TUESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2021
BAKER CITY HERALD — A3
LOCAL & STATE
Oregon examines
spyware investment
amid controversy
By Andrew Selsky
Associated Press
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
Felled trees are moved in preparation for being cut into log lengths and loaded onto a truck. A settlement has
been reached over a 15,700-acre timber project in Oregon’s Ochoco National Forest.
Sett lement reached over 15,700-
acre Ochoco thinning project
project failed to protect riparian areas
that are critical for elk and fi sh.
Under the original version of the
The federal government has
settled a lawsuit fi led by environmen- project, up to 3 million board-feet
tal groups that objected to portions of of timber was to be harvested from
about 500 acres of riparian areas, said
a 15,700-acre thinning project in the
Oliver Stiefel, an attorney with the
Ochoco National Forest.
The U.S. Forest Service has agreed Crag Law Center who represented
the plaintiffs.
to refrain from logging within 150-
A majority of those riparian acres
300 feet of streams within about 40
will now be preserved from logging
units of the Black Mountain Vegeta-
under the settlement, he said. “There’s
tion Management Project and pay
still thousands of acres of upland log-
$100,000 in attorney fees to the
ging that’s on the table.”
plaintiffs.
The original version of the project
Attorneys for the Forest Service
was expected to generate nearly 18
did not respond to requests for com-
million board-feet of timber.
ment about the settlement.
The settlement creates logging buf-
The complaint was brought ear-
fers of 300 feet on either side of larger
lier this year by the Central Oregon
fi sh-bearing streams and 150 feet
Landwatch and Oregon Wild non-
profi t organizations, which alleged the on either side of smaller waterways,
By Mateusz Perkowski
Capital Press
said Rory Isbell, attorney for Central
Oregon Landwatch.
“Our intentions were to protect the
most sensitive habitats,” he said. “This
settlement gives us what we wanted
from the lawsuit.”
Aside from providing shade and
stream bank stability that benefi t
fi sh, riparian areas are also important
to the life cycle of elk in the national
forest, Stiefel said.
In autumn, male elk rely on wetted
areas for “wallows” where they cover
themselves in mud and their own
feces and urine in preparation for
mating, he said. During spring, female
elk give birth in riparian areas where
they have better access to food and
shelter.
“These are key sanctuaries for fi sh
and wildlife,” Stiefel said.
Transparency issues surround high
school profi ciency requirements bill
By Hillary Borrud
The Oregonian
For the next fi ve years, an Oregon
high school diploma will be no guar-
antee that the student who earned it
can read, write or do math at a high
school level.
Gov. Kate Brown had demurred
earlier this summer regarding
whether she supported the plan
passed by the Legislature to drop
the requirement that students dem-
onstrate they have achieved those
essential skills. But on July 14, the
governor signed Senate Bill 744 into
law.
Through a spokesperson, the
governor declined again Friday to
comment on the law and why she
supported suspending the profi cien-
cy requirements.
Brown’s decision was not public
until recently, because her offi ce did
not hold a signing ceremony or issue
a press release and the fact that
the governor signed the bill was not
entered into the legislative database
until July 29, a departure from the
normal practice of updating the
public database the same day a bill
is signed.
The Oregonian asked the gov-
ernor’s offi ce when Brown’s staff
notifi ed the Legislature that she had
signed the bill. Charles Boyle, the
governor’s deputy communications
director, declined to answer.
Boyle said in an emailed state-
ment that suspending the read-
ing, writing and math profi ciency
requirements while the state
develops new graduation standards
will benefi t “Oregon’s Black, Latino,
Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian,
Pacifi c Islander, Tribal, and students
of color.”
“Leaders from those communi-
ties have advocated time and again
for equitable graduation standards,
along with expanded learning oppor-
tunities and supports,” Boyle wrote.
Lawmakers and the governor
did not pass any major expansion
of learning opportunities or sup-
ports for Black, Indigenous and
students of color during this year’s
legislative session.
The requirement that stu-
dents demonstrate freshman- to
sophomore-level skills in reading,
writing and, particularly, math led
many high schools to create work-
shop-style courses to help students
strengthen their skills and create
evidence of mastery. Most of those
courses have been discontinued
since the skills requirement was
paused during the pandemic before
lawmakers killed it entirely.
Democrats in the legislature
overwhelmingly supported ending
the longtime profi ciency require-
ment, while Republicans criticized
it as a lowering of academic stan-
dards. A couple lawmakers crossed
party lines on the votes.
Proponents said the state need-
ed to pause Oregon’s high school
graduation requirements, in place
since 2009 but already suspended
during the pandemic, until at least
the class of 2024 graduates in
order for leaders to reexamine its
graduation requirements. Recom-
mendations for new standards are
due to the Legislature and Oregon
Board of Education by September
2022.
However, since Oregon educa-
tion offi cials have long insisted
they would not impose new gradua-
tion requirements on students who
have already begun high school,
new requirements would not take
effect until the class of 2027 at the
very earliest. That means at least
fi ve more classes could be expected
to graduate without needing to
demonstrate profi ciency in math
and writing.
Much of the criticism of the
graduation requirements was
targeted at standardized tests. Yet
Oregon, unlike many other states,
did not require students to pass
a particular standardized test
or any test at all. Students could
demonstrate their ability to use
English and do math via about fi ve
different tests or by completing an
in-depth classroom project judged
by their own teachers.
A variety of factors appear to
have led to the lack of transpar-
ency around the governor’s bill
signing decisions this summer.
