A8 The BulleTin • Thursday, January 13, 2022
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
What’s the
right price for
public records?
A
police bodycam recording, emails between politicians or
data about COVID-19 cases can tell a story that Oregonians
want to know and some in government contrive to hide.
Oregon’s public records laws are
strong on paper. But there are many
examples where government bod-
ies seek to delay or outright deny
requests. And sometimes the fees
charged for the records can be prohib-
itively pricey. Charge enough and it’s
just the same as any denial.
Examples drive that home. A Bulle-
tin reporter made a public records re-
quest from the organization that over-
sees this region’s bus system, the Cen-
tral Oregon Intergovernmental Coun-
cil. The reporter sought the complaints
filed from disabled and low-income
riders. After more than a year of wait-
ing, the reporter got the documents in
2016. The complaints were indeed few
compared to the volume of rides pro-
vided, though some complaints were
serious. Passengers said drivers were
putting them in danger.
In another example, in 2018, when
iPads were still relatively new in the
Bend-La Pine Schools, a Bulletin re-
porter asked for a list and the price of
apps and textbooks purchased for stu-
dent iPads. The district said the price
would be $2,000 because of the staff
time to collect it and the cost of a law-
yer to go through and redact anything
necessary. The district did lower the
price to $1,000, but that was still too
high a cost.
Those are relatively extreme ex-
amples from a few years ago. COIC
made changes to its public record
policy. And at least when The Bulle-
tin’s editorial board requests infor-
mation from the school district, the
response is swift and reasonable. Fees
charged, though, continue to be an
issue for journalists, the public and
governments.
Oregon’s Public Records Advisory
Council is looking for solutions. The
council is a state body whose power
comes from its ability to study and
make recommendations. It’s up to leg-
islators to weigh the recommendations
and make any changes in the law.
The council has heard from jour-
nalists. It knows complying with some
requests are a burden for government
agencies. And there are companies
who make vast requests for public
documents and turn around and sell
the information. How should state
policies be written to handle that?
The council reviewed last week
a proposal to have the Legislature’s
Policy and Research Office look into
how other states handle such matters.
What are the fees charged? How are
the fees determined? Does the public
get charged for legal fees for review
and redaction?
Then there is the matter of fee waiv-
ers. In Oregon, journalists frequently
request a fee waiver, arguing that what
they are doing is in the public interest.
Sometimes public bodies then waive
the fees or reduce them. How is it
done in other states?
All that information could be useful.
The more difficult question to answer
will be what options work best. Jour-
nalists may see it one way. Other mem-
bers of the public another. And govern-
ment agencies a third.
Making high school
football a fair fight
F
riday night. High school foot-
ball. The band. The cheerleaders.
The crowd. It can still be quite
the event, even if the pandemic and
chronic traumatic encephalopathy
have clouded those Friday night lights.
So when the Oregon School Activ-
ities Association’s Football Ad Hoc
Committee proposes changes, it’s
worth looking at what they have in
mind. We read in The Oregonian the
committee is considering a policy to
make football teams playing down a
classification to be ineligible for post-
season play.
Teams are allowed to play down a
classification if they have been losing,
a lot. They are allowed to play down
if they had an in-class winning per-
centage for 22% or less over the previ-
ous two years. But what about when a
team that plays down keeps winning
or making it to the championship? Is
that fair?
We don’t pretend to know the right
way to solve this problem. If you want,
you can contact the OSAA and tell it
what you think. The website is osaa.org.
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.
A possible Snake River dams solution
BY JIM GREER
T
he question of “should the
lower four Snake River dams
be removed to save salmon?”
seems never-ending, while a poten-
tial solution is now within reach.
With the many stakeholders, such
as power utilities and conservation
groups, dug in with opposing posi-
tions siding with either “the dams
should stay” or “the dams must go”,
one could conclude there is no possi-
ble resolution.
