A6 The BulleTin • Friday, January 29, 2021
Republicans
Continued from A1
But with the Republicans fac-
ing a Democratic supermajority
in both chambers of the Legis-
lature just as the 2021 session
began, many GOP lawmakers
complained the state party was
trying to score national politi-
cal points instead of working to
win Oregon elections.
“It’s none of our business
what US House Representatives
from other states do” Rep. Bill
Post, R-Keizer, wrote in a blog
post demanding an agenda re-
set. “Focus, please.”
The Senate did not make a
group statement, but some also
were angry with the timing,
topic and tone of the attack.
“I have not seen any credi-
ble evidence to suggest that the
riot at the United States Capi-
tol was a ‘false flag,’” said Sen.
Tim Knopp, R-Bend. “I do not
support the Oregon Republi-
can Party’s resolution. I find it
disheartening that while Orego-
nians are struggling, these po-
litical distractions get in the way
of helping them recover.”
The uproar intensified when
the Anti-Defamation League
harshly criticized Republicans
for misappropriating the Reich-
stag fire, a prelude to the Holo-
caust, to buttress an argument
that those who were the target
of the attacks were the perpe-
trators.
“The violence at the US
Capitol on January 6th was a
large-scale physical assault on
our nation’s democratic values
and institutions perpetrated by
right-wing conspiracy theo-
rists, extremists, and support-
ers of former President Trump.
That is a fact,” the ADL said in a
statement.
The Republican lawmakers
said they were blindsided by the
Oregon Republican Party pro-
nouncement. They were never
consulted or even told in ad-
vance what was coming from
the party’s 22-member execu-
tive committee of GOP activists.
The Oregon State Commit-
tee has provided fuel for a feud
with GOP lawmakers before.
The party hosted conservative
political firebrand Roger Stone
at its 2018 conference in Sa-
lem. A squad of Proud Boys,
the right-wing group with a
reputation for violence, served
as Stone’s bodyguards, flashing
“white power” hand signs at a
party after his speech.
Despite the sharply conserva-
tive tone of the statement, state
GOP chairman Bill Currier has
been criticized by some activ-
ists as not being conservative
enough by requiring a litmus
test on issues important to the
party’s increasingly Trump-ori-
ented base.
Redirected
Continued from A1
“That’s currently about 60%
of the 53,000 first doses to be
sent around the state next week,
reflecting the large number of
health care workers and indi-
viduals from vulnerable popula-
tions in the region,” Brown said
Brown did not say where the
doses would come from, but her
office provided a list of 15 coun-
ties that are ahead of schedule
on inoculating priority groups.
Some of the doses are from a
new shipment authorized by the
U.S. Centers for Disease Con-
trol and Prevention.
The diversion was an-
nounced soon after news re-
ports that Deschutes County
and others were inoculating se-
nior citizens 75 year old and up.
Under the current guidelines,
those groups were to receive
shots as late as Feb. 14.
The reason that the 15 coun-
ties are ahead of schedule was
not mentioned in Brown’s
statement or information from
the Oregon Health Authority.
Grant County has moved down
the list because of an unexpect-
edly high rate of eligible people
declining to be vaccinated
Brown has made inoculat-
ing teachers and school staff
a higher priority than vacci-
nations for those aged 65 and
above who are most likely to get
seriously ill and die from the
virus. Oregon is the only state
giving priority to teachers over
seniors.
Brown praised counties that
had moved more swiftly than
expected through the early pri-
ority groups.
“Other counties have done a
fantastic job and have finished
their first round of vaccines for
Phase 1a populations,” Brown
Currier said he believes the
party needed to be a “big tent”
that can create winning coali-
tions with unaffiliated voters
and disenchanted Democrats.
“We need to be more focused
on issues rather than trying to
decide whether some given can-
didate meets some litmus test,”
he said. “The party doesn’t pick
the candidates, the voters do.”
Critics within the party say
the hard right turn on the cur-
rent version of the Republi-
can Party would reject Oregon
icons like Gov. Tom McCall and
Sen. Mark Hatfield, who spear-
headed environmental reforms
and equal rights issues.
No Republican has won the
governorship since Vic Atiyeh
in 1982. The state has supported
the Democratic candidate for
president, win or lose, back to
Mike Dukakis in 1984.
