The BulleTin • Friday, March 19, 2021 A5
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
State law should not
punish county unfairly
W
hen Deschutes County voted in November to
prohibit new marijuana production and processing
outside the county’s cities, the vote also meant
something else.
The vote cut the county off from
what was about $500,000 a year in
revenue from the state.
That money would have gone to
help fund the county health depart-
ment and law enforcement. It turned
out that the vote ostensibly to stop
additional marijuana production
in the county was also a vote that
made it more difficult for Deschutes
County to fight addiction and crime.
The way Oregon’s marijuana laws
were written excluding any type of
marijuana operation meant losing
all the marijuana money. It doesn’t
matter that Deschutes County does
have existing marijuana producers.
As state Rep. Jason Kropf, D-Bend,
explained the law was written like an
on/off switch. County voters turned
it off.
Kropf and state Rep. Jack Zika,
R-Redmond, have introduced a fix,
House Bill 3295. It turns the funding
mechanism into more of a “dimmer
switch” in Kropf’s words. Deschutes
County would continue to get fund-
ing, according to the same state for-
mula as before — revenue raised is
divided up based on acreage and
licensing. Deschutes County or any
other government entity wouldn’t be
cut off entirely because it prohibits
new operations. Kropf, Zika and De-
schutes County Commissioner Tony
DeBone testified in favor of the bill
earlier this month.
Two important issues came up
during that hearing. Did voters
know the county would lose reve-
nue? Some did. The Bulletin wrote
about it. Commissioners also dis-
cussed it during public meetings.
But the revenue drop wasn’t clearly
explained in the voter’s pamphlet.
The second issue is: The amount
of money at stake will be signifi-
cantly reduced by November’s Mea-
sure 110. Measure 110 was the ballot
measure approved statewide that
provides more money for drug treat-
ment. It will siphon off about 72% of
the $500,000. Still the county might
get $140,000 and that amount seems
likely to rise as marijuana revenue
increases over time.
State law shouldn’t be written to
punish Deschutes County unfairly. It
is. If this fix doesn’t pass this session,
the law still needs to be changed.
County makes understanding
the budget a little bit easier
G
overnment budgets can be
real snoozefests. Impenetra-
ble. Lacking context. A flood
of numbers.
It doesn’t mean they aren’t im-
portant. If you want to find some-
thing out about how, say, Deschutes
County spends its money or where
its money comes from, it’s probably
there. Somewhere. Deschutes Coun-
ty’s budget document has a pretty
cover, a good overview and lots
of charts and lots of numbers. For
more than 300 pages.
But what the county has done
recently is provide what it calls its
“Popular Annual Financial Report.”
A new one came out this week. You
can see it at tinyurl.com/9j5jpwsv.
It’s a very clear 14-page short
summary of where the county gets
its money and where it goes. For
instance for a resident of Bend, the
county is the property tax collec-
tor. But it only keeps about 17 cents
on the dollar. About 48 cents goes
to schools. Another 21 cents goes
to the city of Bend. The Bend Park
& Recreation District gets 10 cents.
The Deschutes Public Library gets
4 cents.
The county earns most of its
money in taxes and spends most of
its money on public safety. It’s level
of debt has substantially declined
over the last 10 years from $94 mil-
lion to $46 million. That’s happened
as it has paid off projects such as
county buildings. Because of the
county’s growing population there is
a need to expand the county court-
house, which will likely mean an in-
crease in indebtedness.
Deschutes County isn’t the only
government agency making an ex-
tra effort to make information about
it easier to understand. The city of
Bend has in recent years provided
dashboards on its website that show
where it is at in meeting city goals
and budget information. The cool
thing is that they update often.
Of course not everything is hunk-
dory when it comes to governments
being forthcoming about what they
are doing. But we complain about
that so much it only seems right to
point out some examples where gov-
ernments are trying hard to get it
right.
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
Oregon needs tighter mink regulations
Thank you for pointing out that we at the Center for Bi-
ological Diversity are absolutely aiming to reshape how Or-
egon treats animals by seeking to end beaver trapping and
hunting last year and this year improve how mink farms
are regulated.
