MONDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2019
Baker City, Oregon
4A
Write a letter
news@bakercityherald.com
OUR VIEW
PERS
problems
persisting
You don’t have to be an accountant to know Or-
egon’s Public Employees Retirement System is in
trouble. School teachers, police offi cers and other gov-
ernment employees deserve good retirement plans.
But it has to be a plan the state can afford.
Oregon’s PERS moved from no liability in 2007 to
$17 billion in unfunded liability in 2017. Then it got
worse. The actuary for the Oregon Public Employees
Retirement System estimated it had grown to $26
billion at the beginning of this year. A new report
from the Oregon Secretary of State’s Offi ce on PERS
will not put your mind at ease.
There is some good news. Long-term projections
show the system will meet its funding objectives. The
bad news could be getting between here and there.
The major problem for PERS has been that its
investments have not been performing as well as
expected. That has an unfortunate ripple effect
throughout the state. It means less money goes into
the classroom, to fi x roads and for all the many other
things government entities do, because it must in-
stead be diverted to fund PERS. For instance, Bend-
La Pine Schools had to dedicate about 18% of payroll
to PERS for some employees for the previous two-
year rate period. It’s now at 23% for that same group
of employees. That is expected to grow.
The new report zeros in on the investment as-
sumptions that the PERS board has been making.
The board makes the assumption that it will earn
7.2%. That may well be too high. And, in turn, that
would lead to even higher contributions into PERS.
It was not a subject of the report, but what was
refreshing about the 2019 Legislature is that it did
pass some PERS reforms aimed at lowering future li-
ability. For instance, it required cost sharing by public
employees. Public employees would have a small per-
centage of their salaries diverted into paying down
PERS debt. That is something that has long been a
goal of people looking to reform PERS.
The Legislature also did some fi ddling with the
numbers. If the PERS shortfall was the equivalent
of a car loan, the Legislature stretched out the pay-
ments. It’s like the Legislature turned to Oregon’s
children and said: You pay PERS off.
Oregon public employee unions fi led a lawsuit in
August to overturn the cost sharing part of the re-
forms. We don’t know what the courts will say about
that case. Oregonians may well be left with a rising
unfunded liability exacerbated by infl ated assump-
tions about investments and more of the costs being
passed on to the next generation. That’s not a win for
anybody.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the Baker City Herald.
Columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions
of the authors and not necessarily that of the Baker City Herald.
Letters to the editor
• We welcome letters on any issue of public interest.
Customer complaints about specifi c businesses will
not be printed.
• The Baker City Herald will not knowingly print
false or misleading claims. However, we cannot
verify the accuracy of all statements in letters to the
editor.
• Letters are limited to 350 words; longer letters will
be edited for length. Writers are limited to one letter
every 15 days.
• The writer must sign the letter and include an
address and phone number (for verifi cation only).
Letters that do not include this information cannot be
published.
• Letters will be edited for brevity, grammar, taste
and legal reasons.
Mail: To the Editor, Baker City Herald,
P.O. Box 807, Baker City, OR 97814
Email: news@bakercityherald.com
Why I abandoned the GOP
With so much happening in the
world, you probably don’t want to read
about my own personal dark night of
the soul.
But at the risk of sounding narcis-
sistic, I do think there is some value in
examining why a person like me would
feel compelled to leave the Republican
Party.
It was only four years ago that I
proudly, defi antly and publicly aban-
doned the Democrats. I’d left them
in spirit many years before, mostly
because of their insistence on treating
abortion rights as fundamental. Never-
theless, apathy kept me from changing
my registration for several years longer
than I probably should have.
In 2016, John Kasich was my escape
hatch. Changing my registration just in
time for the Pennsylvania presidential
primary gave me the sense that even
if he didn’t win the nomination, I was
able to cast my vote for a genuinely pro-
life candidate: pro-child, pro-mother,
pro-worker, pro-immigrant, pro-faith.
He spoke a language I understood, a
language that had become mangled in
the mouths of Democrats.
Watching the debates last week, I
heard that confused rhetoric again,
with the candidates all declaring their
horror at the carnage of gun violence
but completely at peace with legalized
abortion. If I needed any reminder of
why I stopped supporting the Demo-
cratic Party, it was right there on that
CHRISTINE M.
FLOWERS
stage.
But the comfort and fellowship I
thought I’d found in the GOP was
shattered when President Trump took
a phone call from Turkey’s president
and decided to withdraw our troops
from Syria, abandoning our Kurdish
allies. While some GOP lawmakers
spouted off righteous indignation and
some invoked real pushback, for me,
it was too little, much too late. The
abandonment of the Kurds and the
almost cavalier attitude of some of my
Trump-supporting acquaintances was
a wake-up call that this was no longer
a party I wanted to belong to.
