SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
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EDITORIAL
Taking time on
the lodging tax
The Baker City Council made the right choice Tuesday, Feb. 23, in
deciding not to withdraw from its 2006 agreement with Baker County
under which the county administers the local lodging tax.
Councilors need to gather more information before they can reason-
ably consider whether to make a change in how the tax is collected and
spent.
Although about 73% of the taxes are collected in Baker City, the
ramifi cations affect all of Baker County.
The lodging tax is straightforward. Guests at motels, bed and
breakfasts, RV parks, vacation rental homes, campgrounds and other
lodging businesses pay the tax, which is 7% of the rental rate (the
businesses themselves do not pay the tax; they only add it to the rental
bill). The money, except for 5% set aside for administrative costs, must
be spent for tourism promotion and economic development. The basic
idea is that local governments, rather than taxing local residents and
businesses to promote the area to tourists, should instead tax the tour-
ists themselves. Most cities and counties charge a lodging tax.
Locally, Baker City was the fi rst to impose a lodging tax, in 1984.
Later the county expanded the tax to unincorporated areas, and other
cities, including Halfway, Sumpter and Unity, also assess the lodging
tax. Since July 1, 2006, the county has been responsible for collecting
the tax, including within Baker City, and for spending it. An ordinance
requires that 70% be used for tourism promotion and 25% for economic
development. The tax revenue, among other things, pays for the visi-
tors center the Chamber of Commerce operates, and for the contract
with tourism promoter Timothy Bishop. The county also has used the
money to buy ads in travel magazines and other publications.
Councilors heard from several business owners Tuesday, including
one who owns an RV park. They all told councilors that they benefi t
from the tax, and urged the city to continue the 2006 agreement.
That’s not to say the lodging tax system can’t be improved. County
Commissioner Mark Bennett said commissioners plan to discuss the
issue Wednesday, March 3. He said the City Council is a key player in
the topic. Considering most of the money is collected from guests at
Baker City establishments, Bennett is right. With the pandemic easing
and a potentially busy tourism season ahead, city and county offi cials
should reassess the lodging tax and consider ways to maximize its
benefi ts in boosting the county as a tourist destination.
But until the city has a detailed plan for how it would spend lodging
taxes collected within the city limits, it’s premature for the City Coun-
cil to withdraw from an agreement that’s supported by the business
owners who are supposed to benefi t. They told councilors that the city-
county joint effort works. The city needs a compelling reason to start
going it alone.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
OTHER VIEWS
Humane solution at the border
Editorial from The Los Angeles Times:
The Biden administration’s decision this week
to reopen a detention center in Texas for unac-
companied teenaged minors drew outrage from
immigrant rights advocates, including U.S. Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who de-
nounced the move as Trumpism revisited, or at
the least extended. It’s not that simple.
To be sure, resurrecting the 66-acre, 700-capac-
ity site in Carrizo Springs is jarring, given that
President Joe Biden pledged to roll back former
President Donald Trump’s draconian rules and
policies governing immigration. The move, and
a reported decision to reopen another facility at
Homestead, Florida, must be temporary.
There are few valid reasons to incarcerate
unaccompanied minors who arrive at the border
seeking help. Under federal law, the government
is supposed to assess them while holding them
in the least restrictive environment possible,
and speedily hand them over to guardians —
parents, relatives, foster care — while their
immigration and asylum cases work their way
through the system.
Under the 1997 Flores settlement, the govern-
ment is supposed to detain children for no longer
than 20 days, but the reality has been much dif-
ferent, with detentions more than doubling that
on average and lasting months in some cases as
immigration offi cials try to vet the youngsters’
stories and their guardians. Although often
time-consuming, it’s necessary to avoid releas-
ing children into dangerous environments. No
one wants a repeat of the 2014 episode in which
overwhelmed immigration offi cials mistakenly
released a number of Guatemalan minors to traf-
fi ckers who enslaved them at Ohio egg farms.
Conditions for children have been atrocious in
some of the detention facilities run by Customs
and Border Protection and private contractors,
including complaints about unsanitary and
unsafe conditions and reports of sexual abuse.
Yet even at the best-run shelters, children suffer
an additional psychological and emotional ordeal
after fl eeing their homes, often traveling alone
northward to the border.
The government must do better. It’s under-
standable that trying to process newly arrived
children — whose numbers have been increasing
in recent months — while adhering to CO-
VID-19 restrictions requires more space. But the
underlying problem here isn’t space so much as
staff and capacity to vet stories and fi nd place-
ments for these children as quickly and safely as
possible.
Some of the minors ultimately may not win
permission to stay, but some will, either under
immigration codes that allow abandoned or
orphaned minors a safer harbor, or international
agreements and laws — not to mention basic
human decency — that bar returning people to
unsafe environments. But that’s not the issue of
the moment.
The issue is ensuring that the government
treats these children as required by law, with
detention of minimal duration and in the least-
restrictive conditions possible. The ultimate goal
is to be able to place these youths safely with
guardians so quickly, there’ll be no need for sites
like the ones the new administration is reopen-
ing.
Fighting words and the power of politicians
I learned at least one thing from
the second impeachment trial of
former president Donald Trump.
Politicians say “fi ght” a lot.
Not as frequently as is implied
by the edited recording that
Trump’s lawyers played in the
Senate, to be sure, a stitched
together litany of sound snippets
that is the audio equivalent of a
migraine.
