NORTHWEST East Oregonian Page 2A Cougars euthanized in Silverton, The Dalles Employers weighing benefits of PERS liability payments By CLAIRE WITHYCOMBE Capital Bureau SALEM — It’s not yet clear how many of the state’s public employers will use a new state program meant to address the state’s public pension debt. A little time, and a lot of math, stand between now and the answer. Oregon has an unfunded public pension liability of about $25.3 billion. Gov. Kate Brown has been seeking ways to pay down that debt, largely benefits already earned by retirees that can’t legally be altered. A bill requested by Brown and passed by lawmakers in the recently concluded legislative session, Senate Bill 1566, established a special incen- tive fund. Qualifying public employers are to receive a match of 25 percent of a one time, lump-sum payment they make toward their share of the $25.3 billion liability. The bill also created a separate School Districts Unfunded Liability Fund, which will distribute money to a new account to help school districts offset growing PERS costs. Both are funded by one-time revenue sources expected to generate about $140 million — $25 million for the match and $115 million for the school fund. Rob Bovett, legal counsel for the Association of Oregon Counties, says many counties are inter- ested in the match program, though he has yet to hear of any who have decided whether to use it or not. Bovett says the 25 percent match makes a difference in the face of skyrocketing percentage of payroll that public employers devote to PERS costs. “With six years of really Oregon wildlife officials euthanized two cougars this week, the first after sightings in Silverton that closed The Oregon Garden and the second in The Dalles that was found in an under construction hotel room. The subadult cougar in Silverton had been spotted by a woman walking through the wetlands of the botanical garden, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife officials said. The site was closed Wednesday, and ODFW trapped and killed the animal soon after. “The cougar was euthanized because it was considered a public safety risk,” ODFW spokeswoman Michelle Dennehy said. “That basically means they’ve killed livestock, pets or have been seen repeatedly in broad daylight. Cougars are normally afraid of people, and if they’re not, that indi- cates something isn’t right.” Then on Tuesday, a two-year-old male cougar was found in a room under construction at the Oregon Motor Motel in The Dalles. SALEM — A backlog of rape kits in Oregon is a year away from being eliminated following the passage of a state law mandating quicker testing, officials say. The kits collect biological material following reported sex crimes. In 2015, the Oregon State Police said it had a backlog of more than 5,600. In 2016, legislators passed a measure to speed up processing, but by 2017 state labs said their backlog had actually increased as old kits poured in from around the state. The state patrol and Multnomah County now say that kits are being processed quickly, and that labs are within a year of completing testing on thousands of older, warehoused kits dating to 1983. Less than 2,000 are estimated to be left statewide. The backlog in three of the Local home delivery Savings off cover price EZPay $14.50 41 percent 52 weeks $173.67 41 percent 26 weeks $91.86 38 percent 13 weeks $47.77 36 percent *EZ Pay = one-year rate with a monthly credit or debit card/check charge Single copy price: $1 Tuesday through Friday, $1.50 Saturday East Oregonian (USPS 164-980) is published daily except Sunday, Monday and postal holidays, by the EO Media Group, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801. Periodicals postage paid at Pendleton, OR. Postmaster: send address changes to East Oregonian, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801. 