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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (April 21, 2020)
Pendleton, BMCC work on public projects | REGION, A3 E O AST 144th Year, No. 132 REGONIAN TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 2020 $1.50 WINNER OF THE 2019 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD CORONAVIRUS | BROWN ANNOUNCES RAPID DISTRIBUTION OF PPE TO LONG-TERM CARE FACILITIES, A6 HollyJo Beers: A constitutional candidate Editor’s note: This is the fi rst in a series of stories on the candi- dates for Position 3 on the Umatilla County Board of Commissioners. By ALEX CASTLE East Oregonian UMATILLA COUNTY — Nothing is more sacred to HollyJo Beers than the U.S. Constitution. As one of fi ve candidates run- ning in the May 19 primary for the only open seat on the Umatilla County Board of Commissioners, Beers, 66, is promising the nation’s foundational document will guide her as she aims to use her mixture of local and statewide politi- cal activism to better rep- resent the voices of Uma- tilla County. “I’m not a part of the good ol’ boys club, and I’m not a ‘yes’ man,” she said. “ I am a constitutionalist. I believe in the Constitution and in protecting the people’s rights, and for liberty and justice for all people of Umatilla County.” Though she’ll readily acknowl- edge her minimal experience in holding elected offi ce, Beers, who resides in Milton-Freewater, has lived in Umatilla County all her life and worked a variety of jobs. Now retired, in the last fi ve years, Beers has been politi- cally engaged with Umatilla Coun- ty’s chapter of the Oregon Three Percenters, a group she now leads locally that is devoted to resisting infringements on the Constitution by the U.S. government. In Umatilla County, the Oregon Three Percenters have particularly petitioned and lobbied for greater protections of the Second Amend- ment, which Beers claims as essen- tial to protecting the rest. “Once the Second Amendment goes, you have no way to defend yourself from the rest of them fall- ing,” she says. Nationally, the Three Percen- ters have been associated with protests against immigrants and refugees, and were notably sympa- thetic toward Ammon Bundy and the 2016 occupation of the Malheur See Beers, Page A9 COVID-19 REPORTED CASES* INTERNATIONAL: 2,479,691 DEATHS: 170,370 UNITED STATES: 746,625 U.S. DEATHS: 39,083 OREGON POSITIVE TESTS: 1,956 NEGATIVE TESTS: 38,089 TOTAL TESTED: 40,045 DEATHS: 75 UMATILLA COUNTY POSITIVE TESTS: 27 Oregon faces steep drop in income taxes NEGATIVE TESTS: 497 MORROW COUNTY POSITIVE TESTS: 5 NEGATIVE TESTS: 60 *as of 5 p.m. Monday, April 20 State likely to require billions in federal aid Sources: Oregon Military Depart- ment’s Office of Emergency Manage- ment, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Worldometer.com By PETER WONG Oregon Capital Bureau SALEM — Even as a legisla- tive panel prepares this week to draw from the state’s emergency fund, Oregon faces a steep drop in income taxes that the state govern- ment relies on to aid schools and to pay for services, and the state may need federal help. Estimates of tax losses are still being developed. But Oregon and all other states are likely to require billions in federal aid that may dwarf the amounts given during the Great Recession a decade ago — and far more than Congress has approved so far to counter the eco- nomic downturn prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. While Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and the Democratic majority in the U.S. House have made aid to states a priority, Treasury Secretary Ste- ven Mnuchin says it’s more likely such aid will take a backseat to replenishing federal help for small businesses, which already have exhausted the $350 billion Con- gress made available for them. Wyden was more optimistic. “We are trying to work out an agreement to address all of these issues,” he said. But one expert said Congress will have to do more for states. “States face massive budget shortfalls that will be more severe than they saw during the Great Recession,” said Michael Leach- man, senior director for state fi scal research for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progres- sive-leaning think tank. “Those cuts will make an already-weak economy even weaker and will hurt families See Taxes, Page A9 COVID-19 MYTHS 5G mobile networks do not spread COVID-19 Staff photo by Ben Lonergan Kevin Anderson plays on his guitar in the basement of his Pendleton home on Monday afternoon. Anderson was in Las Vegas two-and-a-half years ago when a gunman opened fi re on music fans at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival, killing 58 and wounding hundreds. Finding peace