OREGON
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
East Oregonian
A7
Oregon jobless claim Rural counties press for reprieve from closures
system is still broken
By PIPER MCDANIEL
The Oregonian
‘Restart’ error
returns despite
state’s insistence
problem was fixed
By MIKE ROGOWAY
The Oregonian
SALEM — An error in
Oregon’s jobless claims sys-
tem that confounded scores
of workers on Easter Sun-
day returned a week later,
despite the state’s insistence
the problem was fixed.
Sunday morning, the
Oregon
Employment
Department’s website was
again telling many work-
ers they must restart their
claims when they make their
weekly filing for benefits.
That’s a mistake — most
workers do not need to start
over — but they didn’t have
an immediate alternative
Sunday morning to make
their weekly filing for con-
tinued benefits.
The department’s web-
site incorrectly said, “The
restart stop issue has been
fixed.” When workers tried
to file their weekly claims
Sunday morning, though,
the system instructs them to
“Restart Your Claim.”
After several hours, the
employment
department
said it resolved the issue
with its systems, blaming
a “record level of online
claim processing, paired
with other weekend system
maintenance” for the prob-
lems. “As of just a few min-
utes ago, we’ve already seen
at least 20,000 who received
the restart error this morning
now successfully file their
weekly claim,” communi-
cations manager Gail Kru-
menauer wrote in a 1 p.m.
email. “The fix is working.”
After the breakdown in
the claims system last week,
the employment department
promised the “restart error”
wouldn’t happen again at the
start of this week.
The employment depart-
ment is struggling to cope
with an onslaught of jobless
claims. Close to 300,000
Oregonians lost their jobs in
the first weeks of the coro-
navirus outbreak as restau-
rants, bars and many other
businesses shut down to
contain the epidemic.
The department has been
unable to process many
claims because it still relies
on a 1990s computer system
to process claims. The state
has been planning an over-
haul since it received federal
funding for an upgrade in
2009 but estimates the new
computers won’t be fully in
place until 2025.
Antiquated system
Oregon’s
antiquated
computers frequently deny
claims to people who are
legally entitled to benefits,
a problem that has exploded
with the surge in claims.
That’s resulted in jammed
phone lines and delays in
benefits to thousands of
newly laid off workers.
Meanwhile, Oregon has
been unable to adapt its com-
puters to process changes in
the jobless benefits system
that Congress approved last
month to alleviate the eco-
nomic crisis brought on by
the coronavirus. That means
thousands of more unem-
ployed Oregonians are not
receiving full benefits.
For example, Oregon
cannot process claims made
by gig workers and the
self-employed even though
Congress made them eligi-
ble for benefits last month.
The state has given no esti-
mate of when it will be able
to process their claims.
And Oregon has been
unable to waive the “waiting
week” — a period before for
newly unemployed workers
are eligible to start receiv-
ing financial benefits. Con-
gress authorized states to
waive the waiting period last
month but Oregon, unlike
other states, has been unable
to implement the waiver.
BURNS — In the next
week or two, Samantha
Landon will have to decide
whether or not to close her
three businesses in Harney
County: a hair salon, a short-
term rental and Bella Java, a
bistro named for her love of
coffee. Landon laid off eight
employees she couldn’t pay
in March, after social dis-
tancing orders took effect
statewide and forced many
businesses to close to stem
the spread of the coronavirus.
She has been using her
own money, including her
federal stimulus check, to try
to keep her businesses afloat.
With almost no profit, she
can no longer afford to pay
overhead or wages.
“I won’t be able to order
food unless I buy it on
credit,” Landon said. “I have
to accrue more debt to make
it work. It would be ridicu-
lous to keep going this way.”
Landon is among hun-
dreds of small business own-
The Oregonian/OregonLive Photo/Dave Killen, File
A man walks in downtown Burns in southeast Oregon’s Har-
ney County. Officials there want Gov. Kate Brown to allow the
county to re-open businesses after coronavirus closures.
ers in rural Eastern Oregon
working to avoid a collapse
they won’t come back from.
County officials say they
can’t afford to wait to reopen
businesses and risk deeper
economic damage.
