Pandemic not stopping elgin Opera house production | NORTHWEST, A2
E O
AST
145th year, No. 70
REGONIAN
Tuesday, March 30, 2021
$1.50
WINNER OF THE 2020 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
OREGON SENATE
OREGON HOUSE
Bill would
keep data
regarding
outbreaks
public
Bill would
extend
right to
overtime for
farmworkers
Farmers say house
bill would threaten
agricultural industry
senate Bill 719
currently sits in
senate committee
on health care
By PHIL WRIGHT
La Grande Observer
By JAMIE GOLDBERG
The Oregonian
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Maria Corona receives her first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine during an event for farm and food process-
ing workers at the Sage Center in Boardman on Wednesday, March 24, 2021.
saLeM — a proposal for a bill
to compel the state to keep aggregate
data relating to reportable disease
investigations as public informa-
tion remains alive
in the ongoing 2021
Oregon Legisla-
ture.
senate Bill 719,
which had a public
hearing last week
and has a work
session on Wednes-
Dembrow
day, March 31, is
currently in the
senate commit-
tee on health care.
according to the
text of the proposal,
“aggregate data
derived from infor-
mation obtained by
Hansell
the authority or a
local public health
administrator in
the course of an
investigation of a
reportable disease
or disease outbreak
are not confiden-
tial or exempt from
Power
disclosure” under
specific sections of Oregon’s public
records law “unless the data could
reasonably lead to the identification
of an individual.”
sen. Bill hansell, r-athena,
does not serve on that committee,
but explained most bills that did not
have a hearing or work session by
March 19 were dead in the senate. a
bill can’t exit a committee to head to
a floor vote without a work session.
Oregon’s constitutional limit of 160
days for the Legislature, he said,
firms up scheduling to consider new
laws. But at this point in the session,
he said, plenty of proposals are done.
sB 719, though, is pitting public
interest in information about the
coronavirus against health agencies
concerned with revealing an indi-
vidual’s private health information.
Two Portland democrats, sen.
Michael dembrow and rep. Karin
a. Power, are the chief sponsors
of the bill. hansell said they were
liberal progressives who tend not to
want to infringe on people’s privacy,
See Data, Page A10
Priority population
More than 1,000 agricultural workers vaccinated
during first-of-its-kind clinic in Morrow County
By BRYCE DOLE
East Oregonian
B
Oa r d M a N —
Maria corona knew
she wanted to get
the vaccine. Three
months earlier, eight of her
family members tested positive
for cOVId-19. so had many of
her co-workers and neighbors.
“I was really concerned,”
said corona, who, at 49, spends
half the year working in food
processing plants and the other
half working in the fields near
her home in Boardman. “you
hear a lot in the news that people
are dying, so you get afraid.”
The day after corona learned
through Facebook that she and
her co-workers were eligible to
receive the cOVId-19 vaccine,
she hopped in her dodge cara-
van and made her way down to
the saGe center, where state
and county health officials were
offering doses to farmworkers in
a four-day clinic that was the first
of its kind.
“In order to not infect other
people, to feel safe with your
family and to be secure is what’s
most important,” corona said
through a translator after getting
her vaccine on Wednesday,
March 24.
akiko saito, deputy direc-
tor for the cOVId-19 response
and recovery unit, a joint divi-
sion between the Oregon health
authority and the Oregon
department of human services,
said the clinic was a “pilot proj-
ect” specifically geared to
immunize a community long
understood to be especially
vulnerable to cOVId-19.
In all, officials vaccinated
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Staff at a COVID-19 mass vaccination clinic at the Sage Center in
Boardman administer doses of the COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday,
March 24, 2021.
over 1,000 agricultural work-
ers at the clinic, according to the
Morrow county health depart-
ment.
Saito said state officials are
looking to hold similar efforts
statewide. State officials recently
conducted a survey with 585
agricultural facilities that
showed more than 21,000 work-
ers were eligible for the vaccine.
