A4
OPINION
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Paulus
blazed trails
in Oregon
politics
F
ormer Secretary of
State Norma Paulus
was a product of rural
Oregon. She exemplifi ed
what individuals can do
when given a chance —
conquering poverty, polio
and the lack of a college
degree to emerge as one of
Oregon’s most infl uential
politicians.
And Paulus did so during
an era in which she typically
was “The Only Woman in
the Room,” the title of her
autobiography.
Paulus died Feb. 28, two
days after another Republi-
can secretary of state, Dennis
Richardson. U.S. Rep. Greg
Walden and state Sen. Betsy
Johnson remarked at Rich-
ardson’s recent funeral that
Paulus set the standard for
her successors, regardless of
political affi liation.
Both were strong, inde-
pendent, transformative lead-
ers, said Republican Walden,
who represents Oregon’s 2nd
Congressional District.
Democrat Johnson added
that Paulus and Richard-
son placed the needs of Ore-
gon ahead of their own polit-
ical party. “Norma blazed her
own trail and was one tough
cookie,” Johnson said.
Paulus would have turned
86 on March 13, but hers cer-
tainly was a life well-lived.
She was the fi rst woman
elected to statewide offi ce in
Oregon and the last Repub-
lican secretary of state until
Richardson.
Norma Jean Petersen was
born during the Depression to
a Nebraska farm family who
eventually settled near Burns
in Eastern Oregon, seeking a
better life.
But the family’s poverty
kept her from attending col-
lege after graduating from
Burns High School at age 17.
Instead, she became a secre-
tary for the Harney County
district attorney. Then polio
struck and she endured weeks
of treatment in an iron lung.
After recovering, she moved
to Salem, where she went
to work as a legal secretary
for Chief Justice Earl Lato-
urette of the Oregon Supreme
Court.
She so impressed Lato-
urette that he urged her to
become a lawyer despite not
being a college graduate. She
studied part-time at the Willa-
mette University law school
while still working full-time
at the Supreme Court and
also being married with a
young child. Her husband,
Bill Paulus, whom she met at
law school, eventually bor-
rowed money from an uncle
so she could quit her job and
be a full-time law student.
It was a productive invest-
ment. In 1962, Norma Paulus
graduated from law school
with honors. Her marriage to
Bill lasted 40 years until his
death in 1999. Although Bill
Paulus stayed in the back-
ground politically, he was
a well-regarded lawyer in
his own right, known for his
work with school districts.
A legislator before being
elected secretary of state in
1976, Norma Paulus was
fearless. She stood up to the
followers of the Bhagwan
Shree Rajneesh, who tried to
rig Wasco County elections
by busing in homeless peo-
ple to register as voters, and
who contaminated salad bars
in The Dalles to sicken other
voters.
Later as the state’s elected
superintendent of public
instruction, Paulus took on
teacher unions and others
who questioned her vision for
school reform.
All the while, she car-
ried a deep affection for the
vastness of her state, from
the coast to the mountains
and the rangelands of East-
ern Oregon. Everywhere she
went, people seemed to know
her on a fi rst-name basis.
Paulus lost the 1986 elec-
tion for governor to Demo-
crat Neil Goldschmidt, and
the Oregon Republican Party
soon moved on from the cen-
trist approach she represented
– fi scally conservative and
socially liberal.
As her obituary said, “She
leaves a legacy of indepen-
dence, fi erce respect for the
integrity of democratic insti-
tutions and willingness to
engage adversaries or even
friends in standing up for
what she thought right.”
Her rural values served all
of Oregon.
GUEST COMMENT
Sunshine your fundamental right
By Jim Zachary
Valdosta Daily Times
For government to be of, by
and for the people it must be out
in front of the people.
The theme for Sunshine Week
2019 is simply, “It’s your right to
know.”
The reason it’s your right to
know is that it’s your government.
From the courthouse, to the
statehouse to the White House, it
is your right to know what gov-
ernment is up to.
