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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 21, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Thursday, December 21, 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 Listen to legislative leaders If the Oregon Legislature intends potentially divisive than the state’s transportation package, far-reaching to pass tax and spending reforms in as it was. 2019, the work should have begun Three approaches were key to the months ago. transportation plan: That was the message from First, the four legislators veteran legislators at the recent operated as a bipartisan leadership Oregon Leadership Summit. It team, instead of echoed what Gov. the Democrats Kate Brown and the legislative leaders With a 35-day controlling outcome. The said in June: In the session starting four trusted and 2019 Legislature, respected each focus on structural in February, other, even when budget and tax reforms. Brown has yet to they disagreed, Yet Brown told show her hand. sometimes vehemently. the Leadership That team Summit this month approach recognized that she wanted to political practicality — the majority achieve such reforms a year earlier Democrats would need minority — in the 2018 Legislature. She said Republicans’ votes for passage. her staff was working on “options to solve the structural deficit issues Widespread bipartisan support also Oregon faces, not just for the short would deter critics from trying to term but for the long term.” overturn the transportation plan through a voter referendum. With that 35-day legislative That approach also reflected the session starting in February, Brown leadership quartet’s commitment has yet to show her hand. to a transportation plan that Which reinforces why four would overcome ideological and veteran legislators — Democrats geographical differences. Maybe and Republicans — were skeptical it’s noteworthy that three of the about the state soon being able to four came from rural regions; none make progress on tax and spending represented the Portland metro area; reforms. none was considered an ideologue. The four lawmakers steered the Second, the negotiations massive transportation-finance plan involved months of work — or through this year’s Legislature. The years, if you count past iterations of Democrats — Springfield Sen. Lee transportation plans. Beyer and Coos Bay Rep. Caddy Third, everyone had a say. McKeown — chaired the special Scores of individuals and interest transportation committee. The groups from throughout Oregon Republicans — Dallas Sen. Brian participated in workgroups. They Boquist and Ontario Rep. Cliff could not reasonably claim they had Bentz — served as vice chairs. Their collaborative success might not been heard. In contrast, the 2018 Legislature provide a guide for handling revenue is only weeks away and Oregonians and budget reform, which is why know little about the governor’s and the summit’s organizers asked them legislative leaders’ plans for genuine to speak. Yet the lawmakers warned tax and spending reforms. We are that financial reform would be far not filled with hope. more complicated, difficult and 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 Raising graduation rates The (Eugene) Register-Guard O regon Secretary of State Dennis Richardson’s just-completed audit of high school graduation rates was one of those good news-bad news reports. While there has been some improvement in the number of students who graduate from high school in four years, overall graduation rates have remained flat if you include students who take longer than four years to graduate. Improved on-time graduation rates are a good thing for both students and taxpayers, but the bottom line is that too many students — almost one in five — are still leaving school without earning a diploma. The new audit is useful because it drills down below these numbers to look at which groups are struggling and what might be done to help them. This is the kind of information that is needed for the state Department of Education to set priorities and craft a plan to reach these goals. Auditors were critical of the department’s response to low graduation rates in the past, saying it needs “to step up its game and assume its leadership role to make Oregon a leader in education.” This puts the ball squarely in the court of the department’s new acting head, Colt Gill, a former superintendent of Bethel School District. Gill was named the acting deputy superintendant in October after his predecessor was fired. Based on Gill’s initial response to the audit, Gov. Kate Brown’s confidence in him is justified. Gill concurred with the audit recommendations made by the secretary of state — and outlined efforts that are planned or already underway to deal with the concerns raised by auditors. In some cases, these efforts surpass the recommendations or goals outlined in the audit. This kind of initiative is going to be needed. Based on federal budget priorities, Oregon public schools are likely to face increased financial pressure in the next few years. For example, plans at the federal level to do away with the state and local tax exemption, or SALT, are likely to make it even harder to increase local or state taxes to pay for improvements in education. Currently, taxpayers are allowed to deduct state and local taxes when they file their federal income taxes. In Eugene, for example, a homeowner with an income of $75,000 currently can deduct about $10,300 in state and local taxes from his or her federal income tax obligation, according to the Government Finance Officers Association. Remove those deductions, and that homeowner will pay about $1,550 more in taxes per year. The vast majority of taxpayers who benefit from these SALT deductions are middle income or working class. For example, about eight times as many taxpayers earning less than $25,000 a year claim this deduction nationally compared to people with an income of $1 million or more. If this tax break goes away, it is likely to make it harder to pass state or local tax measures for schools. The good news is initiatives already underway within Oregon should help improve graduation rates, including recent increases in funding for Career and Technical Education. But it’s going to require building a partnership between the Department of Education, local school districts and community members to improve graduation rates in the face of these new challenges. The new audit drills down below the numbers. OTHER VIEWS Bringing down our monsters W ASHINGTON — Jaws drop Even though women are half of and drop and drop. Until it ticket buyers, only 4 percent of the 100 seems it will never stop. top-grossing films over the last decade You would think we would get were directed by women. Women make numb at some point. But no. There are up 11 percent of writers, 3 percent just too many numbskulls. of cinematographers, 19 percent of We cannot refresh our browsers fast producers and 14 percent of editors. enough to see the latest stupefactions The quality of women’s roles, once so on sexual violations and Trump Maureen rich in the ‘30s and ‘40s, has atrophied. violations — which dovetail in a Last year, women comprised only 29 Dowd surreal way. percent