A4
BAKER CITY
Opinion
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news@bakercityherald.com
Tuesday, August 2, 2022 • Baker City, Oregon
EDITORIAL
Preserving
farmland must
be a priority
M
ark Twain is credited with telling readers
to buy land because, he warned, they
aren’t making more of it. Unfortunately,
farmland sold too often is put to other uses and is lost
forever.
A new report from the American Farmland Trust
warns that the Pacific Northwest stands to lose more
than half a million acres of farmland to urban sprawl
by 2040 unless cities make smarter development
choices.
Between 2000 and 2016 alone, roughly 11 million
acres of farmland has been lost or fragmented by
development.
Across the Northwest, as many as 527,185 acres
of additional farmland may be lost to urban and
low-density residential development by 2040 — par-
ticularly in rapidly growing metro areas around Puget
Sound, Portland, Spokane and Boise.
Washington would be the hardest-hit state, losing
238,614 acres of farmland under the worst-case sce-
nario. That is an area roughly 4½ times the size of
Seattle.
Oregon would lose up to 142,267 acres of farmland,
while Idaho would lose up to 146,304 acres.
Our own reporting has shown that when urban de-
velopment moves into rural spaces more than farm-
land can be lost. As areas fall to other uses, the over-
all viability of the local ag infrastructure comes into
jeopardy.
As fields give way to housing developments, con-
flicts between homeowners and farms increase. New
residents don’t like the dust and smells associated with
farm production, and complain about farm machin-
ery on the roads and trucks during harvest time.
And, as developments break up the landscape,
farmers find it ever more difficult to move equipment
from field to field.
We can’t fault farm families for getting the highest
value for their property. Where there are buyers, there
will be sellers.
As an alternative to development, we favor ease-
ment programs that allow owners to sell their devel-
opment rights and realize the market value of their
land while preserving it for farming.
We encourage state legislatures to fund those types
of programs while taking steps to rein in urban
sprawl.
Preserving farmland must be a priority.
When developers look at farm and range land, they
see “empty” spaces with nothing on it. They see par-
cels for subdivisions, apartment buildings, shopping
malls and restaurants.
Farmland is far from empty. It provides the food
that sustains us and the fiber that clothes us. It is a vi-
tal strategic resource. It is, as Thomas Jefferson said,
the wealth of the nation.
Farmland is more than just a patch of ground with
stuff planted on it. Once paved over and developed, it
cannot be replaced.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the Baker City
Herald. Columns, letters and cartoons on this page
express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily
that of the Baker City Herald.
CONTACT YOUR PUBLIC OFFICIALS
U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley: D.C. office: 313 Hart Senate Office Building, U.S. Senate,
Washington, D.C., 20510; 202-224-3753; fax 202-228-3997. Portland office: One
World Trade Center, 121 S.W. Salmon St. Suite 1250, Portland, OR 97204; 503-
326-3386; fax 503-326-2900. Baker City office, 1705 Main St., Suite 504, 541-278-
1129; merkley.senate.gov.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden: D.C. office: 221 Dirksen Senate Office Building,
Washington, D.C., 20510; 202-224-5244; fax 202-228-2717. La Grande office: 105
Fir St., No. 210, La Grande, OR 97850; 541-962-7691; fax, 541-963-0885; wyden.
senate.gov.
U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz (2nd District): D.C. office: 1239 Longworth House Office
Building, Washington, D.C., 20515, 202-225-6730; fax 202-225-5774. Medford
office: 14 N. Central Avenue Suite 112, Medford, OR 97850; Phone: 541-776-
4646; fax: 541-779-0204; Ontario office: 2430 S.W. Fourth Ave., No. 2, Ontario, OR
97914; Phone: 541-709-2040. bentz.house.gov.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown: 254 State Capitol, Salem, OR 97310; 503-378-3111;
www.governor.oregon.gov.
Oregon State Treasurer Tobias Read: oregon.treasurer@ost.state.or.us; 350
Winter St. NE, Suite 100, Salem OR 97301-3896; 503-378-4000.
Oregon Attorney General Ellen F. Rosenblum: Justice Building, Salem, OR
97301-4096; 503-378-4400.
Oregon Legislature: Legislative documents and information are available
online at www.leg.state.or.us.
