A4 THE BULLETIN • SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 2022
Election
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Ryan Brennecke/Bulletin file
An entrance to St. Charles Bend, seen in September 2020.
St. Charles
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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.”
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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.
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gwarner@eomediagroup.com