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East Oregonian
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
CHRISTOPHER RUSH
Publisher
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
ANDREW CUTLER
Editor
WYATT HAUPT JR.
News Editor
JADE McDOWELL
Hermiston Editor
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Democracy only works through participation
D
emocracy shouldn’t be a spec-
tator sport.
Sad to say, but that is often
what our form of government becomes.
Collectively, we bemoan perceived
injustices or complain about a policy or
law but do little to change it.
Our form of government, though, is
built around the idea that voters should
— and must — participate.
Thomas Jefferson — a founding
member of our government — felt the
people were the best protection against
tyrannical forms of government. Jeffer-
son promoted an “enlightened” nation
of voters who serve as a check against
government overreach.
Yet it is a two-way street and that
means voters need to participate in
their government. Exercising the right
to vote is the single most obvious
method to be involved, but it isn’t a sil-
ver bullet.
Many of us, in one way or another,
enjoy the fruits of our great nation.
Thousands of men and women have
served our nation over 200-plus years
and made a down payment on our abil-
Staff photo by E.J. Harris, File
Hermiston city councilor Lori Davis reads from her opening statement as her challenger
Mark Gomolski looks on during the 2017 Hermiston Chamber of Commerce candidate forum
at BMCC in Hermiston.
ity to live inside a democracy. Those
sacrifices stand as an example and
should be motivation for the rest of us
to participate in our democracy.
Granted, that is often not an easy
task. Especially now in a digital age
where events move at light speed,
going to a city council or county com-
missioner meeting after a long day of
work can seem to be a daunting task.
We all have lives, we are all busy, so
taking three hours on a Monday or
Tuesday night to listen to what appears
to be boring discussion between elected
leaders can seem senseless.
The public trust, though, makes it
imperative that all voters, when they
can, go to such meetings to listen and
evaluate how elected leaders are doing
and what they are making decisions on.
Often there is a refrain of “I didn’t
know they were doing that” when a
specific policy or ordinance is suddenly
enforced. Yet we should know. Voters
should never be caught by surprise by a
new ordinance or law.
Our elected leaders work for us. It
is that simple. They are elected by the
people and serve the people and are
accountable to the people. Not to their
staffs, not to their friends and not to
their political cronies. They serve the
people.
Yet voters must take responsibil-
ity as well to ensure democracy works.
That means going to the occasional
council meeting. That means — at least
from time to time — taking a gan-
der at a city council or county meeting
agenda.
Democracy only works through par-
ticipation. So, don’t get caught by sur-
prise. Get involved.
OTHER VIEWS
Plan, money are key to
success at state DAS
Bend Bulletin
ecretary of State Bev Clarno’s office
released its latest audit on July 3, this
one on the state of cybersecurity in the
Department of Administrative Services, the
state’s central administrative agency.
The picture the audit painted wasn’t a
pretty one.
It found the agency’s cybersecurity
efforts lacking, so much so that “as a
result, DAS systems and data may be at
risk for unauthorized use, disclosure, or
modification.”
Auditors found that, among other things,
DAS lacks a formal security management
program. As a result, it has no framework
for continuing evaluation of risk, putting
effective procedures in place and then mon-
itoring to see that they work as intended.
In fact, auditors noted, the agency
doesn’t have an inventory of authorized
and unauthorized software being run on its
computers. DAS does have a tool that could
create such a list, but for some reason does
not use it.
Also bad news: There are more than 80
different software applications in use at
S
YOUR VIEWS
‘We’ deserve better than an
‘Us’ vs. ‘Them’ mentality
Time to rethink Walden’s
leadership
Each month Oregon’s secretary of state
publishes a report on voter registration and,
much to the dismay of Democratic poli-
ticians in Salem and the national media,
Oregon is not as “Blue” as they think. Ore-
gon does not have two groups of voters
— “Us” the progressive liberal socialists
and “Them” the far right conservatives —
but are listed into 10 different groups. The
June report shows “Us” with 34.95% and
“Them” with 25.30% leaving “We” the peo-
ple with a 39.75% majority.
