Opinion
A4
BAKER CITY
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news@bakercityherald.com
Saturday, August 13, 2022 • Baker City, Oregon
EDITORIAL
Removing
house was
warranted
B
aker City hired a contractor to tear down a
home on the east side of town last week. But
not because the property was strewn with
trash and other debris.
Although the term “eyesore” is decidedly subjective,
given that each person’s aesthetic judgment is differ-
ent, the property at 1975 Birch St., at the corner of
Birch and Washington, would have qualified as such
for most people.
City officials had tried over several years to deal
with the accumulation of debris on the property. From
2017 to 2021, the city paid four times to haul away
trash. The recurring nature of the situation earned the
YOUR VIEWS
property, owned by Lucas Buddy Lee Gwin, the du-
Those trying to overthrow
GOP party aren’t acting
like conservatives
bious distinction of being the first deemed a “chronic
neighborhood nuisance” under a 2019 revision to the
city’s property maintenance ordinance.
Gwin appealed that January 2022 judgment by
Brent Kerns, Baker County Justice of the Peace, but
the appeal was dismissed July 19. In an email to the
Herald on Thursday, Aug. 11, Gwin, responding to a
request for a comment about the city dismantling the
home, wrote a single word: “heartbroken.”
The reason the 950-square-foot home no longer
stands, however, isn’t how the property looked. The
reason is that Dawn Kitzmiller, the city’s building of-
ficial, after inspecting the structure on April 7, con-
cluded that it was unsafe based on the city’s property
maintenance ordinance. Kitzmiller said the home
was in “terrible” shape, with interior walls removed
and the ceiling failing in places. She said the house,
which was built in 1900 and had a real market value of
$3,740, according to the Baker County Assessor’s of-
fice, “would have failed” at some point.
The city, in dealing with unsightly properties, must
always balance the rights of property owners with
public expectations.
But when city officials have determined that a home
or other structure poses an actual danger because it
could collapse, they have an obligation to deal with
the situation. If the owner is neither able nor willing
to fix the problem, as apparently was the case at 1975
Birch St., then dismantling the structure is reasonable.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
The far left must love Jake
Brown, Kenny Hackett and
Baker County United (BCU)!
Claiming to be constitutional
conservatives, they helped or-
ganize recall meetings against
the conservative members
of City Council. They at-
tempted an overthrow of the
Baker County Republicans
(BCRCC). Hackett just trav-
eled to another failed over-
throw attempt of the Hood
River County Republican
Chair! Why?!
I attended our recent Re-
publican meeting. The
BCRCC executive committee
wasn’t removed, nor are they
being “investigated.” Just be-
cause Brown writes long, tor-
tured pages of “proof” doesn’t
mean his accusations are real.
They aren’t.
When BCU talks about
“purging” the BCRCC, they’re
talking about your friends and
neighbors who’ve dedicated
thousands of hours volunteer-
ing to help elect conservatives,
spending thousands of their
own dollars to represent at
state and national meetings. I
personally started with Rea-
gan’s campaign as a kid, blow-
ing up balloons for parades, all
the way through co-chairing
Kevin Mannix’s gubernatorial
campaign locally, then work-
ing on Dennis Richardson’s
gubernatorial and Secretary of
State campaigns, with many in
between.
My mother, BCU’s primary
target, is the elected chair for
Congressional District 2 and a
Trump delegate sent to Cleve-
land for Convention. My ide-
ologies are clear on Council
where we stood up against
the mandates and for our 2A
rights. What were Brown and
Hackett doing? Badmouthing
these efforts systematically in
and out of businesses across
town. What triggered them
in March 2021, before my gu-
bernatorial race was even a
thought, to begin their assault?
Most of the folks at that
meeting had never partic-
ipated in one before. They
didn’t know the people they’d
been made to hate. They’d
never personally witnessed
ANY of the “problems” they’d
ardently bought into. Not even
Judge Vance Day, a staunchly
Christian conservative, passed
their litmus test. They wanted
HIM canceled when he de-
cried their mob rule tactics.
Truth always bubbles to the
surface, though it often takes
longer than we’d like. In the
big scheme of things, men like
Brown and Hackett are impo-
tent. As Day said, “They just
want to burn down the house
to rule over the ashes.” Antifa
behaves like this. Conserva-
tives don’t.