59° 49° 58° 34° FRIDAY SATURDAY Mostly cloudy with a bit of rain Chance of a little p.m. rain PENDLETON TEMPERATURE FORECAST 50° 32° 50° 31° 50° 31° HERMISTON TEMPERATURE FORECAST 58° 34° 62° 49° PENDLETON through 3 p.m. yesterday TEMPERATURE HIGH LOW 58° 56° 75° (1911) 30° 36° 18° (1913) PRECIPITATION 24 hours ending 3 p.m. Month to date Normal month to date Year to date Last year to date Normal year to date 0.00" 0.94" 0.87" 3.27" 5.10" 3.38" HERMISTON through 3 p.m. yesterday TEMPERATURE HIGH Yesterday Normals Records LOW 61° 59° 76° (1947) 26° 35° 19° (1943) PRECIPITATION 24 hours ending 3 p.m. Month to date Normal month to date Year to date Last year to date Normal year to date 0.00" 0.43" 0.61" 2.06" 4.19" 2.85" SUN AND MOON Sunrise today Sunset tonight Moonrise today Moonset today First Full Mar 24 Mar 31 Last Apr 8 54° 32° 55° 34° Seattle 57/44 ALMANAC Yesterday Normals Records 55° 35° 6:57 a.m. 7:09 p.m. 9:29 a.m. none New Apr 15 Today SUNDAY Spokane Wenatchee 50/43 52/40 Tacoma Moses 56/41 Lake Pullman Aberdeen Olympia Yakima 57/45 53/44 54/43 56/40 60/44 Longview Kennewick Walla Walla 54/42 60/51 Lewiston 61/47 Astoria 59/47 51/40 Portland Enterprise Hermiston 56/46 Pendleton 52/43 The Dalles 62/49 59/49 59/43 La Grande Salem 54/47 55/43 Albany Corvallis 54/41 54/40 John Day 56/48 Ontario Eugene Bend 62/48 55/38 54/40 Caldwell Burns 62/49 55/40 Astoria Baker City Bend Brookings Burns Enterprise Eugene Heppner Hermiston John Day Klamath Falls La Grande Meacham Medford Newport North Bend Ontario Pasco Pendleton Portland Redmond Salem Spokane Ukiah Vancouver Walla Walla Yakima Hi 51 54 54 54 55 52 55 57 62 56 52 54 53 60 52 55 62 61 59 56 58 55 50 53 55 60 60 Classified & Legal Advertising 1-800-962-2819 or 541-278-2678 classifieds@eastoregonian.com or legals@eastoregonian.com NEWS • To submit news tips and press releases: call 541-966-0818 or email news@eastoregonian.com • To submit community events, calendar items and Your EO News: email community@eastoregonian.com or call Tammy Malgesini at 541-564-4539 or Renee Struthers at 541-966-0818. • To submit engagements, weddings and anniversaries: email rstruthers@eastoregonian.com or visit www.eastoregonian. com/community/announcements • To submit sports or outdoors information or tips: 541-966-0838 • sports@eastoregonian.com Business Office Manager: Janna Heimgartner 541-966-0822 • jheimgartner@eastoregonian.com Lo 40 45 40 39 40 43 38 48 49 48 39 47 44 42 40 41 48 45 49 46 40 43 43 44 43 51 44 W r c c r sh c r c c c sh c c r r r c c c r c r c c r c c NATIONAL WEATHER TODAY Thu. Hi 49 55 46 47 52 54 47 53 58 55 42 55 52 50 47 48 60 60 58 48 50 48 53 51 49 57 56 Lo 36 29 28 39 25 28 34 32 34 32 28 31 28 36 38 39 35 33 34 38 26 37 31 28 38 36 28 Shown are noon positions of weather systems and precipitation. Temperature bands are highs for the day. W r r r c r r r r r r sh r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r WORLD CITIES Today Beijing Hong Kong Jerusalem London Mexico City Moscow Paris Rome Seoul Sydney Tokyo Hi 56 74 74 49 78 34 45 56 43 70 46 Lo 33 59 52 39 53 21 34 41 34 67 45 W s s s c pc sf pc sh c r r Thu. Hi 64 73 80 52 77 32 47 54 51 73 61 Lo 39 65 61 41 48 23 37 36 34 69 47 W s s s c pc c c c pc sh sh WINDS Medford 60/42 (in mph) Klamath Falls 52/39 Boardman Pendleton REGIONAL FORECAST Coastal Oregon: Heavy rain today; a down- pour in the morning, then rain in the south. Eastern and Central Oregon: Mainly cloudy today with a passing shower, except dry across the north. Western Washington: Cloudy today; periods of rain across the south. Occasional rain tonight. Eastern Washington: Mostly cloudy today. Rain and drizzle in the north; a shower near the Idaho border and in the mountains. Cascades: Periods of rain today. Plenty of clouds tonight with a couple of showers. Northern California: Cloudy today; rain, some heavy; however, snow showers in the interior mountains. Today Thursday NE 4-8 SW 6-12 W 10-20 SW 10-20 UV INDEX TODAY Shown is today’s weather. Temperatures are today’s highs and tonight’s lows. 0 2 3 called Melissa’s Law, required police to pass kits to state authorities within 14 days. The law was named for Melissa Bittler, a 14 year-old Portland girl killed by a rapist on her way to school in 2001. In that case, DNA evidence linking the murder and other rapes went untested for five years. Since the passage of the law, Jacqueline Swanson, a Portland attorney who has represented rape victims, said she has had calls from women asking what to do about investigations that seem to have stalled, and reporting that police had told them they were waiting for rape kit results. Some kits are also attached to crimes for which the statute of limitations has expired. While Oregon has no statute of limitations for first-degree sex crimes linked to newly-discovered DNA evidence, evidence of lesser crimes does have a time limit. COMMERCIAL PRINTING Production Manager: Mike Jensen 541-215-0824 • mjensen@eastoregonian.com REGIONAL CITIES Forecast A bit of rain