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East Oregonian
Saturday, January 19, 2019
CHRISTOPHER RUSH
Publisher
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
WYATT HAUPT JR.
News Editor
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Rural response
T
he state of Oregon must begin
grappling with the lack of
reliable emergency response
in its wildest and most remote places.
Cash-strapped, tax-burdened
rural Oregon counties are playing
host to more adventurous visitors,
while their own populations age and
require more medical care. Mean-
while, the tax base that supports rural
emergency responders continues to
decline as their economies sputter
and their children moves elsewhere
to find economic opportunity.
To sum up: Adventurous visi-
tors are getting into more and more
trouble, but the places where they
find that trouble are having a harder
and harder time providing reliable
emergency response. As we reported
earlier this week, Wheeler County
is one of those places. With little
economic activity after its logging-
based economy collapsed in previous
decades, Wheeler has become the
least populated and fastest shrinking
county in the state. And its aging
population is straining the volun-
teer emergency responders that for
generations helped support a thin
professional crew of law enforcement
professionals.
Those volunteer systems are
beginning to collapse under the
weight of state and federal regula-
tions, heavier burdens being placed
EO Media Group/Tim Trainor
The Wheeler County Sheriff’s Office evidence cage, located in the courthouse basement,
must occasionally be emptied so defendants have a place to sit during trial breaks.
on fewer and fewer people, and a lack
of institutional resources.
And it’s not just Wheeler County.
Other poor rural counties in eastern,
southern, central and coastal Oregon
see the same fate on the horizon.
There are no more rocks to squeeze
for a little additional funding in many
such frontier locales. Tax rates are
high while economic prospects are
low.
It’s hard enough for the profes-
sionals to make it out there. Members
of the Wheeler County Sheriff’s
Department must buy their own
boots, guns and bulletproof vests,
wear uniforms handed down from
other departments and type up their
reports on hand-me-down computers.
On days off, deputies change the
oil and do brake work on their own
patrol cars. Police evidence storage
areas are used as cells for inmates
between hearings.
Imagine doing all that hard work,
without many resources, and not
getting paid. That’s what volun-
teer ambulance drivers, firefighters
and EMTS are facing. And if the
state doesn’t want to see the system
collapse entirely over the next years,
it needs to find a sustainable, reason-
able route of migrating dollars from
our tourism and recreation economy
to the people tasked with keeping
those tourists and recreators safe.
Some have floated a motel tax that
would be divided equitably among
the state’s 36 counties. Just $1 a night
on every hotel stay in Oregon could
bring a small county like Wheeler
upwards of $200,000 a year. That
would provide a reliable, steady
stream of income to help a poor sher-
iff’s department, make life easier for
rural ambulance and fire crews, and
on down the line. It will save lives.
That help must come from else-
where. As we said above, there’s few
options to raise that kind of money
on the backs of poor people in poor
counties, thanks to Oregon’s tax
system. Governor Kate Brown has
pledged to use her last term to help
rural Oregon keep pace with the
gains that the rest of the state has
enjoyed. The problems facing rural
law enforcement and emergency
response offers her — and the Legis-
lature — the chance to put her words
into meaningful action.
OTHER VIEWS
Swamp things everywhere
Among Wheeler’s consulting duties,
according to the Project on Government
rain the swamp!” was one
Oversight, was hosting a fundraiser for key
of those memorable Donald
Republican Sen. John Barrasso, now the
Trump campaign promises that chairman of the Senate Environment and
remains unfulfilled, much
Public Works Committee. ...
like “Mexico will pay for
After more than a decade
Given the
the wall!” and “Repeal and
working for the Senate’s
replace Obamacare!” with
premier denier of human-
Republican
“something terrific.”
caused climate change,
majority in
Unlike the latter two
James Inhofe of Oklahoma,
promises, there’s little
Wheeler joined a consulting
the Senate
debate about the need to
firm working against envi-
and Trump’s
ronmental restrictions on
establish strong ethical
behalf of his top client, coal
standards for govern-
avid support,
ment. That makes Trump’s
magnate Robert Murray.
Wheeler’s
failure to keep his swamp-
“He’s spent his career
draining pledge — high-
carrying
out someone else’s
confirmation
lighted by the Senate
agenda,” Joseph Goffman,
might be a
confirmation hearing
executive director of
Wednesday for a former
Harvard Law School’s envi-
foregone
ronmental law program,
coal industry lobbyist
conclusion.
says of Wheeler.
nominated to run the Envi-
ronmental Protection
Since Wheeler joined
Agency — all the more
EPA, first as deputy and
disturbing.
then acting administrator, the agency has
Nominee Andrew Wheeler became
worked to roll back fuel efficiency stan-
acting EPA administrator after his prede-
dards on vehicles, ease greenhouse-gas
cessor and former boss, Scott Pruitt,
restrictions on coal-burning power plants
resigned in July amid a cloud of self-serving and, in December, rescind regulations that
ethics scandals. Wheeler, 54, doesn’t carry
reduce coal-plant release of mercury and
Pruitt’s ethical baggage, but he has devoted
other poisons.
himself to a disciplined rollback of environ-
Given the Republican majority in the
mental safeguards.
Senate and Trump’s avid support, Wheeler’s
Wheeler is one of 188 former lobbyists
confirmation might be a foregone conclu-
sion. But that doesn’t mean senators can’t
working in the administration, according
to ProPublica, and a fox-guarding-the-hen-
use the confirmation hearing to press the
house example of someone regulating an
nominee on a variety of important issues.
industry that once paid him handsomely.
After all, Wheeler isn’t a lobbyist
Others include the acting secretary of
anymore. If confirmed, he’ll be in charge of
the Interior, David Bernhardt, previously
implementing environmental laws designed
an influential lobbyist for the fossil fuel
to protect the quality of the air Americans
industry, and EPA senior attorney Erik
breathe and the water they drink.
Baptist, who used to work as a lobbyist
Moreover, history will judge him for
and lawyer for the American Petroleum
what he did — or didn’t do — to head off
Institute.
catastrophic impacts from human-induced
Trump replaced President Barack
climate change. A daily drumbeat of reports
Obama’s ethics rules with a set he said
confirms that warming oceans, melting
were tougher, but which in fact allow for
icecaps and rising sea levels are more likely
the liberal granting of waivers so that the
to drown coastal swamps than to drain
swamp once again can fill with water.
them.
USA Today
“D
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.
OTHER VIEWS
Real ‘Green Deal’ taxes would hit middle class
The Wall Street Journal
B
y now readers have heard that
progressive luminary Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez (AOC for groupies)
supports a 70 percent top marginal tax rate,
which she says will help finance a “green
new deal.” Higher taxes on the rich is the
stock socialist answer on how to pay for
any project, though a reminder arrived this
week that soaking the wealthy will barely
register as a down payment.
The Tax Foundation on Monday did
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez the favor of taking her
proposal seriously and asked: How much
money would the government reap from
a 70 percent tax rate on income above
$10 million? Authors Kyle Pomerleau and
Huaqun Li looked at two scenarios — one
if the rate applied only to ordinary income
like wages and interest, and another if it
also applied to income from capital gains.
The best case scenario: a 70 percent
rate would raise less than $300 billion in
revenue over 10 years, which is less than
half of the $700 billion that has been cited
in press reports. Progressives aren’t eager to
put a price tag on the green new deal, which
includes modest proposals like a universal
jobs guarantee. But you can bet that ridding
the economy of carbon will cost into the
trillions of dollars.
A 70 percent top rate would generate
even less revenue if extended to capital
gains. Investors only pay when they realize
gains by selling assets, and they are espe-
cially sensitive to tax rates when deciding
whether to sell. High rates can leave money
locked into a current asset instead of flowing
to the next good idea.
When the Tax Foundation authors
considered the effect on behavior and
incentives — why bother with that extra
investment if most of the money will go
to government? — they found that a 70
percent top rate on all income would lose
the government $63.5 billion over 10 years.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez won’t admit it, but
she and her socialist friends will eventu-
ally have to go where the real money is: the
middle class. That means higher tax rates
on even modest wage earners; taxes on
retirement savings like 401(k)s or college
savings accounts.
Remember this the next time a Democrat
or columnist who claims to be conservative
says he’ll finance a program by hitting the
1 percent of earners who already pay more
than a third of America’s income taxes.
Sooner or later they’re coming after you.
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