A4 BAKER CITY HERALD • SATURDAY, MARCH 26, 2022
BAKER CITY
Opinion
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Baker City, Oregon
EDITORIAL
Solve the pressing
ambulance challenge
B
aker City and Baker County oﬃ cials have no higher
priority than solving the ambulance service crisis, at least
temporarily.
Fortunately, there is time to do so.
Th e challenge is a daunting one, to be sure. Th e Baker City Fire
Department, which for decades has provided ambulance service
within the city limits and for much of the time in a signiﬁ cant
portion of Baker County as well, doesn’t collect nearly enough
from ambulance bills to cover its costs. Th e vast majority of am-
bulance calls are for patients who have either Medicare, Medicaid
or another type of government insurance that pays much less
than half of what the city actually bills.
Th is isn’t a new problem. But the budget gap in the ﬁ re de-
partment has grown in the past several years, in part because the
city, using a three-year federal grant, hired three new ﬁ reﬁ ghter/
paramedics in 2018 to handle an increase in ambulance calls.
Th e federal dollars, which paid more than half the cost of the
new employees, are no longer available. As the gap grows, the
city needs to spend more from its general fund — which includes
property tax revenue from city residents — to cover the shortfall.
Since 2018, when the city accepted the three-year federal
grant, Baker County has sent money to the city for ambulance
services. Th e county paid $33,000 per year during the grant peri-
od, and has allocated $100,000 in its budget for the current ﬁ scal
year, which continues through June 30, 2022.
Under Oregon law, the county is responsible for ensuring there
is ambulance service and has the authority to choose ambulance
service providers.
In January of this year, Baker City Manager Jon Cannon sent
to the county a proposed three-year contract that would main-
tain the city ﬁ re department as the ambulance provider for an
area that includes the city and more than half the county, includ-
ing much of Baker Valley.
County oﬃ cials, meanwhile, worked on a response to the city’s
proposed contract.
Unfortunately, a bureaucratic blunder and a lack of communi-
cation between city and county oﬃ cials contributed to the City
Council approving what amounts to an ultimatum. During their
meeting on Tuesday, March 22, councilors, aft er hearing a report
from Cannon on the ambulance conundrum, voted to have Can-
non notify the county that the city, as of Sept. 30, 2022, intends to
cease its ambulance service, including within the city limits.
In his report to councilors, Cannon notes that he believed the
county was “working on a response” to the city’s proposed three-
year contract.
Th at response was supposed to be sent to the city prior to
Tuesday’s Council meeting, County Commissioner Bruce Nich-
ols said on Wednesday, March 23. But it wasn’t sent.
Cannon said it was a “shame” that the county didn’t get its
proposal to the city prior to the meeting. Th at it was.
Yet if he had called the commissioners’ oﬃ ce before the meet-
ing he would have learned that the county’s proposal was ready.
Moreover, Cannon would have learned that the county, although
it suggested a one-year contract for ambulance services rather
than three years, was oﬀ ering to contribute $130,000 for that year,
just $7,000 less than what city oﬃ cials projected the city would
need for the next ﬁ scal year to continue operating ambulances.
In other words, if commissioners had ensured their proposal
had been sent to the city, or if Cannon or city councilors had
checked on the status of that proposal, councilors might not have
needed to threaten to end ambulance service six months from
now. Th is ultimatum inevitably has worried some city residents,
even though the county is legally obligated to ﬁ nd a replacement
ambulance service so the issue at stake is not whether we will
have ambulances available, but rather who will operate those vital
vehicles.
Cannon contends that a long-term solution to the ambulance
issue requires a more stable source of revenue. Th e statistics seem
to bear this out, as the city is not collecting enough from ambu-
lance billing to cover its escalating costs. In his report to the city
councilors for Tuesday’s meeting, Cannon noted that there is no
reason at this point to believe that Congress will boost payments
from Medicare and other federal programs enough to solve the
problem. Th at might leave a new local property tax levy as a logi-
cal option. Unlike the current situation, in which the only prop-
erty tax revenue that goes to the city ﬁ re department is paid by
owners of property within the city limits, a new levy would need
to include properties outside the city but inside the ambulance
service area that the city ﬁ re department covers.
In the meantime, though, the county’s proposed one-year con-
tract appears to be a short-term solution that maintains the city
ﬁ re department as the ambulance provider.
Financial challenges notwithstanding, that is the best option.
Although Baker City will have ambulance service regardless,
removing that function from the ﬁ re department would force the
city to lay oﬀ employees in that department, something the city
should strive to avoid if possible.
For decades, the city has operated a ﬁ re department that
responds to all manner of emergencies, from ﬁ res to medical
issues, with highly trained professionals. Th at must continue to
be a top priority.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
OTHER VIEWS
Is betting on college
sports worth the gamble?
Editorial from The (Bend) Bulletin:
People already bet on college
sports in Oregon. It’s unregulated
and maybe that’s what Oregonians
want.
But there was a proposal in the
Oregon Legislature to change it.
The Oregon Lottery would be al-
lowed to host games so people
could gamble on college sports,
just like people can on other
sports.
Anti-gambling organizations were
against it. Tribal representatives op-
posed it as well, perhaps fearing it
would eat into their casino revenues.
The idea was to channel the profits
from state gambling revenue on col-
lege sports into Oregon’s Opportu-
nity Grant Program. That’s the state’s
largest grant program for college stu-
dents. It is based on need. The esti-
mate was that some 3,000 more stu-
dents could get financial help based
on the revenues from gambling.
Do you think that benefit is worth
it or not? Tell your state legislator.
