OFF PAGE ONE
Saturday, November 14, 2020
East Oregonian
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Timeout: ‘We get it, people hate some of these restrictions’
Continued from Page A1
County, for example, will be
under the restrictions until at
least Dec. 16.
“I want to be honest about
that now — be prepared,”
she said.
Unlike previous shut-
downs, Brown said personal
service providers, such as
physical therapists, chiro-
practors and medical spas,
will remain open during the
freeze.
Earlier on Nov. 13, Brown
also announced a joint travel
advisory between Ore-
gon, Washington and Cal-
ifornia that urges residents
to refrain from nonessen-
tial out-of-state travel, asks
those arriving after travel-
ing to self-quarantine for 14
days and encourages people
to stay local.
“The advisories define
essential travel as travel
for work and study, criti-
cal infrastructure support,
economic services and sup-
ply chains, health, immedi-
ate medical care, and safety
and security,” a press release
stated.
California surpassed 1
million cases of the virus
earlier this week, while
Washington reported that its
new cases have doubled in
the past two weeks.
The Oregon Health
Authority has reported
a record number of new
weekly cases for three con-
secutive weeks, including
single-day records of over a
thousand cases on Nov. 12
and Nov. 13, and an all-time
high of active hospitaliza-
tions of 303.
In Umatilla County, the
Oregon Health Authority
has reported 202 new cases
of the virus since Saturday,
Nov. 7, which is the most
new weekly cases reported
since the virus spiked locally
in July.
Parties identified as
source of local surge
Prior to the announce-
ment, Umatilla County Pub-
lic Health Director Joe Fiu-
mara said Nov. 12 that the
local rise in cases has been
directly linked to at least
“five or six” large social
gatherings of 30 or more, and
at times 50 or more people,
that were hosted around or
after Halloween.
Fiumara said a significant
portion of these cases have
been diagnosed in young
adults and teens — county
data showed nearly 55%
of the county’s total cases
have been among people 39
or younger as of Nov. 13 —
and the health department is
pleading with parents and the
community to prevent these
gatherings from happening.
“Parents: please help pre-
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan, File
A sign along Southgate in Pendleton advertises takeout and
delivery only following Gov. Kate Brown’s ban on dine-in
restaurants in March 2020. Oregon is being put on a “two-week
freeze” in an attempt to curb the rapid spread of COVID-19,
Gov. Brown announced at a press conference Friday, Nov. 13.
vent the spread of COVID-19
by ensuring that your teen is
not out partying,” an email
sent by the health depart-
ment to parents with students
in the Pendleton School Dis-
trict stated this week. “We
are aware of one or more
large parties planned in our
area for the upcoming week-
end. Please ensure that your
teen is not in attendance.”
Fiumara
said
those
attending the parties have
also been unwilling to share
information with the health
department during contact
tracing and it’s hindering the
local response.
In one instance, Fiumara
said an entire household was
diagnosed with the virus and
had recently attended a birth-
day party of at least 25 peo-
ple but wouldn’t share infor-
mation about other attendees
who may have been exposed.
“We have many instances
of items like that happen-
ing, which make it confusing
for us to know how many of
these are the same party or
how many are different,” he
said.
Sidelinger said Nov. 13
that the vast majority of
cases statewide have also
been linked to social gath-
erings, and that the state
has directed counties to pri-
oritize contact tracing for
the most at-risk individuals
when necessary due to the
difficulty in tracking cases
associated with them.
Younger individuals are
generally more healthy and
less likely to be hospital-
ized or suffer severe symp-
toms of COVID-19, but Fiu-
mara said there’s still risk
of spreading to other more
at-risk individuals and the
numbers will continue to
keep schools and businesses
under restrictions.
“The real concern is who
they’re going to bring it
home to,” Fiumara said. “If
they have a place of employ-
ment, who are they going to
bring it to at work, who are
they going to interact with
in the community, and all
of that really just pushes the
spread up.”
We’re starting to get
‘flashbacks’
While many Oregon
counties sustained relatively
stable case numbers ear-
lier in the pandemic, Uma-
tilla County became home
of some of the highest case
numbers and worst case rates
per capita during a rapid
spike in July.
The county reported over
1,300 total cases of the virus
at a daily average of 45 cases
per day in the month of July,
and the health department
struggled to keep up with the
mounting case investigations
to trace while attempting to
expand staff and streamline
processes.
While the recent increase
in cases has been more grad-
ual and the health depart-
ment is better equipped to
handle them this time, Fiu-
mara said the current surge
of case numbers has given
the department some “flash-
backs” to the one experi-
enced this summer.