and snow forwarded to Gardner’s lab. But the tally of local departments included some that had been processed before the count was finished. Because of that overlap, Gardner wrote in an email, he estimates the total statewide backlog is less. Statewide, he estimates less than 2,000 kits remain. Despite progress on the backlog, advocates say some victims still face barriers to having their reports taken seriously. In February the Portland Police Bureau announced it had used a SAFE kit to solve a 2006 crime, but a report later surfaced that the victim had given police the name of the suspect immedi- ately following the attack. The case mirrored a 2017 report that the agency had left a kit untested and made no arrest in a 2011 assault, despite also having the suspect’s name and address. The 2016 law that spurred testing of the kits, officially Circulation Manager: Marcy Rosenberg • 541-966-0828 • mrosenberg@eastoregonian.com Copyright © 2018, EO Media Group Breezy with rain, then cooler the late winter. “But a cougar coming this far into downtown, into the business district and deep into a hotel complex, and not showing fear of people or wariness of urban environments? That’s just extremely odd,” said Jeremy Thompson, ODFW district wildlife biologist, in a press release. “This may have been a cougar that was unable to establish its own home range in its natural habitat.” The Dalles cougar was ADVERTISING Advertising Services: Grace Bubar 541-276-2214 • gbubar@eastoregonian.com Multimedia Consultants: • Kimberly Macias 541-278-2683 • kmacias@eastoregonian.com • Jeanne Jewett 541-564-4531 • jjewett@eastoregonian.com • Dayle Stinson 541-278-2670 • dstinson@eastoregonian.com • Angela Treadwell 541-966-0827 • atreadwell@eastoregonian.com • Audra Workman 541-564-4538 • aworkman@eastoregonian.com SUBSCRIPTION RATES To subscribe, call 1-800-522-0255 or go online to www.eastoregonian.com and click on ‘Subscribe’ Mostly cloudy state’s most populous coun- ties, Multnomah, Marion, and Lane - including the cities of Portland, Eugene, and Salem - should be eliminated next month, when results are expected back from a private lab, said Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney Tara Gardner. “We’re waiting for approx- imately 150 kits,” she said. The statewide backlog is also dropping, with state labs logging 1,172 waiting kits in February, the first decline in their backlog since 2015. Lab head Capt. Alex Gardner said that with new staff he expects to process the last by the end of the year. Some kits are also held by local police, but the exact number is always changing as departments send their kits to the state for testing, Gardner said. A tally late last year and including approximately 157 of the state’s more than 170 local departments, showed about 1,100 kits waiting to be Subscriber services: For mail delivery, online access, vacation stops or delivery concerns call 1-800-522-0255 ext. 1 — Founded Oct. 16, 1875 — THURSDAY ODFW responded after a call from city police and found the animal trapped in the small room. They determined the cougar was a public safety risk and sedated it with a dart gun through a vent in the wall, then took it off-site and killed it. Cougars are becoming a more common sight in towns such as Silverton, which are close to a forested area and food, Dennehy said, and have long been part of life on the outskirts of The Dalles in By TOM JAMES Associated Press Corrections TODAY EO Media Group file Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has euthanized two cougars in Oregon this week, one in Silverton and the other in The Dalles. Officials report steady progress on rape kit backlog The East Oregonian works hard to be accurate and sincerely regrets any errors. If you notice a mistake in the paper, please call 541-966-0818. www.eastoregonian.com the sixth euthanized by the state agency in 2018 because of public safety concerns, according to a press release. Oregon’s cougar popula- tion has rebounded from a low of around 200 animals in the late 1960s to more than 6,000 today, The Statesman Journal reported. Encounters between people and cougars are rare. There has never been a confirmed attack by a wild cougar on a person in Oregon, Dennehy said. “Seeing more cougars is part of a larger trend, espe- cially in northwest Oregon, but people don’t need to be alarmed,” Dennehy said. “Just consider keeping pets indoors at night. If you do