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About Baker City herald. (Baker City, Or.) 1990-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 13, 2019)
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2019 Baker City, Oregon 4A Write a letter news@bakercityherald.com OUR VIEW State’s spending problems When people spend other people’s money, they can be less than fi nicky. And so it seems with workers at the state of Oregon. For instance, the state bought 23 Xerox print- ers for $1,461.78. A state audit found a better deal that could have saved the state more than half that amount. The state bought 58 copies of some statistical soft- ware for $12,694.42. A state audit found a better deal that could have saved $6,079.52. And the state bought four licenses for some data- base software for $119,649.11. The same state audit from December 2018 found a better deal that could have saved the state $107,017.51. Yikes. Those are egregious examples. We did pick them from the audit to highlight the shocking savings that the state could have made if it spent money more carefully. Of course, state workers may not always have the time to seek out a great deal on every pur- chase and state purchasing requirements can inter- fere with getting the cheapest price. The state audit found, though, the state could have saved between $400 million and $1.6 billion during the 2015-2017 biennium based on $8 billion in procurements during that time. We’d like to be able to tell you that’s all fi xed now. We can’t. But we can tell you the state is moving in what could be a positive direction in one area — pur- chases by state and local governments that are too big to put on a credit card. The state has a contract with Periscope Holdings, an Austin, Texas, company, to build a new statewide procurement system, according to Governing maga- zine. The platform called OregonBuys is scheduled to gradually go live across government in 2020. There are similar systems in Illinois, New Jersey and Mas- sachusetts. If it works right, it will replace what’s called ORPIN, which is the system the state and local governments use now. Buying stuff for the state gets complicated, because there are many legal requirements. The hope is that the system will keep that in the background and gov- ernment workers will be able to shop for goods more easily. It will automate a lot of the work. It might make it easier for smaller vendors to compete for state dollars. And the state should be able to better track spending and purchases and manage that data. Will the cost of the OregonBuys be recouped in sav- ings? We hope so. Will it fi x the fundamental problem that people aren’t as careful when they spend other people’s money? No. But it should enable the state and the public to better monitor it. 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. Schiff’s bias aids GOP skeptics Even before his ill-advised mock- ery of President Trump’s request for “a favor” from new Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) was seen by Republicans as blinded by bias against Trump. And now that Schiff is leading the initial phase of the House impeachment inquiry, he has become Exhibit A in the GOP argument that the whole thing is rigged. As if to confi rm those suspicions, Schiff’s committee has turned a portion of its website into a glossy, political- campaign-style presentation of the case against Trump, titled: “Read for your- self: President Trump’s Abuse of Power.” It’s accessible from the main page of the Intelligence Committee’s website through a prominent link bearing the innocuous-sounding title, “Impeach- ment Inquiry.” “The House of Representatives launched an impeachment inquiry to ascertain the full extent of the president’s misconduct, and thanks to testimony from dedicated, nonpar- tisan public servants, we now have a much fuller picture of how President Trump abused the State Department and other levers of government for his own political gain,” the page states in its introduction. “Pursuant to House Resolution 660, we are now releasing transcripts of these witness interviews so every American can see the facts and decide for themselves: is this conduct acceptable?” The question featured in boldface on the website may sound neutral, but the page is anything but. Instead, it high- lights excerpts from selected witnesses to paint a damning case against Trump. This is precisely why Republicans focus at least as much on the process of the inquiry as the substance. But it’s important to put what Schiff is doing in historical context, not because he’s breaking with precedent but because he’s adapting past practice to the cur- rent legal reality. President Nixon’s “Saturday Night JON HEALEY Massacre” — his attempt to shut down the Watergate investigation in October 1973 by having the Justice Depart- ment fi re special prosecutor Archibald Cox, which prompted the top two DOJ offi cials to resign rather than carry out Nixon’s order — helped persuade Congress to enact a law in 1978 creat- ing a judicially appointed independent counsel to investigate allegations of presidential wrongdoing. Independent counsel Lawrence Walsh subsequently probed the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration, and then independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr dug into the Whitewater land-fraud al- legations against President Clinton. Starr’s Whitewater investigation covered several years and produced nothing, but with the help of attorneys for Paula Jones, who’d sued Clinton for sexual harassment, Starr forced Clinton in August 1998 to testify before a grand jury about an alleged White House affair with an intern named Monica Lewinsky. Clinton falsely denied having “sexual relations” with her, and within a few months, the