Tell the candidates running for state
office. They may bring back the idea
in the 2023 legislative session.
COLUMN
Trans athletes and the
challenge of playing fair
L
ia Thomas is an accomplished
athlete.
She’s also a brave woman.
But her achievements in the
swimming pool this year raise le-
gitimate questions about equality in
sports.
And although it’s unfortunate
that Thomas has become a symbol
for the much broader social and
political divides that define Amer-
ica these days — and much worse,
that she’s become a focus for bigots
— this ought not deflect from the
reality that she and other transgen-
der athletes can potentially tilt what
we’ve come to think of as a level
playing field that affords women the
same opportunities that men have
had for much longer.
This is an appropriate discussion,
and one which does not deserve
to be branded as bigotry — not, at
least, when the conversations are
between reasonable people who
accept fundamental physiological
truths rather than indulge in eu-
phemism lest the overly sensitive
take offense.
Thomas was born a male.
After undergoing hormone re-
placement therapy, she now identi-
fies as a woman.
Thomas, who attends the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, competed
against men in swim meets for her
first three collegiate years. She was
the runner up in three events in the
2019 Ivy League men’s champion-
ships.
During her senior year, starting
in the fall of 2021, and more than
two years after starting hormone
replacement therapy, Thomas com-
peted as a woman.
Although she swam slower than
she had before hormone therapy,
Thomas was faster than most of the
women she competed against.
As an example, before hormone
therapy, when Thomas competed
as a man, her best time in the 500-
yard freestyle race was almost seven
seconds faster than seven-time
Olympic gold medalist Katie Le-
decky’s NCAA record. While com-
peting as a woman, and in winning
that event at the NCAA Division I
championships earlier this month,
Thomas’ time was almost nine sec-
onds slower than Ledecky’s record.
A group of researchers found that
Thomas’ best times when compet-
ing against other women are about
5% slower on average than when
she swam against men, and before
hormone therapy suppressed her
testosterone production.
Jayson
Jacoby
Thomas broke two Penn school
records and won three races in a
November 2021 meet. In the 500
freestyle race, Thomas touched the
wall almost 13 seconds ahead of the
runner-up.
Thomas was not so dominant,
though, against higher-level com-
petition.
At the NCAA championships, in
addition to her national title in the
women’s 500, she finished fifth in
the 200 freestyle and eighth in the
100 freestyle.
This hardly qualifies as ruining
competitive sports for women, as
some hysterical commentators have
suggested.
Thomas won only one race.
And although the feats of top-
level swimmers are impressive, the
sport rarely gains much attention in
the U.S. except during the Summer
Olympics.
The notion that hordes of biolog-
ical males, enticed by Thomas, will
subject themselves to the effects of
hormone therapy and the inevitable
tide of nasty comments, just so they
can excel in a more popular sport
such as basketball, seems farfetched,
if not downright farcical.
Still and all, it would be unfair, it
seems to me, to consider this matter
exclusively from the standpoint of
trans athletes such as Thomas.
Her decision to compete as a
woman affects all of her fellow
swimmers. Ensuring equal oppor-
tunities for women to compete was
the purpose of Title IX of the 1972
Education Amendments, the federal
law that prohibits gender discrimi-
nation, in academics and athletics,
in institutions that receive federal
financial aid.
To suggest that Thomas’ being
born a male had nothing to do with
her recent success in the pool is as
silly as ignoring that her genome
contains a Y chromosome.
Politics frequently aims to inter-
fere with biology, but the former
can’t actually change the latter.
That said, I see no clean, easy an-
swer to this dilemma.
I respect Thomas’ decision. I
don’t condone telling her she has to
compete against men solely because
of that aforementioned chromo-
some.
But neither can I blithely pre-
tend that this single biological fact
doesn’t afford Thomas an advantage
that some — and probably many,
based on her race results this past
season — of her fellow female com-
petitors, no matter how prodigious
their natural talent and no matter
how diligently they toil in the pool
and the weight room, can offset.
This seems to me wrong.
Yet I can’t think of how to make
it right.
The voters who choose inductees
to the Major League Baseball Hall
of Fame — professional athletes, of
course, not amateurs like Thomas
— have in effect punished several of
the sport’s greatest performers who
were either accused of or confirmed
to have used performance-enhanc-
ing substances. The punishment
was refusing to vote for them, and
thus excluding many, so far, from
induction.
That list includes Barry Bonds,
who has hit more home runs than
any other major leaguer.
But denying an honor to athletes
who cheated, and doing so after they
retire, is no solution to the conun-
drum of transgender athletes com-
peting now and in the future.
Thomas didn’t cheat. Or lie.
Indeed, telling the truth was per-
haps her bravest act.
Creating a separate competitive
category for trans athletes, as some
have suggested, is similarly unsat-
isfying. Whether the roster of such
athletes would be sufficient to create
true competition is questionable at
present, for one thing. Worse still,
the concept of a separate category
perpetuates the notion that Thomas
and other trans athletes ought to be
segregated.
Another compromise feels to me
like a copout — continuing to allow
Thomas to compete against women
but affixing to her results an asterisk.
This strikes me as merely a diluted
form of the segregation I mentioned
in the previous paragraph.
I have no idea whether Lia
Thomas will turn out to be an out-
lier, or whether her experience as a
college swimmer is the vanguard of
a major change, and challenge, for
sports in general.
But it seems likely that preserv-
ing the notion of fairness in the
pools and fields and courts of the
future, while also respecting ath-
letes’ gender choices, will be a more
complicated task than it has been
up til now.
Jayson Jacoby is editor of the
Baker City Herald.