encounter a cougar, make yourself look big and don’t run away from it.” Cougars were hunted to almost extinction in Oregon until 1957, when they were reclassified as a game animal. Hunting cougars is still allowed, but it’s more restricted and there’s a closely monitored bag limit. In 1994, Oregon voters outlawed hunting cougars with dogs. Associated Press dramatic employer rate increases, there is going to be a significant loss of public services, and this is a way to stem the tide,” Bovett said. It will also take some time for school districts to figure out whether the matching program will work for them, says Jim Green, executive director of the Oregon School Boards Association. For a small or medi- um-sized district, the program could help to temper those dramatic rate increases from year to year — say, instead of leaping from 26 percent of payroll to 33 percent, they might go from 26 to 30 percent. “It’s not just pure math,” Green said. “It’s also, what could we do in our district if we had that money that goes to that PERS increase?” Under the new bill, public employers that want to get the matching funds would have to contribute a minimum of $25,000. That will mean that employers will also have to evaluate whether making the contribution to the matching fund is worth the cost of the contribution, Green said. Green rattled off a list of potential needs that $25,000 could help pay for, especially in a small school district: a new part-time special education aide, career and technical educa- tion programming, a new school bus or roof. “At each and every turn we need to do what will have a bigger impact on students,” Green said. Public employers will know more about whether the program suits them once PERS rates are set later this year, and more still in mid-2019, when the state’s next two-year budget will be finalized. 211 S.E. Byers Ave., Pendleton 541-276-2211 333 E. Main St., Hermiston 541-567-6211 Office hours: Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed major holidays Wednesday, March 21, 2018 1 1 1 8 a.m. 10 a.m. Noon 2 p.m. 4 p.m. 6 p.m. 0-2, Low 3-5, Moderate 6-7, High; 8-10, Very High; 11+, Extreme The higher the AccuWeather.com UV Index™ num- ber, the greater the need for eye and skin protection. Forecasts and graphics provided by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2018 -10s -0s showers t-storms 0s 10s rain 20s flurries 30s 40s snow ice 50s 60s cold front 70s 80s 90s 100s warm front stationary front 110s high low National Summary: As snow winds down over the Ohio Valley and central Appalachians, snow will ramp up in the coastal Northeast today. Heavy rain, flooding and mudslides are in store for portions of California and Oregon. Yesterday’s National Extremes: (for the 48 contiguous states) High 90° in Pompano Beach, Fla. Low -15° in Saranac Lake, N.Y. NATIONAL CITIES Today Albuquerque Atlanta Atlantic City Baltimore Billings Birmingham Boise Boston Charleston, SC Charleston, WV Chicago Cleveland Dallas Denver Detroit El Paso Fairbanks Fargo Honolulu Houston Indianapolis Jacksonville Kansas City Las Vegas Little Rock Los Angeles Hi 70 51 38 36 52 57 60 36 60 39 42 37 75 62 43 82 22 39 81 77 42 67 56 73 64 69 Lo 46 34 28 28 34 32 50 32 39 26 27 27 53 38 26 57 -1 27 72 54 23 40 38 61 37 60 W pc pc r sn s s c sn c sn pc sn pc pc pc pc pc c c s pc pc pc c pc r Thur. Hi 77 59 44 44 54 61 59 41 63 46 48 40 80 72 46 86 25 42 81 80 47 66 67 71 70 63 Lo 52 39 31 26 42 41 37 30 39 27 32 23 61 46 25 60 6 27 72 62 29 39 45 54 48 55 W c s pc pc c s sh c pc pc s pc pc pc s c s s c pc s s s sh pc r Today Louisville Memphis Miami Milwaukee Minneapolis Nashville New Orleans New York City Oklahoma City Omaha Philadelphia Phoenix Portland, ME Providence Raleigh Rapid City Reno Sacramento St. Louis Salt Lake City San Diego San Francisco Seattle Tucson Washington, DC Wichita Hi 42 57 81 38 42 50 70 34 67 53 33 84 38 35 47 51 61 65 50 64 74 65 57 83 38 64 Lo 25 36 54 26 28 32 51 30 45 38 28 65 28 32 32 24 46 57 33 52 60 55 44 57 29 43 W sn pc s pc c s s sn s pc sn pc sn sn r s sh r pc c pc r c pc sn pc Thur. Hi 50 63 74 44 47 58 69 43 74 62 43 91 39 42 56 49 53 63 53 65 68 58 48 91 45 73 Lo 34 49 54 29 29 40 52 32 55 40 29 67 25 31 31 35 31 38 41 46 58 46 37 61 30 49 Weather (W): s-sunny, pc-partly cloudy, c-cloudy, sh-showers, t-thunderstorms, r-rain, sf-snow flurries, sn-snow, i-ice. W s pc s s pc s s s pc pc pc c c c pc c r sh pc sh r sh r c pc pc