Kerry McQuisten
Baker City
Oregon PUC shouldn’t
allow utilities to seize
private land
I am an eastern Oregon
attorney and an Oregon tax-
payer. I recently learned that
the Oregon Public Utility
Commission is creating rules
to allow utilities to enter onto
and seize privately owned land
in Oregon without requir-
ing compliance with Oregon’s
condemnation laws. This con-
cerns me as an attorney, be-
cause condemnation or “tak-
ing” of private land implicates
landowners’ legal/Constitu-
tional rights. Allowing sei-
zures of land that violate the
law will generate expensive lit-
igation, and is highly likely to
be overturned by the courts.
As a taxpayer and as an attor-
ney, I object to any waiver that
will predictably result in costly
litigation, at taxpayer expense,
which is likely to lose in court.
Additionally, I am con-
cerned about the extreme ur-
ban-rural divide within our
state.
There is substantial sup-
port in eastern Oregon for
the idea that the interests and
values of eastern Oregonians
are not taken seriously by
west-side politicians. Any de-
cision by the state to ignore
private landowner rights in
favor of billion-dollar utility
companies will only fuel the
resentment of rural Orego-
nians who feel that their state
fails to acknowledge or respect
their values — particularly the
rights of private landowners.
I often hear my neighbors’
complain about this issue, and
consider the political divisions
in Oregon as frightening and
serious. Any PUC decision to
circumvent laws which protect
private landowners will only
deepen the divisions within
our state.The PUC should
exercise common sense, and
deny waivers of the law if con-
demnation of private land is
required.
Anne Morrison
La Grande
CONTACT YOUR PUBLIC OFFICIALS
President Joe Biden: The White House, 1600
Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, D.C. 20500; 202-456-
1111; to send comments, go to www.whitehouse.gov.
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, Oregon State Treasurer Tobias Read: oregon.
La Grande, OR 97850; 541-962-7691; fax, 541-963-0885; treasurer@ost.state.or.us; 350 Winter St. NE, Suite 100,
wyden.senate.gov.
Salem OR 97301-3896; 503-378-4000.
U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz (2nd District): D.C. office: 1239
Oregon Attorney General Ellen F. Rosenblum:
Longworth House Office Building, Washington, D.C.,
Justice Building, Salem, OR 97301-4096; 503-378-4400.
20515, 202-225-6730; fax 202-225-5774. Medford
office: 14 N. Central Avenue Suite 112, Medford, OR
Oregon Legislature: Legislative documents and
97850; Phone: 541-776-4646; fax: 541-779-0204;
information are available online at www.leg.state.or.us.
Ontario office: 2430 S.W. Fourth Ave., No. 2, Ontario, OR
97914; Phone: 541-709-2040. bentz.house.gov.
State Sen. Lynn Findley (R-Ontario): Salem office:
900 Court St. N.E., S-403, Salem, OR 97301; 503-986-
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown: 254 State Capitol, Salem,
OR 97310; 503-378-3111; www.governor.oregon.gov.
1730. Email: Sen.LynnFindley@oregonlegislature.gov
COLUMN
College football continues to test my commitment
C
ollege football is trying to drive
me away but I cling to it, a be-
sotted and slightly pathetic
suitor who can justify all manner of
betrayals.
A four-team playoff system that
blatantly favors a handful of tradi-
tional powers?
I dismiss this as a lovesick husband
might when he comes home and
finds a Dear John letter taped to the
TV remote control. Probably it’s just
an ill-conceived joke. And anyway I
can surely talk her out of it.
Besides which, my alma mater, the
University of Oregon, has played in
two national championship games in
the past dozen years despite lacking
the cachet of Alabama or Ohio State
or Notre Dame.
(Yes, the Ducks lost both games,
as my Beaver and Husky and Bronco
friends, relatives and, in the case of
the latter mascot, spouse, delight in
pointing out. But you can’t win a na-
tional title without actually playing in
the national title game is my juvenile,
but no less true, retort.)
A rule that allows athletes to re-
ceive six-figure payments for NIL
— the use of their name, image or
likeness?
Well, sure, this too lends a likely
advantage to a relative handful of
well-endowed programs (the U of O,
thanks to the largesse of Phil Knight,
among them). But players ought to
earn something other than a schol-
arship for their toils, after all, con-
sidering they risk injuries that can
Jayson
Jacoby
afflict them for the rest of their lives,
a risk hardly any of them will offset
with multimillion-dollar professional
contracts.
