A2 THE BULLETIN • SUNDAY, MARCH 21, 2021
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GENERAL
INFORMATION
LOCAL, STATE & REGION
DESCHUTES
DESCHUTES COUNTY
COUNTY L. New
New COVID-19
COVID-19 cases
cases per
per day
day
COVID-19 data for Saturday, March 20:
Deschutes County cases: 6,163 (4 new cases)
Deschutes County deaths: 70 (zero new deaths)
Crook County cases: 796 (2 new cases)
Crook County deaths: 18 (zero new deaths)
Jefferson County cases: 2,001 (1 new case)
Jefferson County deaths: 31 (zero new deaths)
Oregon cases: 161,320 (339 new cases)
Oregon deaths: 2,362 (5 new deaths)
BULLETIN
GRAPHIC
GRAPHIC
129 new cases
130
(Dec. 4)
What is COVID-19? It’s an infection caused by a new coronavirus.
Symptoms (including fever, coughing and shortness of breath)
can be severe. While some cases are mild, the disease can be fatal.
108 new cases
120
(Jan. 1)
90
new
cases
7 ways to help limit its spread: 1. Wash hands often with soap
and water for at least 20 seconds. 2. Avoid touching your face.
3. Avoid close contact with sick people. 4. Stay home. 5. In public,
stay 6 feet from others and wear a cloth face covering or mask.
6. Cover a cough or sneeze with a tissue or cough into your elbow.
7. Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces.
110
*No data
available on
Jan. 31
due to state
computer
maintenence
(Nov. 27)
100
90
80
50
new
cases
70
60
(Feb. 17)
47 new cases
50
(Nov. 14)
541-382-1811
7-day
average
8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri.
28 new cases
(July 16)
ONLINE
40
31 new cases
(Oct. 31)
30
16 new cases
(Sept. 19)
9 new cases
www.bendbulletin.com
SOURCES:
OREGON HEALTH
HEALTH AUTHORITY,
AUTHORITY,
SOURCES: OREGON
DESCHUTES COUNTY
COUNTY HEALTH SERVICES
SERVICES
20
(May 20)
1st case
10
(March 11)
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Lottery results can now be found on
the second page of Sports.
Secretary of state hires
constitutional law expert
to help in redistricting case
BY HILLARY BORRUD
The Oregonian
Oregon Secretary of State
Shemia Fagan has taken the
unusual step of hiring an ex-
perienced lawyer with consti-
tutional law expertise to help
her win a court battle with leg-
islative leaders over deadlines,
data sets and powers to redraw
legislative districts.
P.K. Runkles-Pearson was
a partner at long-established
Portland firm Miller Nash
Graham & Dunn before she
was hired as the secretary
of state’s in-house general
counsel in February, accord-
ing to her LinkedIn profile.
Runkles-Pearson has expertise
in state and federal constitu-
tional law, according to her for-
mer employer’s website.
None of the prior three sec-
retaries of state had a general
counsel. Instead, they relied
on the Oregon attorney gen-
eral to represent them and
could get input from other
staffers who were lawyers. The
attorney general supervises
Runkles-Pearson’s work and
Runkles-Pearson has been ap-
pointed as a special assistant
attorney general for work on
the redistricting case, a spokes-
person for Attorney General
Ellen Rosenblum noted.
Runkles-Pearson’s annual
salary is $165,936, according
to the secretary of state’s Pub-
lic Information Officer Aaron
Fiedler. He did not directly an-
swer a question about why Fa-
gan chose to hire an in-house
attorney to work on redistrict-
ing, rather than paying the De-
partment of Justice to do the
work, as is the norm.
Now that Runkles-Pearson
has been hired, Fagan’s admin-
istration is working on figuring
out what legal issues in addi-
tion to redistricting the general
counsel might tackle.
“P.K. Runkles-Pearson was
hired as the general counsel for
the entire agency and has been
working with all seven agency
divisions to assess and serve
their general counsel needs,”
Fiedler wrote in an email. “In-
cluded in agency needs are
redistricting issues, in consul-
tation with the Oregon Depart-
ment of Justice.”
