PREP BASKETBALL: Pendleton girls dominate Hood River Valley | SPORTS, B1
E O
AST
144th Year, No. 73
REGONIAN
WEDNESDAY, JANuARY 29, 2020
$1.50
WINNER OF THE 2019 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
Ballot measure
possible to
stop legislative
walkouts
Oregon union leaders say
they will file initiative
aimed at stopping
legislative walkouts
By JEFF MAPES
Oregon Public Broadcasting
SALEM — Ore-
gon Gov. Kate Brown
and Democratic legisla-
tive leaders have played
down the idea of trying
to amend the Constitu-
tion to prevent future
walkouts of the kind Baertschigar
staged by Republicans
during last year’s legisla-
tive session.
But a top labor leader
says public employee
unions are planning
to file a proposed bal-
lot initiative that would
Baessler
threaten legislators who
walk out with being
tossed from office.
Joe Baessler, politi-
cal director of the Amer-
ican Federation of State,
County and Municipal
Employees, said polling
conducted by the unions
Burdick
show that “voters really
seem to like the idea that
if you don’t show up to
work, you lose your job.”
The proposed con-
stitutional amendment,
Baessler said, would
oust legislators who have
at least 10 unexcused
Kotek
absences in a year.
Republican state sen-
ators — outnumbered
by an 18-12 Democratic
majority — staged two
walkouts last year to
prevent the Senate from
going into session. The
Oregon Legislature, one
Hansell
of just a few states with
strict quorum rules, requires that two-
thirds of the members be present to con-
duct business.
The first walkout failed to stop a new
business tax, but Democrats did agree to
drop bills dealing with guns and vacci-
nations to get the Republicans to return.
The second walkout helped deep-six a
bill on carbon emissions aimed at com-
batting climate change.
Senate Majority Leader Ginny Bur-
dick, D-Portland, has introduced a pro-
posed constitutional amendment for the
February session that would ask voters to
remove the two-thirds quorum rule. But
Burdick, Brown and House Speaker Tina
Kotek, D-Portland, all played down the
likelihood of moving forward with this
proposal.
See Walkouts, Page A8
Staff photo by Kathy Aney
Composer Chris Thomas talks about his life to members of the Oregon East Symphony Youth Orchestra during a recent
rehearsal. The orchestra will play Thomas’ “Autumn Harvest” during Thursday’s concert at the Vert Auditorium. Orchestra
director Zach Banks smiles in the background.
Coming home
Oregon East Symphony Youth Orchestra will play
music of Pendleton-born composer Chris Thomas
By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian
P
ENDLETON — When
the music comes, it bursts
out of his brain like a gey-
ser that composer Chris
Thomas rushes to collect
in all its orchestral parts. To capture
the deluge, he sings loudly into his
phone.
Thomas explained his process to
members of the Oregon East Sym-
phony Youth Orchestra during a
recent rehearsal in the Pendleton
High School band room.
“I can’t sit at a piano and just
come up with something,” Thomas
told them. “When I do that nothing
happens.”
Instead, he heads outside to hike
or jog in nature.
“After about 10 minutes of being
outside, the music comes fully
formed,” he said. “I start singing it
into my phone. Then I go back to my
studio to the piano.”
“A LOT OF THE COMPOSERS WE STUDY ARE LONG
GONE. HOW COOL IT IS WE GET TO ACTUALLY
MEET A LIVING COMPOSER AND PLAY A WORK
THAT WAS RECENTLY COMPOSED.”
— Zach Banks, Director of the Oregon East Symphony Youth Orchestra
When Thomas had arrived at last
Thursday night’s rehearsal about
10 minutes earlier, familiar music
greeted him.
Director Zach Banks led the
orchestra through “Autumn Har-
vest,” a Thomas composition. The
youth orchestra will play the piece on
Thursday night during a free concert
at the Vert Auditorium.
Adding to the coolness factor of
hearing his piece come to life for the
first time was the added detail that
this was happening in his boyhood
band room.
“This is the room where I did
orchestra,” Thomas said. “I sat in the
cello section.”
Banks invited the 2001 PHS grad-
uate to sit and let the musicians pick
his uber-creative brain.
“A lot of the composers we study
are long gone,” Banks said. “How
cool it is we get to actually meet a
living composer and play a work that
was recently composed.”
Thomas has produced an eclec-
tic body of work, writing music for
movies, television, theme parks, con-
cert halls, dance theater and even a
Halloween party on the Queen Mary
called Dark Harbor and dubbed
“Queen Scary.” Thomas gave a TED
Talk last summer about his work
See Composer, Page A8
City hall hit with graffiti
By ALEX CASTLE
East Oregonian
PENDLETON — Two
identical messages featuring
swastikas and white suprema-
cist references were graffitied
on the exterior of Pendleton
City Hall in separate incidents
over the last week.
Glenn Graham, the city’s
facilities manager, said he got
a report at about 4 p.m. on
Monday that something had
been written outside of the
city hall entrance. The mes-
sage, which Graham said was
identical to one found writ-
ten in black Sharpie next to
the building’s boiler room last
week, was written in chalk
and includes a swastika and
the phrase “Nazi Pitbull.”
According to the Anti-Def-
amation League, pit bulls
have been used as a hate sym-
bol by white supremacists,
often using one particular
graphic of the dog that one
group even incorporated into
their logo.
“The pit bull has long
been used as a skinhead sym-
bol, presumably because of
its reputation as a ‘fighting’
dog,” the ADL website states.
The graffiti on Monday
didn’t cause any damage,
Graham said, and was washed
away within 30 minutes
because it had only been writ-
ten in chalk, though the mes-
sage from last week had to be
painted over.
Though he didn’t file one
himself, Graham said all graf-
fiti found on city buildings is
reported to the police. But
when contacted on Tuesday,
Pendleton Police Chief Stu-
art Roberts couldn’t find any
reports regarding graffiti at
city hall.
Roberts said the city some-
times only sends an unoffi-
cial email reporting graffiti or
contacts the code enforcement
division directly, but this was
the first he heard of any recent
racist or biased property van-
dalism happening in the city.
See Graffiti, Page A8
Contributed photo
A message tagged in chalk near the entrance of
Pendleton City Hall was found on Monday after-
noon.