Republican lawmakers run-
ning in 2020 found themselves
sharing a ballot and sometimes
a stage with Jo Rae Perkins, a
QAnon conspiracy believer,
who was easily defeated by
Democrat Sen. Jeff Merkley.
Without strong statewide can-
didates, Currier and the party
committee have been called out
by some in the GOP for a “fixa-
tion” on launching recall efforts
against Gov. Kate Brown that
never got enough signatures to
even trigger a vote.
Julie Parrish, a former GOP
House member who is now a
political consultant, said in 2019
that a recall was a sign of a party
leadership low on good ideas.
“We need a strategy, and a re-
call isn’t it,” she said.
The ultimate fallout on the
controversy won’t be known for a
while. Voters don’t go to the polls
again for major partisan offices
until the May 2022 primaries.
Jim Moore, a professor at Pa-
cific University, studies public
reactions to politics as outreach
director from a base named
after one of those long-ago Re-
publicans: The Tom McCall
Center for Civic Engagement.
“The biggest impact of the
“false flag” assertion will be it
driving more moderate Repub-
licans out of the party — those
that are still left after five years
of Trump and decades of a
party moving to the right on all
issues,” he said.
Winning elections is tough
for Republicans in Oregon to-
day. But the party’s scant pres-
ence in Salem and Washington
was given a jolt by the claims.
“That all being said, the Ore-
gon Republican Party is getting
international notice with its
incendiary public pronounce-
ments,” Moore said. “The mea-
sure of how that is working out
will be simple — does it bring in
money to the ORP coffers.”
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gwarner@eomediagroup.com
Phase 1a completions
Counties that have completed vacci-
nating the 1a group, which includes
medical staff, health care workers,
elderly in nursing homes and staff
working at the facilities:
• Jackson
• Deschutes
• Klamath
• Crook
• Yamhill
• Jefferson
• Grant
• Marion
• Coos
• Wallowa
• Malheur
• Morrow
• Lake
• Baker
• Polk
CICELY TYSON • 1924-2021
Groundbreaking, award-winning actor dead at 96
BY MARK KENNEDY
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Cicely Ty-
son, the pioneering Black actor
who gained an Oscar nomina-
tion for her role as the share-
cropper’s wife in “Sounder,”
won a Tony Award in 2013 at
age 88 and touched TV view-
ers’ hearts in “The Autobiogra-
phy of Miss Jane Pittman,” died
Thursday at age 96.
Tyson’s death was an-
nounced by her family, via her
manager Larry Thompson,
who did not immediately pro-
vide additional details.
A onetime model, Tyson be-
gan her screen career with bit
parts but gained fame in the
early 1970s when Black women
were finally starting to get star-
ring roles. Tyson refused to
take parts simply for the pay-
check, remaining choosey.
“I’m very selective as I’ve
been my whole career about
e e
gwarner@eomediagroup.com
Andrew Harnik/AP file
Actress Cicely Tyson blows a kiss
after receiving the Presidential
Medal of Freedom from Presi-
dent Barack Obama at the White
House in 2016.
dom in 1972. Tyson was cast as
the Depression-era loving wife
of a sharecropper (Paul Win-
field) who is confined in jail for
stealing a piece of meat for his
family. She is forced to care for
their children and attend to the
crops.
Her performance evoked
rave reviews, and Tyson won
an Academy Award nomina-
tion as best actress of 1972.
In the 1974 television
drama “The Autobiography
of Miss Jane Pittman,” based
on a novel by Ernest J. Gaines,
Tyson is seen aging from a
young woman in slavery to a
110-year-old who campaigned
for the civil rights movement
of the 1960s.
In the touching climax,
she laboriously walks up to a
“whites only” water fountain
and takes a drink as white offi-
cers look on.
“It’s important that they see
and hear history from Miss
Jane’s point of view,” Tyson told
The New York Times. “And I
think they will be more ready
to accept it from her than from
someone younger”.
Biden opens ‘Obamacare’ window for uninsured
BY RICARDO ALONSO-
ZALDIVAR
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Presi-
dent Joe Biden on Thursday
ordered government health
insurance markets to reopen
for a special sign-up window,
offering uninsured Ameri-
cans a haven as the spread of
COVID-19 remains danger-
ously high and vaccines aren’t
yet widely available.