Redistricting in Oregon
Redrawing Oregon’s legisla-
tive districts normally falls to
the Legislature, and the state
constitution requires the body
to finish that work by July 1.
That is usually not a problem,
as federal law requires the Cen-
sus Bureau to provide states
with the necessary population
data by April 1 and that has
happened decade after decade.
Only if the Legislature fails to
agree on how to redraw state
House and Senate district lines
by the July 1 deadline does
that task fall to the secretary of
state. Under the state constitu-
tion, that officer has until Aug.
15 to complete the task.
But the pandemic and other
factors complicated the collec-
tion of the once-a-decade tally
of the U.S. population in 2020.
As a result, the Census Bureau
has said it cannot get the re-
quired population data to Ore-
gon until Sept. 30.
The secretary of state’s role is
Kaylee Domzalski/OPB file
Shemia Fagan, pictured on the Oregon Senate floor in 2020, became
Oregon’s secretary of state this year.
among the key issues at stake
in the Legislature and secre-
tary’s dispute over how Oregon
should handle the conflict be-
tween the state’s constitutional
redistricting deadlines and
pandemic-delayed timeline to
receive census data. So are the
questions of how well the dis-
tricts will reflect the state’s cur-
rent population and potential
disruption to 2022 elections.
Seeking an extension
In a March 10 court filing,
the Democratic leaders of the
Legislature, Senate President
Peter Courtney of Salem and
House Speaker Tina Kotek of
Portland, asked the Oregon
Supreme Court to extend law-
makers’ deadline to finish leg-
islative redistricting until three
months after the state receives
census data. They also asked
the court to order the secretary
of state, who is also a Demo-
crat, not to take up the task of
legislative redistricting until
at least three months after the
census data is released – or
roughly the last day of 2021.
Candidates who run for of-
fice in 2022 must file to run by
March 8, and many begin lin-
ing up financial and political
support before that.
“For Oregon, that delay —
absent intervention by this
court — creates a constitutional
crisis,” the legislative leaders’
lawyers wrote. The legislators
argued that redrawing legisla-
tive districts without the new
census data would violate the
Equal Protection Clause and
Voting Rights Act and noted
the census “provides data on
race and ethnicity in all the
census blocks in Oregon neces-
sary to ensure compliance with
the federal Voting Rights Act.”
The Legislature is repre-
sented by lawyers from the
national firm Markowitz Her-
bold, who a legislative commit-
tee hired last month.
In the secretary of state’s re-
sponse, her lawyers wrote that
the unprecedented calamity
of the last year and the related
census delay would not justify
the court ignoring Oregon’s
constitutional redistricting
deadlines. She insists the Leg-
islature can complete the task
by its July 1 deadline, using
data that from Oregon’s feder-
ally-designated census experts
at Portland State University,
which is not as accurate as what
the Census Bureau plans to
send at the end of September.
“There is no dispute that
final district lines should
be evaluated in light of cen-
sus data, and that the delay
thus poses a significant chal-
lenge for the Legislative As-
sembly in drawing the map,”
Runkles-Pearson and the attor-
ney general’s staff wrote. “But
it does not justify the extraor-
dinary remedy that (the Leg-
islature) seeks here: an order
from this court rewriting the
constitution and leaving state
legislative district boundar-
ies in limbo until July 1, 2022,
and enjoining the secretary
of state from carrying out her
own constitutional duties in a
timely manner.”
Fagan asserted through her
lawyers that Oregon officials
could draw adequately accu-
rate legislative districts based
on yet-to-be-published data
the Portland State University
Population Research Center.
“Even if all of that data is not
yet compiled, there are several
months to do so before the July
1 deadline,” lawyers wrote on
behalf of the secretary of state.
“And when the census data
becomes available, it will be
straightforward to compare it
to the data the Legislative As-
sembly used and determine if
any corrections must be made
to the map.”
