A8 The BulleTin • Wednesday, april 14, 2021
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
Vote Hovekamp,
Borja and Schoen
for Bend parks
T
he Bend Park & Recreation District made a big change in
the last several years, agreeing to reduce fees it charges on
new development to help hold prices down on affordable
housing.
That’s on top of scholarships to
ensure lack of money won’t block
children from being able to partici-
pate in the district events. Should the
district do more? Or should it invest
more in parks and more programs?
Layers of complication get added
in when you think about the dis-
trict’s future. The acres of park per
person are anticipated to decline
over the next five years. Miles of
trails will decline, too. It’s a conse-
quence of a growing population and
the increasing cost and scarcity of
land for parks.
And then there are the more, con-
sistent refrains the district faces,
such as barking over off-leash dogs.
The popularity of the river grows,
putting pressure on access points.
And the debate over Mirror Pond’s
future and the district’s role can di-
vide a room.
Got all that? It’s just a taste of
the issues the candidates running
for board of the park district have
to look forward to. We have inter-
viewed the candidates and have
some recommendations. Keep in
mind, we don’t think there is a bad
candidate in the lot. We support Na-
than Hovekamp, Zavier Borja and
Deb Schoen.
Hovekamp is an incumbent and
current board chair. He has worked
as a biology teacher at Central Or-
egon Community College and
is Wildlife Program Director for
Central Oregon LandWatch. Be-
fore serving on the park board, he
also served on the Bend Planning
Commission and the board of the
Bend-La Pine Schools. So lots of rel-
evant experience.
He sees the parks and the dis-
trict’s programs as critical social and
physical infrastructure. He does not
want to see them decline. He is satis-
fied with the balance the district has
struck with reducing SDCs, though
he says keeping high quality parks
and programs will be a tremendous
challenge with the community’s
growth. He has been impressed with
the outreach park district staff do to
take the community’s temperature
and ensure all members of the com-
munity are served.
His opponent Lauren Nowier-
ski-Stadnick is also a strong candi-
date. She is an attorney doing civil
litigation and a former NCAA ath-
lete in three sports.
Nowierski-Stadnick is downright
enthusiastic about what parks and
park programs can do for the com-
munity. She wants to leverage her
legal background to help the district
maneuver through such challenges.
She points out she is a trained advo-
cate and can use that to break down
barriers to participation.
We don’t find major differences
between Hovekamp and Nowier-
ski-Stadnick on matters of policy.
Our endorsement goes to Hov-
ekamp because of the experience he
has on the board.
There’s no such direct experience
on the park board in the election
between Zavier Borja and Robin
Vora. Borja is a first-generation
Mexican-American who was born
in Redmond and grew up in Ma-
dras. He has worked for the Bend
park district and the Boys and Girls
Club of Bend. He is now the outside
programs coordinator for Vamonos
Outside. The organization is dedi-
cated to connecting Latinx families
to the outdoors. The park district
already does significant outreach in
bridging that gap. Borja would be a
tremendous asset to do more.
Borja is somewhat young com-
pared to the average age of park
board members. He is 27. We see
that as an asset, not a problem. The
park district needs more input from
younger people about its future.
Vora retired from the U.S. Forest
Service and Fish and Wildlife Ser-
vice after 39 years. Since then, there
is a strong commitment to serve.
He has served on a long list of com-
mittees in Bend — urban renewal,
historic landmarks, the Orchard
District Neighborhood Association
and more. He has also been engaged
in working with the park district on
the development of Orchard Park
and more.
Vora is undoubtedly a strong can-
didate, but Borja gives the district a
voice it does not hear from enough.
Vote for Borja.
Deb Schoen, who was appointed
to the board, faces Elizabeth Hughes
Weide for the third seat up for elec-
tion. Schoen is the first to compli-
ment Hughes Weide. Hughes Weide
has an impressive wealth of experi-
ence managing numerous projects
that involve the National Environ-
mental Policy Act and the Califor-
nia version of same. Her expertise
would be very useful for the district
on such matters.
