KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
ANDREW CUTLER
Publisher/Editor
ERICK PETERSON
Hermiston Editor/Senior Reporter
ThuRSDAy, JAnuARy 6, 2022
A4
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Oregon
agencies
skip audits
the law
requires
O
regon’s latest “Annual Report of State-
wide Internal Audit Activities” might
be a perfect sleep aid. But that annual
report is a really good idea.
That is, it’s a really good idea if it’s done
right.
Big state agencies in Oregon are basically
required by law to take a hard, objective look
at themselves every year and figure out what
they might need to do better. It could lead to
improvement in government. And the audits
improve transparency. They give Oregonians
a window into how government agencies are
doing.
This year the executive summary of the
report is packed with good news. Agencies
completed 56 audits. Three agencies got top
marks from “external quality reviews.” Fully
21 of the state internal auditors hold advanced
degrees. And the highlight reel goes on with
more.
Read just that executive summary and it
seems like it’s going great. Dig deeper, though,
and the state actually only met one of its goals
for internal audits. Some agencies didn’t even
do them. There are, of course, excuses for not
doing them. There always are.
One goal is that 100% of state agencies
comply with ORS 184.360. That’s the state law
that requires internal audits. The state didn’t hit
it.
Only 79% of the required agencies produced
a risk assessment of the agency that conforms to
national standards.
Only 72% completed at least one audit per
year based on its annual report.
Only 69% completed a governance or risk
management audit in the last five years.
The state also aims for a goal that 75% of
state agencies complete an annual audit plan
each year. Only 55% of agencies did.
The state’s final two goals for internal audits
have to do with using audits to improve govern-
ment. One is that agencies do surveys after an
audit to figure out ways to improve how they do
audits. Only 83% did.
We had to chuckle when we saw the one goal
that the state achieved. It’s related to that last
goal of conducting surveys after an audit. The
state hopes at least 90% of survey responses
affirmatively state the audit provided value to
the organization. Fully 100% believed the audit
work had value — now if only more agencies
would actually do the audits as required.
If this report is to be truly useful, shouldn’t
the executive summary highlight that actually,
year after year, many state agencies don’t get
these audits done? Shouldn’t there be a brief
summary about what each internal audit did
find?
EDITORIALS
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East
Oregonian editorial board. Other columns, letters
and cartoons on this page express the opinions
of the authors and not necessarily that of the East
Oregonian.
LETTERS
The East Oregonian welcomes original letters
of 400 words or less on public issues and public
policies for publication in the newspaper and on
our website. The newspaper reserves the right
to withhold letters that address concerns about
individual services and products or letters that
infringe on the rights of private citizens. Letters
must be signed by the author and include the city
of residence and a daytime phone number. The
phone number will not be published. Unsigned
letters will not be published.
SEND LETTERS TO:
editor@eastoregonian.com,
or via mail to Andrew Cutler,
211 S.E. Byers Ave., Pendleton, OR 97801
A sense of place in the Blue Mountains
BILL
ANEY
THIS LAND IS OUR LAND
T
here is a place along the upper
Grande Ronde River that has
a hold on my heart. As a kid, I
would camp there with my grandfather,
him teaching me to build a fire, split
kindling, play gin rummy, flip pancakes
(“belly gaskets” he would call them) and
fish for trout. Imagine the patience it
must take to teach a 10-year-old how to
cast a fly.
I was a city kid, raised in Portland
and Corvallis, but every summer I
would spend several weeks with my
grandparents in northeastern Oregon.
I see now that these experiences and
places led to me to make life choices
that have always brought me back to the
Blue Mountains. My education, summer
jobs and career moves kept returning
me to this place that feels like home.
In an incredible stroke of luck, one
of my first Forest Service jobs was as
a fire prevention technician, patrolling
an area that included the upper Grande
Ronde. A campground had been devel-
oped where grandpa used to park his
trailer, the lodgepole pine forest had
been ravaged by pine beetles, and even-
tually the river was no longer stocked
with native hatchery trout, but I still felt
a great attachment to this landscape.
Each day I visited with campers,
fishers and woodcutters and shared with
them stories of my summers in the same
spot, pointing out good fishing holes,
access roads and spring sources — and
of course, spreading the fire prevention
message.
Social scientists have a term for
this special feeling I have for the upper
Grande Ronde. It is called “sense of
place” and refers to the characteris-
tics of a place that make it special or
unique or that create in people a sense of
attachment and belonging. My child-
hood experiences created for me a
primal landscape, and it is common for
exposure to natural landscapes to influ-
ence our preferences later in life. That
certainly held true for me.
have you ever driven by a house
where you lived as a kid and felt a
rush of memories, sights and sounds?
That’s sense of place. Do you choose
to camp in the same location every
hunting season, perhaps your grand-
parents’ hunting campsite, even when
the hunting success doesn’t live up to
the memories of your youth? That tug
is your sense of place, and it’s import-
ant. During my career I was sometimes
frustrated by my agencies’ inability to
close roads, even when the roads were
reducing the value of wildlife habitat
or damaging soil and water quality. It
seemed like every two-track road in
the forest led to someone’s traditional
family hunting camp.
Some elements of the sense of place
are cultural, referring to the attachment
of a people or culture to an environ-
ment or homeland. I don’t compare my
own feelings of sense of place with the
connections that native people have to
their ancestral lands, as my connection
only runs one or two generations deep
and doesn’t include the land providing
for the needs of my ancestors — nor
was it ever taken from them. But I do
respect that native people have a long
and spiritual connection to the land,
and I appreciate the significance of their
work to restore the capacity of the land
and waters to provide for them. It must
be a powerful emotional experience to
see salmon return to a stream that one’s
ancestors used to fish, or to pick huckle-
berries in areas known through family
oral history.
We spend plenty of time in inauthen-
tic locations, places that could be put
anywhere. Strip malls, fast food restau-
rants, large box stores and downtown
areas that have been converted to tourist
traps or heavy commercial use all lose
their ability to connect to people with
a sense of place. Gertrude Stein visited
the site where her childhood home and
farm once stood, and upon seeing that
the land had been converted to housing
developments, summarized her feelings
by saying “there is no there there.” This
certainly is the antithesis of the sense of
place; I sense in her writing a mourning
for the loss of part of her own identity.
To be sure, the upper Grande Ronde
is not the only place that evokes strong
feelings for me. There is a lake in the
Wallowas I call “spread your ashes
worthy” because of its sheer beauty.
hayward Field in Eugene is a place that
holds special memories for me as a track
and field athlete, coach and spectator.
Even the sidewalk in front of the Great
Pacific has a special place in my heart
because of the many summer Friday
evenings I have spent there with good
friends.
As an adult, I have visited and fished
the upper Grande Ronde with my own
family. The day is coming soon when
I will be able to take my grandchildren
to the same place, and I look forward
to setting up a camp, cooking belly
gaskets, building a campfire, playing in
the river, and helping them catch trout
on a fly.
I suspect these experiences will
bring a tear or two to my eye; such is the
power of sense of place.
———
Bill Aney is a forester and wildlife biol-
ogist living in Pendleton and loving the
Blue Mountains.