People who believe the new
legislative districts are not
fairly apportioned in light of
the 2020 census data can file a
“placeholder” protest in court
by Aug. 1, Fagan’s lawyers
wrote.
STATE BRIEFING
Oregon Tech faculty call
for president to resign
the Northwest Natural office,
where demonstrators made
speeches condemning the
natural gas provider and per-
formed a die-in protest on its
lawn Friday.
Two protesters, ages 19 and
21, were arrested for allegedly
climbing over the North-
west Natural fence and were
charged with trespassing, ac-
cording to Eugene Police.
Northwest Natural did not
return phone calls Friday.
Most protesters arriving at
the park knew they would be
participating in a bike protest
but had not been told their
final destination until the
protest was underway. The
franchise agreement the city
of Eugene maintains with the
natural gas provider, allowing
it to install infrastructure in
public right of ways, is set to
expire in May.
The two entities have not
agreed on provisions about
carbon reduction as a provi-
sion of an extension.
The group, numbering
more than 50 people and in-
cluding small children and
older adults, carried signs
calling for a transition from
fossil fuels .
Eugene Police were called
to the scene around 1:30 p.m.
on a noise complaint, police
spokeswoman Melinda Mc-
Laughlin said .
The crowd dispersed about
20 minutes after the two ar-
rests, McLaughlin said.
Climate protests were held
across the globe Friday, in-
cluding in Bend.
The Oregon Institute of
Technology’s faculty senate
has called for university pres-
ident Nagi Naganathan’s res-
ignation, but school adminis-
trators say he has no plans to
leave his post.
The senate approved the
resolution last week, saying
faculty had lost confidence in
Naganathan’s leadership.
“This is not knee-jerk,”
Professor Don McDonnell
said. “This is not COVID.
This is not union negotia-
tions.”
McDonnell, who is a pro-
fessor of medical imaging
technology at the school, will
present the resolution to Na-
ganathan asking him to re-
sign. If Naganathan declines,
all full-time faculty will vote
on whether they have confi-
dence in Naganathan’s leader-
ship this month.
Chair of the Board of
Trustees Jessica Gomez said
Thursday that board mem-
bers she has talked to are
happy with the direction of
the university and fully sup-
port Naganathan’s leadership.
She said that the resolution
declaring no confidence
stems from a labor dispute.
Eugene youth protest
targets natural gas
provider; 2 arrested
A youth-led protest against
fossil fuels biked from Eu-
gene’s Skinner Butte Park to
— Bulletin wire reports
10. HE. PLAY
in Central Oregon
Look for Central Oregon events and add your own
bendbulletin.com/events
bendbulletin.com/events
They
They will
will always
always remember
remember this
this day.
day
It was
was when
when they
they got
It
got their
their first
fi rst skin
skin
cancer
NO SUNSCREEN.
SUNSCREEN.
cancer - - NO
Did
You Know?
Know?
Did You
• Springtime
sun
is
Springtime
sun
is
sometimes
considered
sometimes
considered
more
more dangerous
dangerous because
because
the
temperatures
are
the
temperatures
are
cooler
and you
you are
cooler and
are not
not
aware
aware of
of how
how much
much sun
sun
you are
are getting.
getting.
you
• • Springtime
Springtime is is a a great
great time
time
to
to purchase
purchase a a new
new bottle
bottle
of
of sunscreen.
sunscreen. Sunscreen
Sunscreen
expires
and loses
loses its
expires and
its
eff
ectiveness over
effectiveness
over time.
time.
New Year.
Year. New
New Sunscreen.
Sunscreen.
New
PETERS DERMATOLOGY CENTER
Gerald Peters, MD, FAAD, FACMS
Ann Reitan, MHS, PA-C • Ericka Luckel, MPAS, PA-C • Julie Natoli, MS, PA-C
541-323-SKIN (7546) • www.petersderm.com • 2353 NE Conners Ave, Bend