Here’s why: COVID-19 can and has been passed back
and forth between humans and mink (this has already
resulted in a viral mutation). COVID-19 has ravaged
mink farms in Europe and the U.S. At least three mink
escaped an Oregon mink farm that was quarantined fol-
lowing a COVID-19 outbreak (and two tested positive for
COVID-19).
In addition to the threat of mink becoming a reservoir
for COVID-19 mutations that may undo our human vac-
cination efforts, we’re concerned that farmed mink could
spread COVID-19 to wild mink and their relatives, like ot-
ters, fishers, martens and badgers, potentially decimating
wild animal populations.
We’ve been through a lot this past year. A lot has
changed. Many of us are thinking about what we want to
keep changing. If we want to stop the next pandemic and
get this one under control, we need to make changes to the
facilities that provide ideal breeding grounds for pandem-
ics.
Oregon’s mink factory farms are a threat to public health
and wildlife. Our petition to add mink to ODFW’s pro-
hibited species list and Senate Bill 832, the bill to close
Oregon’s mink farms and shift their workers to new em-
ployment, would reshape our relationship with animals to
provide us all a safer future.
— Lori Ann Burd is the environmental health director for the
Center for Biological Diversity.
Support the bike bill
In response to your editorial on March 7, I am writing
on behalf of The Environmental Center to voice our strong
support for SB 395, “The Bike Bill”, on the 50th anniver-
sary of its original passage.
Bend was much smaller in 1971 when an initiative was
passed to direct 1% of state transportation improvement
funds to biking and walking routes. Since then, Bend’s
population has ballooned from 13,700 to nearly 100,000.
SB 395 would boost funding to 5%.
SB 395’s extra funds could help Bend ensure safer walk-
ing and biking routes. Last fall, Bend voters approved a
transportation bond. But the bond only pays for a portion
of the total investment we need to make in our transpor-
tation system over the next 20 years. Some additional re-
sources from the state would go a long way to helping our
community meet that need.
Our vision is a transportation system in Bend that
moves people and goods safely and efficiently, and that
meets the needs of all users, whether they walk, bike, take
the bus, or drive. Safety is especially important for walkers
and bikers — people won’t get out of their cars if they don’t
feel safe. Walking and biking are also good for our health
and they reduce car trips on our streets and highways, re-
sulting in less congestion and carbon emissions.
Now is the time to pass the Safe Routes for All act, SB
395, and achieve our vision of safer, less congested streets
for all.
— Neil Baunsgard is a program manager at the Environmental
Center in Bend.
Unfair advantage
Over the years, women’s sports have incorporated im-
portant changes. There was a time when girls’ sports had
physical exertion limits. An example was the special rules
for girls’ basketball. Each team had six players rather than
the normal five. Three played only offense and three were
just defensive players; they couldn’t cross the half court
line, apparently to limit excessive running.
Today girls and women’s sports such as soccer, volleyball
and basketball are played under the same rules as males.
The removal of activity restraints was an acknowledgment
that girls are capable of and benefit from strenuous compe-
tition provided there is player equality.
The Duke University did a study of male and female
performance in various track and field events. The study
found that biological males were physically dominant in all
events evaluated. One example: the 400 meter world cham-
pion woman’s best time in 2017 was exceeded by 285 boys
aged 17 and under; 4,341 adult male sprinters bested her
time.
Redmond city Councilor Krisanna Clark-Endicott’s
support for the South Dakota legislature’s bill allowing bi-
ological girls only in girls’ events is entirely reasonable.
Those whose frame of reference is gender ideology, iden-
tity politics, cancel culture and group think, however, find
the councilor’s position unacceptable, or as this newspaper
implied (Mar. 11), transphobic. Putting aside the unfortu-
nate name calling, the basic question is this: should a small
group of competitors be given unfair advantage while cast-
ing aside the wishes and desires of a much larger group of
competitors? South Dakota correctly says no.
— Jared Black, Bend
Want to fix the filibuster? All it takes is guts
BY KAREN TUMULTY
The Washington Post
T
he problem with the Senate fil-
ibuster is not that there are too
many of them. It is that there
are too few.
