LOCAL & STATE
BAKER CITY HERALD • SATuRDAY, JunE 4, 2022 A5
Prairie City sawmill to reopen in July
Prairie Wood Products
mill previously closed
amid market crash
BY STEVEN MITCHELL
Blue Mountain Eagle
PRAIRIE CITY — The parent company of
the Prairie Wood Products sawmill in Prairie
City intends to reopen the facility in early July
and plans on hiring roughly 50 employees.
The D.R. Johnson Lumber Co., Prairie Wood’s
parent company, announced in a press release that
the sawmill will host a job fair at Chester’s Thrift-
way in John Day on Monday and Tuesday, June 13
and 14, from 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. According to
the press release, the company is looking to fill a
variety of jobs, from maintenance and production
to management roles in human resources.
The wages, the press release states, will be
“highly competitive” with a “robust” benefits
package.
The Prairie City mill was purchased in 1976
by the D.R. Johnson Lumber Co. Two years later,
the family-owned company added a stud mill and
planer. Then, in the late 1980s, the company in-
stalled a co-generation power plant at the Prairie
Wood Products mill.
The sawmill, which operated successfully in Prai-
rie City for more than 30 years and employed up-
ward of 100 people who worked two different shifts,
shuttered in 2008 amid a housing market crash that
led to a lack of available sawlogs.
DR Johnson restarted the mill in early 2009 but
shut it down permanently by the end of the year.
The cleanup of the mill, which sits at the west end
of Prairie City, concluded in 2019. Since then,
much of the mill equipment has remained, along
with the co-gen plant.
In the mill’s heyday, Don (D.R.) Johnson ex-
panded the facility’s capacity by adding a com-
puterized stud mill in 1981. In the late 1980s,
Johnson followed that up by installing the co-gen
power plant at the mill.
Wolves
kill two
sheep in
Umatilla
County
ODFW also
confirms a
second attack
in Grant County
East Oregonian
UMATILLA COUNTY —
Wolves with the Ukiah Pack
killed two sheep in late May on
private land in Coyote Canyon, a
ravine tributary to McKay Creek,
the Oregon Department of Fish
and Wildlife (ODFW) reported.
A sheepherder found a dead
180-pound ewe and 70-pound
lamb in a 5,000-acre pasture
about 1 mile from his camp on
May 30. The sheep had bedded
down for the night in the private
pasture.
The ewe had been mostly con-
sumed, while the lamb was en-
tirely intact. ODFW estimated
both sheep died no earlier than
the evening of May 29 or the
morning of May 30.
ODFW personnel shaved,
skinned and examined the car-
casses. Both sheep suffered mul-
tiple bite punctures and pre-mor-
tem hemorrhaging, indicating a
predator attack.
The ewe had pre-mortem
tooth punctures up to 5/16-
inch diameter on the neck, with
pre-mortem hemorrhaging in the
remaining muscle tissue, accord-
ing to the ODFW report.
The lamb had numerous
¼-inch pre-mortem bite punc-
tures and multiple tears in the
hide on the neck, throat and left
hindquarter above the hock.
Trauma to the neck penetrated to
the bone on both sides and dislo-
cated the neck. Pre-mortem hem-
orrhage on the left hindquarter
was up to 1.5 inches deep.
According to ODFW, the se-
verity and location of injuries
to the sheep are consistent with
wolf attacks.
Second confirmed depredation in
Grant County
ODFW have also confirmed
another attack on cattle by wolves
from the Desolation pack.
On June 1, biologists exam-
ined a six-month-old, 350-pound
calf in a private, 1,200-acre pas-
ture along the Middle Fork John
Day River in Grant County. The
calf had a healing open wound
measuring six inches by three
inches on its hindquarters above
the udder.
This is the same pasture where
ODFW concluded that wolves
from the Desolation pack had
killed two calves on May 19.
Richard Hanners/Blue Mountain Eagle, File
The Prairie Wood Products sawmill in Prairie City closed in 2008. The company announced it plans to reopen in early July 2022.
Oregon botched drug treatment
plan tied to decriminalization
tax revenue from the state’s
legal marijuana industry to
SALEM — Efforts to get
treatment. But applications
millions of dollars in funding for funding stacked up after
to treatment centers and re-
state officials underestimated
lated services as part of Or-
the work required to vet
egon’s pioneering drug de-
them and get the money out
criminalization have been
the door, officials testified
botched even as drug addic- Thursday before the House
tions and overdoses increase, Interim Committee on Be-
state officials and lawmakers havioral Health.
said on Thursday, June 2.
