A8 THE BULLETIN • TUESDAY, MARCH 2, 2021
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
Parking scarcity,
transit scarcity not
a winning approach
B
end is out of balance. Growth has caused housing
prices to soar and housing opportunities to plummet.
The city is making investments to keep clean water
and traffic flowing. But transportation is going to get worse.
One clear gauge: The Oregon
Department of Transportation’s
future plans for the Bend Parkway
includes the kind of bumper-to-
bumper traffic many thought they
had escaped by moving to Bend.
The smart option for a modern
city, urban planners will say, would
be more transit, bikes and safe
routes for pedestrians. That doesn’t
mean no cars and trucks. The goal
is to try to give people other good
options so there is much less need
to use a car. In Bend, the other op-
tions aren’t good. Even investments
in alternatives to the car in the $190
million transportation bond ap-
proved by voters were purposefully
toned down. It was a compromise
to win support for the package —
both among the coalition develop-
ing the bond and from voters.
Parking can seem relatively pe-
destrian among the issues of trans-
portation. Feelings about parking,
though, do get intense. To some
free parking on a public street is
virtually a birthright. To others, the
car is the ruling fauna of the city
and that must change. Free parking
is a scourge that must be eradicated
to make a city more livable and
equitable.
Bend is tilting toward the
scourge camp. The city announced
no more free parking in the city’s
parking garage. It has plans for
more paid parking downtown and
is creating a system of permit park-
ing for neighborhoods.
This week, the Bend City Coun-
cil is scheduled to talk about some
code changes to facilitate that. The
section of code about the “down-
town district” would transform
into “parking districts.” And the
temporary parking district around
McKay Park and the whitewater
rafting would become formalized
and permanent.
Whether or not you think those
changes are sensible, Bend’s blunt
pressure on parking and on cars is
coming without substantial invest-
ment in transit, biking and walk-
ing. The city is pushing people to
change to a mobility future that
doesn’t exist.
Legislature needs a
case of common sense
S
lapping big, new taxes on Or-
egon industries during a pan-
demic, well, that should make
you question the sobriety of our es-
teemed legislators.
But House Bill 3296 would raise
taxes on beer, wine, cider and dis-
tilled spirits by as much as 2,800%.
Some translation: The price of a
six-pack could go up by more than
$2, as Bulletin reporter Suzanne
Roig wrote recently.
It would make it easier to swal-
low if that new revenue the bill aims
to siphon off was going to a good
cause.
It is. The idea is it would go to
help fight addictions to alcohol and
drugs. Oregon is among the worst
in the nation in providing access to
treatment.
When the government raises taxes
on something, it can also reduce
consumption, which may in turn re-
duce problems with alcohol.
The problem is people may just
reach for cheaper alternatives, which
in many cases are not the products
of Oregon’s craft industries.
If Oregon does need to come up
with a source of revenue to fund
more addiction treatment, don’t slap
the tax increase only on one sector
of the economy.
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.
My Nickel’s Worth
Can’t get a shot
I am 73, and I have not been able
to find an appointment available for a
COVID-19 vaccine. I have been try-
ing every morning online at the St.
Charles site since eligibility opened
up for those 70 and over. Eligibility
has opened for those 65 and over, so
now the system is more overloaded
than it was ! I am furious at the state
of Oregon for not accessing more
vaccines for their seniors.
Jim Veenker, Bend
What will Bentz do?
Your March 1 reporting on Ore-
gon’s online interest in militias and
political violence raises an import-
ant question about how Rep. Cliff
Bentz will respond. Will he support
the conspiracy theories and disinfor-
mation upon which a number of his
constituents apparently rely, or will
he strive to tone down the rhetoric
and work toward a unified govern-
ment capable of passing legislation
that could actually benefit them?
— Rob Brazeau, Bend
Recognize the truth about
COVID-19
There is a question I would ask,
if given the chance to confront the
myriad people who demand the roll-
back of COVID restrictions, demand
the “right” to go maskless, demand a
return to in-person instruction, de-
mand that they be allowed to gather
in large groups in churches, etc. The
question is, “How many people must
die to satisfy your demands?” Is it
the case that these people, at some
level, just don’t understand what a
pandemic is? Almost half a million
people have died, but they just don’t
get it?
Right-wing politicians don’t get it.
They have always pushed purported
rights over lives, but the “rights”
they’re pushing in this regard seem
very much like privileges.
Even the Supreme Court (or at
least the conservative wing) don’t get
it. Religious rights require that more
people die, just so religious peo-
ple can gather together indoors and
breathe on one another? Really? So,
when those people go home and in-
fect their friends and neighbors, and
people die, we’re supposed to say,
“Oh well, it was their right”?
The news media don’t seem to get
it. They treat all these issues in much
the same way they treat purely polit-
ical issues. He said this, and she said
that. But no analysis. Thousands of
pages of coverage, but no one has the
guts to mention the obvious truths of
the matter? Just once I’d like to read,
“Of course, this move would result in
more COVID-19 deaths.”
— David Shoulders, Bend
More about Southworth
Thanks to David Jasper for writ-
ing about R. Gregory Nokes’ book
“Breaking Chains: Slavery on Trial in
the Oregon Territory” and Oregon’s
historic racial exclusion laws. But the
caption for the photo of formerly en-
slaved Oregonian Louis Southworth
(1829-1917) says Southworth settled
in Jacksonville. This gives a wrong
impression.
Researcher Peggy Baldwin has
written about Southworth in “The
Oregon Encyclopedia” and else-
where. Born in Tennessee, South-
worth was brought to Oregon
country by a slaveholder in 1853.
Determined to purchase his free-
dom, Southworth tried gold mining
in Southern Oregon and California,
but ultimately raised the money by
teaching violin and playing for danc-
ing schools.