The “We” majority do not ride public
transportation like CCRider or TriMet. The
“We” majority do not want to live in high
density housing communities. The “We”
majority do not like the “Us” groups dic-
tating “Their” urban agendas into our rural
communities. The “We” majority want
good paying jobs in our communities so
“We” won’t have to drive into “Their” com-
munities to work.
Hard working state senators like Betsy
Johnson (D-Columbia), Bill Hansell
(R-Umatilla) and Dennis Linthicum
(R-Klamath) understand their constituents
have different political values but are try-
ing their best to fulfill their obligations to
serve their communities. Sure, “We” may
not all agree to the outcomes but that is how
a democracy works. Oregon has 36 differ-
ent counties with vastly different needs than
just the three counties, Multnomah, Wash-
ington and Clackamas, that have the high-
est population density. The “Us” majority in
Salem and the Portland Metro area need to
take a step back and listen rather than dic-
tate “Their” agenda.
Joe Turner
Columbia City
Recently Greg Walden held a meet-
ing in Athena. Interestingly, he has
never spoken a word about how insanely
bad Trump has been treated by the
left with their incessant false narra-
tives about the fake Russia sham the
left itself actually created, the many
insane events by the left in Portland and
Salem, as well as other places on the
left coast of the I-5 corridor. So it is no
surprise a congressman from Texas had
to speak up for Oregonians on the Port-
land mayor and city council allowing
the police to stand down regularly.
Prior to that he did not speak out
about the missing and still unaccounted
for $305 million of federal dollars for an
Obamacare exchange setup Kitzhaber
never had to account for and it all disap-
peared except for the cost of the failed
website that never even worked, for sup-
posedly $78 million, yet Jason Chaf-
fitz of Utah did speak out about it here
in Oregon. How is it possible to com-
pletely miss all these events and have
no opinion or take any actions at all?
Seems a valid question, as Cruz made
Walden look like a fool this week.
Probably time to look deeper, peo-
ple. He was also weak and more or less
missing on the Burns Finicum sham.
That too was an Oregon disgrace! Busi-
ness as usual and being a Chamber of
Commerce front man and pharmaceu-
tical representative is not going to fly
any longer. Well past time to rethink
matters.
Stephen Baze
Hermiston
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.
DAS, but all but 16 of them are managed
not by information technology staff, but by
others in the various divisions. That helps
explain why some divisions have the ability
to install unapproved software.
Worse, the lack of cybersecurity is
already causing problems.
Files at the Department of Human Ser-
vices were compromised in January 2019
when an employee opened a “phishing”
email.
The Secretary of State’s campaign
finance and business registry websites were
both hacked before Dennis Richardson held
that office.
DAS officials agreed with the seven
recommendations made in the report and
noted that the 2019 Legislature already has
allocated money for an agency-wide assess-
ment of its IT capability and security.
The assessment will allow DAS to create
a program for managing both software and
hardware, officials said.
Unfortunately, DAS officials don’t
expect to complete four of the seven recom-
mendations until 2023, assuming the Legis-
lature gives it the money in 2021
to do so.
CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES
U.S. PRESIDENT
GOVERNOR
Donald Trump
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
whitehouse.gov/contact/
Kate Brown
160 State Capitol
900 Court Street
Salem, OR 97301-4047
503-378-4582
U.S. SENATORS
Ron Wyden
221 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510
202-224-5244
La Grande office: 541-962-7691
Jeff Merkley
313 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
202-224-3753
Pendleton office: 541-278-1129
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE
Greg Walden
185 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-6730
La Grande office: 541-624-2400
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.
REPRESENTATIVES
Greg Barreto, District 58
900 Court St. NE, H-38
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1458
Rep.GregBarreto@state.or.us
Greg Smith, District 57
900 Court St. NE, H-482
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1457
Rep.GregSmith@state.or.us
SENATOR
Bill Hansell, District 29
900 Court St. NE, S-423
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1729
Sen.BillHansell@state.or.us
Send letters to the editor to
editor@eastoregonian.com,
or via mail to Andrew Cutler,
211 S.E. Byers Ave.
Pendleton, OR 97801