OFF PAGE ONE
Tuesday, July 2, 2019
East Oregonian
A7
Lexington: City closed after council fails to pass budget
Continued from Page A1
“The last three meetings
have been a nightmare,” he
said.
Dickenson optimistically
called his layoff a “vacation”
and said he hopes a budget
gets passed next week so that
he can return to work quickly.
“They just voted the
recorder and I a raise, and
then they turn around and do
this,” he said.
Kemp is seeking advice
from various state agen-
cies, the city’s legal counsel,
Morrow County, the city’s
insurance company and the
League of Oregon Cities on
how to proceed. Until Lex-
ington’s government is up
and running again, the city
can’t pay its bills. Residents
will not be able to obtain per-
mits, pay their utility bills in
person or access other ser-
vices normally available at
city hall. Residents can mail
payments, but the U.S. Postal
Service is currently holding
the city’s mail.
According to informa-
tion provided by Oregon
Department of Revenue
public information offi cer
Rich Hoover, if any expen-
ditures are made without
the appropriation authority
provided by passing a bud-
get, “the offi cials who allow
or authorize such expen-
ditures might be held per-
sonally responsible for the
repayment of the money.”
He also stated that it was
possible that Lexington
could lose their tax levy for
the year if it was success-
fully challenged in court.
Hoover said as of 2017
ghost towns were no longer
subject to local budget law
after Oregon ghost towns
whose members didn’t
reside there year-round
struggled to get a quorum
to pass a budget by July 1.
Lexington, while small, is
not considered a ghost town.
Morrow County Board
of Commissioners Chair
Jim Doherty said Monday
morning that he hadn’t been
aware of Lexington’s clo-
sure. He said he would reach
out and see what the county
might need to do to fi ll in
gaps, but noted that this
wasn’t the fi rst time Lex-
ington had been struggling
with its status as a city.
“The last couple of years
they’ve kind of been hang-
ing in the balance in being
incorporated,” he said.
Lexington was incorpo-
rated in 1903.
Climate: HB 2020 widens urban-rural divide
Continued from Page A1
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
Senator Ron Wyden speaks with Ken Bisconer, director of fl ight
operations at PAE ISR, during a tour of the drone company’s
hangar at the Pendleton Unmanned Aerial Systems Range.
Town Hall: Wyden talks
policy in Pendleton
Continued from Page A1
One PAE employee vol-
unteered that the company
occasionally struggled with a
regulation that required reg-
istration numbers for every
drone. He added that those
numbers were often deregis-
tered once PAE shipped the
drone overseas.
Wyden promised that he
would connect his staff with
PAE’s to help solve the issue
and any other federal issues
they encountered.
Wyden and the issues
Oregon’s senior senator
wasn’t just in Pendleton for a
hangar tour.
Between a Sunday after-
noon town hall at Blue Moun-
tain Community College
and a meeting with the East
Oregonian editorial board,
Wyden, a Democrat, was
forceful in his opposition to
some of the Trump adminis-
tration’s actions.
In light of rising tensions in
the Middle East after Iran shot
down an American drone, an
audience member at the town
hall asked Wyden what the
U.S. could do to avoid a war
in Iran.
Noting that President Don-
ald Trump had authorized
strikes against Iran before
pulling back, Wyden was ada-
mant that “nobody is going to
cut corners” when it comes to
going to war with Iran.
Wyden had especially
harsh words for John Bolton,
Trump’s national security
advisor.
“Mr. Bolton has never seen
a cause he didn’t want to start
a war over,” he said.
Another audience member
asked Wyden how America
could protect itself from elec-
tion interference.
“I believe hostile foreign
powers are going to interfere
in our elections in 2020 in a
way that will make 2016 look
like small potatoes,” Wyden
responded.
Wyden touted his work
on the SAFE Act, a bill that
requires paper ballots in
national elections and cyber-
security audits.
The bill recently passed
the U.S. House of Repre-
sentatives, but it faces much
tougher odds in the Sen-
ate, which is controlled by
Republicans.
