WEEKEND EDITION
Umatilla police send lieutenant to help in deadly shooting, A3
FEBRUARY 12 – 13, 2022
146th Year, No. 48
HERMISTON
Multiple
elections
with no
candidates
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
HERMISTON — The field
running for Hermiston city offi ce
is starting to come together but still
has some gaps.
With less than a month before
the fi ling deadline, the races for the
Ward 4 city council seat and munic-
ipal judge position are contested,
but one race has only one candidate
while another has none.
Hermiston city recorder Lilly
Alarcon-Strong said the city
recently advertised the seats up for
election in May with the hopes of
attracting more candidates to the
races.
This year, voters will consider
candidates for Hermiston’s four
ward seats. The candidate’s ward is
determined by where they live, but
all voters will still get a chance to
weigh in on all four races. Below is a
summary of the fi eld for each race so
far. The fi ling deadline is March 8.
Ward 1
(northwest Hermiston)
Four years after falling just short,
Jackie Linton is running for Ward
1 again.
Linton, a substitute teacher and
retired postal worker, came in third
in a three-way race for the Ward 1
seat in 2018, but she was only 33
votes shy of making the runoff elec-
tion. The incumbent, Lori Davis,
came in second during the primary
but would go on to win the Novem-
ber general election.
Davis, an employee at Two
Rivers Correctional Institution,
Umatilla, was appointed to the
council in 2010 and then won her
fi rst term a few months later. She
ran unopposed in her fi rst election,
but secured second and third terms
by winning contested elections.
Although the city website didn’t
list her as a candidate as of Wednes-
day, Feb. 9, Davis wrote in an email
that she plans to fi le for reelection.
$1.50
WINNER OF 16 ONPA AWARDS IN 2021
Framework for the forests
Committee completes desired conditions for Blue Mountain forest plan
eight main objections, including
economics; access; management
area designation; pace and scale
of restoration; grazing; fi re and
salvage logging; coordination
between agencies; and wildlife.
The counties argued the agen-
cy’s plan would close roads and
limit livestock grazing while fail-
ing to thin enough of the woods
to boost timber jobs or lower the
risk of large wildfi res.
The BIC subcommittee
revised the list of conditions
pertaining to a number of key
issues, including access, elk
security, wilderness and other
set-asides.
By STEVEN MITCHELL
Blue Mountain Eagle
J
OHN DAY — Groups
long at odds on forest
m a n age me nt h ave
reached a consensus on
goals and desired condi-
tions that will frame how
the U.S. Forest Service
drafts land management
plans on three national forests in
Northeastern Oregon and South-
eastern Washington.
At a meeting Jan. 25, the
access subcommittee of the
Blue Mountains Intergovern-
mental Council — or BIC for
short — submitted its fi nal rule
and desired conditions to the full
council.
The Forest Service formed the
BIC, made up of county offi cials,
tribal members and other stake-
holders from the Blue Moun-
tain region, after the agency’s
proposed 2018 management
plan revision fi zzled in the face
of intense public scrutiny.
The three national forests
covered by the management plan
— the Umatilla, Wallowa-Whit-
man and Malheur — are
collectively known as the Blue
Mountain Forest and make up a
third of Oregon’s national forest
land.
Each forest has its individual
resource and management plans,
with desired conditions and goals
spelled out. While the plans do
not dictate project-level deci-
sions, the desired conditions will
form a foundation for
the broader guide-
lines surround-
ing key issues
such as forest
access, elk
secu-
Forest access
Blue Mountain Eagle, File
A mountain goat moves up a ridge in the Strawberry Mountain Wil-
derness.
rity, forest health and graz-
ing when the Forest Service
begins the process of revising its
management plan for the Blue
Mountain Forest.
Craig Trulock, Malheur
National Forest supervisor, said
he is not sure when the revision
process would begin. However,
he said a proposal has been
forwarded to U.S. Forest Service
headquarters in Washington,
D.C., to put a team together to
begin drafting the revision.
From the beginning, Trulock
said, the idea was to seek
compromise
and
solutions on as many issues as
possible.
“I think we made huge prog-
ress with the BIC on understand-
ing each other,” Trulock said.