For over three decades the pop-
ulations of Snake River salmon and
steelhead have plummeted to levels
nearing extinction. Billions of dol-
lars have been spent on fish ladders,
water release programs, habitat res-
toration, removal of road culverts
and other stream blockages, killing
of predators like cormorants, sea li-
ons and smolt-eating pikeminnows.
Hatcheries have been built to raise
and replace the wild steelhead and
salmon for human harvest, but the
protected wild component of these
fisheries is still at all-time lows.
Lawsuits and judges are drawn
into the fray to determine if plans
developed by agencies are adequate
for recovery of the salmon and steel-
head. Invariably the plans have been
found to be insufficient. The scien-
tists found smolt mortality is more
than 20% at each lower Snake River
dam as they migrate downstream.
The surviving fish must then nego-
tiate the remaining four Columbia
River Dams and reservoirs. Ocean
conditions and climate change have
also added their impacts to the equa-
tion in recent years.
GUEST COLUMN
So, whose ox is being gored? Be-
sides the fish, the biggest losers are
the Native American tribes that cul-
turally, spiritually and for sustenance
have depended on salmon for thou-
sands of years. Sport and commercial
fisherman and the communities and
businesses associated with these ac-
tivities are huge economic losers.
Utilities make the case that the
lower four dams provide reliable,
and carbon free electricity, while
fearing the wrath of their customers
if electric rates were to rise. At the
same time new clean energy tech-
nologies and conservation programs
are expanding quickly and adding
replacement power to the electrical
grid.
The state’s scientists say that re-
moving these dams will give the
fish a long-term fighting chance.
Their data show no matter what
has been done to date, the wild fish
populations continue to decline.
Conservation groups make the
case for salmon recovery, increas-
ing biodiversity, and adding jobs
and economic gains through new
recreational opportunities. With
the dam removal option, irrigators,
grain growers, barging companies
and others dependent on the dams
fear lost livelihoods. Many politi-
cians appear to see the challenge of
consensus too high of a mountain
to climb. Tribes remind everyone
of what the United States promised
to them in treaties and agreements
made long ago.
So yes, saving salmon is a highly
complex problem. However, there
is a proposal on the table today that
addresses most all of the concerns.
U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, a Repub-
lican from Idaho, has put forward
a draft plan he calls The Columbia
Basin Initiative. He has a big pic-
ture view of the future of wild Snake
River salmon and steelhead and
where they are headed and the costs
and impacts to those affected by dam
removal. He and his staff have done
extensive reviews of the science and
past mitigation actions and have
concluded dam removal is the only
option for success. The Initiative
addresses all aspects of the contro-
versy, how issues will be addressed,
and the federal dollars used to cover
the costs. Simpson notes that sev-
eral congressional representatives
and senators from the four states
involved (Montana, Idaho, Wash-
ington and Oregon) sit in powerful
committee positions, which makes
now the time to move forward. We
need support from all of our con-
gressional representatives as time
is running out for these iconic fish
species.
I encourage you to look at Rep.
Simpson’s initiative at the Colum-
bia Basin Initiative and contact fed-
eral senators and representatives
to get their support and ask your
friends across the four states to do
the same.
Jim Greer lives in Sisters. He is a former director
of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
and the former chief of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration
Program.
e
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What if Democrats lose and Republicans become a majority party?
BY MEGAN MCARDLE
The Washington Post
W
ASHINGTON — What
happens if Democrats lose
in 2024?
I don’t mean “What if Republi-
can-controlled legislatures override
the results of the presidential elec-
tion?” or even a less noxious “What
if a Republican wins the electoral
college but loses the popular vote?” I
mean, what if Democrats just . . . lose?
The question is admittedly specu-
lative, but it’s not as far-fetched as my
left-leaning readers might imagine.
They ought to start imagining it, how-
ever, because the more the left as-
sumes it can’t happen, the more likely
it becomes.
Democrats have gotten out of the
habit of thinking of the Republican
Party as a normal opposition that
sometimes beats them by the sim-
ple expedient of winning more votes.
