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About Baker City herald. (Baker City, Or.) 1990-current | View Entire Issue (June 20, 2020)
4A SATURDAY, JUNE 20, 2020 Baker City, Oregon Write a letter news@bakercityherald.com OUR VIEW Police discipline records should be accessible It’s remarkably easy in Or- egon to fi nd out when a doctor is disciplined. The Oregon Medical Board posts details on its website. It’s remarkably easy in Oregon to fi nd out when a nurse was disciplined. The Oregon Nursing Board posts details on its website. It’s remarkably diffi cult in Oregon to track the details when a member of law enforcement is disciplined. Does that make any sense? Most doctors and nurses are not employed by government. Members of law enforcement are public employees. Why doesn’t the public have easy access to their disciplinary records? If you are near a computer, you can go right now to the Oregon Medical Board website and fi nd out details of disciplinary action against doctors. It’s not only when doctors get their certifi cation revoked, either. Sometimes it’s when they must modify their practice, such as being barred from prescribing opioids or practicing telemedicine. It’s similar for the Oregon Nursing Board. Once again, the information does not only include if a nurse had his or her license revoked. It can include details of if a nurse was terminated by an em- ployer and what he or she must do while on probation. It took The Oregonian two years — yes, two years — to get records from the state on cases in which state regulators inves- tigated if an offi cer’s certifi cation should be revoked. The state agency threw up obstacle after obstacle to deny the request. First, it charged a small fortune. The state agency said The Oregonian had to pay $17,000. We aren’t saying there isn’t a cost to providing the public with public information, but it should be included in the budget of state agencies. It’s part of their job. That $17,000 wasn’t the end of the blockades the agency put up. For a more complete recounting, read the story www.oregonlive. com/police-fi re/2017/12/police_dis- cipline_records.html. After that fi ght, some changes were made. And the state Board of Public Safety Standards and Training does make public deci- sions when it decides to revoke or not revoke the certifi cation of police offi cers. But the details are far from eas- ily accessible. The problems are not limited to the state board. If an offi cer is disciplined for inappropriate conduct by his or her local department for, say, use of force, why isn’t that easily available to the public? If a law enforcement agency or its insurance company must pay a settlement for an incident, shouldn’t the details be required to be publicly released? Requiring body cameras and banning chokeholds only go so far. The public must be able to hold law enforcement accountable. That means disclosure of when disciplinary actions were taken and not taken and the related investigations. 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. Bridge the digital divide As COVID-19 has pushed home broadband connection, that many Americans online to fi gure drops to 56% for incomes GISSELA MOYA work and attend school, of $30,000 and below. While 79% we hear a lot about Zoom of white households have a home fatigue and other annoyances. But what about internet connection, just 66% of black households the tens of millions of Americans who either have and 61% of Latino households do. only limited internet access at home, or no access Lack of internet access is a problem in urban at all? and suburban homes, as well as in rural com- Lack of internet access in some households and munities. And it is especially destructive when communities has long been a national problem. it comes to education. Overall, approximately 12 The pandemic has turned it into a national crisis. million students nationwide are affected by this It’s time to close our nation’s digital divide. digital divide, putting their futures at risk. Millions of American can access the internet “Schools have shuttered and more than 50 only through smartphones. That’s better than million students have been told to head online nothing, but plagued by serious limitations: Data for class,” wrote Jessica Rosenworce, a member of the Federal Communications Commission, while caps and slower speeds greatly limit what users dissenting from the rosy conclusions reached can do. And some important tasks — like fi lling by the FCC’s Republican majority in its annual out complex applications for employment or Broadband Deployment Report. “This pandemic college admission — are much harder, given the has demonstrated conclusively that broadband is limits of a tiny touch screen. no longer nice-to-have. It’s need-to-have.” The nonprofi t group where I work has been COVID-19 has shown us that the digital talking to folks here in California and elsewhere divide isn’t sustainable if we want all Americans about life on the wrong side of the digital divide, to have a fair shot at success. which makes everything harder, especially edu- The FCC needs to do more to bridge the cation. We spoke to a high school student taking digital divide, especially in urban and sub- business classes who struggles to create and urban homes. Congress must act swiftly and upload web design assignments on her smart- decisively by providing federal funding to build phone, and an older woman who had to drop out a future-proof, all-fi ber network that reaches of a professional management course because every household in the nation, and eliminating she had no way to do the coursework online. Fabiola Espitia, a counselor at Chaffey College state-level bans on communities building their own networks. in Rancho Cucamonga, California, told us about Ensuring that everyone in the United States a recent high school graduate she counseled who has access to robust, affordable, high-speed couldn’t take an Advanced Placement exam due to lack of