A8 The BulleTin • Sunday, May 9, 2021
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
Wilderness permits
came and went fast
T
here’s fast like Usain Bolt. There’s fast like how fast a
parking spot can go in downtown Bend. And now there’s
a new one: fast like how fast the Forest Service’s new
wilderness permits went for the Central Cascades.
On the first morning they were
available, April 6, high-demand
dates and locations were sold out in
30 minutes. Page views on the asso-
ciated recreation.gov website spiked
to more than 1,000 a minute for
overnight trips.
The most recent data we could get
courtesy of the Forest Service was as
of April 27. By then:
• About 15,800 individual day-use
permits were sold — about 93% of
the total.
• 4,582 overnight group permits
were sold — about 85% of all ad-
vance overnight permits.
Before you start to get depressed
— as a certain editorial writer did
— thinking that you will never, ever
get a chance to visit the nearby wil-
derness again, there is something
important to remember. The For-
est Service didn’t put all the permits
up for sale online. It only put up a
percentage.
The majority of permits, partic-
ularly for day-use permits, are still
available. New permits are going to
be made available on a sort of roll-
ing one-day window. For instance,
the Green Lakes trailhead will have
80 day-use permits open up every
day during the permit season. Only
20 permits per day were available in
advance.
So you likely still can go, though it
The majority of permits,
particularly for day-use permits,
are still available. New permits
are going to be made available
on a sort of rolling one-day
window.
might take more advance planning
than it did in the past. And there is
now a cost. A day-use permit is “$1
per person, for each outing.” An
overnight permit is “$6 per group
permit, for each outing” with 1-12
people per group.
Is this new system better for ev-
eryone? It was put in place because
the Forest Service was concerned
crowds were overwhelming trails
and degrading the wilderness expe-
rience. This system may help better
protect the wilderness for now and
for the future.
The concern we continue to have
is if it will just put some people off.
That may mean people value the
wilderness less because they can’t
visit it as easily.
And any barrier to entry can be
a bigger barrier to entry for people
of lower income. Will the Forest
Service be able to mitigate that? We
hope so.
Safety problem presented
then solved — for now
P
eople can sometimes be re-
leased from professional med-
ical care in Deschutes County
with serious mental illness before
anyone would like them to be. Beds
at Oregon State Hospital are hard
to come by, especially during the
pandemic.
With proper medication, the pa-
tients may be stable. Without it,
there can be trouble.
The problem just can be ensur-
ing they get medication. Holly Har-
ris, program manager of Deschutes
County Behavioral Health Crisis
Services, said her department has
had three or four more extreme
cases this year.
Patients needed medication but
were “trespassed” or prohibited
from visiting locations where the
county offers those services. She
didn’t specify what got the individu-
als trespassed. Weapons were men-
tioned. On Tuesday, she asked the
Deschutes Public Safety Coordinat-
ing Council for help.
“This is one of those things that
in a risk assessment we talk about
being uncommon but potentially
high consequence or catastrophic,”
said Dr. George Conway, Deschutes
County’s Health Services Director.
You can’t turn in any direction at
the meetings of the Deschutes Pub-
lic Safety Coordinating Council and
not see an important public safety
organization represented. The sher-
iff, the presiding judge, the district
attorney, local police departments,
mental health and more meet to-
gether to identify problems like this.
They then work together to solve
them.
As soon as Harris explained the
problem, Deschutes County Sher-
iff Shane Nelson spoke up. “Since
we are already in partnership with
you, if you want to just call me
offline, we’ll solve it for you,” he
said. He added nonuniformed de-
tectives could be used to perhaps
lower the tension level for some
patients.
That will hopefully work. For
now. But as Deschutes County Cir-
cuit Court Presiding Judge Wells
Ashby pointed out, more and more
the state seems to be saying that
counties need to handle these prob-
lems locally — beds may continue to
not be available at the state hospital.
Deschutes County may need to de-
velop its own solution.
