A8
OREGON
East Oregonian
Thursday, August 4, 2022
Property owners may bear brunt of new ore risk law
Oregon9s new
approach worries
some rural
property owners
By JAYSON JACOBY
Baker City Herald
BAKER CITY 4 Wes
Morgan is an enthusias-
tic supporter of the efort to
protect Oregon9s rural homes
from wildore.
His own, for instance.
Morgan, who is chief
of the Powder River Rural
Fire Protection District, an
all-volunteer agency with a
station just outside Sumpter,
has endeavored to reduce the
risk of ore on his property
among the ponderosa pines of
Sumpter Valley.
He maintains a lush green
lawn as an efective ore break.
He prunes the pines to
deprive the trees of a ladder
that names could climb into
the combustible crowns.
He stacks his orewood a
safe distance from his home
and makes sure needles and
Wes Morgan/Contributed Photo, File
Wes Morgan has strived to protect his Sumpter Valley home from wildfire by maintaining an
expense of lush green lawn, pruning limbs from the ponderosa pines and taking other steps.
other tinder don9t accumulate
on his roof.
Yet for all that, Morgan is
troubled by the prospect of
the state compelling prop-
erty owners, possibly includ-
ing some of his neighbors, to
take similar precautions under
penalty of law.
<There are a lot of people
that need to do something=
to protect their properties,
Morgan said.
<But I have mixed feel-
ings.=
His ambivalence stems
from a law the Oregon Legis-
lature passed in 2021.
Senate Bill 762 requires,
among other things, that the
state create a map that shows
a wildfire danger level for
every tax lot. That map, which
the Oregon Department of
Forestry recently released,
also shows the boundaries
for what9s known as the wild-
land-urban interface 4 WUI
4 areas with homes that are
within or near forests or range-
lands where wildfires are
more likely.
Properties that are both
within the WUI, and that have
a wildore risk rating of either
high or extreme (on a ove-level
scale that also includes no risk,
low and moderate risks) could
be required, also under Senate
Bill 762, to create the same
sort of defensible space that
Morgan has around his home.
Such property owners
might also have to comply
with changes in building
codes.
Morgan isn9t comfortable
with the state mandating the
kinds of work he undertook on
his property.
But he9s even more trou-
bled by the process the
Department of Forestry has
used.
In July the agency mailed
letters to 250,000 to 300,000
property owners whose land
is within the WUI and has a
wildore risk rating of high or
extreme.
Morgan is among the recip-
ients. His letter is dated July 21.
<I think this letter caught a
lot of us of guard, including
me,= Morgan said on Tuesday,
Aug. 2. <I think the state got
the cart before the horse.=
He cites the letter itself.
It reads, in part: <You may
be required to take actions
to create defensible space
around your home and adhere
to changes to building code
requirements. Both of these
regulatory processes are still
in development.=
The problem, in Morgan9s
view, is that he and tens of
thousands of other property
owners are left to wonder what
they might be required to do,
and when.
According to the Forestry
Department, the Oregon State
Fire Marshal is working on
the defensible space require-
ments. The agency is slated
to adopt those in December
2022, and take efect in 2023.
The state Building Codes
Division is responsible for the
building code requirements
mentioned in the letter to
property owners.
The agency is scheduled
to adopt codes Oct. 1, 2022,
and those will take effect
April 1, 2023.
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it was helpless to correct
because of the rigid technol-
ogy.
The adjudication back-
log rapidly emerged as one
of the employment depart-
ment9s biggest woes in 2020.
The agency said that Septem-
ber that 49,000 people were
waiting to have their claims
adjudicated, leaving them in a
protracted limbo without aid.
Critics said the actual number
was even higher.
State auditors found the
employment department
lacked clear, accessible poli-
cies governing adjudication
decisions. And the depart-
ment didn9t have procedures
in place to ensure claims
were processed correctly
and promptly.
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Congress.
Thousands of laid-off
workers had to wait months
for their benefits, and the
employment department took
seven months to pay workers
for their orst week of unem-
ployment 3 the very last state
in the nation to make that
federally authorized payment.
The department initially
lacked the capacity to handle
email inquiries, and its phone
lines were swamped for
months by laid-of workers
seeking help with their claims
or an explanation as to why
their aid hadn9t arrived. The
ancient computers automat-
ically mailed out confusing
or incorrect information 4
notices the department said
’S
pandemic and has plans in
place to implement each of
the auditors9 recommenda-
tions.
<At this point, the agency
really is a very different
agency than if you look back
just prior to the pandemic,=
Gerstenfeld said.
Some changes won9t be
in place until 2024, though,
when Oregon updates the
technology behind its bene-
ots payment system.
The employment depart-
ment9s troubles were a major
crisis in the spring and
summer of 2020. In a single
month, the state9s jobless rate
soared from historic lows to
a record high, 13.3%. Oregon
paid more than 580,000
jobless claims that year,
amounting to nearly $7.5
billion in beneots.
The nood of layofs over-
whelmed the employment
department, which resorted
to manually processing
hundreds of thousands of
claims because its balky
computers couldn9t handle
the volume of applications
or the changes in federal
N
SALEM 4 Oregon was
struggling to deal with
complicated jobless bene-
ots claims even before the
pandemic hit, according to
a new state audit that found
some claims went unre-
solved for years as adjudica-
tors completely lost track of
their status.
The long-delayed audit,
issued July 27 by the Oregon
Secretary of State9s Oïce,
attempts to account for the
chaos and confusion that
beset the Oregon Employ-
ment Department during the
early days of the pandemic.
The report only briefly
reiterates the findings of
two prior audits, in 2012
and 2015, that the employ-
ment department suffered
from frequent turnover in its
main focus of the new report.
The state lacked systems
and procedures to ensure
claims were being adjudi-
cated correctly, according
to the auditors, and didn9t
reliably communicate with
unemployed workers about
the status of their cases.
<Some claims end up
taking months or years to
adjudicate due to insuffi-
cient internal controls in (the
department9s) antiquated IT
systems,= the auditors found.
And some racial groups,
and claimants with lower
incomes, had to wait much
longer than others to have
their cases addressed.
David Gerstenfeld, now
well into his third year as
the employment depart-
ment9s acting director, said
he agrees with all the audi-
tors9 ondings and said oxes
are well underway.
<We needed to operate
differently. Nothing that
was in there was a surprise,=
Gerstenfeld said in an inter-
view. He said the department
is now adjudicating claims
more rapidly than before the
RD
By MIKE ROGOWAY
The Oregonian
executive ranks and a notori-
ously obsolete and innexible
computer system that dates
to the 1990s.
Those failings became
acute during the pandemic,
blocking aid for tens of thou-
sands of people during the
sharpest economic down-
turn in Oregon history.
State audits director Kip
Memmott said the employ-
ment department would
have performed much better
during the pandemic if it
had made the technological
upgrades recommended in
prior audits.
Still, the auditors found
that in some respects Oregon
didn9t perform much worse
than other states. And they
cite federal data indicating
the state lost less to fraud
than many of its peers.
When it came to complex
claims that required formal
adjudication, though, the
auditors say Oregon9s system
for managing them had been
facing major problems for
years and turned into an
outright crisis during the
pandemic. Adjudication is a
TH
Report onds
problems went far
beyond obsolete
computers
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