internet access. Others had their educa- internet access should be a national priority. tion disrupted when the pandemic forced the Gissela Moya is the Manny Garcia Technology closing of a campus library, their only internet Equity Fellow at The Greenlining Institute and connection. co-author of Greenlining’s recent report, “On the Unsurprisingly, the digital divide mirrors eco- Wrong Side of the Digital Divide.” This column was nomic and racial ones. Last year, a Pew Research produced for the Progressive Media Project, which is survey found distinct patterns in who lacks in- ternet access at home. While 92% of families with run by The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service. a household income of $75,000 or more have a Savoring a battle with no human casualties I have been waging a war for sev- eral weeks against a clever and deter- mined enemy that’s trying to invade, and potentially ruin, my home. Fortunately no lives are in danger. No human lives, anyway. The carpenter ants, on the other hand, are enemy combatants, and I am not inclined to give quarter. I would prefer not to be embroiled in this confl ict, or indeed any other. But the battle has not been with- out benefi t. During this unprecedented spring of 2020, a season defi ned by sadness and disillusionment, I have occasionally appreciated being able to focus my frustration on some- thing other than the various societal confl icts roiling America. Which is to say I much prefer to think the best of people and to reserve my animosity for a bunch of ants, which among things don’t have Facebook pages or access to smartphones. I have found that while I’m concentrating on dealing with my invertebrate pests I enjoy a blissful interlude, when pandemics and protests seem less important. Carpenter ants are hardly rare, of course. I don’t suppose a year has passed during the quarter century I’ve lived JAYSON JACOBY in my house that I didn’t see at least several of the bugs trundling along in a fl owerbed or in the driveway. I rather enjoy watching ants. An individual ant seems to move as aimlessly as a drunk searching for his car keys in an unlighted parking lot at 2 in the morning. But when you see even a handful of ants a certain purpose in their pattern, even a level of precision, usually becomes obvious. Ants, it goes with- out saying, can’t accomplish much without teamwork. Including chewing up my home, which is not at all entertaining. This was the fi rst spring I found carpenter ants in large numbers, and worse still they were crawling right beside the house. My kids have even seen a few ants inside — most disturbingly for my 13-year-old daughter, a couple in the bathtub — also a fi rst for me. I don’t have any particular grudge against ants, as they’ve never done me any harm. Indeed when I see them in the woods I un- derstand the crucial roles they play, in spreading nutrients and serving as food for birds and other species. But city-dwelling carpenter ants have the potential to become more than a nuisance. Their affi nity for burrowing into wood to create their nests — and they’re not at all particular about whether that wood is a discarded 2-by-4 or the walls of a home — can cause major structural damage. My fi rst few forays against the ants reminded me of nothing so much as the fi nal story in the 1982 anthology fi lm “Creepshow.” That’s the one in which a fastidious man’s apartment is infested with cockroaches. It’s delightfully creepy — espe- cially the last scene when the cock- roaches pour out of the dead man’s mouth (he had a heart attack) and other parts of his body in a grisly brown fl ood. Anyway, I was pottering around by our front porch one afternoon and I saw a single ant near the lower of the two wooden steps that give on to the porch. I raised my shoe, intending to step on it, but the ant veered at the last second, moving with a speed I wouldn’t have believed possible. Its escape left me off balance and I barely avoided what could have been a nasty fall, what with all the sharp edges nearby. But just as I was regaining my equilibrium another half dozen or so ants rushed out from beneath the steps. I started a sort of tap dance. This was energetic but scarcely more effective. I suspect that if anyone was driving past during those 15 seconds or so they would have assumed I was in the throes of a seizure, or possibly being attacked by Asian hornets. This unsettling episode prompt- ed me to investigate around, and eventually underneath, the steps. I found a few telltale mounds of shredded (which is to say, ant- chewed) wood, but these were only about as wide as a dime. The other ant avenue I noticed was the walkway leading from the driveway to our back door. I frequently saw a few ants there, sometimes heading toward the house and other times away, but in both cases clearly on a mission. A few specimens were carrying larvae. Those I smashed with a particular satisfaction. My wife, Lisa, later traced this route to a corner of one of her raised fl ower beds, where I found more diminutive piles of masti- cated wood. Most generally I prefer to sow seeds rather than poison on our place. And I like nothing better than to watch the honeybees going about their business on our fl ow- ers, to listen to their somnolent buzz at noon of a hot summer’s day. But I also have a mortgage. And an aversion to four-fi gure bills for contractors. I procured some ant-killing granules, which I distributed with what seemed to me signifi cant restraint. I’ll concede that this was not easy. I felt a powerful urge to use something more akin to a carpet- bombing strategy. But as any responsible warrior does, I seek to avoid collateral damage. I still see carpenter ants on occasion but so far as I can tell we’ve reached an impasse, if not an armistice. Although I can’t help but worry that some day I’ll step outside and fi nd a corner of my house turned into a crumbling pile of ant munchings. Jayson Jacoby is editor of the Baker City Herald.