Several counties sent let-
ters to Gov. Kate Brown that
requested a reprieve from
sweeping business closures
and asked to reopen busi-
nesses in a way that allows
for social distancing.
Brown pledged on Tues-
day to begin work on such
a plan, but the timelines to
reopen are murky.
Many rural business own-
ers have only a matter of
weeks before they will be
forced to close, county offi-
cials say. Rural leaders are
eyeing May 1 as a tentative
target to start reopening.
“Businesses are strug-
gling,” said Harney County
Judge Pete Runnels, who was
among the first rural lead-
ers to reach out to Brown.
“It will be harder and harder
for them to come out of this
at all.”
Harney County has no
cases of COVID-19, and to
residents in far-flung com-
munities untouched by the
pandemic, the necessity of
the orders can seem question-
able as businesses are pushed
to the brink, Runnels said.
The county’s April 13 let-
ter detailed potential steps
business owners could take to
help protect against the virus
while resuming operations.
“We have abided by the
rules,” the letter said. “We’ve
seen them extended and we
have continued with stricter
controls, we just can’t hang
on any longer.”
Within days, seven other
eastern counties followed suit
— Baker, Grant, Deschutes,
Jefferson, Klamath, Union
and Wallowa — and submit-
ted a joint letter spelling out
similar concerns and asking
to talk with Brown to develop
potential solutions.
Oregon’s non-unanimous jury verdicts come to an end
By CONRAD WILSON
Oregon Public Broadcasting
WASHINGTON — The
U.S. Supreme Court ruled
6-3 Monday that the U.S.
Constitution requires unan-
imous jury verdicts in state
criminal courts. The move
ends Oregon’s history of
using non-unanimous juries
to find people guilty of
crimes other than murder.
Specifically, the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled the 14th
Amendment incorporates a
person’s Sixth Amendment
right to jury unanimity.
Oregon was the last state
in the country that utilized
a non-unanimous jury law,
allowing convictions in
many types of cases with an
11-1 or 10-2 decision.
Monday’s Supreme Court
case was out of Louisiana,
though that state had pre-
viously ended the practice
of non-unanimous juries
through a measure approved
by voters.
Non-unanimous
juries
have been part of Ore-
gon’s Constitution since
1934, when voters adopted
the practice. Legal scholars
argue non-unanimous juries
are rooted in discrimina-
tion, and that Oregon’s law
was originally intended to
silence the voices of Catho-
lic and Jewish immigrants in
the state.
In Louisiana, the law was
directly tied to Jim Crow laws
and aimed to make it easier
to convict black defendants
so white landowners could
maintain a cheap, post-slav-
ery labor force. In Novem-
ber 2018, Louisiana voters
scrubbed
non-unanimous
juries from their state’s Con-
stitution. But that didn’t pre-
vent the Supreme Court from
agreeing to hear a case that
directly dealt with the issue
of non-unanimous juries.
In recent years in Oregon,
there’s been a growing rec-
ognition about the state’s rac-
ist and discriminatory past,
as well as an understanding
among many state lawmak-
ers and elected officials —
even the state’s district attor-
neys — that there should be
no doubt among jurors when
convicting a defendant of a
crime.
However, Oregon legal
experts have disagreed on
how best to adopt unanimous
juries without overturning
many past convictions.
While Oregon’s attorney
general and criminal jus-
tice reform groups lauded
the court’s decision, Morrow
County District Attorney
Justin Nelson said he was
concerned on how the move
might affect victims.
Nelson didn’t think the
ruling would affect many
previous convictions in Mor-
row County, but he was wor-
ried that it might lead to
other cases in the region to
be retried if the convictions
are voided.
“That’s going to be con-
cerning for victims,” he said.
“It’s going to be stressful.”
Beyond the psycholog-
ical effect on victims, Nel-
son said older cases could be
more difficult to prosecute
because certain evidence like
eyewitness testimony won’t
be as fresh.
Going forward, Nelson
expects more cases to go to
trial instead of plea bargains
because defense attorneys
will only need to convince
one juror of reasonable doubt
to create a hung jury.
Umatilla County District
Attorney Dan Primus did
not return a call requesting
comment.
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