He said election security
supporters should fan out
like “digital Paul Reveres,”
spreading the word about the
issue and putting pressure
on Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell to allow
the bill’s consideration in the
Senate.
And like Rep. Greg
Walden’s town hall earlier in
the day, the conditions at the
immigration detention camps
near the U.S.-Mexico border
became a topic of discussion.
Wyden recounted a recent
video from federal court
where a lawyer from the U.S.
Justice Department argued
that the federal government
wasn’t required to provide
migrant children housed in
detention centers soap or
toothbrushes.
“That’s not American
folks,” he said. “When you
see a child that’s hurting,
whether it’s by the roadside
or anywhere else, you try to
reach out and help that child
rather than walk in the other
direction.”
Toward the end of the
meeting, an audience mem-
ber who identifi ed himself as
a member of a local Tea Party
group spoke up.
The man pushed back
against some of Wyden’s crit-
icism of the president and his
comments on climate change.
Wyden said they may not
agree on the issues, but giving
the man a chance to speak at
the town hall was a part of the
“Oregon Way.”
knows this but has chosen
to sow fear in the hearts and
minds of rural Oregonians
through a campaign of dis-
tortion and misinformation.”
Opponents, including the
11 Republican senators who
fl ed the state last week to
prevent a vote on HB 2020,
say the cap-and-trade plan’s
urban supporters simply
don’t understand their rural
counterparts.
“Part of governing is
including all of Oregon, not
just Multnomah County, in
what is going to be included
in legislation,” said Sen. Tim
Knopp, R-Bend.
Andrew Miller, a major
Republican donor and chief
executive offi cer of Port-
land-based Stimson Lum-
ber Co., framed HB 2020 in
more colorful terms.
“It’s a ‘screw you’ to rural
Oregon so that people in
urban Oregon can feel good
about saving the planet,”
Miller said.
Oregon is often described
as a “blue state,” one that
favors Democrats. But that
belies the reality that Ore-
gon, like many Western
states, contains sharp politi-
cal contrasts.
Oregon’s few major cit-
ies and their suburbs hold
the bulk of the population,
and therefore its voter base
and political power. They are
overwhelmingly “blue” in
contrast to the largely “red”
counties of Eastern Oregon
and the Oregon coast.
But dividing the state
neatly into Portland and
everything else and assign-
ing each to ends of the
political spectrum is an
oversimplifi cation.
As of January, Oregon
had 969,106 registered Dem-
ocrats, 701,392 registered
Republicans and 911,387 vot-
ers who were not affi liated
with a party.
And some of the state’s
rapidly growing regions, such
as Bend and Hood River, are
becoming more liberal.
But one statewide survey
suggested views on climate
change were driven more by
politics than geography.
The Portland fi rm DHM
surveyed Oregonians in
March about whether Oregon
Capital Press Photo/Sierra Dawn McClains
Protesters line the sidewalks Thursday near the Oregon
Capitol protesting two climate bills in the Legislature. HB
2020, the so-called cap-and-trade bill, was scuttled on Sat-
urday. But HB 2007, which will require heavy-duty trucks
and other equipment in Multnomah, Washington and
Clackamas counties to have new diesel engines, passed.
“should do more to address
climate change.”
Some 85% of Democrats
said yes, compared with 25%
of Republicans and 53% of
nonaffi liated voters and those
registered with other parties.
By area, 64% of respon-
dents in the Portland area
agreed, compared with 58%
in the Willamette Valley and
44% in the rest of the state.
“There’s been a misinfor-
mation campaign,” said Brad
Reed, spokesman for Renew
Oregon, a coalition of special
interests that supported the
cap-and-trade program.
Reed said that campaign
portrayed the pollution costs
and restrictions proposed as
destroying rural economies,
riling areas of the state.
Backers of cap and trade
said rural Oregon would have
benefi ted in a way that oppo-
nents downplayed, obfus-
cated or ignored.
“This bill is a massive,
massive investment in rural
Oregon. I mean, tens of mil-
lions, hundreds of millions of
dollars a year will be going to
rural Oregon for the next 30
years, the way this bill was
designed,” said Dylan Kruse,
lobbyist for Sustainable
Northwest. “This notion that
this is urban versus rural, or
this is about environmental
groups profi ting off of this, is
outrageous.”
