A4 BAKER CITY HERALD • THURSDAY, MARCH 3, 2022
BAKER CITY
Opinion
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Baker City, Oregon
EDITORIAL
Ensuring public
meetings are
kept public
O
regon’s Public Meetings Law, which
has been in place since 1973, is pretty
straightforward as laws go.
And its purpose could hardly be more clear.
Groups of elected or appointed officials who
conduct the public’s business, and spend the
public’s money, should do so in venues that are
open to the public. The law applies to meet-
ings when a quorum of the body is present.
Public bodies subject to the law include
those most people would probably expect —
city councils, county commissions, school
boards. But the law also applies to many that
don’t generally get as much attention, or pub-
licity, such as the various boards and commis-
sions, some elected and some appointed, that
most cities and counties have.
The law, as laws so often are, is littered with
exceptions.
Public bodies can legally meet in private
(although journalists, in most instances, can
attend) to discuss certain topics such as real
estate negotiations or to consult with an at-
torney.
But during these “executive sessions,” public
bodies are not allowed to make final decisions.
For instance, a city council could meet in an
executive session to discuss buying property.
But councilors couldn’t actually decide to pur-
chase the parcel until they reconvene in a pub-
lic session that has been announced so that
people who wish to attend can do so.
To reiterate — the law isn’t complicated.
Most discussions by a quorum of a public
body — and all final decisions — must take
place in public.
But inevitably, some public bodies violate
the law, some intentionally, some inadver-
tently.
The problem is that people who believe such
violations have happened are on their own
in most cases — in terms of money as well as
time — in filing a legal challenge. Citizens’
main recourse is to file a complaint in circuit
court. The exception is in the case of a public
official who might have violated the execu-
tive session provisions of the public meetings
law. In that case a resident can file a complaint
with the Oregon Government Ethics Com-
mission, the agency that enforces ethics laws
which, among other things, deal with conflicts
of interest and instances of public officials us-
ing their office for personal gain.
House Bill 4140 would make it much easier
for the public to enforce the public meetings
law, and create a much more effective deter-
rent for officials who might violate it.
The bill, which appears unlikely to pass
during the current legislative session, would
allow the Government Ethics Commission to
investigate alleged violations of the law, and
to fine each public official involved in a viola-
tion up to $1,000. Importantly, the law would
prohibit officials from passing off fines to the
agency — a city or school board, for instance
— that the officials represent.
The fines are the stick in the law. Its carrot
is a requirement that the Government Ethics
Commission offer training to public bodies
affected by the public meetings law. This train-
ing need not be complex, given how easy it is
to understand the requirements of the pub-
lic meetings law, and how easy it is to comply
with them.
If House Bill 4140 doesn’t make it out of the
current session, legislators need to bring it
back in 2023.
It’s vital that the public’s business be con-
ducted, and its money spent, transparently.
That’s why Oregon has had a law defining
public meetings for almost half a century. But
without a reasonable method for ensuring that
the law is enforced, its well-intentioned provi-
sions ring hollow.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
COLUMN
Big Tech promoting a big lie
BY STEVEN BUCCI
As Big Tech gatekeepers like Google
and Amazon face long-overdue scrutiny in
Washington for anti-competitive practices
that limit choice and reduce quality online,
they have resorted to a national-security de-
fense: Breaking us up, they claim, will only
help China.
It’s an ironic move. These tech giants
have extensive, well-documented ties to
Beijing, doing high-volume business in
China’s marketplace, while capitulating to
the whims of its government for fear of los-
ing access and status.
Their arguments are an insult to the
spirit of American ingenuity, which is
driven by innovation unleashed through
competition, not by condoning a choke-
point of five global corporations that have
become ever more complacent as their
market power grows. Innovation comes
from all corners, not from a handful of
gatekeepers that keep new ideas and ser-
vices from coming to market. These domi-
nant tech companies are the largest barrier
to entry for companies that may have tech-
nology concepts critical to solving some of
our biggest challenges.
Some bipartisan ideas are moving
through Congress that could help prevent
dominant platforms such as Amazon, Face-
book, Apple, Microsoft, and Google from
favoring their own products and services to
the detriment of small businesses, innova-
tors and consumers.
The bipartisan effort saw five Republi-
cans vote with Democrats to move legisla-
tion out of committee, reflecting the overall
bipartisan momentum around reining in
Big Tech inside the beltway and across the
country. According to Gallup, 57 percent of
Americans believe the government should
increase regulation of Big Tech, and a Vox
poll found that 65 percent of Americans
think its economic power is a problem fac-
ing the U.S. economy.
To be clear, the legislative efforts are not
about punishing the Big Five because they’re
big. It’s about addressing harmful behavior
that allows them to keep their thumb on the
scales to further monopoly status. Big Tech
can argue that these initiatives could jeop-
ardize U.S. leadership over China and com-
promise user data all they want, but that’s
nonsense. There are clear national-security
provisions being considered to prevent the
transfer of data to businesses affiliated with
the government of China or other govern-
ments of foreign adversaries.
Let us not forget that these Big Tech plat-
forms are some of the worst violators of pri-
vacy and data security in human history.
Facebook paid a $5 billion fine for using de-
ceptive practices and sharing its users’ per-
sonal information without permission with
third-party apps. Google was fined for vio-
lating children’s privacy laws, and has been
accused of secretly tracking users.