Pendleton man coming to grips with trauma of Las Vegas shooting By KATHY ANEY East Oregonian P ENDLETON — Kevin Anderson knows trauma. The Pendleton man worked as a fi rst responder for 30 years and was in Las Vegas two-and-a-half years ago when a gunman opened fi re on music fans at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival. In an instant, Anderson and his wife, Elaine, went from happily lis- tening to country singer Jason Aldean to diving for cover. The barrage of gunfi re killed 58 people and wounded hundreds. SWAT offi cers swarmed the nearby Manda- lay Bay Resort and Casino and found the shooter, Stephen Craig Paddock, 64, dead in his 32nd-fl oor hotel room with a cache of rifl es and ammunition. “We heard what sounded like fi reworks,” said Elaine, a senior mortgage loan offi cer at the Guild Mortgage Com- pany in Pendleton. “Everyone started dropping.” Elaine and Kevin tended to off-duty California police offi cer Michael Gracia, who was shot in the head, and his fi ancé, Summer Clyburn, who had a bullet in her back. Kevin got Gracia to a car and Elaine helped Clyburn into an ambu- lance. Kevin returned multiple times to help others. Since the concert, Kevin has struggled. He tried ther- apy, but had trouble opening up. He felt anxious. “It keeps you hypervig- ilant,” he said. “I was con- stantly surveilling. I felt ter- rifi ed going to the mall or the movie theater.” Six months ago, he retired as an emergency medical tech- nician and regional communi- cations director for American Viruses cannot travel on radio waves/mobile networks. COVID-19 is spreading in many countries that do not have 5G mobile networks. COVID-19 is spread through respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs, sneezes or speaks. People can also be infected by touching a contaminated surface, and then their eyes, mouth or nose. Source: World Health Organization Exposing yourself to the sun or to high temperatures does not prevent COVID-19 You can catch COVID-19, no matter how sunny or hot the weather is. Countries with hot weather have reported cases of COVID-19. To protect yourself, make sure you clean your hands frequently and thoroughly, and avoid touching your eyes, mouth, and nose. Source: World Health Organization See Peace, Page A9 Can Oregon’s Hells Canyon get any hotter? Editor’s note: Fifteen years ago, the East Oregonian and its sister publications at EO Media Group published a landmark series of sto- ries on climate change. This month we begin a new series, Climate Changed, that will revisit many of the sources we talked with then and look at what has happened in the intervening time. By STEVE TOOL EO Media Group ENTERPRISE — Hells Canyon, North America’s deepest gorge, may have Oregon’s most diverse climate. In just a few miles the elevation can change by 7,000 feet, morph- ing from dry, rocky desert along the Snake River to snow-laden alpine peaks in the Wallowa Mountains. Pat Matthews, cur- rent ODFW district wildlife biologist over- seeing the region, is skeptical that climac- tic changes are having a signifi cant effect on the specialized ecosystem. He has decades of experience in the region, and he’s not seeing big changes in the canyon. “You hear a lot about climate change in the news, but as far as what we’re seeing on the ground right here in Hells Canyon ... we’re just not seeing any kind of changes yet,” he said. Matthews said he “provided quite a few comments for our draft man- agement plan that prob- ably are contrary to a lot of the other biologists’ opinions,” noting that he agreed behind the sci- ence of climate change modeling, but noted “you have to be able to verify that model on the ground and see if what the model tells you is really happening.” “We haven’t been able to see any difference,” he said. “I mean the last three winters have been terri- bly hard. ... To think that things are warming up or changing that way — it’s just not happening here.” But Jim and Holly Akenson, wildlife biologists who worked for ODFW in Hells Canyon for years, see the beginning of signifi cant change. That is especially signifi - cant in the canyon’s higher eleva- tions, where small climactic varia- tions can have major effects. Holly Akenson, who currently serves on the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Commission, said it’s hard to notice climate change effects on animals day-by-day and year-by-year. She said that in the higher elevations on both sides of the canyon, increasing temperatures have led to a reduction in the alpine biome. That affects animals special- ized for that ecosystem. “Species like pikas are affected because they could get isolated on a smaller area,” she said. “They need deep snow cover in the win- See Canyon, Page A9
