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About The Blue Mountain eagle. (John Day, Or.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 12, 2018)
STATE BlueMountainEagle.com Wednesday, December 12, 2018 A9 Brown’s budget includes $247 million for rural projects By CLAIRE WITHYCOMBE Oregon Capital Bureau On the campaign trail, Gov. Kate Brown was eager to tell voters she would rep- resent all regions of the state. “I’m the only candi- date in this race with a track record of bringing Republi- cans and Democrats together, urban and rural Oregonians together, to tackle the prob- lems facing Oregon,” Brown said during one debate. A month after her reelec- tion, she is following through on that claim. Brown’s proposed budget, released last week, includes more than $247 million for rural infrastructure projects and other increased spending to benefi t rural residents. “I also believe that the work we are doing to con- tinue to grow the economy by investing in infrastruc- ture, housing, broadband, water and of course, career and technical education will benefi t communities large and small across Oregon,” Brown told reporters as she released her budget proposal. There’s enthusiasm from observers about Brown’s spending plans for rural Ore- gon, from dams to housing to high-speed internet. But some advocates and lawmakers worry about other parts of her budget that cut fi re protection on forestland, hold steady money for com- munity colleges and increase taxes by $2 billion. Rural areas of the state face unique challenges. Despite the state’s robust overall economic growth, rural Oregon has yet to fully bounce back from the Great Recession. Rural unemployment has been declining since its peak in 2009, and the state’s rural econ- omy is less diverse, mak- ing it more vulnerable to shocks. And the populace Gov. Kate and work- Brown force in non- metro areas of Oregon are aging, accord- ing to a report last year from the state Employment Department. While the income of rural Oregonians is about equal to other rural areas of the coun- try, state economists say, housing is about 30 percent more expensive. The governor wants to offer a carrot to developers to build more affordable hous- ing across the state. She wants to boost fund- ing for loan programs and for public-private partnerships to build housing for people who can’t fi nd affordable homes in the communities where they work. Brown wants the state to borrow $130 million through bonds to build up to 2,100 affordable homes for communities of color and in rural areas. The governor has also proposed millions in water projects. Brown’s budget allots $16 million to replace the Wal- lowa Dam, which is more than a century old and whose operators keep less water than it was built to hold to avoid a failure. Todd Nash, chair of the Wallowa County Commis- sion, said that replacing the dam could help increase water for irrigating crops such as timothy hay and alfalfa. “That would mean addi- tional water for some of those areas that have been underserved by water … to continue to irrigate and that is a big win for Wallowa County,” Nash said. And Brown wants to divvy millions for rural com- munity colleges across the state, with a focus on career readiness. Brown’s wish list includes an agricultural workforce center at Blue Mountain Community College in Pend- leton and an industrial trades center at Klamath County Community College in Klamath Falls. Oregon’s 17 community colleges had about 280,000 students in the 2016-17 school year, according to the Higher Education Coordinat- ing Commission. They pri- marily serve rural areas. But unless the Legislature raises nearly $2 billion in new taxes for her major edu- cation revival plan, Brown’s budget would reduce money that community colleges say they need to continue current operations for the next two years. It would also cut funds to Oregon Promise, which covers tuition for certain students. Ron Paradis, head of col- lege relations for Central Oregon Community Col- lege in Bend, said the college would get less money under the basic budget than it cur- rently does. “It would defi nitely mean cuts, or tuition increases,” Paradis wrote in an email. The college operates cam- puses in Bend, Redmond, Prineville and Madras with an enrollment this fall of about 5,000 students. The governor wants more rural Oregonians to have high-speed internet that could “literally bridge the urban-rural divide,” she said in October. Joseph Franell, CEO of Eastern Oregon Telecom who chairs the state Broad- band Advisory Council, said that he was “thrilled” about the governor’s proposal to create a Broadband Offi ce and allocate $5 million to a broadband infrastructure fund. The Broadband Offi ce would develop partnerships between government and pri- vate companies to expand high-speed internet to rural Oregon, pursue federal fund- ing and support local efforts to develop faster internet. There’s a technical advan- tage