We do believe, though, that
Schoen is the stronger candidate
overall. She worked as a professional
in park districts for 40 years, much
in Tualatin. That’s a lifetime of first-
hand experience in the issues parks
face. It’s hard to beat that. Her ex-
perience brings a careful balance to
her approach when she thinks about
SDC waivers, access to the De-
schutes or off-leash dogs.
There’s a learning curve to serving
on a board or getting involved with
a park district. We have no doubt
Hughes Weide has the ability to get
up to speed. It just won’t be as much
as what Schoen can bring to the
position.
We recommend you vote for
Hovekamp, Borja and Schoen. And
do please vote, no matter what you
decide.
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.
It really is back to the office this time
BY LIONEL LAURENT
Bloomberg
P
eople lucky enough to have
the option are looking forward
to working from home more
after the pandemic, polls suggest —
provided they’re not schooling from
home at the same time. And polls
also suggest employers are looking
forward to offering that flexibility.
Momentum is building for a “hybrid”
workplace, according to experts,
which would most likely allow for
two to three days per week at home.
Still, as vaccine rollouts gather pace
and economies reopen, there doesn’t
seem to be much daylight between
the concept of “office-first hybrid”
and simply getting staff back to their
desks.
Google parent Alphabet last week
told staff to prepare a return to their
desks by Sept. 1 and that anyone
wanting to work remotely would
have to get prior approval. Amazon.
com also called for an “office-centric”
return to work. Meanwhile, Goldman
Sachs Group bankers are dutifully
trooping back to headquarters after
scathing comments from Chief Ex-
ecutive Officer David Solomon, who
called working from home an “aber-
ration” that was bad for innovation
and collaboration and said it was not
“the new normal.”
Of course some big companies
have said they will embrace at least
some remote work. And there are
creative ideas on how to do so, in-
cluding plans by European startup
Revolut to allow people to work over-
seas up to two months a year. But for
many the future is starting to look a
lot like the pre-pandemic days.
Although office-space demand has
been crushed by the worst global re-
cession since World War II, with ex-
cess capacity put back on the market
and vacancy levels rising, demand is
expected to start picking up this year.
Net absorption of office space, the
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difference between the total occupied
by tenants and the total vacated, is
expected to cross back into positive
territory next year in the U.S. and Eu-
rope, says Kevin Thorpe, chief econo-
mist at real-estate company Cushman
& Wakefield. In Asia, where the virus
was better kept under control, the
metric never went negative.
Whether because of attachment to
company culture, old-style manage-
ment techniques or the brand power
of the office itself, firms took a wait-
and-see approach rather than give
up their lease or flee major cities for
good. Corporate bean counters do
see real estate as a future cost saving,
and executives talk up the need for
employee flexibility, but change will
be gradual.
“Watch what companies do, not
what they say,” says Thorpe. He ex-
pects working from home to rise to
10% of the U.S. labor force from 5%
over the next decade.
Obviously, executives should tread
carefully when prodding people back
to work — the pandemic isn’t over
and variants may delay the economic
reopening process. Over-confident
messaging might confuse or demor-
alize employees if they’re forced to re-
verse course.
And yet, judging employees by
what they are doing, rather than what
they say, shows the joy of working
from home has faded. The pandemic
has cut out the daily commute, but
we’re working an hour longer every
day as a result. We are anxious to be
seen to be available, eroding the bar-
riers between work and home. Our
work-life balance hasn’t improved.
With plenty of stress, fatigue and
distractions at home, it’s not surpris-
ing that a recent survey found peo-
ple choosing to work in the office to
be more productive. Praising “wa-
ter-cooler moments” is groan-induc-
ing, but there are benefits to collab-
orating with colleagues or meeting
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clients in person. The dark side of of-
fice life, such as bullying and harass-
ment, has in some cases been harder
to tackle from behind a keyboard.
Even some residential data sug-
gests people are starting to cool on
the pandemic dream of escaping to
the countryside. Knight Frank re-
search for the U.K. shows urban areas
close to London are back in demand,
with the popularity of rural idylls dy-
ing down.
All of which takes us back to the
so-called hybrid model. Will it come
to pass if going back to the way things
were is proving hard to resist? The
omens aren’t great.
