The BulleTin • SaTurday, May 21, 2022 B5
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
Have your say
regarding Pacific
Power’s proposed
14% increase
T
hirteen dollars a month. That’s how much more an
average Pacific Power residential customer in Oregon
may have to pay as of Jan. 1.
With the increases for business
and industrial customers, it would
bring in about $106 million for Pa-
cific Power, says the Citizens Utility
Board, which looks after the inter-
ests of utility consumers in Oregon.
Should Pacific Power get it? Or is
the utility asking for too much? You
can tell the Oregon Public Utility
Commission what you think.
The increase for average residen-
tial customers will be about 14%.
That’s where the $13 a month comes
from.
Pacific Power does face a real-
ity of increasing costs. It must close
coal-fired plants and transition
more to renewable energy. That’s
the direction given by Oregon law.
It is spending millions to reduce the
danger of wildfire from power lines.
Oregonians do want Pacific Power
to do that, right? Natural gas prices
are going up. The utility has some
gas-fired plants. Buying electricity
on the market can cost more.
Beyond costs, Pacific Power pro-
poses some policy changes. It pro-
poses to move to seasonal rates.
Electricity would be cheaper in win-
ter and more expensive in summer.
That may make sense to encourage
people to use power wisely when de-
mand will spike in the summer for
air conditioning. Price should signal
cost and costs for Pacific Power are
higher in times of high demand. But
the downside is, of course, that peo-
Beyond costs, Pacific Power
proposes some policy changes.
It proposes to move to seasonal
rates. Electricity would be
cheaper in winter and more
expensive in summer.
ple with less money in warmer parts
of the state will be hit hard because
of such a change.
Pacific Power is also seeking other
changes in how it how it gets com-
pensated. Bob Jenks, executive di-
rector of the Citizens Utility Board,
told us Friday Pacific Power is ask-
ing for a change that would have
customers assume more of the risk
than they do now if Pacific Power is
off in its projections. Matt McVee,
vice president of regulatory policy
and operations for Pacific Power,
told us the change is important be-
cause it can be a long time between
when the utility must make projec-
tions and actual costs are known.
The PUC meets Tuesday at 6 p.m.
to discuss the proposals. There is
more general information about
the PUC and rate increases here:
tinyurl.com/ORpucrates. You can
comment on the proposed increases
by emailing the PUC at PUC.
PublicComments@puc.oregon.gov.
You can also call 503-378-6600.
Historical editorial: The
right price of ditch lands
Editor’s note: The following historical editorial
originally appeared in the May 31, 1907 edition
of what was then called The Bend Bulletin.
T
he action taken by the state
land board in granting an
increase of lien on its ditch
lands to the Deschutes Irrigation
& Power Company will receive the
approval of most people in this sec-
tion. The general comment is that it
will prove a benefit to the country.
The mere fact that the price of land
has been raised will not be of par-
ticular benefit, but the conditions
imposed by the board in return for
the increased lien are of value to the
future welfare of this section.
It is now generally conceded that
the only satisfactory condition is
where the settlers own their own
irrigation system. This is to be the
stipulations of the new contract,
the settlers owning the system at
the end of 10 years. Thus the per-
█
petual maintenance charge of $1.00
per acre per year will be removed,
and after 10 years the settlers can
maintain their own system on a
much cheaper basis. Furthermore
the present maintenance charge is
reduced from $1.00 to 80 cents per
acre per year, a small saving in itself
not to be despised.
Some may complain that the in-
crease is too high, but it is no higher
than the average price of land un-
der the government projects, all of
which have been settled as rapidly
as they were reclaimed. In fact, the
new contract to be entered into
the state and the D.I. & P. Co. con-
tains many of the good points of
the contract used by the national
reclamation service. The increase
will please the man who has already
bought ditch land. It is believed the
new contract will prove a benefit to
all in the long run.
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.
