OFF PAGE ONE
Tuesday, January 5, 2021
East Oregonian
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About-face: ‘I don’t see the math where this gets overturned’
Continued from Page A1
College votes sent by the
states.
The Electoral College
results are sent to Congress,
where they are read aloud.
Normally, Congress rapidly
certifies the vote in a largely
ceremonial process.
However, if a member
of the House and a mem-
ber of the Senate object to
any slate of electors, both
chambers must hold sepa-
rate two-hour debates before
voting whether to accept or
reject the Electoral College
numbers.
House members —
including Democrats —
have made single objections
in the past, but no senator
has joined the effort.
However, more than 100
of the House’s 221 Repub-
licans have said they will
oppose the vote.
“Multiple states have
engaged in litigation and
thousands of witnesses have
submitted sworn affidavits
of reported fraud in the 2020
Presidential election,” a let-
ter signed by Bentz and other
freshmen says.
Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell, R-Ken-
tucky, had lobbied his cau-
cus not to join the objec-
tion. But Sen. Josh Hawley,
R-Missouri, announced he
would object and an addi-
tional dozen senators, led by
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, say
they will also object.
While the moves to block
Oregon Capital Insider/Contributed Photo
U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario, right, is sworn into office on Sunday, Jan, 3, 2021, as the rep-
resentative for Oregon’s Congressional District 2. The oath was administered by House Mi-
nority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., with Bentz’s wife, Lindsay Norman, middle, holding
a Bible.
certification are expected
to delay the result by a few
hours on Wednesday, Jan.
6, the House Democratic
majority of 222 members
will be joined by several
Republicans who oppose the
effort as undemocratic.
Sen.
Mitt
Romney,
R-Utah, the Republican
presidential nominee in
2012 who lost to President
Barack Obama, slammed
those challenging the Elec-
toral College votes as “dan-
gerously threatening our
democratic republic.”
“I could never have imag-
ined seeing these things in
the greatest democracy in the
world,” he said. “Has ambi-
tion so eclipsed principle?”
Former House Speaker
Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin,
told his former colleagues in
the House that challenging
the Electoral College results
was “striking at the founda-
tion of the republic.”
Ryan said he could not
think of “a more anti-demo-
cratic and anti-conservative
act than a federal interven-
tion to overturn the results of
state-certified elections and
disenfranchise millions of
Americans.”
Trump tweeted that those
members of Congress who
were not supporting him
were cowards.
“The ‘Surrender Caucus’
within the Republican Party
will go down in infamy
as weak and ineffective
‘guardians’ of our Nation,
who were willing to accept
the certification of fraudu-
lent presidential numbers!,”
Trump tweeted on Monday,
Jan. 4.
The heat of the argument
intensified on Jan. 3 when
a recording of an hourlong
telephone call by Trump in
the White House to Geor-
gia Secretary of State Brad
Raffensperger, a Republi-
can, was made public.
In the call, the president
told Raffensperger, the state
elections official who had
already certified the results,
to go back into the votes
again to overturn Biden’s
11,779-vote win.
“So look. All I want to
do is this. I just want to find
11,780 votes, which is one
more than we have,” Trump
said. “Because we won the
state.”
Raffensperger
said
repeated recounts had not
changed the outcome and
that he would not change the
result.
“Well, Mr. President, the
challenge that you have is,
the data you have is wrong,”
Raffensperger said.
Bentz is the only Repub-
lican among Oregon’s five
House members and two
senators. One of his col-
leagues, Rep. Earl Blume-
nauer, said Trump’s call to
the Georgia officials should
be prosecuted.
“In 17 days, Trump has
NO claim to immunity and
should be investigated,” Blu-
menauer said. “If a crime
was committed, he should
be arrested and prosecuted.”
Walden, the outgoing
representative of Oregon’s
2nd Congressional District,
could not be reached to com-
ment on Bentz’s position or
whether if Walden was still
in Congress he would sup-
port the results over objec-
tions of Republican activists.
Soon after the election,
Republican political lead-
ers were refusing to buck
Trump’s claims of having
the election stolen from him.
McConnell declined to sup-
port Trump’s conspiracy
theories on voting but pub-
licly refused to call Biden
“president-elect.”