Moreover, Big Tech relies heavily on ex-
ploiting China’s cheap labor and produc-
tion. In particular, Apple benefits from
cheap labor for its products, stores troves of
Chinese consumer data on servers owned
by state-owned firms, and censors apps in
its app store to appease Chinese govern-
ment demands.
Apple even brokered a $275 billion deal
to help develop China’s economic and tech-
nological abilities, but has refused to assist
U.S. law enforcement in criminal cases at
home.
Similarly, Amazon relies on Chinese
forced labor for production of many of its
products, censors reviews and ratings to
appease the Chinese Communist Party, and
has even teamed up with firms that pro-
vide surveillance technology to the Chi-
nese government’s concentration camps.
Google bent over backward to produce a
censored search engine to comply with the
strict speech prohibitions required by the
Chinese Communist Party, while espousing
internet freedom.
Giant tech firms such as Google, Ama-
zon, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple have
had years to be overseas ambassadors for
American principles. They’ve often done
exactly the opposite, violating basic tenets
of consumer privacy and security and help-
ing a regime whose view on human rights
runs directly counter to U.S. ideals and to
directly assist their military with things like
AI development.
Policymakers must ignore the bogus
fearmongering on national security being
pushed by Big Tech in an effort to evade
accountability. Next time they are told that
antitrust begets China’s dominance, they
would be wise to consider the messenger.
Steven Bucci, a retired U.S. Army Special
Forces Colonel and former Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense, is a visiting fellow at
The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org)
OTHER VIEWS
The world is standing with Ukraine
Editorial from The Baltimore Sun:
Not since 9/11 has an unprovoked hos-
tility been so clearly defined as good versus
evil. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has,
if nothing else, sidestepped the usual vaga-
ries of who started what or who is the victim
and who is the aggressor. On the one side is
Ukraine, a sovereign nation, the second larg-
est in land mass in Europe. On the other is
Russia’s authoritarian ruler, Vladimir Putin,
with an enormous military and an unbridled
desire to return his country back to the So-
viet Union days.
Even his cover story for this extraordi-
nary military action — including a claim
of “peacekeeping” support for “breakaway”
regions of Donetsk and Luhansk — was so
flimsy one wonders why he bothered. The
absurdity peaked when Putin explained in a
Feb. 24 televised speech that his goal was the
“denazification” of Ukraine, a country cur-
rently led by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Jew-
ish grandson of a Holocaust survivor.
In Baltimore, as is the case across the
United States, the only serious questions
people are asking themselves today is how
best to support Ukraine and punish Rus-
sia and whether economic sanctions an-
nounced by President Joe Biden are tough
enough. The appetite for engaging in a di-
rect military clash and putting U.S. troops
in the line of fire, meanwhile, is appropri-
ately low. And while there’s certainly been
some finger-pointing over whether the U.S.
had done enough to support Ukraine after
the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014,
as both of the last two presidents withheld
military aid from that country, this sort of
second-guessing is like fretting over U.S.
military preparedness prior to Pearl Har-
bor. Let the historians pass their judgment.
What people really want to know is, what
happens next?
Putting the economic squeeze on Russia
has much appeal. The threat of sanctions
may not have initially deterred Putin, but it’s
clear that he’s made some serious miscalcula-
tions. First, that the level of resistance within
Ukraine would prove as lethal as it’s been
to date but secondly, that NATO members
and others would be willing to impose sanc-
tions far beyond anything considered after
Crimea. Surely, top of that list is kicking Rus-
sia out of the SWIFT global bank payments
system which has already sent the ruble and
that country’s stock market into a steep de-
cline. Even Germany, a country with an un-
derstandable post-World War II aversion to
military spending and a dependence on Rus-
sian energy, has decided to toss at least 100
billion euros at its armed forces.
But make no mistake, imposing sanctions
against Russia will not be painless for the rest
of the world. It will not be as simple as pour-
ing Russian vodka down the drain or be-
moaning recent vandalism at the St. Michael
Ukrainian Catholic Cemetery in Dundalk,
as heinous as the topping of 49 headstones
last week might have been. And certainly it
will require more than posting on social me-
dia blue and yellow messages of support that
symbolize Ukraine’s flag. Isolating Russia
means harming the buyer of Russian goods
as well. And that could include oil and gas, a
major Russian export.
Certain Republicans, including the 45th
president, would have Americans believe
that the U.S. could pump the world out of
harm on the energy front. But the reality
is far more complicated. While U.S. energy
production, particularly natural gas, has
certainly increased over time, this dream of
energy “independence” is largely a mirage.
And draining U.S. resources to the last
drop as quickly as possible isn’t much of a
long-term solution to anything, especially
given the threat of climate change. Better
to do exactly what President Biden seeks to
do: inflict the most harm possible on the
Russian economy and on Putin and his al-
lies while sparing other nations the most
collateral damage possible; support peace
talks but do not be intimidated by Putin’s
nuclear saber-rattling.
Symbolic actions have their place (and
cemetery vandals richly deserve prosecu-
tion). Americans might also donate to the
various charities that are helping Ukraini-
ans (the International Committee of the
Red Cross, Baltimore-based Catholic Re-
lief Services and Save the Children among
them). But what may be needed most is
to reflect the sort of determination that
Ukrainians are demonstrating each day in
fighting this invasion. If it means higher
prices at the pump, worsening inflation or
an economic slowdown, so be it. We are all
Ukrainians now.