This was supposed to be the party
that valued our relationship with
NATO, the party of a strong national
defense, the party that respected our
military. This was supposed to be the
party that didn’t take a knee when
the National Anthem was played, that
wasn’t embarrassed by overt expres-
sions of patriotism.
My angry feelings toward the Repub-
lican Party were further compounded
last week when two agencies of the
federal government — ICE and the
FBI — threatened to deport one of
my immigration clients. My client
has spent the last few years provid-
ing valuable information to them in
exchange for being allowed to remain
in the United States — but now that
the investigation has closed, he’s been
taken into custody and it is likely that
he’ll be deported.
I believe strongly in loyalty. It’s
everything to me. That’s why I can’t
get behind a Republican Party that is
disloyal to everyone from our Kurdish
allies, who supported us in the Middle
East, to my client, who risked a lot to
help America and was repaid by being
sent to a detention center.
I’ve had enough. I will never return
to the Democratic Party, because of
how they embrace abortion, play games
with identity politics, and think that
gender is a matter of opinion. But I no
longer feel that the Republican Party
represents my morals.
This is my own Declaration of “In-
dependent.” Last week, I registered as
an Independent. I will never again be
a Democrat, particularly not in a city
where that party is fi lled with people
like Larry Krasner and Jim Kenney.
Their principles are anathema to me.
But the GOP abandoned the principles
I loved.
And so, I abandoned them.
Christine M. Flowers is a lawyer and
columnist for the Philadelphia Daily
News. Readers may send her email at
cfl owers1961@gmail.com.
OTHER VIEWS
Democrats risk losing focus on 2020
Editorial from Bloomberg News:
At a debate last Tuesday night in
Ohio, 12 Democratic candidates dis-
cussed who was best able to defeat Presi-
dent Donald Trump in November 2020.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, House
Democrats continued an impeachment
inquiry that seems likely to recommend
that Trump should be removed from of-
fi ce before the election even gets close.
A certain tension between the party’s
presidential wing and its congressional
wing is inevitable. Candidates for presi-
dent need to present a broad yet coher-
ent vision of the future — one that’s but-
tressed by a range of policy prescriptions
and wrapped up in a message that’s both
incisive and inclusive. (The record up to
now on that is mixed.) House impeach-
ment investigators are engaged in a very
different business. They must drill down
into the details of White House malfea-
sance, and be singularly focused on hold-
ing a wayward president accountable for
wrongdoing.
Although these two pursuits are nec-
essarily distinct, it’s important that they
should not be at odds. The most obvious
danger is that a mismanaged impeach-
ment inquiry might worsen the party’s
electoral prospects next year. The best
way to guard against that is for each
effort to take account of wider political
currents and, above all, command the
confi dence of Americans outside the
Democratic Party’s base.
So far, both wings are holding up well.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a parti-
san leader, but she has proved a cautious
and reluctant impeacher, resisting calls
to proceed until the news of the presi-
dent’s improper dealings with the new
president of Ukraine left her no choice.
Since the inquiry began, she has wisely
grounded the effort in constitutional
imperative and congressional duty.
Despite the administration’s persistent
defi ance of congressional authority, the
fl ow of information has been steady and
damning.
Details of the shadow foreign policy
run by Rudolph Giuliani, the president’s
personal lawyer, are only the latest in
a series of remarkable improprieties
now coming to light. These and much
else demand further investigation. On
Tuesday, Giuliani said he would ignore
a congressional subpoena demanding
that he turn over documents. The House
should use all the tools at its disposal to
force compliance.
It should also remember that the
more clinical and less partisan these
investigations appear to the public, the
more likely they are to convince skeptics
— and that’s crucial. Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell and his Re-
publican colleagues are unlikely to join
in holding Trump to account unless a
sizable portion of Republican voters and
Republican-leaning independents are
inclined to abandon the president fi rst.
If the inquiry is perceived as cyni-
cal and unprincipled, it will not only
fail in its own right but also harm the
Democrats’ electoral prospects next year.
Granted, the presidential hustings are
inherently partisan: Candidates, after
all, are appealing to fellow partisans to
earn the nomination of their party. Yet
there was encouraging evidence on the
stage Tuesday night that most of the
Democrats running for president also
understand that partisanship is too
pinched a response to a nation in crisis.
Compared with previous debates, there
was a greater — though not yet suf-
fi cient — emphasis on collegiality, and
fewer efforts to ambush or embarrass
rivals.
With public trust low, and many
information sources polluted with mis-
information, it’s going to take patience,
persistence and a good strong measure
of respect for dissenting views to reach
some of the men and women whose
support Democrats will need. To defeat
Trump — either sooner, through con-
gressional action, or later, in a presiden-
tial election — Democrats should remain
mindful of what matters, and of the
people they need to persuade.