House impeached him in a lame-duck session. The Senate de- clined to convict him the following year. Congressional Republicans hated the Walsh investigation. Congressional Democrats hated the Starr investi- gation. As a result, Congress let the independent counsel statute lapse in 1999. Since then, the primary respon- sibility for investigating the president has rested with the Justice Depart- ment. Most recently, a top DOJ offi cial appointed special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to look into possible Russian collusion with the 2016 Trump cam- paign after Trump fi red FBI Director James B. Comey, who had been leading the counterintelligence probe. The current attorney general, Bill Barr, has shown no inclination to investigate the allegations that Trump leaned on Ukrainian offi cials to conduct investigations that would benefi t Trump politically; in fact, the DOJ has already decreed that Trump’s request in the July 25 phone call with Zelens- kiy did not violate federal campaign- fi nance laws against seeking donations from foreign sources. So in the absence of an independent counsel or a special counsel, Schiff has put himself in the role of the person assembling the case against Trump. That’s why the depositions were conducted in private sessions, as grand jury testimony is done, making it hard for witnesses to coordinate their stories (hello, Gordon Sondland!). That’s also why Trump isn’t being given the chance to participate yet, although Republicans on the committees are certainly advancing the narratives Trump’s lawyers would be advancing to defend the president. The public hearings that begin this week will give Republicans more of the openness they sought, but Schiff is likely to remain in Kenneth W. Starr mode. He’s leading a three-committee effort to gather evidence about Trump’s machinations on Ukraine; it will be up to the House Judiciary Committee to open the process to Trump’s lawyers, who will challenge the evidence and try to put it into a very different context. The Judiciary Committee will then decide whether to recommend articles of impeachment for the House to vote on. Notably, Starr laid out 11 specifi c grounds for impeaching Clinton based on his conduct with Lewinsky and his efforts afterward to cover it up. If Starr’s investigation of that episode is any guide, one can expect the report Schiff produces to be similarly pointed and conclusory. It’s safe to bet too that Republicans with situational amnesia about Kenneth W. Starr will complain that the process was irredeemably tainted from the start. Jon Healey is the Los Angeles Times’ deputy editorial page editor. OTHER VIEWS Harris’ longer school day proposal worth considering Editorial from The Dallas Morning News: We wouldn’t have expected ourselves to back a new spending plan from a presidential primary candidate, and certainly not in the present atmosphere where trillions of dollars in new taxes are being proposed to support programs of such vast government overreach that it staggers the mind. But we had to pause when California Sen. Kamala Harris, a slumping candidate in the Demo- cratic primary, suggested a modest pilot program to study expanding the school day from its traditional ending time of 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. This actually could be helpful. And it’s worth considering. Harris’ proposal would see a small number of participating school districts receive $5 mil- lion in grants over fi ve years to help some low-income elemen- tary schools develop after-school programs that would keep kids learning and active until a parent or guardian gets off work. The program would be studied for its impact on parents, children and schools and depending on its outcome, could be considered for greater funding in the future. Don’t get us wrong. We don’t think schools should raise chil- dren. Parents should. And in a more perfect society, perhaps, chil- dren could have greater free time to roam and explore their world. We are kidding ourselves to believe we live in such a society. Many kids are simply transferred from school to some off-site after- school care when the bell rings. Others ride the bus to an empty home and wait for mom or dad’s workday to end. For too many working parents, the hours between the end of school and the end of work (not to mention the commute home) are fraught with concern about getting quality care if they can even begin to afford that in the fi rst place. Harris’ policy recognizes that reality and its particular impact on low-income communities where children are most vulnerable. And it approaches a proposed solution in a sound fashion — a slow and integral study in interested com- munities. Our surprise at our interest in this plan is surpassed only by our surprise at the reaction of progres- sive media and, of course, far-left social media. They hate Harris’ plan because it would actually help working parents work, as if a 40-hour workweek qualifi es as the depth of capitalist cruelty. “Rather than reshaping soci- ety to accommodate the needs of workers, Harris’ plan appears designed to keep more people working for longer, suiting the interests of their employers and using gestures towards communi- ty input as a smokescreen,” writes Brendan O’Connor in Vice. O’Connor carries on to conclude — and this isn’t parody — that slowing economic productivity would be great because it “could reduce climate-harming emis- sions.” Tell that to people who need a paycheck to cover the rent and groceries. Harris’ plan actually is accom- modating “workers,” or people as we like to call them. And what’s more, it might give their children the advantage of greater learn- ing and extracurricular activities that are too often not available in lower-income schools.