President Joe Biden is on the right
track when he says he wants to see a
return to the old days, when senators
who wanted to block a bill had to take
the floor and keep talking, like a re-
prise of Jimmy Stewart’s famous scene
in the 1939 movie, “Mr. Smith Goes
to Washington.”
The legislative ideal behind the fil-
ibuster, a maneuver almost as old as
the Senate itself, is to encourage the
culture the founders intended. It was
set up to be an institution lubricated
by deliberation and compromise, and
a place where the views of the mi-
nority are given a hearing.
That explains why, despite the lib-
eral cry to do away with the filibuster,
only about 1 in 5 Democratic sena-
tors say they want to see it abolished,
according to a survey done by the
Washington Post’s Power Up team.
But for the filibuster to work the
way it is supposed to, rather than as
a means of blowing up the legisla-
tive machinery, the Senate needs to
go further. It must make the filibus-
ter painful enough to exact a price
on the entire Senate. If one senator
wants to obstruct a bill by talking it
to death, the 99 other senators should
have to be present in the chamber as
well, foregoing whatever fundraisers
or other events they may have sched-
uled.
One of the reasons the faux filibus-
ter has become so common is that
it imposes no penalty, except on the
idea that a majority should be able to
work its will in a democracy.
If you go by the frequency of clo-
ture motions — the procedure by
which 60 votes are required to cut off
debate on a measure — it is clear that
senators who are in the minority use
procedural gambits to gum up the
Guest columns: Your submissions should be
between 550 and 650 words; they must be signed; and
they must include the writer’s phone number and
works far more frequently than they
did in the past. In the Congress of
2019 and 2020, there were 328 cloture
motions filed; back in the 1950s, this
generally happened one or two times
at most during a session.
What passes for a filibuster in
modern times usually consists of a
weary clerk reading a roll call over
and over to an empty chamber while
the senators themselves go on about
their business. Every so often, a ma-
jority leader orders an all-nighter in
which metal cots are rolled out for the
senators to rest. Then-Senate Major-
ity Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pulled
that stunt in 2007 when Republicans
threatened to filibuster a resolution
calling for troops to begin leaving
Iraq. Reid gave in the following day.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist,
R-Tenn., also hauled out the cots
when Democrats were blocking ju-
dicial appointments in 2003. That no
one took any of this seriously became
clear when Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa,
address for verification. We edit submissions for brevity,
grammar, taste and legal reasons. We reject those
submitted elsewhere. Locally submitted columns
held up a sign in the early evening
announcing that he planned to head
home to watch “The Bachelor.”
Occasionally, grandstanders in the
Senate’s ranks stage a pointless talk-
athon simply for the attention it can
draw. (See: Cruz, Ted.) That no doubt
would still happen if the “speaking
filibuster” became the norm, but it
would be less likely to be tolerated if it
meant that all of a senator’s colleagues
had to sit there and listen.
The beauty of doing it this way is
that it would require no change to the
Senate rules at all, just a leader with
the guts to demand the presence of
senators in the chamber.
We saw that happen in 1988, when
Majority Leader Robert Byrd, D-W.
Va., a parliamentary master, got frus-
trated over a GOP filibuster of cam-
paign finance legislation and called
for a quorum of 51 members to ap-
pear. When Republicans boycotted
the quorum vote, Byrd ordered the
sergeant-at-arms to round up and
alternate with national columnists and commentaries.
Writers are limited to one letter or guest column every
30 days.
arrest the absent senators. Sen. Bob
Packwood, R-Ore., attempted to bar-
ricade himself in his office during the
midnight manhunt and was carried
onto the Senate floor feet first.
“The knock on the door and the
forced entry smack of Nazi Ger-
many, smack of communist Russia,”
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., sputtered,
claiming that senators were treated
more roughly than “even those ac-
cused of the most heinous crimes.”
For his part, Packwood said: “I rather
enjoyed it.”
It is worth noting that even after all
of that, Byrd failed to get a vote on the
campaign finance bill. But he made
his point about the obstructionism
of those who were blocking it, and he
probably made the Republican mi-
nority think twice about using the
tactic again. The next Congress saw
the number of cloture motions drop
dramatically, from 54 to 38.
— Karen Tumulty is a Washington Post
columnist covering national politics.
How to submit
Email: letters@bendbulletin.com