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
Douglass did not dox
Bend-La Pine School Board Chair
Carrie Douglass was accused of “dox-
ing” her opponent in a formal com-
plaint to the district. Doxing is the act
of publicly revealing private personal
information. When a candidate files
for public office in Oregon, they sub-
mit a candidate filing form (SEL 190),
which requires a candidate to disclose
information to the public. These fil-
ings are public records, searchable
on the county clerk’s and secretary
of state website. Sharing information
that is retrievable by a Google search
is not doxing.
When you run for public office,
you make trade-offs; one of those is
to public scrutiny. At best, candidates
engage the public about who they are,
what they stand for, and their posi-
tions on relevant issues. When candi-
dates refuse to participate in our dem-
ocratic processes by not showing up
at nonpartisan forums or participat-
ing in endorsement interviews, they
shirk their responsibility to inform the
public. Claiming “doxing” and filing
“formal complaints’’ against your op-
ponent doesn’t lead to a better demo-
cratic process; it sows misinformation
and baseless divisiveness. Families
and students in Bend-La Pine deserve
better.
Carrie Douglass courageously en-
gages the public in many ways: social
media, public events, email, etc. I’m
awed by the time she dedicates to en-
gaging and listening to the commu-
nity, even and especially when people
don’t agree with her. We need more
public officials like Carrie who are
willing to talk to the people they rep-
resent, not people who stand behind
their lawyers and deprive the public of
dialogue.
— Whitney Swander, Bend
Lopez-Dauenhauer
for Bend schools
I live in Redmond, but I pay close
attention to what is happening in
Bend because of my grandchildren
being enrolled in public school there.
I support Maria Lopez-Dauenhauer
for Bend school board. Maria was
born in Mexico and moved up the
ladder through the Silicon Valley tech
world. She is a Latina mother, busi-
nesswoman, wife of a Navy veteran
and mother of two teens. She is not
afraid to speak up for our students
to get back to the basics in the class-
room, to teach our kids to love their
country and who they are regardless
of race or gender.
Her message is one of unity and
common sense: that we are all equal
and have the capacity to excel and
succeed, and lift all students up. This
community talks about the need
for diversity. Please vote for Lo-
pez-Dauenhauer for her diversity of
thought, background and character.
— Joyce Waring, Redmond
Leaving the area
I read and fully agree with the let-
ters from Clarissa Jurgensen and Bill
Eddie. Bend is becoming a sprawling,
unwelcoming place for us residents,
including the wildlife that is trying to
hang on. In a letter to The Bulletin a
few months ago, Cylvia Hayes asked
the question, “When will we reach
enough?” It doesn’t look like anytime
soon.
Wildlife habitat is disappearing
rapidly without second thoughts. I
realize there will be a count and as-
sessment of the dwindling remaining
numbers of some species. Do you se-
riously think any change in this crazy
overbuilding ethic will occur as a re-
sult? I don’t like being a pessimist, but
clearly, clearly, money is the ruling de-
cider here.
I’m leaving the area. I don’t want to
be around to witness the continued
destruction of this beautiful place.
We do not need any more develop-
ments, golf courses that suck up our
dwindling water supply and emer-
ald-green lawns in the city doing the
same.
If I thought that staying and fight-
ing the good fight would matter, I
would think hard about it. I’m sure
I will be replaced by at least 10 other
folks who will happily try to deal with
the growing traffic, road rage, water
shortages and sprawl.
— Suzanne Staples, Bend
Don’t vilify the unvaccinated
In the Wednesday edition of The
Bulletin, Vicky Ryan, Crook County
public information officer, is quoted
as saying, “The bottom line is that
not getting vaccinated could set us all
back.”
This makes no sense. If vaccina-
tions are as effective as they’re pro-
fessed to be and now almost uni-
versally available, then the main
population that one puts at risk by not
getting vaccinated is other people who
choose not to get vaccinated. Some of
those people could get COVID and
even die, but that’s a risk that they are
apparently willing to take. None of
this, however, will “set us all back” be-
cause it should have no effect on most
of us who have already been vacci-
nated.
