think Givens has his hands full just managing the affairs of Umatilla County. Yet you are paying him $90,853 a year, not including benefits or PERS — which is likely 35 percent more — to meddle in Douglas County’s affairs. Really? We must wonder why a Umatilla County commissioner is concerned with a home rule charter initiative happening in our community. Are they afraid it’s catching? Let’s hope so. It is both offensive and taboo for a commissioner from another county to involve himself in the politics and affairs of another local government. Commissioner Givens opposed our charter on behalf of our commissioners, who are under suspicion for misuse of federal Title III dollars as recently reported in The Oregonian. These same commissioners have closed the county’s libraries and failed to support or promote a local measure to keep them open, outsourced public health services, have seen fit to log old growth trees at our county parks and approved planning permits allowing a foreign corporation to take private properties through eminent domain. Are similar decisions in Umatilla County’s future? Our charter called for five commissioners elected from throughout the rural areas of our county, giving those outlying communities a voice at the table, and a professional salaried county manager; not just someone whose only qualification is “they can win elections.” Umatilla County citizens are very generous considering your county’s median income is $45,000 and you pay your commissioners more than $90,000 a year — and that doesn’t even include the cost of their benefit package. Douglas County commissioners’ salaries are $77,459 annually, or $121,000-plus with benefits and PERS. A bit out of whack when you consider the average annual income in Douglas County is right around $38,000. Starting to see our point? Home rule is the privilege of citizens at the grass roots level to manage their own affairs and institute measures requiring accountability from elected officials. Home rule assumes government concerns should be solved at the level closest to the people and is the cornerstone of a democratic local government. Diana Larson and Stacey McLaughlin Myrtle Creek