State Sen. Lynn Findley (R-Ontario): Salem office: 900 Court St. N.E., S-403,
Salem, OR 97301; 503-986-1730. Email: Sen.LynnFindley@oregonlegislature.gov
COLUMN
Inflating the health of the labor market
BY RACHEL GRESZLER
B
etween out-of-control inflation, on-
going supply-chain struggles, the
crisis at the southern border, for-
eign policy concerns, exploding energy
prices, rising crime and a high likelihood
that the country is either already or soon
will be experiencing stagflation (an in-
flationary recession), it’s no wonder that
Democrats and the Biden administration
are talking up the strong labor market.
A recent tweet on the Democrats’ of-
ficial Twitter page stated, “Under @Joe-
Biden, the private sector has recovered all
of the jobs lost during the pandemic —
and added jobs on top of that.”
For starters, that statement is only half
true, at best.
According to the official jobs numbers
from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, pri-
vate-sector jobs are up by about 140,000
since the low in April 2020, but only four
in 10 of those job gains occurred on the
Biden administration’s watch, while six in
10 were recovered during the Trump ad-
ministration.
But that’s just private-sector jobs. There
are 755,000 fewer people employed today
than at the start of the pandemic, despite
a 4.2 million increase in the population of
people ages 16 and older.
If the employment-to-population ra-
tio were the same as it was prior to the
pandemic, in February 2020, 3.3 million
more people would be working today.
Moreover, economists estimate that a
decline in the desired hours of work has
roughly doubled the magnitude of the la-
bor force decline.
While the labor market appears to be
going well by some metrics, that’s not the
whole story.
Metrics like a nearly half-century low
unemployment rate, high nominal wage
gains and 11.3 million job openings that
equal two jobs available for every un-
employed person didn’t arise naturally.
Rather, they were artificially induced
through bad government policies that
have included a lot of unintended conse-
quences.
Most significantly, 18 months’ worth of
bonus unemployment benefits that paid
most people more to stay on the sidelines
than to work caused millions of people to
leave the labor market. Meanwhile, Wash-
ington stimulated consumer and business
demand for goods and services by flood-
ing the economy with trillions of dollars
in so-called COVID-19 relief — about
half of which was money printed by the
Federal Reserve.
The unprecedented labor shortage has
caused huge struggles for employers, and
all sorts of problems for ordinary Amer-
icans, including canceled flights, un-
opened community pools, delayed deliv-
eries, overcrowded emergency rooms and
reduced public safety.
Too few workers is also adding to the
inflationary cycle.
When employers have to compete for
workers, they have to increase their com-
pensation. According to the National
Federation of Independent Businesses
(NFIB) survey, 48 percent of owners
reported increasing compensation in
June and 28 percent said they plan to in-
crease compensation over the next three
months.
But paying workers more to do the ex-
act same thing requires hiking prices, and
as the NFIB report states, “These rising
labor costs will be passed on to consum-
ers through higher selling prices, which
are being raised at a record pace,” with 69
percent of employers reporting increased
prices in June.
Yet, despite a $3,100 increase in the av-
erage full-time worker’s paycheck over the
past year, inflation has eaten away $5,300
of value, leaving him $2,200 poorer.
And the future isn’t looking good.
Small business owners’ expectations for
better business conditions reached an
all-time low in June, owing to “inflation
and worker shortages,” along with “policy
talks that [have] shifted to tax increases
and more regulations.”
Government policies to spend more,
tax more, regulate more and produce less
will only make labor shortages and infla-
tion worse.
If lawmakers want to be able to tout
metrics like increased labor force partici-
pation and real rising wages, they should
start by removing the government-im-
posed barriers they’ve created for work
and productivity.
Rachel Greszler is a senior research fellow at The
Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for
the Federal Budget.
OTHER VIEWS
Virus, and indifference, are on the rise again
EDITORIAL FROM
THE BALTIMORE SUN:
G
iven the latest surge in COVID-19
cases — thanks to omicron sub-
variant BA.5, deemed the most
transmissible yet — and the relatively new
threat posed by monkeypox, which has
been spreading globally since May, one
might expect the public health establish-
ment to be asking for heightened precau-
tions or at least vigilance.
One would be wrong.
Has it been judged too early for warn-
ings? Is there a new wariness over causing
too much alarm over too little infection? Is
it an acknowledgment that pandemic fa-
tigue has left the public highly skeptical?
Whatever the reason, the usual suspects
from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention to Baltimore’s own Johns Hop-
kins Bloomberg School of Public Health ar-
en’t exactly clanging the alarm bells of late.