If, as Ms. Ryan claims, “Each indi-
vidual has a right to choose, and we
respect that choice,” she might begin
by not vilifying the unvaccinated as
threats to the community.
— Gary Miranda, Redmond
Letters policy
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Make Election Day a holiday in Oregon to increase voting numbers
BY KEVIN FRAZIER
O
ur state Legislature cannot
wave a wand and solve Ore-
gon’s problems. Gov. Tom Mc-
Call acknowledged as much in his
second inaugural message: “Members
of the Assembly, we cannot shape a
better Oregon by ourselves.
We are leaders, but we are
not magicians. Only the cit-
izens of Oregon themselves
can attain this goal.”
McCall encouraged legis-
lators to rely on compromise
to solve problems, reminding
Frazier
his colleagues that “if we re-
nounce realism and gradu-
alism, we may — paradoxically — be
frustrated in our ideals, and see the
realization of our goals delayed.”
In other words, it’s on Oregonians
in every corner of the state to end the
gridlock in Salem — by electing collab-
orative officials, keeping them account-
able, and replacing them when they’ve
placed partisan or personal goals over
the needs of their constituents.
The problem is too many Orego-
nians haven’t used the best tool to
help shape a better state: Too many of
us aren’t voting.
As recently reported by
Jim Moore in The Oregon
Way, “in 2020, 91.3% of Re-
publicans and 90.9% of Dem-
ocrats voted. Of the six mi-
nor parties, turnouts ranged
from 84.3% (Independents)
to 59.1% (Working Families).
Unaffiliated voters came in
at 64.8%.” The participation
gap between Oregonians affiliated
with major parties and everyone else
has a drastic impact on who heads to
Salem. Moore pointed out that even
in a Portland-metro district where the
Democratic candidate did not receive
the party’s endorsement, the third-
GUEST COLUMN
party candidate failed to draw robust
support (though 39% of the district
was registered as nonaffiliated, the
third-party candidate received just
19% of the vote).
This isn’t to say that Oregon needs
a competitive third party (though I
think it does). This isn’t to say Dem-
ocrats and Republicans are flawed
(each has pros and cons). This is
merely to say that as long as more par-
tisan Oregonians participate at a dras-
tically higher level than everyone else,
we’ll continue to see politics and pol-
icymaking in blue and red shades —
making the sort of compromise and
collaboration that McCall urged all
the more difficult to realize.
Why non-D and non-R voters are
sitting on the sidelines is a bit of a
chicken-and-egg problem. Ds and Rs
are motivated by seeing candidates on
their team on the ballot. Oftentimes,
the rest of the electorate doesn’t see
anyone with their views vying for of-
fice. Ds and Rs feel like their vote mat-
ters — for example, one additional
Democrat could be the difference in
whether the party has a supermajor-
ity.
It can feel less necessary to vote for
the lone independent or third-party
candidate, who will face stiff odds in
realizing their agenda.
One solution would be universal
voting — taking steps to ensure that
every eligible voter indeed partici-
pates. I’m not sure that’s the approach
McCall would suggest. After all, he
pointed out that an “Oregonian is an
individual unique and his fierce inde-
pendence.”
For now, let’s start by making Elec-
tion Day a holiday. Oregonians should
celebrate their role in and responsibil-
Oregonians should celebrate their
role in and responsibility
for shaping our state.
ity for shaping our state. It may seem
unnecessary in a mail-in voting state,
but the date would make clear that
participation is an expectation in our
state.
And, at a time when just one in
four Oregonians think our democracy
has improved over the last four years,
investing in our civic pride is an over-
due investment.
If Oregonians want compromise in
Salem, then we’ll have to vote like we
want it, and that will require even the
nonaffiliated voters actually showing
up to the polls.
e e
Kevin Frazier was raised in Washington County.
He is pursuing a law degree at the University of
California, Berkeley School of Law.