Do not ignore sleep for teens
BY HEATHER TURGEON
AND JULIE WRIGHT
Special to The Washington Post
T
een mental health is a major
concern for today’s parents,
and for good reason: More
than 1 in 3 high-schoolers say they’ve
felt persistent sadness or hopelessness,
and roughly 1 in 5 reports having se-
riously considered suicide. Many of
us are searching for answers. But a
major culprit is hiding in plain sight:
This generation of teens is the most
sleep-deprived population in human
history.
No group has ever slept as little as
the modern adolescent.
Seventy percent of young kids and
65% of adults get healthy sleep, but by
their senior year, only about 15% of
high-schoolers do. The average high-
schooler sleeps six-and-a-half hours a
night, when they optimally need nine;
and 1 in 5 teens sleeps five or fewer
hours a night. By all accounts, adoles-
cents are living in a state of severe and
chronic sleep debt.
Studies connecting sleep loss and
poor mental health fill stacks of sci-
entific journals. Adolescents who
sleep fewer than eight hours a night
are more likely to report symptoms of
depression. One analysis found that
underslept teens getting six to seven
hours a night were 17% more likely to
think about hurting themselves than
those sleeping eight; and sleeping five
hours a night made them 81% more
likely to consider self-harm.
In fact, sleep loss is implicated in
almost every psychiatric diagnosis.
Brain imaging studies have shown
that sleep deprivation amps up the
reactive, negative emotional centers
of the brain, while the prefrontal cor-
tex — which soothes and gives us
The average high-schooler sleeps
six-and-a-half hours a night, when
they optimally need nine; and 1 in
5 teens sleeps five or fewer hours a
night. By all accounts, adolescents
are living in a state of severe and
chronic sleep debt.
perspective, judgment and emotional
regulation — is less active.
The real question is: How could we
expect this level of sleep deprivation
not to deepen the cracks in adoles-
cents’ mental health?
No one questions the benefits of
sleep for babies and young children.
But teenagers’ brains and bodies are
growing just as much as they did in
their earliest years. The restructuring
of the adolescent brain is pivotal to
healthy development — and to a large
extent, it occurs during sleep.
So how did we get here?
For one, teen sleep has been declin-
ing for decades because of too-early
school start times and the snowball-
ing of homework and activities. High
schools have been extremely slow to
follow the science and adopt healthy
schedules.
Imagine an experiment in which
researchers forced subjects to wake
up three hours before their natural
rise time, then asked them to perform
complex cognitive tasks, for five days
straight. That’s a description of the av-
erage teen’s school week.
Add to this that students can easily
have four hours of homework each
night, even though research suggests
that more than one hour adds only
anxiety and no intellectual benefit..
Meanwhile, the proliferation of
smartphones has been a wrecking ball
for teen sleep. Some of the worst sleep
stealers are Meta, YouTube, TikTok,
Apple and other companies that spe-
cialize in creating addictive technolo-
gies that have infiltrated teen life.
The problem may sound intracta-
ble, but it’s not. Unlike many of the
complicated factors making teens
anxious or sad, sleep is fixable.
Schools should start their days later
and reduce homework. Tech compa-
nies should be regulated and held ac-
countable for responsible design. Yes,
these systemic shifts will take time.
But families can also protect sleep at
home. Right away. Starting tonight.
Research ties family rules and
healthy sleep routines to a host of
positive outcomes. In a study of more
than 15,000 middle- and high-school-
ers, those with bedtimes of 10 p.m. or
earlier were 24% less likely to suffer
from depression and 20% less likely to
have suicidal ideation than those with
bedtimes of midnight or later.
Parents often underestimate their
influence, but what they say and do
matters. Start by modeling good hab-
its. As a family, set clear devices-off
hours and reasonable bedtimes.
Yes, teens are struggling for a host
of valid reasons. But science shows
that for many, their outlooks will
brighten and their stress will subside
if they win back precious hours of
slumber. Sleep should be a priority
as we seek to turn the tide of the teen
mental health crisis. From there, we
can more clearly identify what else is
troubling kids — and truly help them.
█
Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright are the
authors of “Generation Sleepless: Why Tweens
and Teens Aren’t Sleeping Enough and How We
Can Help Them.”
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Should getting the most votes be enough when it’s not a majority?