of protagonists. Comment Every day, TV anchors breathlessly There has been lip service given report some bizarre new insult or to fixing the inequality, but no one in accusation or hissy fit or Putin nuzzling by the power ever raised holy hell about it — not president, as he wanders around howling in the the women studio chiefs, not the male studio storm like a late-stage Lear — raging, blowing, executives, not the unions. spouting, wits turning — in his White House of Hollywood was a warped society and dark delusions. everyone knew it. Gender stereotypes were The dynamic in the capital grows ever enshrined in amber: Women can’t direct more dangerous, as Donald Trump tells fables because it’s too risky to trust them with big to justify the unjustifiable and his staff feeds budgets; they get too emotional; they only him more fables in a futile attempt to manage want to direct movies where people talk or, his puerile moods. Truth is held hostage to God forbid, cry; they don’t have the authority Trump’s ego. The country’s fate — and the to come across as commanding generals. world’s — rests on who best flatters America’s That’s why monsters were allowed to roam, Grand Canyon of Need. feeling entitled to human sacrifices, vulnerable As men are falling, women are rising. The young women offered at the altar of art, gender gap in Virginia and Alabama presages a ambition and box office. gender chasm in 2018. Hayek asks the infuriating key question: Democratic women in Congress have “But why do so many of us, as female artists, decided they may be able to expel the president have to go to war to tell our stories when we on his self-confessed sexual larceny. If they have so much to offer? Why do we have to can purge their own party’s offenders and fight tooth and nail to maintain our dignity?” drive women to the polls With so many talented by whipping up outrage women and so many over the absurdity of ticket-buying women, the nation’s avatar of why had Hollywood aspirations and values stopped trying “to find out being immune from the what female audiences penalties facing other wanted to see and what gropers, then they could take back the House stories we wanted to tell.” and maybe even the Senate and hold hearings When I wrote a Times Magazine piece on the Harasser in Chief. two years ago, interviewing scores of “We are not going to let up,” Rep. Lois women directors, writers, producers and Frankel of Florida, chairwoman of the cinematographers and studying their amazing Democratic Women’s Working Group, told work, I got more and more angry as I realized The New York Times’ Carl Hulse. “This is so that these women were being systematically much bigger than us.” excluded based on ridiculous biases. The country is going through twin traumas I believed the top woman producer who told that seem pagan in their lack of decency. me that it involved something as primitive as With so many grotesque stories tumbling men in Hollywood not wanting to be bossed out about marauding men treating women as around by women because it made them think property or their office as their “stable,” as one of hectoring wives and mothers. former NBC producer said in the case of Matt There are a lot of well-meaning people with Lauer, you’d think it would be hard to remain power in Hollywood. But they have looked at peak disgust. the other way for far too long on shameful And yet I felt the revulsion rising yet again imbalances. as I read Salma Hayek’s Times op-ed piece As Melissa Silverstein, founder and about her nightmarish experience with the publisher of Women and Hollywood, told depraved Harvey Weinstein when she was me, “Just because we finally had a successful trying to get her Frida Kahlo movie made with superhero movie directed by a woman, we now Weinstein producing — and demeaning and see that we are still really at the beginning.” threatening and pouncing and punishing. Hayek nailed it when she concluded: “Until Hayek recalled that she was “lost in the fog there is equality in our industry, with men and of a sort of Stockholm syndrome,” thinking women having the same value in every aspect if she made some compromises — Weinstein of it, our community will continue to be a demanded she add a full-frontal nude sex scene fertile ground for predators.” with Ashley Judd — that he would come to see No wonder, given the state of Washington her as an artist. and Hollywood, Dictionary.com chose It perfectly captured the rotten little secret “complicit” as its word of the year. that has long been corroding Hollywood. The ■ industry that helps shape our view of women Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer has fallen into gender apartheid — Saudi Prize for commentary, became a New York Arabia on Sunset Boulevard. Times columnist in 1995. As men are falling, women are rising. YOUR VIEWS Widening opportunity gap requires immediate action As 2017 draws to a close, we consider the challenges, hopes and opportunities for the year ahead and we are confronted with the stark reality that Oregon can and must do better for children and families. It is humbling to know that more than 100,000 children in Oregon are living in households with $800 a month or less in income. If nothing changes, these children — and many more in Oregon — are unlikely to escape poverty and its effects during their lifetime. New research from The Oregon Community Foundation confirms that disparities in Oregon are growing along socioeconomic, racial and geographic lines. The circumstances of one’s birth, where one is born, and longstanding patterns of discrimination determine the lifelong opportunities that are available to Oregon’s children. Families face economic stagnation, children face barriers to quality education and neighborhoods are increasingly segregated and isolated. Left unaddressed, this gap in opportunity will cut to the very core of Oregon’s future. But we can change this trajectory and close the opportunity gap for many of Oregon’s children by supporting economically and racially integrated affordable housing solutions, encouraging community engagement and promoting leadership development. Parenting education and expanded career and technical education opportunities are also part of the solution. We need to invest in education, from quality and affordable childcare and preschool to out-of- school enrichment, mentoring, and access to higher education. These strategies will be most successful when they are led by community members who can best define community assets, problems and potential solutions. Challenges and assets in each community are varied and there is not one “silver bullet” solution. But we have faith in the real power of Oregon communities to address these challenges because we see examples around the state where communities, donors, volunteers, government leaders and nonprofit organizations are addressing these challenges. As we enter the new year, we challenge Oregon to focus on the children whose promise of the American dream is becoming an illusion. Timely solutions will come from committed Oregonians who are willing to organize, collaborate, advocate and invest in families and strategies that renew the promise of the American dream for every Oregon children. Tim Mabry Hermiston