On Dec. 1, The Washing-
ton Post newspaper asked
all 249 Republicans in the
U.S. Senate and U.S. House,
“Who won the election?”
Walden was among the
70% of those polled who did
not respond directly to the
newspaper’s query. But the
Post reviewed recent public
statements and put Walden
on the list of 27 accept-
ing Biden as the next presi-
dent based on a Dec. 1 inter-
view for a National Journal
podcast.
“I think in the end we’ll
have a transition here, and
you’ll have a new president
come Jan. 20,” Walden said.
“I don’t see the math where
this gets overturned and
so far I’ve not seen the evi-
dence of the amount of fraud
it would take, or mistakes
— and those occur in every
election — to overturn the
results in any state.”
Focus: ‘It’s really hard to find the motivation to do school work’
Continued from Page A1
average and ability to take
advanced classes.
“It’s really a disservice to
those who are trying to set
themselves up for success,”
he said. “If you’re taking AP
Biology, how are you sup-
posed to learn that through
a computer screen?”
Ashley Perkins was
standing on the corner with
her daughters, Emma Per-
kins, a sophomore, and
Kayla Perkins, a sixth-
grader. She said she wanted
to let the school district
know her family supported
getting kids back into the
classroom as soon as they
can.
Emma said she looked
forward to being able to
form more of a relationship
with her teachers, and be
more engaged in class.
“It’s really hard to find
the motivation to do school
work,” she said of distance
learning.
Mooney echoed other
administrators by pointing
out that although the gov-
ernor has removed the sta-
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
A group of roughly two dozen protesters advocating for the reopening of schools gather
outside the Hermiston School District office in Hermiston on Monday, Jan. 4, 2021.
tistical barrier to reopening,
many of the state’s social
distancing rules remain the
same. That means districts’
revised reopening plans
will still have to account for
reduced school bus capacity,
teachers that can only inter-
act with a maximum of three
cohorts per day and class
sizes that allow for 6 feet of
social distancing between
students.
After Brown made her
announcement,
Pendle-
ton Superintendent Chris
Fritsch sent out a letter on
Dec. 30, 2020, that sketched
out what the district could
do with wider latitude while
tempering expectations.
Fritsch wrote that the dis-
trict is considering bringing
back elementary school stu-
dents for half-days before
Feb. 15, a move that would
expand in-person education
while working around Pend-
leton’s class size limitations.
Fritsch was less optimistic
about bringing back second-
ary students, but he added
the district would continue
to advocate for a change in
the rules.
Fritsch said the district
plans to unveil a more for-
mal plan after its Tuesday,
Jan. 5, school board meeting.
In a Jan. 4 interview,
Athena-Weston Superinten-
dent Laure Quaresma said
her district’s small class
sizes means the district is in
good position to bring back
its students at the K-5 level.
Quaresma said staff and
school board members will
continue to discuss their
options through the end of
the week. At the secondary
level, the district is look-
ing at splitting its student
body and hosting them for
in-person class on alternat-
ing days.
But Quaresma added the
district didn’t want to final-
ize its plan until it got more
Building: Purchase was approved in June 2020 Brown:
Continued from Page A1
Once the new city hall
is complete, the county will
move the services currently
located in the Cook Build-
ing into a 5,000-square-
foot space in city hall that
the city is adding to plan for
future growth. According to
a deal previously signed by
both parties, the county will
have use of that space for
a minimum of 15 years in
exchange for its $3 million
investment in the new city
hall. The $400,000 from the
Cook Building will be cred-
ited toward that $3 million.
Murdock
emphasized
that the $3 million comes
from payments in lieu of
taxes that the county is
receiving from large devel-
opments in Hermiston’s
enterprise zone. It fits with
the county’s plan of rein-
vesting enterprise zone
funds into the cities where
they came from.
“The county general
fund is not making a contri-
bution,” he said. “These are
development funds gener-
ated in Hermiston.”
During the Dec. 16,
2020, meeting where the
commissioners voted for the
sale of the Cook Building,
Commissioner Bill Elfering
stated that he felt the county
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
The Umatilla County Board of Commissioners has approved
the sale of the Cook building located at 435 E. Newport Ave.
was getting a good deal
based on cost, and the pub-
lic would benefit being able
to visit county offices that
were newer, larger and in a
more accessible location.