Is that the right call? Given the general
public’s current reluctance to stick to the
basic precaution of wearing masks indoors
as COVID continues, it feels suspiciously
like a truce, if not a surrender. Where have
you gone Anthony Fauci? When last we
heard, President Joe Biden’s chief med-
ical adviser was telling reporters to take
the monkeypox virus seriously and called
for more testing of it, suspecting that the
nearly 2,000 probable or confirmed cases
in the United States were an “undercount.”
But an aggressive push to warn the public,
at least beyond the gay community where
most monkeypox cases have been traced
to date? Not crickets exactly, but hardly
State Rep. Mark Owens (R-Crane): Salem office: 900 Court St. N.E., H-475,
Salem, OR 97301; 503-986-1460. Email: Rep.MarkOwens@oregonlegislature.gov
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Baker City Hall: 1655 First Street, P.O. Box 650, Baker City, OR 97814; 541-523-6541;
fax 541-524-2049. City Council meets the second and fourth Tuesdays at 7 p.m.
in Council Chambers. Councilors Jason Spriet, Kerry McQuisten, Shane Alderson,
Joanna Dixon, Kenyon Damschen, Johnny Waggoner Sr. and Dean Guyer.
• We welcome letters on any issue of public in-
terest. Customer complaints about specific busi-
nesses will not be printed.
• The Baker City Herald will not knowingly print
false or misleading claims. However, we cannot
Baker City administration: 541-523-6541. Jonathan Cannon, city manager; Ty
Duby, police chief; Sean Lee, fire chief; Michelle Owen, public works director.
The unprecedented labor shortage
has caused huge struggles for
employers, and all sorts of problems
for ordinary Americans, including
canceled flights, unopened
community pools, delayed deliveries,
overcrowded emergency rooms and
reduced public safety.
Nobody is ever going to claim that the
U.S. response to the pandemic has
been perfect to date. Far from it. But
we’re not sure what’s worse, a public
health establishment that acts too
aggressively in the face of one or more
diseases, or one that prefers to sit on
its hands.
the kind of warnings heard early in the
COVID pandemic. While monkeypox is
rarely lethal, the sores it causes are painful,
and the virus is evolving fast.
Meanwhile, BA.5 remains on the up-
swing in Maryland and elsewhere. The
CDC reports an average of more than
126,000 new COVID cases per day and
more than 6,000 new hospital admissions,
both of which are up significantly from one
month earlier — and that’s with substan-
tially less testing than at the height of the
pandemic. Yet how many people are still
wearing their masks to the grocery store?
Maybe one-third? One-quarter? Less? Even
checkout clerks dealing with hundreds of
customers each day are going without.
Indeed, how many politically conserva-
tive candidates for public office are at this
exact moment running on a platform of
promises to not return to COVID precau-
tions? In Maryland, for example, the lead-
ing Republican candidates for governor
went into the primary election on Tuesday
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with dueling ads promising that “lock-
downs” would be a thing of the past under
their administrations. Really? They can
see into the future? What’s next, a prom-
ise never to vaccinate? To never declare
a public health emergency? To toss the
mask supply just in case we’re tempted?
Nobody is ever going to claim that the
U.S. response to the pandemic has been
perfect to date. Far from it. But we’re not
sure what’s worse, a public health estab-
lishment that acts too aggressively in the
face of one or more diseases, or one that
prefers to sit on its hands. The former may
get a lot of criticism for slowing the econ-
omy unnecessarily but the latter is likely to
allow more Americans to become sick and
possibly die (while new daily deaths aver-
age in the 300s, it was just a few months
ago that they were numbering several
thousand). That’s a Hobson’s choice. And
illness is not without consequence, either.
Aside from the risk of long COVID, quar-
antining and taking time off from work
affects families, vacation plans and the
economy.
Let’s remove this from politics and
judge the circumstances strictly on the
science, which means it’s not yet time to
completely lower our defenses. This is not
the moment to shun masks and join in-
door crowds and generally throw caution
to the wind. Get your shots (including
boosters) and wear properly-fitted masks
inside among crowds.
None of this seems too much to ask —
if our public health leaders would please
keep asking for it.
• Letters will be edited for brevity, grammar, taste
and legal reasons.
Mail: To the Editor, Baker City Herald,
P.O. Box 807, Baker City, OR 97814
Email: news@bakercityherald.com