A8 THE BULLETIN • WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2021
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
Should journalists
get a discount on
public records?
W
hen The Bulletin requests access to information
from government, it sometimes hits a wall of No.
Bulletin reporter Jackson Ho-
gan asked in 2018 the Bend-La Pine
Schools for a list and price of all apps
and textbooks bought for student iP-
ads, specifically those in use. About
a month later, the district told him
the cost of providing the informa-
tion would be $2,000. Eight district
staffers would apparently have to
work a total of 18.5 hours to pull the
information. Then a lawyer with the
High Desert Education Service Dis-
trict would have to work six hours at
$115 an hour to review the informa-
tion and redact anything necessary.
The district offered to give The Bul-
letin 50% off or charge $1,000. Still,
prohibitively pricey for The Bulletin.
House Bill 2485 seeks to enshrine
50% off for journalists in law. It re-
quires state agencies to reduce public
records request fees by 50% if the re-
quest is made in the public interest.
It requires state agencies to entirely
waive fees if a public records request
is in the public interest and narrowly
tailored. And it requires requests
made by members of the news me-
dia to be treated as in public interest.
The bill is sponsored by state Rep.
Karin Power, D-Milwaukie. She in-
troduced it on behalf of the Society
for Professional Journalists.
We certainly appreciate the senti-
ment. But sometimes 50% is no deal.
The cost can still be a wall of No.
News media is not defined in the
bill. That can be tricky. Maybe The
Bulletin would easily qualify. What
about a person who diligently tracks
and regularly writes about educa-
tion policy on a blog? Is that person
a member of the news media? Are
they acting in the public interest?
As much as we like the idea of get-
ting 50% off, Oregon’s public records
law is Oregon’s “public” records law.
The news media can play a criti-
cal watchdog role and help spread
information. It just seems unfair
that a member of the public could
be charged double for the same re-
cord as a journalist. The member
of the public has just as much right
to it under Oregon law, not just as
much right at twice the cost. And
by charging journalists half the cost,
the costs of providing information to
other members of the public would
presumably go up, because they
would be subsidizing the work of
journalists.
More than 40 bills in play this leg-
islative session aim to change Ore-
gon’s public records laws. Some seek
to block disclosure of information
to the public. Some seek to make
disclosure easier. We are flattered
that the intent of HB 2285 is to help
journalists tear down the Wall of No.
But all Oregonians are entitled to
the right to know what their govern-
ment is doing.
HB 2485 is scheduled for a public
hearing on Thursday in the House
Rules Committee.
Eliminating student
debt might benefit
the wealthy the most
O
regon Sens. Ron Wyden and
Jeff Merkley are backing a
plan to cancel up to $50,000
for federal student loan borrowers.
“It’s ridiculous that so many
students are forced to take on
back-breaking amounts of debt to go
to school—especially as the corona-
virus continues to upend our econ-
omy,” Merkley said in a statement.
“It’s time to cancel student loan debts
so we can free up Americans bur-
dened by student debt to chase their
dreams, contribute to their commu-
nities, and help us pave the way to
economic recovery.”
The idea supported by Democrats
is also to eliminate any tax liability
from having the debt wiped out.
People who are low income or
who are racial minorities would cer-
tainly benefit, but the benefit would
accrue mostly to wealthier families.
They hold most of the federal edu-
cation debt. A simple policy of elim-
inating $50,000 in federal student
loan debt would be a regressive pol-
icy, not a progressive one. It would
be a policy that would give more
benefits to people who need it less.
Wyden and Merkley say they
want to ensure that debt cancellation
“helps close racial wealth gaps and
avoids the bulk of federal student
debt cancellation benefits accruing
to the wealthiest borrowers.”
OK how is that going to be done?
By race? By race and income? And is
this only a one-time deal or can col-
leges start escalating their costs and
advertising: Don’t worry, your first
$50,000 in college debt is now free.
Editorials reflect the views of The Bulletin’s editorial board, Publisher Heidi Wright, Editor
Gerry O’Brien and Editorial Page Editor Richard Coe. They are written by Richard Coe.
GUEST COLUMN
Parking reform will help us create
a sustainable future for the city
BY MELANIE KEBLER
L
et’s talk about how parking re-
form can help create a sustain-
able future for Bend.
Our city is growing rapidly
and faces challenges of af-
fordability, traffic conges-
tion, and equitable economic
recovery. How we use our
streets and land for parking
has a meaningful impact on
housing, transportation, and Kebler
the environment our econ-
omy depends on. As a city that loves
to innovate, it’s time to evolve the way
we think about parking in Bend.
Parking reform is only one compo-
nent of a much larger plan that your
City Council can build for Bend’s fu-
ture. Council’s upcoming proposed
two-year goals cover a wide range of
issues, including how we can become
a more connected city that is truly
welcoming to everyone. We must
plan effectively for new neighbors and
improve how everyone gets around
town. Smarter parking policy can help
us do that.
Bend residents interact with our
streets, roads and parking lots every
day. How we use that public space has
a direct impact on everyone’s quality
of life. The city has a duty to respon-
sibly manage space on our streets in
a way that is equitable, financially
sound, and environmentally responsi-
ble. And in fact, one way to do this is
to start thinking of our streets as pub-
lic spaces for people, not just cars.
More than 2,500 people in Bend
don’t own a car, and more than 5,000
people live in households that either
have no car or multiple adults
sharing a car. Some choose
to walk, bike or ride transit
instead, but the vast major-
ity are economically disad-
vantaged, disabled or elderly.
Those folks still pay, indi-
rectly, for the cost of “free”
parking, and that’s not fair.