But politicians utter that bel-
licose word pretty often just the
same.
I suppose, with the benefi t of
hindsight, that I knew this even
before I was bombarded by the
word while listening to the im-
peachment trial.
Politicians have for many
decades — centuries, even — bor-
rowed heavily from the military
lexicon to describe their bloodless
engagements.
They speak not only of fi ghting
— for constituents and against the
cretins in the other party, common-
ly — but also of their legislative
battles and the wars they wage
against such implacable foes as
poverty, racism and drugs.
We’ve heard this martial lan-
guage so often that we’re numb to
how inappropriate it is to compare,
even implicitly, a debate on the
House or Senate fl oor to rushing a
machine gun nest or enduring an
artillery barrage.
(The same could be said for
sports, come to that.)
But our ears perk up when that
familiar word, “fi ght,” is implicated
JAYSON
JACOBY
in a historic invasion of the U.S.
Capitol.
Among the phrases Trump
uttered during his now infamous
speech on Jan. 6 was “fi ght like
hell.”
This particular fi ght, of course,
was against what Trump continues
to insist was an unfair — indeed, a
“stolen” — election.
And it’s beyond dispute that the
people who defi led the Capitol were
motivated largely by their belief,
shared with and encouraged by
Trump, that Joe Biden’s victory was
illegitimate.
But the question put to senators
involved quite a different matter.
Was Trump, by dint of that
speech, responsible for the ugly
scene at the seat of American legis-
lative power?
Except it seems to me that the
charge against Trump was even
more specifi c than that.
As I listened to the representa-
tives who presented the case for
conviction in the Senate, it struck
me that what they were actually
alleging is that had Trump not
spoken publicly on Jan. 6, it is all
but inconceivable to imagine that
anyone would have illegally entered
the Capitol.
To agree with this premise you
must conclude, obviously, that
Trump’s infl uence over his acolytes
is extraordinary powerful.
But that’s not even the whole of
it.
To concede that the House
managers proved their case against
Trump, you also have to be con-
vinced that he and his supporters
have developed a rapport so strong,
and so sophisticated, that his most
faithful supporters can discern
between the former president’s ac-
tual marching orders — to belabor
the military analogy — and when
Trump is merely trying to confound
his critics.
I make a distinction here be-
tween “most faithful” supporters
and the rest because I think it’s a
crucial one, perhaps the most cru-
cial in this entire sordid affair.
Recall that of the many thou-
sands of people who watched
Trump speak on Jan. 6 and who
later gathered at the Capitol, the
Capitol Police estimated that about
800 actually entered the building.
During that speech, one of
Trump’s more specifi c statements
about the impending rally was
this: “I know that everyone here
will soon be marching over to the
Capitol building to peacefully and
patriotically make your voices
heard.”
The Associated Press, in a
disturbingly subjective exercise in
“fact-checking,” describes that state-
ment as a “passing remark, lost in
the winds of that day’s rage.”
The AP’s description of the
remark being “lost” makes no sense,
considering that Trump made it
before the “rage” which generated
such a zephyr, according to this pos-
sibly unprecedented poetic indul-
gence by the normally staid AP.
I fi nd the adjective “passing”
inapt, too.
Trump focused much of his
speech on his allegations of election
fraud, not on the impending rally at
the Capitol.
But when he did cite the rally
specifi cally, he also used an adverb
with a precise meaning: “peacefully.”
And of course a majority of pro-
testers complied.
I suppose it’s conceivable that
that majority either didn’t recognize
Trump’s call for violence, coded
though it was (except, apparently, to
the discerning listeners at the AP),
or else they lacked the fortitude of
the criminals.
But the far more plausible expla-
nation is that the greater number
of people did what Trump called on
them to do — to make their voices
heard, and “peacefully.”
I’m not suggesting, of course, that
the cretins who barged into the Cap-
itol and killed a police offi cer weren’t
also in thrall of Trump’s simplistic
and bombastic rhetoric.
But if this ugly episode is to
have the laudable effect of tem-
pering militant political speech,
then Trump’s critics, both among
politicians and the media, need to
muster at least a credible attempt
at even-handedness.
Politicians ought to consider how
often they employ “fi ght” or its syn-
onyms in their own rhetoric.
One of the House impeachment
managers, Rep. Madeleine Dean
of Pennsylvania, kept count, not-
ing that Trump said either “fi ght”
or “fi ghting” 20 times during his
speech.
(The AP’s fact-checkers, proving
themselves as handy with a calcula-
tor as with a thesaurus, proclaimed
Dean’s tally as accurate. I presume
none of those 20 references could
be considered “passing,” or prone to
being lost in winds of rage.)
I understand that the attack on
the Capitol is, fortunately, unique.
And it was Trump’s supporters
who committed the dastardly acts
on Jan. 6, not the lackeys of a Demo-
crat who also speaks occasionally of
“fi ghting” for or against something.
But that reality is a fl accid
reason to excuse other politicians,
regardless of party, for resorting to
potentially inciteful language.
It’s nonsensical to believe that
among all political leaders, Trump
alone has the oratorical author-
ity that induces his followers to
commit crimes — especially when,
during the speech in question, he
unequivocally endorses a peaceful
demonstration.
To confl ate his rhetoric, obnox-
ious though it so often is, with a
Mansonesque omnipotence is to
indulge in the worse sort of parti-
san fantasy.
Jayson Jacoby is editor
of the Baker City Herald.