in having a dedicated broadband offi ce. It could help the state qualify for more federal funding, Franell said. As the economy and daily life depends more on the internet, reliable and fast internet service can connect rural Oregonians to services like health care and educa- tion, Franell said. “If the Colt .45 revolver was the great equalizer of the 1800s, broadband is the great equalizer of our era,” Franell said, “And when I say that, there’s no one thing other than broadband that has such potential for positive impact on people’s lives.” For example, instead of traveling for hours to see a specialist, more rural res- idents could use medical video conferencing, often called telehealth. “If you have good, reli- able, fast access to broad- band, regardless of location, you can get educated, literally all the way up to a Ph.D.,” Franell said. “Regardless of where you live, you can get health, you can connect with government in ways you couldn’t before.” Rural communities have had problems enticing pri- vate companies to build high- speed internet infrastructure. John Day City Manager Nick Green said that there is not much incentive for com- panies to invest in high-speed internet in rural or frontier communities. There’s a lot of space and not many peo- ple per square mile to pay for the service. And getting federal money is tough. Green found out last week that the city hadn’t been awarded a federal grant to help bring broadband to the area. It had spent about $100,000 to pre- pare the grant application. Internet is so sluggish at John Day City Hall that he couldn’t directly upload that application. He hopes that more sup- port from the state would help communities like his get federal dollars to close the broadband service gap, which impacts schools, libraries and other govern- ment functions. A smattering of other pro- posals could improve life in rural communities. The gov- ernor wants to phase in hun- dreds of new state troopers over the next 10 years, which would improve emergency response times in rural areas of the state. And she wants to put $10 million toward cleaning up contaminated rural Oregon lands. A front-and-center envi- ronmental concern in many rural areas, though, is smoke. Come summer, gray skies and ash affl ict rural parts of the state where wildland fi res are more common, and local residents and lawmakers have clamored for a change to forest management poli- cies to address smoke issues. Brown wants to establish, through the executive order, a council on wildfi re response to evaluate Oregon’s system for responding to large fi res. The council’s job would be to fi gure out whether Ore- gon’s current mode of fi ght- ing fi res is “sustainable” and recommend changes. Senate Republican Leader Jackie Winters of Salem said that while the governor’s efforts to address fi re issues were “long overdue,” she didn’t think decreases in the fi re protection budget would help. The governor’s budget attributed the dip to one-time costs for recent large fi res. Jonathan Sandau, gov- ernment affairs specialist at the Oregon Farm Bureau, pointed to a number of proposals in the gover- nor’s proposed budget that could be a boon for rural communities. He was encouraged by her support of economic development projects in rural Oregon through the Regional Solutions program and efforts to expand broadband service. She also wants to extend tax credits for farmers who house agricultural work- ers and donate crops to food banks or other charities. Those credits are set to expire in the next budget. But Sandau worried that the governor’s push for edu- cation funding — if new taxes don’t pass — could sideline funding for natu- ral resource agencies like the state Agriculture Depart- ment, the Fish and Wildlife Department and the state’s watershed enhancement board. Those agencies do every- thing from regulating the pesticides that farmers use to managing wolves that prey on livestock. “Oregon is a natural resources economy, and a lot of lives and jobs and com- munities depend on that,” Sandau said. State public records advocate fi nds litany of fl aws in Oregon’s public records laws By AUBREY WIEBER Oregon Capital Bureau Governments in Oregon unrea- sonably delay handing over pub- lic documents or charge too much for that access, and put records of elected offi cials sometimes nearly beyond reach of citizens, accord- ing to a new state report. Those are the fi ndings of Gin- ger McCall, Oregon’s public records advocate and included in a formal report issued last week by the state Public Records Advi- sory Council. Her observations are her own, though, based on her experiences in recent months with government offi cials, report- ers and editors and citizens who want public documents. McCall found that Oregon’s public records laws are confus- ing to government and request- ers. It allows government offi cials to delay or withhold records that should be public, and there is lit- tle punishment