Just like a “free” lunch,
there’s no such thing as a “free” park-
ing space. Parking seems free to the
driver who gets there first, but ev-
ery resident of our city pays a cost in
maintenance, loss of other more pro-
ductive uses of that public space, and
increased carbon emissions. A recent
study reported on by Sightline Insti-
tute found that building more parking
led to more driving, less transit use,
and less walking. Free parking is paid
for by all of us in the prices of almost
everything we buy and the tax dol-
lars spent to subsidize driving. That
includes taxes on those who can’t, or
don’t choose to drive..
Housing affordability and avail-
ability are hurt by “free” parking
mandated by our city code. Our local
builders and contractors are forced
to sacrifice valuable land area to cre-
ate storage for cars, whether or not
that much space is actually needed at
a particular site. That means higher
prices and rents. Again, lower-in-
come residents pay more to subsidize
drivers. And removing parking min-
imums doesn’t mean no new parking
spaces will be built. It just allows mar-
ket demand to direct the amount of
parking built.
Combined with investment in
making it easier to walk, bike, roll,
take transit, or even park further out
and hop on a downtown shuttle, park-
ing reforms can help us create more
neighborhoods where the personal
cost of owning a car isn’t a prerequi-
site to living in Bend.
Eliminating unfair subsidies for
parking also creates revenue we can
do other great things with. Parking
benefit districts take fees generated by
a neighborhood’s streets and put them
back into improving that neighbor-
hood, like street improvements that
will benefit everyone who works in or
visits our downtown. And technology
can help us to build a dynamic, equi-
table parking system.
It can be hard to see the bigger pic-
ture when even small parking policy
changes spark strong reactions and
tightly focused conversations. But
each step we take toward responsibly
managing public parking space helps
us to build a better future for Bend’s
environment, housing market, and
transportation system. I’m confident
that as part of this council’s overall vi-
sion and policy goals, parking reform
will make Bend a safer, fairer and
more pleasant place to live.
e e
Melanie Kebler was elected to the Bend City Council
in November 2020. Views expressed are her own.
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The coronavirus may not be able to mutate beyond control
BY FAYE FLAM
Bloomberg
I
t’s been about a year since the early
coronavirus alarms were raised,
and despite a decline in infec-
tions, new fears are rising up. New
COVID-19 variants are making pes-
simists worry that an even bigger next
wave may be coming.
It’s true that the virus is mutating in
ways more profound than biologists
anticipated last summer. But new re-
search also suggests that there may be
limits to how many tricks the corona-
virus has up its sleeve — and that may
make it easier for vaccines to keep up.
If scientists have been somewhat
blindsided by the variants, it’s because
they hadn’t fully realized the way the
coronavirus tends to mutate — in
a way that’s distinct from influenza
or HIV. This virus has a talent for
shape-shifting by dropping pieces of
its genetic code.
Early on, a few scientists observed
these so-called deletion mutations by
studying virus samples from patients
with compromised immune systems.
Such patients can be crucibles for viral
evolution because the virus survives
in their cells for months, making cop-
ies of itself all the while.
The mutations that scientists were
observing in individual patients were
essentially the same as those now seen
in the new variants. Molecular biolo-
gist Kevin McCarthy of the University
of Pittsburgh, who analyzed muta-
tions in immune-compromised pa-
tients, found this eye-opening. “Evo-
lution in that patient, in some ways,
foreshadowed what the virus was go-
ing to do all over the world,” he said.
McCarthy’s group published its
findings earlier this month in Science.
Another group of researchers pub-
lished a similar comparison in De-
cember in the New England Journal
of Medicine.
Last spring and summer, scientists
had considered SARS-CoV-2 to be
somewhat mutation-averse, because
it contains a molecular proofreading
mechanism. When a mutated virus
replicates, this mechanism corrects it.
Human cells and those of other ani-
mals have various such proofreading
systems to allow them to replicate
without too many errors. Influenza
viruses and HIV do not — which is
one reason those viruses continue to
evolve too fast for a single vaccine.
However, it turns out that the coro-
navirus’ proofreader lets one type of
mutation through: a section of miss-
ing genetic code. So the virus is able
to eject sections of code and still rep-
licate — and still get transmitted to
other people.
McCarthy says he came to appreci-
ate this in the early fall when he was
asked about some of the deletions
found in a patient. “I started look-
ing at all these genomic sequences of
SARS-CoV-2 that had been deposited
from all over the world in a public da-
tabase,” he said. “And I started finding
additional examples.”
The deletions can allow viral pro-
teins to change their shapes in ways
that could evade both the proofread-
ing mechanism and the human im-
mune system. That’s what people are
worried about, McCarthy explained.
The first new variant that made big
news — the B.1.1.7 variant that spread
so fast in the U.K. — has two of these
deletions.
B.1.1.7’s big advantage seems to be
an increased ability to transmit be-
tween people. It’s also a basic principle
of evolution that the more that hu-
mans produce antibodies to a virus —
because they’ve been infected before
or because they’ve been vaccinated —
the greater will be the advantage for
any new variant that can elude those
antibodies.
Penn State University evolutionary
biologist Andrew Read likens this to
the introduction of new predators on
an island. The animals already there
either die or adapt — by growing
shells, by climbing or burrowing, or
by acquiring the ability to fight back.
If the coronavirus develops an an-
ti-vaccine strategy, we will need a
counter strategy.
That could mean upgrading the
existing vaccines so that they induce
a broader range of antibodies. It also
might help to give people different
vaccines for their first and second
doses — an approach that needs to be
tested in clinical trials.
A year ago, some people thought
the course of the pandemic could be
foretold according to simple formulas.
As the complexities of the coronavirus
have become apparent, scientists have
grown less confident in their predic-
tions. But that also means there’s no
reason to assume the pandemic will
never go away.
e e
Faye Flam is a Bloomberg columnist.