The Forest Service’s 2018
management plan revision,
which was drafted before
Trulock was named Malheur’s
supervisor, received intense
backlash. The plan called for an
increase in thinning dry upland
forests to improve wildfi re resil-
ience while doubling the current
timber harvest and designating
70,500 acres of new wilderness.
The Eastern Oregon Coun-
ties Association, to which Grant
belongs, listed
In its final draft document
of desired conditions, the BIC’s
access subcommittee wrote
forest access was the most
contentious topic during the 2018
forest plan revision process.
Committee member Bill
Harvey said the forest roads
have been used by people in rural
areas for 75 to 80 years.
Harvey, a Baker County
commissioner, said people have
lived, worked and played in the
Blue Mountains their whole
lives.
“Why, in God’s name,”
Harvey said, “would we want to
take that right away?”
Public use
The group writes that
the public desires to be well
informed on forest access. It
wants the agency to provide an
up-to-date and comprehensive
inventory of all forest roads and
the status of those roads.
This was an important desired
condition for subcommittee
member Mark Owens, a state
representative from Crane, who
told the Blue Mountain Eagle
See Forest, Page A8
Ward 2
(southwest Hermiston)
Incumbent Roy Barron said
he took some time to consider his
options, but he ultimately decided
to submit his paperwork Feb. 9 for a
second term.
“I was a little late to the party,”
he said, adding he wanted to try for
a second term because he wants to
continue the work the council has
already started.
Barron, a teacher at Armand
Larive Middle School, was a
last-minute entrant for the Ward 2
A view of Strawberry Mountain
in the Malheur National Forest.
See Elections, Page A8
Blue Mountain Eagle, File
COVID-19
Units in Eastern Oregon prisons still quarantined
By ALEX WITTWER
EO Media Group
Eastern Oregon Correctional
Institution and Two Rivers Correc-
tional Institution in Umatilla County
still have housing units in quaran-
tine due to the spread of the COVID-
19 virus throughout their facilities,
according to prison offi cials.
Powder River Correctional
Facility in Baker County is in a
heightened state of alert and testing
according to the Oregon Department
of Corrections COVID-19 tracker, as
cases rose amongst the staff and pris-
oner population at the end of Janu-
ary. Seven out of the 15 prisons in
Oregon as of Tuesday, Feb. 8, had
units under quarantine.
Overall, case numbers had
increased dramatically through
January, peaking at 286 active
cases for Two Rivers on Jan. 20. In
December, those numbers were in
the single digits.
Those case numbers fell through-
out the weeks. As of Feb. 8, Two
Rivers had just one active case of
COVID-19.
As a percentage of total cases
during the entire pandemic against
the number of beds at each facility,
Two Rivers ranked the highest by a
wide margin. The case-to-bed rate
was at 68%, while the average across
all prisons in Oregon was 33.3%.
Critic blames prison staff
for virus spread
Corrections offi cials wouldn’t say
whether or not the COVID-19 cases
that spurred a large spike at Two
Rivers was due to a staff member,
but case numbers and dates shared
with EO Media Group show staff at
Two Rivers had tested positive on
Dec. 29, just 10 days before members
of the prison population showed a
spike in positive tests.
“There is no way of knowing
exactly how each positive case orig-
inates or is spread,” said Betty Bernt,
communications manager for DOC.
“When an individual comes into our
intake unit, our current process is to
test all adults in custody.”
Juan Chavez, project director and
attorney with the Oregon Justice
Resource Center, disagrees.
“There’s only one way for the
virus to get in, and that’s through the
staff ,” he said. “It’s abundantly clear
that mask wearing has been scant
in particular with correctional offi -
cers. They haven’t been enforcing
the mask wearing policy, they just let
it slide. They’re more afraid of losing
staff than they are of killing people,
in my mind.”
Chavez noted because intake
goes through Coff ee Creek Correc-
tional Facility — DOC’s intake
facility in Wilsonville where adults
in custody are tested, isolated and
quarantined before being trans-
ferred to other parts of the state —
the possibility of an inmate bringing
the virus into a diff erent prison is
remote.
The Oregon Justice Resource
Center is involved in a class action
lawsuit against the Department of
Corrections due to conditions at the
prisons regarding COVID-19 safety.
That lawsuit is expected to go before
See Prisons, Page A8