“I’ve had opportunities
to discuss this with counsel
and also with finance, and it
appears to be quite a good
proposition with us to enter
into with the city of Hermis-
ton,” he said.
The Hermiston City
Council voted in June 2020
to approve purchase of the
Lanham Building, but City
Manager Byron Smith said
the sale had not yet closed
because the parties involved
had been waiting for the
Cook Building sale to be
approved.
Smith said bids for con-
struction of the new city
hall will close near the end
of January. The architects
for the project estimate it
will take about 18 months to
build, Smith said, but in his
experience contractors tend
to have a longer estimate
than architects so it may be
more like a two-year project.
Since a fire in the HVAC
system and the result-
ing smoke did more than
$100,000 in damage to the
old city hall in December
2019, city staff have been
farmed out to several other
buildings. Contractors have
been working on renovat-
ing the underutilized base-
ment of the Hermiston Pub-
lic Library across the street,
and Smith said the basement
should be ready for city staff
to move into near the end
of January or beginning of
February.
“We’ve had a few hic-
cups with getting materials
since COVID has shut down
plants,” he said.
He said employees mov-
ing into the temporary city
hall in the library base-
ment include “customer ser-
vice” staff, such as the city
recorder, human resources
and the finance department.
Once they leave their cur-
rent location at the old Car-
negie Library next door, the
city’s planning department
will move into that space.
Once the new three-
story city hall is built, it will
include staff that had previ-
ously been located at the old
city hall and in the Carne-
gie Library, as well as free-
ing up space for Hermis-
ton Police Department by
moving the municipal court
from the police station to the
new city hall. The basement
of the library will then be
used to expand the library’s
collection and services.
Continued from Page A1
tion by the second week of
January. School officials
at the Eugene 4J district
announced even before
Gov. Brown’s announce-
ment that they would move
toward a hybrid of in-per-
son and distance learning
in early February.
But other districts,
including Oregon’s largest,
are being more cautious.
Portland Public Schools
Superintendent Guadalupe
Guerrero said in October
2020 that schools would
hold off on bringing stu-
dents back in-person until
the start of February at the
earliest. That time frame
will almost certainly be
pushed back.
“We need educators and
school staff to have access
to vaccinations before we
reopen,” PPS spokesper-
son Karen Werstein said
in a Dec. 30, 2020, email.
“Right now, we are keep-
ing a close watch on the
rollout of vaccinations and
look forward to PPS school
staff being able to access
vaccines at the begin-
ning of phase 1B, per Gov.
Brown’s confirmation last
week.”
The unions that repre-
sent Oregon teachers have
guidance from the Ore-
gon Department of Educa-
tion later this month, given
how often state rules have
changed in the 2020-21
school year.
“Every time you get
something solved, you get
something new,” she said.
As schools weigh their
options, cases are surg-
ing throughout the county.
On Jan. 4, Umatilla County
Public Health reported more
than 200 cases from over the
weekend.
And although the metrics
were just made advisory,
they’re still being calcu-
lated and tracked. In his let-
ter, Fritsch noted that Uma-
tilla County’s late December
2020 case rates were “648%
over the advisory level
for reopening elementary
schools and 1,296% over the
advised level for secondary
schools.”
Once schools reopen,
the next challenge schools
will need to solve is how to
stay open. If schools start
to experience outbreaks,
education may revert to an
online-only format.
expressed skepticism at
Brown’s push for reopen-
ings. Some teachers worry
that school buildings and
classroom practices can’t
be made sufficiently safe
during a global pandemic.
The Oregon Education
Association was critical
of Brown’s Feb. 15 target
and policy changes, saying
they would lead to “uncer-
tainty” and a “patchwork”
of different approaches
across the state.
The Oregon School
Boards Association was
more supportive. The
Oregon Legislature just
approved one of that
group’s key criteria for
reopening — granting
schools liability protection
from COVID-19-related
lawsuits.
“This next step will
require close coordina-
tion with local health
authorities,” OSBA exec-
utive director Jim Green
said in a press release
after Brown’s Dec. 23
announcement. “Above all,
we want to minimize risks
as we return to in-person
instruction.”
But if minimizing
risk involves vaccinat-
ing school staff, reopen-
ing schools won’t happen
quickly, and won’t happen
in time to meet the gov-
ernor’s Feb. 15 reopening
goal.