Biden signed an exec-
utive order directing the
HealthCare.gov insurance
Mug shots
Continued from A1
It would prohibit the release
of booking photos before con-
viction, except in certain, lim-
ited circumstances, including
to aid in the identification of a
fugitive or suspect in a crimi-
nal case.
The bill also targets online
platforms that scrape local jail
websites and automatically
post mug shots on their pages,
charging upward of hundreds
of dollars to take them down.
The industry was addressed
with legislation in 2013 re-
quiring them to remove mug
shots in cases of expunge-
ment.
Under the new proposal,
these websites would be re-
quired to take down mug
shots within 30 days of a re-
quest and charge no more
than $50.
Bend defense attorney
Shawn Kollie said he’s seen
defendants spend as much as
$1,000 to remove a mug shot
from the many websites where
it had been posted.
Kollie said he supports the
bill’s two main purposes: to re-
inforce the U.S. justice system’s
Jail death
Continued from A1
said. “We will push to give first
doses to all Phase 1a individuals
statewide before February 8.”
The state will send second
doses to the counties ahead of
schedule so they can keep on a
timeline for those who have al-
ready received their first shots.
In a related development,
OHA said it would stop issu-
ing specific information about
COVID-19 deaths in Oregon.
Since March, OHA has in-
cluded the age, home county,
place of death, the date of in-
fection, the date of death and
the existence of any underlying
conditions.
Statistics on overall deaths
will be maintained, but specific
case information will not.
OHA said the compilation of
the daily death toll information
was stretching staff too thin.
Critics and the media ques-
tioned the timing, coming amid
a debate over Brown’s decision
to prioritize teachers over the el-
derly. The daily reports showed
that the deaths are overwhelm-
ingly in the 70 and above age
range.
It also comes the day before
the Oregon COVID-19 vacci-
nation committee is expected to
issue ongoing prioritization for
vaccines.
what I do. Unfortunately, I’m
not the kind of person who
works only for money. It has to
have some real substance for
me to do it,” she told The Asso-
ciated Press in 2013.
Besides her Oscar nomina-
tion, she won two Emmys for
playing the 110-year-old for-
mer slave in the 1974 television
drama “The Autobiography
of Miss Jane Pittman.” A new
generation of moviegoers saw
her in the 2011 hit “The Help.”
In 2018, she was given an
honorary Oscar statuette at the
annual Governors Awards. “I
come from lowly status. I grew
up in an area that was called
the slums at the time,” Tyson
said at the time. “I still cannot
imagine that I have met with
presidents, kings, queens. How
did I get here? I marvel at it.”
“Sounder,” based on the Wil-
liam H. Hunter novel, was the
film that confirmed her star-
Had Baksis indicated he
had experiencing thoughts of
suicide, he would have been
referred to a mental health
professional and placed on
suicide watch, Hummel
wrote. Baksis, however, an-
swered no, and was booked
into general population.
COVID-19 protocols at the
jail require inmates to serve
an initial 5-day isolation pe-
riod with no interaction with
markets to take new applica-
tions for subsidized benefits,
something Donald Trump’s
administration had refused
to do. He also instructed his
administration to consider re-
versing other Trump health
care policies, including curbs
on abortion counseling and
the imposition of work re-
quirements for low-income
people getting Medicaid.
“There’s nothing new that
we’re doing here other than
restoring the Affordable Care
Act and restoring Medicaid to
the way it was before Trump
became president,” Biden said
as he signed the directives in
the Oval Office. He declared
he was reversing “my prede-
cessor’s attack on women’s
health.”
The actions were only the
first steps by Biden, who has
promised to build out former
President Barack Obama’s
health care law to achieve a
goal of coverage for all. While
Biden rejects the idea of a gov-
ernment-run system that Sen.
Bernie Sanders has pushed
for in his “Medicare for All”
proposal, his more centrist
approach will require congres-
sional buy-in. But opposition
to “Obamacare” runs deep
among Republicans.