Even before Jan. 6, they often saw Re-
publican victories as a bit of a cheat,
the product of voter suppression, ger-
rymandering and the bad luck of a
Constitution that grants outsize influ-
ence to low-population states. Demo-
crats push election reforms so aggres-
sively because they believe their cause
is right. But it’s also true that they tend
to assume that any accessible, fair and
honest system will give the majority of
votes to Democrats.
It’s understandable that they’d think
so, since our current system gives
such outsize influence to low-popula-
tion states where Republicans outper-
form. And frankly, often, Republicans
act like losers who can’t win elections
fairly — the brazen gerrymanders, the
craven coddling of Donald Trump’s
“stop the steal” twaddle.
Yet the belief in an “emerging Dem-
ocratic majority” predates any Trum-
pian alarm bells. It goes back to a 2002
book by John Judis and Ruy Teix-
eira that outlined how demographic
change could give Democrats a dura-
ble advantage. Over time, the left ele-
vated the authors’ modest hypothesis
into a prophecy; in 2016, one heard
repeated suggestions that Republicans
might never win another presidential
election.
That belief helped shift left-wing
politics further leftward — less need
to worry about wooing moderates
when you can instead just turn out
your growing base. Yet that leftward
shift alienated a chunk of white work-
ing-class voters whom Judis and Teix-
eira had counted on keeping in the
Democratic camp. Now, Teixeira is
warning that Democrats risk losing
many Hispanic and Asian voters, too.
Those are demographics they can’t
afford even to win much less deci-
sively. Election analyst Sean Trende
recently told me that, all else equal, if
Trump had won roughly half of His-
panics in 2020, he would have won
the popular vote.
In reality, Trump got only about a
third of them. But that was up from
around 28% in 2016 — and now, a
recent Wall Street Journal poll shows
Hispanic voters evenly split between
the parties. Democrats haven’t slipped
as far with Asian voters, but Teixeira
documents troubling signs for the
party in New York’s mayoral race and
Virginia’s gubernatorial election.
One can imagine Republicans
building a working majority by pick-
ing up larger minorities of Hispanic
and Asian voters, while winning
back some educated white voters an-
gry about school closures or worried
about crime. That’s a possibility the
left needs to prepare for.
A left that understood it could lose,
outright, would still care about elec-
tion integrity. But it would also try to
stem recent losses by shifting focus
away from the divisive issues that ex-
cite young progressives, and toward
bread-and-butter policies that are
broadly popular. That left would also
make some contingency plans in case
everyone does their best, and Repub-
licans win anyway.
For example, the left has increas-
ingly defined itself as a coalition of
progressives and people of color
against reactionary whites. Would
that be a viable organizing principle in
a world where Republicans win a siz-
able percentage of non-white votes?
Beyond that, what sort of politi-
cal positions should the left adopt, if
Republicans start to outpoll them?
The belief in a frustrated Democratic
majority has made the left increas-
ingly critical of the anti-majoritar-
ian features of American democracy.
How well will those criticisms read if
Democrats take their turn as the party
that can’t quite win a popular major-
ity? Might their future selves come to
appreciate the filibuster, celebrate the
electoral college or regret their en-
dorsement of various court-packing
schemes?
Of course, conservatives should
engage in similar introspection. If Re-
publicans expected to win more elec-
tions, what would they say about the
filibuster, or America’s growing pref-
erence for running all important de-
cisions through the Supreme Court?
For that matter, how would a party
swelling with Hispanic and Asian vot-
ers position itself on immigration?
And if Republicans can assemble a
majority of the vote, won’t they want
Democrats to accept the legitimacy
of that vote? If so, shouldn’t they set a
good example now?
As this suggests, there are upsides
even for Democrats in the prospect of
a few substantial Republican victories:
Nothing is more likely to resign Re-
publicans to the need to respect elec-
tion integrity. Still, Democrats would
probably rather arrive at that point
having fought hard, and prepared
themselves, rather than having spent
their time fiddling with the rules and
working the media refs while Republi-
cans scooped up their voters.
e
Megan McArdle is a columnist
for The Washington Post.