“We’re definitely starting
to push up against what we
can handle on a daily basis,”
Fiumara said.
With
the
county’s
expanded health staff and
a more efficient process for
following up on cases that
was refined during previ-
ous surges, Fiumara said the
health department has been
assisting sporadically with
recent cases from Union
and Malheur counties as
requested.
But as the entire state
enters another period of
lockdowns trying to slow the
virus’s spread, Fiumara said
it’s “disheartening and frus-
trating” to have their local
efforts impacted by those
who continue to flout the
guidelines in place to protect
the community.
“We get it, people hate
some of these restrictions,”
he said. “But man, this is like
the worst thing we could be
doing.”
Democrats: Despite losing 3 seats, Dems hold power
Continued from Page A1
Democrats for three decades,
Republican Suzanne Weber
won the seat.
In the Coos Bay area,
Republicans Dick Anderson
won Senate District 5 seat
and Boomer Wright earned
the seat for House District 9.
“Oregonians voted for
Republican
legislators
because they want their
voices to be heard at the table,
to address the challenges
facing our state, including
the underlying weakness in
our economy and its impact
on families, communities,
schools and safety net ser-
vices,” said Rep. Christine
Drazan, the leader of the
minority Republicans in the
House.
Anderson and Wright
both ran on the platform that
they will bring the voices of
residents on the coast to the
Capitol, where they say law-
makers have long “ignored”
them.
Although Democrats lost
three seats, observers say it
seems the party will keep
their power balance in the
House by 37 to 23 margin by
winning a seat in Bend, and
in the Senate 18 to 12.
House Speaker Tina
Kotek, told The Oregonian
that “the goal in the House
was to defend our superma-
jority. And we did that.”
But Democrats missed a
rare opportunity.
If the party was able to
gain enough new seats in the
House and Senate to become
a two-thirds supermajority it
would have made Republi-
can walkouts ineffective, as
Democrats would be able to
meet quorum to vote even
if Republicans were not in
attendance.
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian, File
Blue Mountain Community College sits on the hillside above
Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution in Pendleton earlier
this summer.
Andrew Selsky/Associated Press, File
Lawmakers convene at the Oregon Senate in Salem on June 29, 2019, after the minority
Republicans ended a walkout over a carbon-emissions bill they said would harm their rural
constituents.
In May 2019, a series of
walkouts by Republican sen-
ators began to block a school
funding tax. They returned
after Democrats scrapped
bills on gun control and
another that would have lim-
ited religious exemptions
from vaccines.
The next month, Repub-
licans again did not show
up to the Capitol in order
to stop a cap-and-trade bill
designed to institute a car-
bon tax in the state. During
that time, Gov. Kate Brown
sent state police to bring the
absent Republican senators
back to the Capitol, and in
response some senators fled
the state.
Walkouts continued in
2020 when Republicans
from both the House and
Senate did not attend short
sessions.
In the wake of the walk-
outs, hundreds of bills failed
to advance.
And while some believed
Republicans would be pun-
ished on the ballot for their
strategies in the Capitol, that
has not been the case.
“Though it seems that the
voters in the state, overall,
disliked the walkout strategy
it didn’t hurt Republicans as
much as Democrats hoped it
would,” Nichols said.
But with the election
nearly concluded lawmak-
ers are hoping to set aside
party differences to focus
on the immediate needs of
Oregonians.
“In the coming ses-
sion, we will focus on the
basic needs facing Orego-
nians who are on the brink
due to the coronavirus pan-
demic, wildfires and other
structural inequities,” Kotek
told The Associated Press.
“Basic needs are not parti-
san issues, and my hope and
expectation is that everyone
will arrive on opening day
ready to work.”
Nichols
called
the
upcoming legislative session
“one of the most important
Amazon:
Continued from Page A1
and county (higher if more
than two buildings are built),
plus $50,000 for education,
$50,000 for public safety and
payments to all taxing dis-
tricts equivalent to what the
company would be paying in
taxes on the first $25 million
of assessed value.
In 2017, Umatilla County
signed a different type of
tax abatement agreement
with Amazon’s subsidiary
Vadata, known as a Strategic
Investment Program agree-
ment, sparking a major dis-
agreement between the city
of Umatilla and the county
over how the payments in
lieu of taxes should be split.
The county decided to give
Umatilla about $1 million
of the $4 million payment,
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Data centers line the countryside near Umatilla on Friday,
Nov. 13, 2020.
but the city manager at the
time, Russ Pelleberg, argued
that the city should receive
at least half, and threatened
legal action.
Since then, Stockdale
said, he is “proud to say the
city and county have made
some really great strides in
our relationship.”