Every deliberation by city
council, county commission,
state legislature or U.S. Congress
is the people’s business.
Every penny spent by local,
state and federal government is
your money.
Every document held in the
halls of government belongs to
you.
Transparency is not, or at least
should not be, partisan.
Access to government meet-
ings and public documents
should never be arduous or even
controversial.
Government derives all of its
powers from the public and is
answerable to the public.
It is unfortunate state and fed-
eral laws are needed to protect
the public’s right to know.
Of course, we know those
laws are needed and more often
than not must be leveraged by
people requesting even the most
basic information from elected
and appointed offi cials.
No
branch
of
government
should
exempt
itself from free-
dom of informa-
tion laws, and no
person in govern-
Jim Zachary
ment should seek
to circumvent those
laws.
Accessing government infor-
mation and attending delibera-
tive meetings should simply be
viewed as democracy in action
and not as an adversarial relation-
ship between the governing and
the governed.
Access laws are not media
laws.
Every person should have free
and open access.
The right to know is not only
an American right, it is funda-
mentally right.
Government secrecy that goes
beyond national security is fun-
damentally wrong.
So records custodians at city
hall, the county courthouse, with
the public school system or at
the state capitol must not bris-
tle when a person asks for pub-
lic records. The records request-
ors are simply asking for a
copy of what belongs to them
already.
Records requestors should
not create an unnecessarily hos-
tile relationship when making
requests.
A records request and fulfi ll-
ment should be a basic, and ordi-
nary, transaction between gov-
ernment and the public it serves.
City council, county commis-
sion, the board of education, the
state legislature and its commit-
tees should not balk at the pub-
lic’s right to attend meetings
and should not look for every
excuse to retreat into an exec-
utive session or closed door
meeting.
Attending meetings, sitting
in on deliberations, understand-
ing not only what decisions are
reached but how those decisions
are reached are all things which
are simply basic American rights,
fundamental to living in an open
and free society.
In our politically charged,
polarized, vitriolic climate there
is very little conservatives and
progressives can agree on.
The public’s right to know is
one thing that everyone, both in
and out of government, both left
and right leaning, and at the local,
state and federal levels, should
agree on.
We are the government.
The government is us.
It is, therefore, everyone’s fun-
damental right to know what gov-
ernment is, and is not, doing.
Jim Zachary is CNHI’s dep-
uty national editor, regional editor
for its Georgia, Florida, Missis-
sippi, Alabama and Texas news-
papers and editor of The Valdosta
(Georgia) Daily Times. He is the
vice-president of and FOI trainer
for the Georgia First Amendment
Foundation. He can be reached at
jzachary@cnhi.com.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
More facts about
vaccines
To the Editor:
I would like to add a few facts
to the letter “Maybe everyone
should rethink vaccines.”
Fact: More than 684,000
adverse events following vacci-
nation, including hospitalizations,
injuries and deaths, have been
reported to the federal government
since 1990. This number is esti-
mated to represent less than 1 per-
cent of all vaccine adverse events
that have actually occurred.
Fact: The U.S. government
now recommends that children
receive 58 doses of 13 vaccines,
with 41 doses given by the age
of 6.
Fact: Vaccine policy and man-
dates have helped to create a
global vaccine market now pro-
jected to bring a staggering $57
billion dollars to drug companies
by 2025.
One of the most politically
powerful public-private part-
nerships in the world today is
the lucrative one that has been
forged by the pharmaceutical
industry with government, main-
stream media and wealthy philan-
thropic foundations with political
agendas.
These facts go a long way
in explaining why mainstream
media outlets have been united in
attacking parents and physicians
who defend the ethical principal
of informed consent, including
informed consent to vaccination,
and are calling for vaccine exemp-
tions to be severely restricted or
eliminated.
The responsibility for the cri-
sis of trust in the global vaccina-
tion system lies with those who
operate the system and refuse to
acknowledge the suffering of the
people harmed by vaccines.
Sheila Swaja
Mt. Vernon
L
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