The most concrete short-
term impact of Biden’s orders
will come from reopening
HealthCare.gov insurance
markets as coverage has
shrunk in the economic tur-
moil of the coronavirus pan-
demic. That’s an executive
action and no legislation is
required.
presumption of innocence,
and to set limits on pay-to-re-
move sites.
“If we truly presume folks
are innocent unless and until
the government proves their
case beyond a reasonable
doubt, it seems appropriate
to not blast an innocent face
around the internet/media,”
Kollie said.
In Deschutes County, ar-
rest subjects are required to be
“booked and printed” in every
case, felony or misdemeanor.
Bend defense attorney Er-
ick Ward said that rather than
a punishment handed down
by a court, the costs associated
with having a mug shot in the
public eye are often a client’s
No. 1 concern.
“The mug shot lives for-
ever, even if your case is later
dismissed, you’re acquitted
at trial, or the conviction gets
expunged,” Ward said. “The
mug shot is often the first
thing you see when you Goo-
gle someone’s name, so it of-
ten has catastrophic effects on
a person’s employment, repu-
tation, love life and ability to
rent.”
Mug shots are also part of
the arrest data that the media
uses to present the facts of a
crime story, such as the name
of the person arrested, charges
filed and the basic facts of the
case being made. They have
generally been available to the
media as public records since
the passage of the Public Re-
cords Act in 1973.
Journalism groups have tra-
ditionally opposed efforts to
curtail this information. Two
groups in Oregon, the Society
of Professional Journalists and
the Oregon Newspaper Pub-
lishers Association, opposed a
similar 2013 law but represen-
tatives of both said they have
yet to take formal positions on
the new proposal.
The 2013 legislation fo-
cused on abuses of the pay-to-
remove industry. Tim Glea-
son, journalism professor at
the University of Oregon, said
the draft legislation goes too
far broadening the earlier law.
“While I understand the in-
tent of the draft proposed bill,
it essentially denies the public
access to information when
access to that information is
in the public interest,” Gleason
wrote to The Bulletin. “Rather
than craft a bill that would
appropriately balance the pri-
vacy interests of the accused
and the public interest in dis-
closure, this draft would take
the public’s interest out of the
equation.”
Fellow Oregon journalism
professor Scott Maier said text
and photo records should be
treated the same by officials
and released to the public
when lawful to do so. Both
are public documents, of pub-
lic interest and central to the
story, he said.
Journalists should exercise
care on their end, as well, ac-
cording to Maier. Some pub-
lications have a practice of
withholding mug shots until
criminal charges are brought,
to guard against frivolous ar-
rests.
“This doesn’t mean the me-
dia shouldn’t withhold publi-
cation. For example, respon-
sible media often withhold
or at least minimize visual
portrayal of mass-murder
suspects — no need to glorify
or invite copy-cat incidents,”
Maier wrote to The Bulletin.
“Just because media can pub-
lish mug shots doesn’t mean
they should.”
other inmates.
On Dec. 3, deputy Chad
Bach was conducting hourly
rounds of inmate cells when
he found Baksis hanging by a
towel tied to a bunk bed. Ac-
cording to the official inves-
tigation, Bach called for help
from other deputies and en-
tered the cell and lifted Baksis
to relieve the pressure on his
neck.
Jail and medical staff cut
down Baksis and began
life-saving measures, includ-
ing use of an automated ex-
ternal defibrillator, CPR and
administering oxygen, Hum-
mel wrote. Paramedics ar-
rived and transported Baksis
to St. Charles Bend, where he
died three days later.
Hummel said Baksis was
also detoxing from prescrip-
tion pain medication for a
back injury and was “anxious
about losing his liberty.”
“Scott Baksis was loved
and deserved to live,” Hum-
mel wrote. “Our lives are
worse off without him. Today,
I spoke with Scott’s mother,
explained my decision, and
extended my sympathies for
her loss.”
The Deschutes County
Sheriff’s Office has a policy
regulating the administration
of prescription medication
to inmates. An office spokes-
man said Thursday the office
needed more time to review
whether it could disclose if
Baksis had been provided his
prescribed pain or anxiety
medication.
e e
e e
Reporter: 541-383-0325,
gandrews@bendbulletin.com
Reporter: 541-383-0325,
gandrews@bendbulletin.com
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