He said the city appreci-
ates the county’s philosophy
with the long-term enter-
prise zone agreements that
not only should cities where
the projects are located
receive half the payments,
but the county should use its
half to reinvest that money
back into economic devel-
moments in Oregon politics
in several generations.”
So what are the odds
of
further
Republican
walkouts?
“It will be much more
difficult for Republicans
to walk out when relief
for small business, people
struggling with health and
questions regarding paths
forward with local and state
level debt are at stake,”
Nichols said. “Not taking
action is going to have much
higher consequences for
their constituents.”
The Republican caucuses
for the House and Senate did
not respond to requests for
comment about the possibil-
ity of future walkouts.
“Now that this election
is over, it’s time to come
together and govern,” Kotek
said. “There is more that
unites us than divides us,
and it’s time to get to work
on behalf of Oregonians
who need our support more
than ever.”
opment in the community
where it was generated.
At a Nov. 4 Umatilla
County Board of Commis-
sioners meeting, commis-
sioners voted unanimously
to approve the two agree-
ments for the new Amazon
campuses. County coun-
sel Doug Olsen told com-
missioners the two planned
projects would be identical
in size and adjacent to each
other in the Wanapa indus-
trial area on the east side of
Umatilla. He said the plan is
for construction on the first
campus to begin “shortly.”
“The terms of the
agreement are very simi-
lar to previous ones with
this developer,” he told
commissioners.
Commissioner George
Murdock said the county and
city had worked together as
co-sponsors of the enterprise
zone to forge the agreement.
DOC: ‘Nobody
wants that to happen’
Continued from Page A1
tion, negotiating on behalf of
BMCC and five other com-
munity colleges across the
state, presented the depart-
ment with three options.
The state prison system
chose Option 1, which would
reduce BMCC’s allocation
from $3 million per year to
about $1.25 million annu-
ally. Bailey-Fougnier said
the deal would result in cut-
ting 8-9 positio ns from
the 27 staff that work for the
program, among other ser-
vice reductions.
Bailey-Fougnier
said
Option 1 was meant more
as an exercise in show-
ing DOC what the program
would look like if it used
some of the budgetary con-
straints the department was
asking for in negotiations.
The other two options repre-
sented proposals with higher
funding amounts and were
considered more feasible by
the community colleges.
“I wish we had never
offered Option 1,” he said.
Bailey-Fougnier
said
both sides will meet again
next week and his hope is
that the colleges will be
able to negotiate further and
hammer out other details on
working conditions, class
sizes and how the new con-
tract will be administered.
The Department of Cor-
rections accepting an offer
made by the state’s com-
munity colleges represents
an abrupt change in tac-
tics from the state’s prison
system.
DOC told community
colleges over the summer
that it intended to end its
contracts with them in favor
of moving the majority of
its educational programs
in-house, a move represen-
tatives said would save the
department money and offer
more consistency to inmates
across the system. Even
as the colleges made some
concessions, the depart-
ment rejected an Octo-
ber offer and made plans
to move ahead with transi-
tioning education operations
internally.
The conflict between
DOC and the commu-
nity colleges attracted the
attention of state Sen. Bill
Hansell, R-Athena, who
wrote a letter to Gov. Kate
Brown imploring her to help
save the relationship.
Hansell found a sympa-
thetic ear across the aisle
and on the other side of Ore-
gon from state Sen. Michael
Dembrow, a Portland Dem-
ocrat who chairs the Senate
Committee on Education.
In a Nov. 12 interview,
Dembrow said the issue
drew his attention as both
a legislator who has worked
on prison education issues
in the past and as a for-
mer professor at Portland
Community College, one
of the schools with a DOC
contract.
Dembrow convened a
meeting with Hansell and
representatives from both
the corrections department
and the community colleges.
Dembrow said the Ore-
gon Legislature could pass
a law in 2021 that would
require DOC to contract
with community colleges,
but its potential for disrup-
tion made it less preferable
to a deal made now.
“Nobody wants that to
happen,” Dembrow said
of legislative action on the
community college con-
tracts. “What would we be
left with then? You’d be left
with a situation where some
people are let go, other peo-
ple are hired, and what, in
six months, those people
are let go and the old people
are rehired? That’s going to
be hugely disruptive for the
adults-in-custody as well as
the employees.”
Both Dembrow and Bai-
ley-Fougnier credited the
meeting with breaking the
ice, leading to DOC accept-
ing the Nov. 6 offer.
But the ball is back in the
colleges’ court as BMCC
looks to avoid further cuts in
a year where it’s already laid
off several employees.