“We’re working with our
local public health authorities
to connect agricultural, migrant
and seasonal workplaces to see if
they can do an event(s) like this”
across Oregon, saito said.
The clinic began two days
after Morrow county received
approval from the state to move
ahead and start vaccinating
farmworkers after sufficiently
providing doses to all other eligi-
ble groups.
at least 20 counties, most
of them east of the cascades,
received approval from the state
last week, including umatilla
county.
The change also comes just in
time for harvest season, which
brings thousands of jobs to the
area. Morrow county Public
health director Nazario rivera
said harvest season can bring as
many as 8,000 workers to the
region annually.
“We want to make sure we
get some of these vulnerable
communities,” he said. “We
know with the season changing
to spring, a lot more farmwork-
ers are going to be out there. so if
we can get them now, before the
season starts, it’ll be a lot easier
to get them vaccinated, rather
than having to ask them to take
time out of their busy schedules
See Vaccine, Page A10
saLeM — It’s not uncommon
for Javier ceja Manzo to work
more than 10 hours a day harvest-
ing crops in Woodburn.
In his decades as a farmworker,
he has worked in extreme heat,
heavy rain and snow. Like many
other Oregon farmworkers, he
didn’t miss a day of work during
the wildfires in September 2020,
despite the air quality reaching
hazardous levels.
yet, he doesn’t receive overtime
pay during those long work days,
and he said he can barely cover his
basic expenses with the income he
does take home.
democrats in the Oregon Legis-
lature are trying to change that situ-
ation. a house bill introduced in
January would require employers
to pay farmworkers overtime if they
work more than 40 hours in a week,
the same rights that most nonfarm
workers in Oregon already enjoy.
But the bill faces strong oppo-
sition from farmers, who say they
operate on thin profit margins and
that the requirement could threaten
Oregon’s agriculture industry. The
added wages could potentially put
small farms out of business and
lead to fewer shifts and less pay for
Oregon’s estimated 174,000 migrant
and seasonal farmworkers, lobby-
ists for farms and nurseries say.
advocates, meanwhile, say
overtime pay for farmworkers is
long overdue and a matter of racial
justice and equity. studies estimate
that more than 90% of Oregon farm-
workers are Latino.
“every dollar is very important
to pay what is necessary,” Manzo
wrote in testimony supporting the
bill. “We do not have the privilege
of taking our family to a restaurant
or buying gifts for our children. We
also do not have time to spend with
our children. We are forced to work
without having opportunities.”
‘We can’t continue to
ignore this’
While the majority of hourly
employees in the united states
receive time-and-a-half pay for the
hours they work beyond 40 hours a
week, farmworkers were intention-
ally excluded from that mandate
back when the Fair Labor standards
act passed in 1938.
Oregon farmers say that exclu-
See Overtime, Page A10
city looks at despain for future upgrades
Pendleton has banked
more than $1.5M to do
North hill street repairs
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
PeNdLeTON — The city of
Pendleton is targeting Northwest
despain avenue for future repairs,
but Public Works director Bob
Patterson said the city won’t start
determining what those repairs will
look like until later this fall.
stretching from North Main street
to Pendleton high school, despain
acts as a major collector road for the
North hill neighborhood. heavy use
throughout the years has caused wear
and tear on the road, and Patterson
said the city has banked more than
$1.5 million in federal gas tax revenue
to do repairs on that street.
But Patterson said the scope of
the repair job still needs to be set.
Besides figuring out whether the
city wants to overlay despain with a
new layer of asphalt or order a more
pricey reconstruction job, Patterson
said other upgrades like widening
certain sections of despain are still
on the table.
The city recently spent $1 million
to widen a section of southwest
Byers avenue, but Patterson said the
reasons for widening despain would
be different.
With on-street parking located
on both sides of Byers, Patterson
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
See Repairs, Page A10
The city of Pendleton is weighing options to upgrade Northwest Despain Av-
enue.