Executives are already grumbling
that picking just two days a week for
remote work, seen as the bare mini-
mum, is complicated. If Monday and
Friday are likely to be overwhelm-
ingly popular, what then? What hap-
pens to productivity if the office is
packed three days a week and empty
the rest of the time? If employees are
told to pick different days, when will
they collaborate with colleagues face-
to-face? This will take time, effort and
investment to manage.
No wonder some have warned that
hybrid work looks like the “worst
of both worlds.” The complexity of
managing hybrid roles will be too
much for some firms, and the in-
evitable productivity losses will be
pinned on remote work — resulting
in a generalized shift back to the of-
fice. When Marissa Mayer banned
working from home at Yahoo in
2013, she said it had sacrificed “speed
and quality.”
Is this too pessimistic? Maybe. But
the quicker offices reopen, the steeper
the climb gets for the more ambitious
work-from-home advocates. People
have short memories: COVID-19 has
been a bonfire of many vanities, and
the WFH revolution might yet be one
of them.
e e
Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg columnist.
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30 days. Email: letters@bendbulletin.com
This particular Supreme Court isn’t going to like idea of vaccine passports
BY NOAH FELDMAN
Bloomberg
T
he consensus among legal ex-
perts seems to be that states
have the right to mandate vac-
cine passports. The main basis is a
1905 Supreme Court case, Jacobson
v. Massachusetts, which held that the
Constitution wasn’t violated when the
city of Cambridge required all adults
to get the smallpox vaccine. Follow-
ing the same logic, courts have up-
held state laws mandating vaccines for
schoolchildren.
But we should not assume that
this deference to state power would
continue under the current Supreme
Court.
For one thing, the constitutional
tests for infringements on personal
liberty have been refined in the last
half century. For another, the current
court is deeply sympathetic to reli-
gious exemptions. If large numbers
of people decline vaccination on re-
ligious grounds, it would effectively
undermine the power of any passport
system.
The Jacobson precedent is certainly
well established. It was written by Jus-
tice John Marshall Harlan (the first
of two justices of that name), who es-
tablished his place in the court’s pan-
theon by dissenting in the shameful
case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which up-
held racial segregation.
The Jacobson ruling rested on the
idea that the state has the power to
protect the common good. The court
held that the Constitution does not
protect individual liberty so much as
to override the state’s reasonable de-
cision to require vaccination. As the
court put it, “the liberty secured by
the Constitution of the United States
to every person within its jurisdiction
does not import an absolute right in
each person to be, at all times and in
all circumstances, wholly freed from
restraint.”
Today, however, the Supreme Court
would analyze the issue through a
different framework, one known as
“strict scrutiny.” First, the court would
ask if the individual’s fundamen-
tal rights were implicated by a gov-
ernment regulation. If so, the court
would then ask whether there was a
compelling governmental interest and
whether the restriction was narrowly
tailored to achieving that interest —
using the least restrictive means pos-
sible.
It is probable, although not abso-
lutely certain, that the court would
treat a vaccine passport as implicating
a fundamental right to make health
care decisions for one’s own body.
True, requiring a passport isn’t quite
as intrusive as mandating vaccination.
But it could be understood as effec-
tively the same from the standpoint of
the individual’s rights, especially if the
passport were legally necessary for ac-
cess to basics like public transport or
workplaces.
The current Supreme Court would
almost certainly hold that the state
has a compelling interest in protect-
ing public health against COVID-19
and restarting the economy. Where
the rubber really meets the road, then,
would be the question whether vac-
cine passports count as the least re-
strictive means to protecting the com-
munity against the virus.
States would, presumably, argue that
vaccine passports are the only way to
safely restart the economy and protect
public health. Opponents would argue
that it’s possible to restart the economy
without vaccine passports. A majority
of the Supreme Court justices might
well be sympathetic to the conclusion
that the passport is not the least re-
strictive means to achieve the govern-
ment’s objectives.
Regardless, the takeaway is not
that vaccine passports are unconsti-
tutional, but rather that the Supreme
Court as currently composed might
take a very different attitude than the
view held by most constitutional ex-
perts. That alone might be a good
reason for states to hold back from
adopting vaccine passports.
e e
Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg columnist and
host of the podcast “Deep Background.” He is a
professor of law at Harvard University and was a
clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter.