A12
OFF PAGE ONE
East Oregonian
Saturday, January 26, 2019
Discord and controversy in
Davos even with Trump absent
By JAMEY KEATEN
AND PAN PYLAS
Associated Press
Staff photo by E.J. Harris, File
Traffic drives south on Highway 97 near the Cow Canyon Rest Area east of Shaniko on Oct.
20, 2018.
Study: ODOT already
taking some safety measures
Continued from Page A1
65 or higher, which went up
by 13.4 points.
In comparison, none of
the control group highway
segments had an increase
in speeders above 2 percent,
and there was virtually no
increase in the number of
cars traveling 85 miles per
hour or higher.
Crashes were up on
raised speed limit highways
across-the-board, and in
most cases, those increases
were larger than the control
segments.
Crashes that caused seri-
ous injury or deaths rose by
36 percent on 70 mile per
hour roads, but that num-
ber also went up by 37 per-
cent on control segment
highways.
The real contrast was
on 65 mile per hour zones,
which saw a 67 percent
increase compared with the
21-point increase seen on
the control roads.
Despite the disparity in
crashes between speed lim-
it-increased roads and the
control segments, traffic
volume was only 10 percent
higher in the speedier zones.
“These preliminary find-
ings of the analysis are con-
sistent with other related
research and analysis that
have found increased crash
frequency and severity with
increased speed limits,” the
study states.
Studying ODOT data
and Oregon State Police
press releases, a Novem-
ber East Oregonian analy-
sis found that fatalities from
traffic crashes rose 10 per-
cent in the 26 months after
the speed limit increase as
opposed to a 3.5 percent
decline in traffic deaths
statewide.
Barreto hadn’t read Port-
land State’s analysis and
didn’t want to comment,
but he previously defended
it after the EO‘s analysis,
saying he wanted to see
how many crashes were
attributed to drunk or dis-
tracted driving.
Given the variety of fac-
tors that could lead to a
crash, Monsere said it’s dif-
ficult to determine cause of
crash on a wide scale.
“You can think of a crash
as having a random nature
to it,” he said.
But he also reiterated that
there’s a significant collec-
tion of research that shows
that traffic collisions go up
when speeds do.
Monsere said there’s
other limitations to his
analysis.
Ideally, the study would
be able to look at three years
of data after the speed limit
increases went into effect
instead of just one.
And since most of the
well-traveled highways in
Eastern Oregon already had
their speed limits raised, he
had to look at other parts
of the state for control
segments.
“They’re
not
ideal
matches,” he said.
Monsere said he’d like
to do a follow-up study not
only with more crash data,
but with more accurate
speed readings as well.
While automatic traffic
records are sparsely located
on Eastern Oregon’s two-
lane highways, Monsere
said the next analysis would
use new software that uses
numerous GPS data points
to more accurately mea-
sure speed and differentiate
between car and semitruck.
In the meantime, ODOT
is already taking some
safety measures after PSU’s
analysis.
Troy
Costales,
the
ODOT Transportation and
Employee Safety Division
administrator, told the Ore-
gon Transportation Com-
mission at a Jan. 17 meet-
ing that ODOT planned to
continue to direct resources
toward speed enforcement
and could also install new
signs and other infrastruc-
ture to prevent offroad and
head-on crashes on two-lane
roads.
In a Friday interview,
Costales said the transpor-
tation commission is also
starting a long-term discus-
sion on establishing a pro-
cess to change speed limits
outside legislative acts.
Pot: City manager remains cautious
Continued from Page A1
Oregon’s surplus of
marijuana is another fac-
tor. Any surplus is going
to drive down prices, Cor-
bett said, and when mari-
juana prices drop, so do the
tax revenues. Still, he said,
he would not be surprised
if every city in the state is
reevaluating the value of
cannabis.
“It just makes sense as
cities struggle to meet the
increase in PERS,” he said.
Paying into the Pub-
lic Employee Retirement
System remains a major
concern statewide, from
the Legislature to coun-
ties to school districts.
And in Pendleton, Cor-
bett said, talk of putting
that $300,000 to use means
improving roads. However
the city uses the money,
he said no doubt the mari-
juana tax benefits Pendle-
ton from a purely financial
standpoint.
The Oregon Department
of Revenue started collect-
ing local marijuana taxes in
February 2017. Since then,
according to the depart-
ment’s Revenue Research
Section, it has received
more than $23 million in
local taxes, and the monthly
revenue from cities and
counties topped $1 million
every month for the past 12
months.
Pendleton’s city man-
ager said that’s impres-
sive, but he will remain
cautious on what to expect
from marijuana revenue
until the market proves its
sustainability.
DAVOS, Switzerland —
While domestic woes side-
lined major figures like U.S.
President Donald Trump,
this year’s gathering of the
global elites in the Swiss
ski resort of Davos show-
cased divisions on press-
ing issues like trade and the
environment.