I’ll concede that even my great af-
finity for college football has been
severely tested by what was, until re-
cently, its most dramatic change —
the dreaded transfer portal, a purga-
tory which favorite players frequently
enter, only to emerge again clad in
the uniform of, perhaps, a despised
rival.
But even though I’ve muttered a
passel of profanities at the seemingly
endless litany of transfer portal an-
nouncements involving Duck players
(and not only in football), I have ul-
timately come to accept it, as I might
adjust to an annoying habit that sud-
denly crops up in a person I care for
deeply.
And yet, just as I was becoming
inured to the transfer portal and its
catering to the whims of teenagers,
college football tendered what might
be the most serious threat yet to our
relationship.
If the playoff system is a Dear John
letter, then the defection from the
Pac-12 Conference of UCLA and
Southern Cal to the Big Ten confer-
ence starting in 2024, announced
in late June, is akin to finding not a
letter from your wife, but your wife
herself, engaged in adulterous hijinks
with your best friend.
And with one of your favorite
beers open on the bedside table.
The ramifications, it seems, will
be far more dramatic than the loss
of two schools which have been con-
ference rivals of the Ducks for more
than half a century.
The Trojans and the Bruins, hav-
ing in effect entered the team ver-
sion of the transfer portal, might well
have doomed the Pac-12.
Speculation is rampant that the
conference either will dissolve as
other schools, including Oregon,
seek refuge in another league, or be
left so depleted as to lose its status as
one of the so-called “Power 5” con-
ferences.
Oregon has been mentioned as a
candidate for multiple conferences,
including the Big Ten and the Big 12.
It would be passing strange, to be
sure, to have the Ducks travel to, say,
Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Colum-
bus, Ohio, and Iowa City, Iowa, for
conference games.
But if I can adjust to having Ore-
gon’s leading running back swap his
Duck helmet for USC’s cardinal and
gold — Travis Dye was the highest
profile of Oregon’s transfer portal
losses this offseason — I suppose I
can get used to the Ducks competing
in a different conference.
But there is one potential effect
from this conference shakeup that,
were it to happen, might actually
sour, in a significant way, my fond-
ness for college football.
same conference to play one another
My fear is that the Civil War will
each year, of course. And although
go away.
it would bother me if the Civil War
What I mean is the annual football moved to, say, September, as a non-
game pitting the Ducks against the
conference game, rather than its tra-
Oregon State Bea-
ditional place as the
vers.
league game,
I’ll concede that even my last
(I understand
usually in late No-
that the two schools
vember, I can at
great affinity for college
agreed to drop the
least condone that
football has been severely change.
Civil War name in
2020, but there’s
But no Civil War
tested by what was,
nothing legally bind-
at all, even for one
ing about that de-
year?
until recently, its most
No nervous hours
cision, at least not
dramatic change — the
waiting for kickoff,
for me, and I will
continue to refer to
dreaded transfer portal, a imagining the aw-
ful scenario of the
the game, and all
Beavers gathering at
other sporting events purgatory which favorite
midfield to celebrate
pitting the Ducks
players frequently enter,
a rare triumph over
against the Beavers,
the Ducks?
as the Civil War.)
only to emerge again
No immense relief
The Civil War is
clad in the uniform of,
when Oregon romps
one of the older, and
most played, rival-
perhaps, a despised rival. to another win?
College football
ries in college foot-
has disappointed me
ball. The first game
was played in 1894. There have been frequently over the past few years.
Undoubtedly it will do so again.
125 meetings, and the game has been
But canceling the Civil War, an
played every year since 1945.
Oregon has won 67 times, Oregon event as inseparable from my con-
cept of Oregon as public beaches and
State 48. There have been 10 ties.
For me, the Beavers are the biggest Crater Lake and Tom McCall and
alpenglow on the Wallowas and Elk-
rival, and by a vast margin.
horns?
No victory is more satisfying, no
That’s one transgression I simply
defeat more agonizing.
I can’t conceive of Oregon having a can’t forgive.
football schedule that doesn’t include
Jayson Jacoby is editor of the Baker
the Beavers.
City Herald.
The schools needn’t be in the