“So clearly, if we were to
Oregonians passed Bal-
do it over again, I would
lot Measure 110 in 2020 de- have asked for many more
criminalizing possession of staff much quicker in the
personal amounts of heroin, process,” said state Behav-
cocaine, methamphetamine ioral Health Director Steve
and other drugs — the first
Allen. “We were just un-
in the nation to do so. A
der-resourced to be able
person found with drugs re- to support this effort, un-
ceives a citation, like a traffic derestimated the work that
ticket, with the maximum
was involved in supporting
$100 fine waived if they call something that looked like
a hotline for a health assess- this and partly we didn’t fully
ment.
understand it until we were
But in the first year after
in the middle of it.”
the new approach took ef-
Allen, who works for the
fect in February 2021, only
Oregon Health Authority,
1% of people who received
told lawmakers in the re-
citations for possessing con- mote hearing that this $300
trolled substances asked for million project has never
help via the new hotline.
been done before.
The ballot measure redi-
Rep. Lily Morgan, a Re-
rected millions of dollars in publican from the south-
BY ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press
western Oregon town of
Grants Pass, said lives are be-
ing lost while the state waits
for the ballot measure to
have a positive effect.
“Director, you’ve men-
tioned a couple of times that
you’re waiting to see, and yet
we have overdoses increas-
ing at drastic rates, in my
community a 700% increase
in overdoses and a 120% in-
crease in deaths,” Morgan
told Allen. “How long do we
wait before we have an im-
pact that we’re saving lives?”
Secretary of State Shemia
Fagan appeared before the
committee, and described
her own mother’s struggles
with heroin and metham-
phetamine addiction. Fagan
said Oregon remains in a
drug abuse crisis, despite the
ballot measure.
“When the voters of Or-
egon passed Measure 110,
we did so because it was a
change of policy in Oregon
to improve the lives of peo-
ple, to improve our commu-
nities,” Fagan said. “And in
the years since, we haven’t
seen that play out. ... In-
stead, in many communities
in Oregon, we’ve seen the
problem with drug addiction
get worse.”
Allen acknowledged there
has been a “dramatic” in-
crease in overdoses and over-
dose deaths statewide and
attributed much of the cause
to the recent arrival of meth-
amphetamine laced with
fentanyl, a synthetic opioid
that is so powerful that a tiny
amount can kill, and illicit
pills containing fentanyl.
That adds urgency to the
effort to provide treatment
services and harm reduction,
like medication to treat over-
doses and needle exchanges,
that the measure also pays
for, he said. Advocates point
out that the services are
available to anyone in Ore-
gon, not just those who were
cited for possession.
“Getting these resources
out to the community is in-
credibly important ... not
just the harm reduction re-
sources, but people who can
support folks who are at risk
for overdose,” Allen said. “So
time is of the essence.”
Ian Green, an audits man-
ager for Fagan, said the text
of the ballot measure lacked
clarity around roles and re-
sponsibilities of the health
authority and the Oversight
and Accountability Council
that the measure established.
That “contributed to de-
lays, confusions and strained
relations,” Green said. He
also blamed the health au-
thority for not always pro-
viding adequate support to
the accountability council.
Council co-chair Ron Wil-
liams said most of the avail-
able funds still haven’t been
released.
“I feel these challenges can
be overcome and corrected
with deliberate, intentional,
focused effort and coura-
geous, solution-oriented
conversations,” Williams
said.
The health authority
said it has offered a three-
month extension to grant-
ees through Oct. 1, who will
receive a prorated amount
based on their prior award
and bringing the total funds
disbursed to $40 million.
Oregon dropping algorithm used in child abuse cases
Investigation showed similar
system disproportionately
affected Black children
BY SALLY HO AND
GARANCE BURKE
Associated Press
Child welfare officials in
Oregon will stop using an
algorithm to help decide
which families are investi-
gated by social workers, opt-
ing instead for a new process
that officials say will make
better, more racially equita-
ble decisions.
The move comes weeks
after an Associated Press re-
view of a separate algorith-
mic tool in Pennsylvania
that had originally inspired
Oregon officials to develop
their model, and was found
to have flagged a dispro-
portionate number of Black
children for “mandatory” ne-
glect investigations when it
first was in place.