In the end, a spunky
16-year-old Swedish cli-
mate activist all but stole the
show.
The World Economic
Forum, which wrapped up
Friday, was characterized
by discord over momentous
issues like Brexit and world
trade. Many of the leaders
closest to those questions
— from Trump to Britain’s
Theresa May and China’s
Xi Jinping — did not show
up as they had in past years.
Envi ron ment alists,
meanwhile, howled about
alleged hypocrisy after
reports that a record number
of flights by carbon-spew-
ing private jets would ferry
rich corporate bigwigs to
talk at the event this year
— including about global
warming.
As the adults deliber-
ated, Greta Thunberg, an
environmentalist teenager,
sounded the alarm.
“I want you to panic. I
want you to feel the fear I
feel every day,” said the stu-
dent, who got a waiver from
school to travel 32 hours
from her home in Sweden
— by train, to keep her car-
bon footprint down.
Since founder Klaus
Schwab first gathered
European business exec-
utives back in 1971, the
World Economic Forum has
defended globalization as a
force for good that improves
lives and boosts prosperity.
Now, advocates of closer
AP Photo/Markus Schreiber
The congress center where the World Economic Forum
takes place is covered with snow on this year’s last day of
the forum’s annual meeting, in Davos, Switzerland, Friday.
economic and cultural
ties are on the defensive.
Trump’s “America First”
sloganeering, the Brex-
it-style self-interest, pop-
ulist politics and the rise
of “strongman” leaders in
countries from the Philip-
pines to Brazil have shaken
confidence in the interna-
tional rules and organiza-
tions set up since World
War II.
The conference center
in Davos still bustled with
business executives, presi-
dents and prime ministers,
heads of non-governmen-
tal organizations, scien-
tists, and artists. They met
privately or sat on publicly
broadcast discussions about
world issues: Poverty, cli-
mate change, the rise of
machines, diseases like
Alzheimer’s and cancer, and
trade disputes among them.
Organizers of the event
trumpeted some achieve-
ments and commitments
made in Davos.
Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe said Japan will push
for global data gover-
nance when it hosts the
Group of 20 leading indus-
trialized and developing
nations this year. Leaders
of Azerbaijan and Arme-
nia held talks toward end-
ing the long-standing con-
flict in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Britain’s health secretary
unveiled a five-year plan to
tackle the global threat of
antimicrobial resistance.
“If it didn’t exist, some-
one would have had to cre-
ate it, because we can-
not solve the most pressing
global challenges without a
unique partnership between
governments, business and
civil society,” WEF Presi-
dent Borge Brende said Fri-
day of the gathering.
Still, the WEF has strug-
gled to shake off the impres-
sion that it hosts cham-
pagne-swilling executives
more interested in their bot-
tom line and power-hungry
politicians more interested
in polishing their global
image than in the state of
the world.
Brazil’s new president,
Jair Bolsonaro, pledged to
work “in harmony with the
world” to cut carbon emis-
sions. The nationalist leader
has faced international con-
cerns that his country could
allow far more aggressive
deforestation in the oxy-
gen-rich Amazon. But he
provided no details and was
asked no probing questions
by the WEF organizers
about his policies.
Shutdown: ‘Those benefits have to last’
Continued from Page A1
continue operating nor-
mally through February,
and that most products up
through that point have
already been purchased.
But the press release
said if the shutdown lasts
beyond February, it’s
unclear what will happen
with food deliveries, as
well as with ordering food
for the following school
year, which is usually done
in February.
The
Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Pro-
gram (SNAP) is another
program that local fami-
lies have seen affected by
the shutdown. The federal
program gives low-income
families some supplemen-
tal funds to purchase food.
Belit Burke, the pro-
gram designer for DHS’
self sufficiency program,
said it’s still too early to
tell what the real impact of
the shutdown will be. Ore-
gon beneficiaries received
their SNAP money for Feb-
ruary a few weeks early to
help with the lapse in fund-
ing. But they won’t receive
more benefits in February,
even though the shutdown
is temporarily over.
“Those benefits have to
last,” she said.
She said the amount that
each family receives var-
ies, but the average case-
load receives $209 per
month.
“It’s meant to be a sup-
plement, but it ends up
being many people’s whole
budget, so they live pretty
lean,” Burke said.
Other nutrition pro-
grams, like the WIC
(Women, Infants and
Children) program, are
expected to be covered
through February, as well.
The SNAP program is
a different funding stream
than the SNAP-Ed pro-
gram, said Angie Tread-
well, the OSU Extension
Service coordinator of
SNAP-Ed (Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Pro-
gram Education). Tread-
well said her program has
already been funded for the
entire fiscal year, so they
will not be affected by the
shutdown any time soon.
That program provides
ways for families to learn
how to use their available
resources to eat better,
including family cooking
classes and food tastings at
local schools.
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