Southworth farmed a claim near
Monroe. Current law limited land
ownership to whites, yet he took
the claim because the son of a white
landowner he knew had abandoned
it. Later he blacksmithed and ran a
livery stable in Buena Vista, Oregon.
The 1862 Homestead Act didn’t
restrict land ownership by race, and
Southworth and his wife and step-
son took up a claim in the Alsea Val-
ley in 1879, where he farmed till he
moved to Corvallis in 1910. Driving
on Highway 34 between Tidewater
and Waldport, you cross Southworth
Creek, named in his memory.
Maybe Louis Southworth passed
through Jacksonville searching for
gold, but he doesn’t seem to have set-
tled there. I love the photo of South-
worth with his fiddle, and I’d give my
eye teeth to know the tunes he played.
— Dorothy Leman, Bend
How to submit Please address your submission to either My Nickel’s Worth or Guest Column and mail, fax or email it to
The Bulletin. Email submissions are preferred. Email: letters@bendbulletin.com Write: P.O. Box 6020, Bend, OR 97708
A judge says we can’t ban evictions; it’s an attack on all federal power
BY LEAH LITMAN
Special to The Washington Post
A
federal judge appointed by Pres-
ident Donald Trump struck
down the federal government’s
moratorium on evictions Thursday
— a policy begun under the Trump
administration and part of the emer-
gency response to the coronavirus pan-
demic. The decision’s fate is unclear:
The government has announced that
it is will take the case to the U.S. Court
of Appeals. But the Texas judge’s ag-
gressive action is a major warning of
things to come, underscoring just how
far Trump judges will go to thwart am-
bitious government action, even in the
midst of national crises.
The eviction moratorium — which,
as of now, will remain in place as the
case proceeds — protects an estimated
40 million people from being removed
from their homes. Yet in Terkel v. Cen-
ters for Disease Control and Preven-
tion, Judge J. Campbell Barker held
that the federal government lacked
the power to regulate evictions un-
der the Constitution. His reasoning
was highly idiosyncratic. The Con-
stitution’s interstate commerce clause
grants the federal government the
power to regulate commerce among
the states. After the New Deal, courts
interpreted the clause to confer ex-
tremely broad powers on Congress.
Conservative judges have tried to rein
in those powers in recent decades, but
the Supreme Court has continued to
maintain that the federal government
can regulate economic activities that
“substantially affect” commerce.
Rich Pedroncelli/AP
Demonstrators call for passage of rent forgiveness and stronger eviction protection while carrying a mock casket past the Capitol
in Sacramento, California, on Jan. 25. On Jan. 29, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to use $2.6 billion in federal stimulus money to
pay off up to 80% of some tenants’ unpaid rent but only if landlords agree to forgive the rest of their debt.
Barker concluded, however, that
evictions do not qualify as economic
activity — full stop. He contended that
evictions concern only the right to re-
main on a property — involving mere
“possession of property” and no com-
mercial exchange. But that argument
is quite strained: Evictions are the rem-
edy for breaches of commercial agree-
ments between landlords and tenants.
A tenant agrees to pay a landlord and
in exchange, the landlord agrees not
to evict the tenant. Evictions are what
happens when a tenant fails to pay a
landlord under a contract: They are
inextricably bound up with economic
transactions. Yet the judge insisted that
evictions were somehow distinct from
economic activities.
If that argument sounds thin, it is.
But in some ways, Barker is taking his
cues from the Supreme Court, which
has parsed the commerce clause in
an increasingly pinched way in recent
years. Consider that in the Supreme
Court’s opinion in NFIB v. Sebelius,
five justices concluded that Congress
lacked the authority to impose a pen-
alty on people who failed to purchase
health insurance. The court reasoned
that Congress could not regulate eco-
nomic “inactivity” — that is, the de-
cision to forgo purchasing health in-
surance. (The court ultimately said the
penalty could be justified if it was con-
sidered to be a tax, and Congress elim-
inated the penalty in 2017.)
But the eviction case goes even
further in curbing Congress’ com-
merce-clause powers. In fact, if widely
embraced, the logic of the opinion
could destabilize a considerable swath
of federal law. The Fair Housing Act,
for example, prohibits discrimination
in the housing market. Under the dis-
trict court’s theory, that statute may be
unconstitutional — at least insofar as
it bars discriminatory evictions. More-
over, in Russell v. United States, the
Supreme Court upheld, on commerce
clause grounds, a federal statute that
prohibited arson of a rental property.
But if evictions from rental proper-
ties do not count as economic activity,
then setting fire to a rental property
probably doesn’t, either.
The opinion’s logic could reverber-
ate well beyond the housing market.
To determine the scope of the gov-
ernment’s regulatory power, Barker
focused exclusively on activities that
involve payment (rent, for example),
and set aside all of the activities related
to that payment (including whether
one can be evicted). Under the cur-
rent understanding of the commerce
clause, Congress can prohibit hotels
and restaurants across the United
States from refusing to serve custom-
ers on the basis of race. But under the
district court’s theory of economic ac-
tivity, a refusal of service would likely
not count as something that Washing-
ton has any say over (since a refusal of
service, like an eviction, concerns the
right to be on the premises rather than
an exchange of money).
On the one hand, the decision in-
validating the eviction moratorium
should not create a panic, because
this one decision will not resolve the
matter; an appeal, naturally, is already
underway. Yet on the other hand, it is
far from clear how many of the judges
that were nominated by Trump will
embrace the kind of legal gymnastics
that the district judge did in this case
to move the law in the preferred direc-
tion — toward curbing federal power.
e e
Leah Litman is an assistant professor of law at the
University of Michigan and host of the Supreme
Court podcast “Strict Scrutiny.”