Oregon’s Department of
Human Services announced
to staff via email last month
that after “extensive analysis”
the agency’s hotline work-
ers would stop using the al-
gorithm at the end of June
to reduce disparities con-
cerning which families are
investigated for child abuse
and neglect by child protec-
tive services.
“We are committed to con-
tinuous quality improvement
and equity,” Lacey Andresen,
the agency’s deputy director,
said in the May 19 email.
Jake Sunderland, a depart-
ment spokesman, said the
existing algorithm would
“no longer be necessary,”
since it can’t be used with the
state’s new screening pro-
cess. He declined to provide
further details about why
Oregon decided to replace
the algorithm and would not
elaborate on any related dis-
parities that influenced the
policy change.
Hotline workers’ decisions
about reports of child abuse
and neglect mark a critical
moment in the investiga-
tions process, when social
workers first decide if fam-
ilies should face state inter-
vention. The stakes are high
— not attending to an allega-
tion could end with a child’s
death, but scrutinizing a
family’s life could set them
up for separation.
From California to Col-
orado and Pennsylvania, as
child welfare agencies use or
consider implementing algo-
rithms, an AP review iden-
tified concerns about trans-
parency, reliability and racial
disparities in the use of the
technology, including their
potential to harden bias in
the child welfare system.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an
Oregon Democrat, said he
had long been concerned
about the algorithms used by
his state’s child welfare sys-
tem and reached out to the
department again following
the AP story to ask ques-
tions about racial bias — a
prevailing concern with the
growing use of artificial in-
telligence tools in child pro-
tective services.
“Making decisions about
what should happen to chil-
dren and families is far too
important a task to give un-
tested algorithms,” Wyden
said in a statement. “I’m glad
the Oregon Department of
Human Services is taking the
concerns I raised about racial
bias seriously and is pausing
the use of its screening tool.”
Sunderland said Ore-
gon child welfare officials
had long been considering
changing their investigations
process before making the
announcement last month.
He added that the state de-
cided recently that the algo-
rithm would be completely
replaced by its new program,
called the Structured Deci-
sion Making model, which
aligns with many other child
welfare jurisdictions across
the country.
Oregon’s Safety at Screen-
ing Tool was inspired by the
influential Allegheny Fam-
ily Screening Tool, which is
named for the county sur-
rounding Pittsburgh, and is
aimed at predicting the risk
that children face of wind-
ing up in foster care or being
investigated in the future.
It was first implemented in
2018. Social workers view
the numerical risk scores
the algorithm generates —
the higher the number, the
greater the risk — as they
decide if a different social
worker should go out to in-
vestigate the family.
But Oregon officials
tweaked their original al-
gorithm to only draw from
internal child welfare data
in calculating a family’s risk,
and tried to deliberately ad-
dress racial bias in its design
with a “fairness correction.”
In response to Carnegie
Mellon University research-
ers’ findings that Allegheny
County’s algorithm initially
flagged a disproportionate
number of Black families for
“mandatory” child neglect
investigations, county offi-
cials called the research “hy-
pothetical,” and noted that
social workers can always
override the tool, which was
never intended to be used on
its own.
Wyden is a chief sponsor
of a bill that seeks to estab-
lish transparency and na-
tional oversight of software,
algorithms and other auto-
mated systems.
“With the livelihoods
and safety of children and
families at stake, technol-
ogy used by the state must
be equitable — and I will
continue to watchdog,”
Wyden said.
The second tool that Or-
egon developed — an algo-
rithm to help decide when
foster care children can be
reunified with their families
— remains on hiatus as re-
searchers rework the model.
Sunderland said the pilot
was paused months ago due
to inadequate data but that
there is “no expectation that
it will be unpaused soon.”
In recent years while un-
der scrutiny by a crisis over-
sight board ordered by the
governor, the state agency
– currently preparing to hire
its eighth new child welfare
director in six years – con-
sidered three additional al-
gorithms, including predic-
tive models that sought to
assess a child’s risk for death
and severe injury, whether
children should be placed in
foster care, and if so, where.
Sunderland said the child
welfare department never
built those tools, however.
█
This story, supported by the
Pulitzer Center for Crisis
Reporting, is part of an ongoing
Associated Press series, “Tracked,”
that investigates the power
and consequences of decisions
driven by algorithms on people’s
everyday lives.