Staff in the secretary of the state
Senate’s offi ce are responsible for
updating the legislative database
when the governor signs a Senate
bill. Secretary of the Senate Lori
Brocker said a key staffer who
deals with the governor’s offi ce was
experiencing medical issues during
the 15-day period between when
Brown signed Senate Bill 744 and
the public database was updated to
refl ect that.
Still, a handful of bills that the
governor signed into law on July
19 — including a bill to create a
training program for child care and
preschool providers aimed at re-
ducing suspensions and expulsions
of very young children — were
updated in the legislative database
the same day she signed them and
email notifi cations were sent out
immediately to people who signed
up to track the bills.
No notifi cation ever went out
regarding the governor’s signing
of the graduation bill. By the time
legislative staff belatedly en-
tered the information into the bill
database on July 29, the software
vendor had shut off bill updates
to members of the media and the
public who had requested them.
They cut it off because of a July 21
system malfunction, said legisla-
tive information services Systems
Architect Bill Sweeney.
SALEM — The future
ownership of an Israeli
spyware company whose
product has been used to
hack into the cellphones of
journalists, human rights
workers and possibly even
heads of state is up in the
air.
Major investors in a
private equity fi rm that
has majority ownership of
NSO Group, the maker of
the Pegasus spyware, are
in discussions about what
action to take. The Oregon
state employee pension fund
is one of the largest inves-
tors, if not the largest, hav-
ing committed $233 million
to Novalpina Capital, the
private equity fi rm, in 2017.
Novalpina Capital has
been saddled with both an
internal dispute among its
founding partners and an
explosive report showing
NSO Group’s spyware has
been widely misused around
the globe.
Oregon State Treasury
spokeswoman Rachel Wray
told The Associated Press in
an email Wednesday the de-
partment is getting involved.
State offi cials previously said
investors have limited say in
private equity investments
once they are completed.
“I can confi rm that,
consistent with our fi duciary
duties to Oregon benefi cia-
ries, and along with other
limited partners, (Oregon
State) Treasury is involved
in discussions related to our
investment in Novalpina,”
Wray said Wednesday.
The development comes
amid a serious disagreement
among the three co-founders
of London-based Novalpina
Capital that, according to
press reports from Britain,
resulted in investors moving
to strip control of the fund
after concluding that rela-
tions between the three had
deteriorated so much that
they could no longer work
together.
Sky News reported the
dispute was about future
deployment of Novalpina’s
1 billion euro ($1.18 million)
fund.
On top of that internal
strife, an investigation pub-
lished in July by the global
media consortium Forbidden
Stories showed that at least
180 journalists around the
world have been selected as
targets by clients of NSO
Group. In one case highlight-
ed by the Guardian, Mexi-
can reporter Cecilio Pineda
Birto was assassinated in
2017 a few weeks after his
cellphone number appeared
on a leaked list of more than
50,000 cellphone numbers.
French President Em-
manuel Macron is one of sev-
eral world leaders who may
have been targeted using the
spyware that is capable of
checking a cellphone’s emails
and other data and turn-
ing on its microphone and
cameras.
NSO Group denied that it
has ever maintained “a list
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of potential, past or existing
targets.” In a separate state-
ment, it called the Forbidden
Stories report “full of wrong
assumptions and uncorrobo-
rated theories.”
The company insists it
only sells to “vetted gov-
ernment agencies” for use
against terrorists and major
criminals and that it has no
visibility into its customers’
data. Critics have provided
evidence that NSO directly
manages the high-tech spy-
ing.
Oregon State Treasurer
Tobias Read, who serves as
the state’s chief investment
offi cer, “is following and (is)
concerned about the report-
ing surrounding Novalpina
and the NSO Group,” Wray
said.
Wray said she cannot
get into specifi cs about the
discussions among Noval-
pina’s investors because of
confi dentiality restrictions
and Oregon’s obligations as
a limited partner. Read de-
clined an interview request.
Oregon was Novalpina’s
fi rst major investor. Stephen
Peel and Stefan Kowski,
two founding Novalpina
Capital partners, showed up
at Oregon treasury offi ces
in the Portland suburb of
Tigard in November 2017 to
make a pitch to the Oregon
Investment Council, which
oversees the state’s $90 bil-
lion pension fund.
“As investors, we assume
we have to be contrarian,”
Peel told the council. “We
have to fi nd deals that
other people don’t see or
don’t want to do for various
reasons.”
The Oregon Invest-
ment Council unanimously
approved a $233 million
commitment. It has so far
provided to the fund $65.7
million, according to the
most recent statistics. The
Alaska Permanent Fund
Corporation and England’s
South Yorkshire Pensions
Authority invested $59 mil-
lion and $33 million respec-
tively.
In 2019, Novalpina Capi-
tal and the founders of NSO
Group acquired a majority
stake in NSO Group from
another private equity fi rm,
Francisco Partners, that the
Oregon pension fund had
previously invested in.
Novalpina’s largest inves-
tors are now considering
picking Berkeley Research
Group to replace Noval-
pina, the Financial Times
reported. If appointed, the
California-based global con-
sulting fi rm would be given
a mandate to return inves-
tors’ money by selling the
three companies Novalpina
owns, including NSO, for the
highest possible price, the
London newspaper said.
Berkeley Research Group
did not respond to a request
for comment. The group’s
website says it “helps lead-
ing organizations advance
in three key areas: disputes
and investigations, corporate
fi nance, and performance
improvement.”
With summer
here, there is
lots of traveling.
Be safe &
have fun!
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