Five resign from Morrow County Sheriff’s Office | REGION, A3
E O
AST
145th year, No. 59
REGONIAN
Thursday, March 4, 2021
$1.50
WINNER OF THE 2020 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
Umatilla County last in COVID-19 vaccinations
County has vaccinated
approximately 960
people per 10,000
residents, ranked
lowest in Oregon
Shafer
By BRYCE DOLE
East Oregonian
PENdLETON — umatilla
county has dropped to the lowest-
ranked county in Oregon for
COVID-19 vaccinations per capita,
according to data from the Oregon
health authority.
Fiumara
In all, the county has vaccinated
approximately 960 people per
10,000 residents, ranked last in the
state, according to state data as of
Tuesday, March 2.
“This is just atrocious and this
needs to be addressed immediately,
in my opinion,” umatilla county
Dorran
Murdock
commissioner John shafer said
during a Wednesday, March 3,
board of commissioners meeting.
For two weeks, the county was
caught second to last in the state
in vaccinations per capita, but this
week, the county fell to dead last for
the first time since vaccine efforts
began in December 2020.
In response to the dismal
ranking, officials in the meeting
approved a letter to be sent to Gov.
Kate Brown’s office “on behalf of
the citizens of umatilla county
based upon discrimination and
inequities in vaccine allocations,”
the letter says.
The official’s letter argues that
despite the state’s promises to vacci-
nate highly vulnerable and infected
communities, the state continues to
send meager shipments to counties
that have been hardest hit by the
pandemic.
In total, 7,792 umatilla county
residents have been vaccinated
against cOVId-19, with 4,661 of
those being second doses.
“We are one of the most diverse
counties in Oregon, and yet we are
not being given any consideration in
terms of the vaccine being provided
to the county,” Umatilla County
Commissioner George Murdock
said. “In addition, as everyone
knows, we’ve had a high rate of
infection, and we have a dispropor-
tionate number of residents who are
both impacted by coronavirus and
who on a daily basis are working
See Last, Page A9
Property
line lawsuit
moves
forward
Waine family filed
lawsuit against
umatilla county
in March 2020
By JADE MCDOWELL
East Oregonian
hErMIsTON — a lawsuit by
airport road residents chris and
Monique Waine against umatilla
County and the city of Hermiston
continues to move forward after
a judge denied the defendants’
motion for summary judgment.
The Waines have been in an
ongoing dispute with the county
over property lines on their home
at the corner of Airport and Ott
roads outside hermiston, after the
county began planning an overhaul
of Airport Road to better accom-
modate traffic for the Eastern
Oregon Trade and Event center.
The Waines lost a hearing for a
temporary injunction against the
project in 2020 and it was later
completed, adding new pavement
and an extra lane.
The case is complicated, touch-
ing on more than a century’s worth
of surveys, monuments, property
descriptions and other records
created since the county first estab-
lished the road in 1907.
“There is a lot of crossover of
law, a lot of different layers and a
lot of grey areas in the law,” chris
Waine said.
Essentially, the Waines believe
that the true airport road right of
way is about 11 feet north and 5
feet east of where the county says
it is, and therefore the road proj-
ect encroached on their property
without compensating them. The
county argues that multiple surveys
show the strip of land in question
See Lawsuit, Page A9
East Oregonian, File
Range Manager Darryl Abling explains the capabilities of the mission control room at the Pendleton UAS Range Mission Control and Inno-
vation Center in Pendleton on Oct. 20, 2017.
Seeking exemptions
Pendleton looks
to cut off public
records access from
city’s drone range
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
ALEM — It could soon get a lot
harder to access public records
from the Pendleton unmanned
aerial systems range.
state sen. Bill hansell, r-ath-
ena, has introduced a bill that would exempt
the city of Pendleton from disclosing records
produced by the test range if making them
public “would cause a competitive disad-
vantage to the test range or its users.” The
exemption covers a broad range of records,
“including but not limited to pricing, intel-
lectual property and customer records.”
at a Feb. 11 senate committee on Labor
and Business hearing, Pendleton city
Manager Robb Corbett called passage of
the bill “crucial” before introducing Steve
Chrisman, the city’s airport manager and
economic development director.
In his written and oral testimony, chris-
man gave legislators a brief overview of the
uas range and its history.
six years after it was established, chris-
man said the uas range now supports about
75 jobs, conducts thousands of drone tests
per year, and produces millions of dollars
worth of economic activity.
Given the $20 million the public has
invested in the test range at the city, state
and federal levels, chrisman said it was in
all Oregonians’ best interest that the uas
range succeed. And if Oregon wanted to see
Pendleton succeed, city officials maintain,
S
East Oregonian, File
Engineers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory talk about the scientific payload
of the ArticShark unmanned aerial vehicle to a group of Pendleton dignitaries in March
2017 at the Pendleton UAS Range.
then they needed to let the range keep some
records under wraps.
as an example, chrisman pointed to
Pendleton’s successful recruitment of
airbus to the uas range. he said the
city knew Airbus wanted to test its Proj-
ect Vahana air taxi concept in Pendleton a
year and a half before Airbus went public
with an announcement in 2017, but Airbus
instructed staff to stay quiet or it would test
its drone elsewhere. Airbus ceased testing
in Pendleton in 2019.
“This need for confidentiality is standard
in the industry, and the first thing prospec-
tive range users ask is for the city to sign a
nondisclosure agreement (NDA),” he wrote
in his testimony. “Without some assurance
of protection of their identity, activities, and
proprietary information, then companies
just simply will not come to Oregon with
this cutting-edge technology. “
chrisman added that the other uas test
ranges in Oregon were either privately or
tribally owned, meaning Pendleton was the
See Exemptions, Page A9