Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The Bulletin. (Bend, OR) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 13, 2022)
A4 THE BULLETIN • SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 2022 Election Continued from A1 Ryan Brennecke/Bulletin file An entrance to St. Charles Bend, seen in September 2020. St. Charles Continued from A1 The health system says 1,784 people will owe $1,000 or less and said it is offering different options for staff, in- cluding a “payment plan, a lump sum payment or a re- duction of earned time off (va- cation time) to offset their bal- ance owed,” Goodman said. A spokesperson from the Oregon Nurses Association, the union representing St. Charles nurses, said some staff members are being asked to pay back as much as $3,000. “While we recognize this is an inconvenience for our em- ployees, we’ve communicated from the beginning that this is a step we’d eventually need to take,” Goodman said. “We have made every effort to keep our employees apprised of the situation.” The move by St. Charles has sparked immediate outrage and pushback from its em- ployees who say they are being asked to make thousands of dollars worth of repayments with little clarity as to how the health system decided what they should pay. “I think there’s a right way of going about getting this fixed, and I don’t know if making our employees re- sponsible for it is the right way to go about it,” said Josh Plank, a hospitalist with St. Charles who is part of the organizing committee for the provid- ers union. He added: “They clearly have enough money to pay a multimillion dollar law firm to fight our union rep- resentation, so I don’t think they’re in that bad of a finan- cial situation.” The Oregon Nurses Asso- ciation on Thursday told its members not to make the re- payments for now. The union’s general counsel wrote a cease and desist order for the health system and planned to send it Friday, urging it to halt the repayment process and claim- ing that what it was doing was illegal. The association “will vig- orously defend its members rights to be free from this un- lawful activity,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Bulletin. “The fact that St. Charles believes it made an error does not surprise any- one. St. Charles use of unlaw- ful debt collection demands against its employees to cor- rect its own error is beyond the pale.” St. Charles argues that it kept employees apprised of the situation in recent months, sending 19 emails and holding town hall meetings to discuss the situation and ask ques- tions. But Plank and Scott Palmer, the director of communica- tions for the Oregon Nurses Association, said some health care workers didn’t know they would need to pay money back until this week. Multiple employees were informed of what they would need to repay with sticky notes. Megan Bovi, a nurse, was approaching the end of the night shift in the pediatric unit at St. Charles Bend on Wednesday morning when her director approached her with some forms and a light blue sticky note. On the note, she said, was the amount that Central Or- egon’s largest health system said she needed to pay back: $2,964.50. “They’re supposed to take care of us,” said Bovi, who read the forms and saw that, if she signed the forms but did not agree to a payment plan, she would have to complete the payment in two weeks. “We have the job of taking care of patients … It’s their job to take care of us, their employees. This is not how you approach (employees) with a serious problem. This was absolute disrespect.” The latest controversy comes as St. Charles — the only hospital system for eight counties — is repeatedly rocked by financial hardship after the pandemic damaged the hospital system’s bottom line and caused a staffing shortage that left some staff concerned that the institution was falling into disarray. Those challenges have soured morale among the health system’s employees. Since January, the Oregon Bureau of Labor & Indus- tries has received 12 claims or complaints against St. Charles relating to compensation, six of which came in July alone. Nine of the complaints or claims involved break or meal periods. In recent months, the health system has also laid off two executives and more than 100 employees in a single month. Goodman said that “many of our caregivers have already acknowledged they’ve been overpaid and have authorized a repayment agreement.” Palmer said it wasn’t right to ask health care workers to now make these payments after en- during the pandemic’s toll. “Nurses have been work- ing incredibly hard in one of the most challenging hospital environments,” he said, add- ing: “It’s just adding insult to injury.” The nurses association is asking that St. Charles with- draw its demands for repay- ment by 9 a.m. on Aug. 15 “or we will pursue further legal actions.” Bovi said she gladly would sit down with an accoun- tant or somebody from hu- man resources to determine if, and how much, she was overpaid. But the sudden de- mands for repayment, after months where she was under the impression that the health system had resolved the time- keeping issue, left her feeling blindsided. She said, “This was just one more punch in the gut.” █ Reporter: 541-617-7854, bdole@ bendbulletin.com T riniTy E piscopal c hurch 469 nW W all s T ., B End Rooted ... Open ... Growing ... SUNDAY SERVICES: 8 AM WORSHIP @ TRINITY 10 AM WORSHIP @ ST. HELENS & ONLINE MORE INFO @ TRINITYBEND.ORG MEALS SCHEDULE @ FAMILYKITCHEN.ORG Johnson, a longtime Dem- ocratic state senator from Columbia County, resigned from the Senate and left the Democratic Party last year to mount a bid for governor as an unaffiliated candidate. To do so, state law requires she submit petitions with enough valid signatures to equal 1% of the total vote in the last presidential election. Based on the 2020 election, Johnson needs 23,743 valid signatures. Signatures are checked against voter records to in- validate anyone who doesn’t qualify as an Oregon voter. The longtime rule-of- thumb is to turn in 50% more signatures than needed. That’s a comfortable buffer to ensure the number thrown out doesn’t push the effort under the minimum needed to qualify. Johnson campaign spokes- person Jennifer Sitton said late last week that the cam- paign was well on track to far surpass the number needed. Volunteer “Betsy Brigades” are out in force with petitions as part of the “Run, Betsy, Run” campaign. Johnson supporters were collecting signatures at the Deschutes County Fair, while other campaigns for gover- nor, Congress and the Legis- lature also had booths. Former Happy Valley Mayor Lori Chavez-DeRemer drove a golf cart decked out in campaign signs to shuttle fairgoers from the parking lot to the entrance. The Johnson campaign confirmed Thursday that it is on pace and will announce plans for events around the petition submission in the near future. Vote counting ends Nov. 15 The general election date is Nov. 8. That’s when voting stops. But counting votes will go on until Nov. 15. Under a state law that went into effect this year, mailed ballots postmarked on or before Election Day will be counted if they arrive at county clerks’ offices within one week after Nov. 8. The new balloting rules were used in the May 17 pri- mary, which was marred by smeared bar codes on ballots in Clackamas County that further delayed final results on key races. One of the most watched was the 5th Congressional District upset win by Dem- ocratic challenger Jamie Mc- Leod-Skinner of Terrebonne over incumbent U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Canby. Schrader won Clackamas County, but it wasn’t enough to flip the overall outcome. Adding a wrinkle into the math for the general election is that the week after Nov. 8 will include two days with no regular mail service. Not only is Nov. 13 the usual Sunday with no mail pick up and de- livery, but so is Veterans Day, on Friday, Nov. 11. The cut-off date will re- main seven calendar days after Election Day, with properly postmarked bal- lots having to arrive by Nov. 15, according to Ben Morris, communications director for the Secretary of State’s Office. No ballot with a postmark after Nov. 8 will be counted during the one-week period. No ballot, regardless of post- mark, will be counted after Nov. 15. During a briefing in the spring, Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan said the state works with the U.S. Post Office to aggressively sweep all mailboxes for ballots in the days after a statewide elec- tion. The majority of ballots are mailed in the county where they are to be counted and ar- rive within the first couple of days after the election. █ gwarner@eomediagroup.com