for agencies who violate the law. If citizens or oth- ers want to challenge a govern- ment’s decision to withhold pub- lic records, the recourse can be a costly court battle. Since April, McCall has trained 1,300 government employees on Oregon’s public records laws. She has also been called on in 90 instances by reporters and edi- tors for help getting government records. The council’s report is meant to inform Gov. Kate Brown and the Legislature and promote reforms in the law. McCall and the public records council received reports of gov- ernment offi cials overusing their authority to keep records secret relating to criminal investigations, personnel matters, trade secrets and internal communications. Decisions to withhold records are based on employees’ reading of the law, and they are some- times poorly trained to do so, the report said. One example is waiving the cost of providing a record. Pub- lic agencies can provide records at free or reduced cost if the infor- mation serves the public inter- est. Some agencies often waive fees, while others have a policy against it, even if the information serves the public. McCall’s report fl agged the city of Molalla’s pol- icy not to waive fees. Kelly Richardson, city recorder for Molalla, said the city charges the cost of gather- ing and copying records because it wouldn’t be fair for the commu- nity to have city employees doing the work for free. “I have found if there is no monetary value attached to the request often times people will make a frivolous request and waste my time and I never hear from them again,” Richardson said via email. McCall called the issues “sys- temic” and said they are caused by a range of challenges, from gov- ernments that can’t search data- bases to citizens making sweep- ing requests that can involve thousands of pages of material. McCall said the law is ambig- uous in many ways. According to her report, there are at least 550 exemptions in Oregon’s public records law. The report noted that govern- ment agencies use exemptions to withhold information when there is no reason to do so. Government agencies are supposed to weigh benefi ts of keeping the informa- tion private against the interest of the public. McCall also found some juris- dictions, such as the cities of Portland and Salem and Mar- ion County, charge a fl at fee to provide specifi c records. The law allows them to charge only the actual cost of providing the documents. Those agencies say they have assessed the average actual cost of each type of record and charge that amount. “Charging all requesters based on an ‘average’ cost of processing public records requests removes incentives for requesters to sub- mit narrowed requests and is unfair to a requester who submits a properly narrowed request,” McCall said in her report. McCall also found delays to be prevalent. Public agencies gener- ally have 15 business days to dis- close public records. Agencies can take longer if it’s not practi- cal to disclose the records within that time frame. That provision, “is unneces- sary and entirely undercuts the requirements” McCall found. The result, McCall found, “can make it diffi cult for victims to obtain insurance payments, limit the damage of identity theft, pur- sue civil litigation, take precau- tions to protect their personal safety, or vindicate their rights in a variety of other venues.” Another provision in Oregon’s record law provides the only way to legally challenge an elected offi cial’s decision to keep doc- uments confi dential is to sue in state court. Appeals, however, can involve an arduous process. “The avenues for appeal — including appeals to the attor- ney general or district attorney or appeals to the courts — are often expensive or time consuming, and requesters are forced to bear the burden of enforcing the law,” McCall said in the report. But not all of the blame is on government. McCall found requesters often send broad requests, such as records of all communication between a gov- ernment employee and another party. McCall found such requests appear to result from a growing distrust of agencies repeatedly showing a lack of cooperation with public records requests. The council is already pro- posing two pieces of legisla- tion. The fi rst is to make the council permanent; it’s sched- uled to sunset at the end of 2020. The other would require state agencies to report annually how they handle public records requests. But McCall wants further action. Her report is based on anecdotal information, but she wants data. To that end, the Pub- lic Records Advisory Council is surveying the state’s 10 larg- est cities, all state agencies and a random mix of other government bodies. FRESH CUT CHRISTMAS TREES STARTING AT $25.00 Don't forget your pets this christmas: Toys, Treats & Beds • • • • Bird Seed Muck Boots Grow Lights Heated Animal Supplies 10w rechargeable flashlight #85912 $19.99 1080P HD DASH CAMERA WITH 8GB SD CARD CL-3005 $39.99