BY EDWARD B. FOLEY
Special to The Washington Post
S
elf-government is supposed to
make sense. That, after all, is the
premise of Thomas Paine’s cel-
ebrated tract, “Common Sense.” Yet
the way we are practicing self-govern-
ment now, as demonstrated by this
year’s primaries, is utterly irrational. It
may cause the demise of democracy
unless we figure out a way to fix it fast.
In state after state, winners have
one-third of the votes or less. J.D.
Vance won Ohio’s Republican Senate
primary with 32.2% of the vote. Ne-
braska’s GOP gubernatorial primary
was won with 33.8%. In Pennsylvania,
the virtual tie between Mehmet Oz
and David McCormick for the GOP
Senate nomination means that about
31% will be enough for victory.
There is no way to say these win-
ners are the collective choice of each
primary’s voters. The fundamental
idea of an election is that the will of
the majority should prevail. To be
sure, in our constitutional system, we
guard against a tyranny of the major-
ity through a set of checks and bal-
ances. Still, when we put questions of
public policy and the representation
of citizens to a vote, we want that vote
to be decided by the larger share pre-
vailing over the smaller — not the
other way around.
Yet we undermine that objective
when we let a candidate win an elec-
tion with a mere plurality of votes. If
the winner has only one-third of the
votes, that means two-thirds — twice
as many voters — were on the losing
side. That’s backward.
And it doesn’t have to be this way.
Seven states require candidates to win
a majority of primary votes and hold
runoffs if they don’t. But holding an-
other election isn’t even necessary if
states would follow the lead of Maine,
which holds an “instant runoff” by
requiring ranked-choice voting in
primaries.
I have argued before that Con-
gress should require its members to
be elected by majority vote, and this
would be an improvement on the
current process. But as a practical
matter, in a two-party system, a plu-
rality-winner rule generally isn’t a
grave problem: When there are only
two candidates, the one with more
has a majority. In fact, using a plural-
ity-winner rule in a general election
tends to generate a two-party system.
Known as Duverger’s law, the strate-
gic incentive created by the need to
win more votes than any other can-
didate prompts political factions to
coalesce into two competing parties,
each vying to capture the electorate’s
median voter.
But Duverger’s law doesn’t work in
party primaries. It is evident that us-
ing the plurality-winner rule for party
primaries does not yield two-candi-
date competitions. Instead, it delivers
the kind of irrational outcomes we are
witnessing this year, where a political
party’s nomination goes to the candi-
date who lost two-thirds, or more, of
the party’s votes.
The harm this irrationality causes
is not confined to the party; it affects
the public as a whole. Pennsylvania
offers an illustration: If Oz ekes out a
primary win with 31% of the vote, he
might go on to win the general elec-
tion. But doing so wouldn’t vindicate
him as the most preferred candidate.
One might argue that McCormick
should run in November as an inde-
pendent. But Duverger’s law, opera-
tive in the general election, effectively
nullifies that option. Only the two
major-party candidates have any real-
istic chance of success.
The consequence is that the dou-
ble use of the plurality-winner rule is
a double whammy. First, in the pri-
mary, where Duverger’s law has no
force, the plurality-winner rule frag-
ments the field, preventing a majority
of voters from choosing the candidate
who truly is most preferred overall.
Then, in the general election, when
Duverger’s law takes hold, the plural-
ity-winner rule prevents a candidate
who lost a primary — even an irra-
tional primary — from mounting a
meaningful independent campaign.
The danger of this double
whammy would not be so great were
it not for the MAGA movement’s hos-
tility toward democracy itself. When
a political faction threatens to repu-
diate future elections upon attaining
power, it is essential that the existing
electoral system not award victories
to this faction’s candidates who aren’t
genuinely the majority’s choice.
Thus, add this to the list of elec-
toral reforms having utmost urgency:
eliminate plurality-winner primaries
— which either state legislatures or
Congress can do. Otherwise, we may
lose our democracy not because we
made that choice, but because an ir-
rational and anti-majoritarian system
produced that result.
█
Edward B. Foley writes on matters relating to
election law and administration.