Pendleton, BMCC work on public projects | REGION, A3
E O
AST
144th Year, No. 132
REGONIAN
TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 2020
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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