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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 1, 2018)
Page 4A East Oregonian Thursday, November 1, 2018 CHRISTOPHER RUSH Publisher KATHRYN B. BROWN Owner DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor WYATT HAUPT JR. News Editor Founded October 16, 1875 OUR VIEW Democracy isn’t meant to be easy for officials A few words about government transparency: It makes democracy messy for government officials; it makes democracy inconvenient for those who hold power; it makes democracy work. The Kate Brown administration got a quick comeuppance last week and a partial lesson in transparency. The Oregon Department of Education quietly decided it was not releasing the annual school district report cards, as had been scheduled for last week, and instead would delay them until Nov. 15. The public was outraged. Gubernatorial candidate Knute Buehler seized on this — rightly so — as an example of Gov. Brown’s lack of transparency. At Brown’s direction, the DOE hastily reversed course and released the data, more or less. The public now can use the DOE website to look up report cards on the performance of each school district and individual schools but cannot run comparisons. State schools chief Colt Gill said programming required more time, which was one reason for the Nov. 15 release date. The Oregonian newspaper proved him wrong. Overnight, its newsroom data team converted material into a useable, searchable format. The newspaper also deserves credit for breaking the original story about the delay, showing once again why a democracy needs a free press to serve as watchdogs. It was not lost on anyone — except perhaps Gill, who said the outcry caught him off-guard — that Nov. 15 is after the gubernatorial election in which education could be a deciding issue for voters. This episode either was tone-deaf management by Gill or, as Buehler claimed, deliberate deception by Brown or her staff. In the end, as Gill said was the case, the data showed little new about Oregon schools. What Oregonians will remember, however, is that Brown’s administration intended to delay the data release, regardless of why. Brown got a reprieve on another debacle. The Oregon Court of Appeals temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that would have forced disclosure of potential legislation being considered by her administration. Those legislative concepts — more than 260 of them — might have revealed whether Brown was AP file photo Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, right, meets with media representatives in Salem on Jan. 26, 2017. considering tax increases and other controversial measures for the 2019 Legislature. After ending the 2017 session by saying tax reform was a high priority for 2019, Brown has not followed through — at least not publicly. Legislative concepts submitted by state agencies have been considered public record in the past, although little attention was paid to them. Now the Brown administration is making the dubious claim that they are protected by attorney-client privilege. Even then, Brown could choose to make them public. It appears that political opponents wanted access to those legislative concepts, probably to use against Brown in the election. That is one of the risks a public official takes. Incumbency has a great advantage over challengers, but incumbency should never shield a politician from transparency. Brown supporters will argue that Buehler is not being transparent, because he has not released his complete income tax returns, unlike Brown. They are right; however, there is a difference between public records and an unelected person’s private tax returns. Candidates promote transparency when running for office, whether for city councils and school boards or the presidency and governorships. Once in office, they prefer the darkness of closed government to the sunlight of full disclosure. That shift might be understandable, but it is inexcusable. Full transparency must be the constant standard by which Oregon government operates. OTHER VIEWS End of birthright citizenship would hurt more than help The (Charleston) Post and Courier resident Trump’s assertion on Tuesday that he could end birthright citizenship via an executive order likely is another attempt to stir up immigration as a campaign issue ahead of next week’s midterm election. It’s a bad and almost certainly unconstitutional idea, and had the matter stopped there, it would hardly merit serious discussion. Then, a few hours later in a series of tweets, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he would introduce legislation “along the same lines” as Mr. Trump’s proposed executive order. It’s not the first time Mr. Graham, long an advocate of immigration reform, has suggested such a change. But he now has a president open to the idea. Executive orders have been used inappropriately in the past to implement sweeping changes in immigration policy, and presidents from both parties have used the tactic in other sometimes dubious ways. But birthright citizenship comes straight out of the Constitution, and allowing the president to alter that document unilaterally would be a serious assault on democracy. The 14th Amendment states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” There’s some room for debate about whether or not that applies to people living illegally in the United States. But presuming that the rest of the Constitution applies to all people on U.S. soil — legally present or not, citizen or foreigner — it’s clear enough that birthright citizenship would as well. Mr. Graham is on firmer legal ground than Mr. Trump by calling for legislation, presumably to amend the Constitution. But unless Republicans pick up significantly larger majorities in both the House and Senate next Tuesday, getting two-thirds of both chambers to vote for an end to birthright citizenship seems P The Bend Bulletin he Oregon Health Authority is proposing whopping tax increases as a way to balance its Medicaid budget. The Oregon Health Plan, which covers Medicaid patients in Oregon, faces a budget deficit of some $830 million in the coming biennium. The agency hopes to fill the gap, in part, by raising taxes on wine, beer, cider and cigarettes. The increases — 150 percent on a pack of cigarettes plus 10 percent increases in alcohol taxes — no doubt will be sold as health measures that just happen to raise oodles of boodle along the way. Sin taxes are popular because so many of us use the “sinful” products not at all or not terribly regularly. They are taxes on things acknowledged to have negative repercussions on society. There are good reasons to tax them, but the taxes can be regressive. People who make less money tend to spend more of their money on alcohol and cigarettes. Any health impact of increased sin taxes may indeed be progressive, but what’s really the likely outcome? People will just be paying more to get what they want. The affordability of booze and cigarettes doesn’t transform people into health nuts. It’s cheaper to drink water, not wine. It’s cheaper to be a nonsmoker than a smoker. It’s not like jacking up prices on sinful products over the decades have turned smoking and drinking into rarefied habits of the wealthy. A sin tax increase can be an effort to do good that does bad for the poor. Oregonians would be better served by a broader, general tax that is not so regressive. T exceedingly unlikely. That’s probably for the best. On the whole, birthright citizenship is a boon for the United States rather than a burden. We need young Americans to grow up into our future leaders, to drive economic growth, to invent and create and innovate. It’s perfectly reasonable to be wary of pregnant women traveling to the United States just to have a baby here, but there are less draconian ways to prevent that, like tightening border security. It’s also true that illegal immigrants commonly have children who are granted U.S. citizenship. Over the past several years, anywhere between 5 and 10 percent of all births in the United States have been to undocumented parents, according to the Pew Research Center. But denying citizenship to those children probably wouldn’t encourage their parents to leave. Instead, it would create a permanent underclass of effectively nation-less people who grow up in the United States but face higher barriers to living a productive, prosperous life — all through no fault of their own. Generally, the goal of immigration reform is to bring illegal immigrants out of the shadows and put them on a path toward legality, not to drive them further underground. Illegal immigrant families do impose costs on taxpayers, particularly when their kids are citizens who are eligible for a broader range of social and safety net programs. But they also put billions of dollars into the economy each year, providing a significant net benefit by most measures. Sen. Graham and President Trump are right that the United States desperately needs to reform its immigration laws and border security policies to protect national security and a lawful society. There is no question about that. But undoing birthright citizenship could actually undermine those efforts. Besides, most meaningful immigration reforms wouldn’t require changing the Constitution. We’d be much better off starting with those. Birthright citizenship comes straight out of the Constitution Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. The sin in sin taxes 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. 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.