By 2050, the Carbon Pol-
icy Offi ce estimates Oregon’s
cap-and-trade plan would
have eliminated 43.4 million
metric tons of carbon annu-
ally from the atmosphere, the
Capital Press reported last
spring. Critics pointed out
that amount represents just
0.12% of global greenhouse
gas emissions. In addition,
the prices of diesel fuel, gas-
oline, natural gas and elec-
tricity would have gone up, in
some cases dramatically.
Sen. Arnie Roblan, a
Coos Bay Democrat, said
Kruse’s views don’t account
for the challenges of life in
rural Oregon.
“They have to drive far-
ther and farther because the
mills are farther and farther
away,” said Roblan, who
opposed the cap-and-trade
plan. “All of these things
conspire to make people who
don’t see a lot of hope out
there, and that is very frus-
trating to them, and when
other people don’t acknowl-
edge that, it makes it even
harder.”
Even supporters of HB
2020 like Sen. Jeff Golden,
D-Ashland, acknowledge it
was a tough sell.
Golden is one of three
Democratic senators who
live outside the Willamette
Valley and represent largely
rural constituencies. He said
he understands the concerns
he hears in his sprawling
Southern Oregon district.
The timber industry there
was decimated by the spotted
owl decision and other shifts,
both political and economic,
in the late 20th century.
But cap and trade is dif-
ferent, he insisted.
“I want rural people in
my district to know we really
hear you,” Golden said. “We
all remember the pain of
the timber decline, and how
rapid it was, and how work-
ing families had the rug
pulled out from under them.
I want them to know that this
isn’t that.”
Some timber companies
supported HB 2020, which
exempted the industry from
regulations.
Others did not, including
Miller’s Stimson Lumber.
Miller believes that while
some businesses and groups
would prosper under cap and
trade, others would suffer.
“It’s all about picking
political winners and losers,”
Miller said.
Similarly, while cap and
trade had the support of
some farmers, the Oregon
Farm Bureau was opposed.
Jenny Dresler, lobby-
ist for the Oregon Farm
Bureau, said cap and trade
didn’t address businesses’
concerns that cost increases
would drive them under.
“I don’t know that it’s
urban versus rural as much
as it’s understanding some
of the pressures in different
sectors in Oregon’s econ-
omy,” she said.
Oregon’s farmers com-
pete with growers in other
states, and even in other
countries.
Neighboring
Idaho doesn’t have anything
like the regulations and
fees included in HB 2020,
Dresler pointed out.
Analysts said the bill
would have immediately
resulted in higher fuel costs,
something opponents zeroed
in on.
Rep. Lynn Findley,
R-Vale, worried that the
increased cost of fuel, for
example, could make Ore-
gon farmers less competitive.
“In my district, you take
a farmer in Ontario that
grows onions,” Findley said.
“When he sells his onions,
he sells them on an open
market with growers from
Idaho, and if the farmer
from Oregon has to pay
22 cents a gallon more for
fuel, his operating costs are
up. … The guy from Idaho
whose fuel is 22 cents a gal-
lon cheaper, his cost of pro-
duction is less, but they’re
selling the same product to
the same people.”
Tourists: Dutch couple sees Pendleton
Continued from Page A1
Klooster said. “Every-
thing is wide open and nat-
ural. The Netherlands is
fl at. That’s it. That’s our
country.”
Spelier said that most
people from the Neth-
erlands visit American
metropolises like Los
Angeles or Las Vegas, but
they wanted something a
little different.
“There are 17 million
people in the Netherlands,”
Spelier said. “There’s not a
lot of space. It’s crowded.
For us, Oregon is different.
It’s special. Life moves at a
different pace here.”
Spelier and van Klooster
take annual trips around the
globe together. Last year,
they went down under to
Australia. Next year, it’ll be
Asia. But for now, they’re
taking their time in Oregon.
“We thought it was
only on TV,” van Klooster
said of Pendleton. “But,
it’s real.”
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