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About The Blue Mountain eagle. (John Day, Or.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (March 27, 2019)
GRANT UNION TRACK TEAM SET FOR SEASON The PAGE A9 Blue Mountain EAGLE Grant County’s newspaper since 1868 Wednesday, March 27, 2019 151st Year • No. 13 • 16 Pages • $1.00 BlueMountainEagle.com Hamsher talks natural resources in Washington, D.C. By Richard Hanners Blue Mountain Eagle Contributed photo Grant County Commissioner Jim Hamsher traveled to Washington, D.C., on March 1-7 where he attended a National Association of Counties committee meeting and met with numerous government offi cials about natural resource issues. A recent whirlwind trip to Washington, D.C., by Grant County Commissioner Jim Hamsher and four other Eastern Oregon county com- missioners focused on natu- ral resource issues, includ- ing forest management. “It was a very worth- while trip,” Hamsher told the Eagle, noting that Chris French, the Forest Service’s acting deputy chief and reviewing offi cer for forest plans, contacted the group a week later to see if they had any more questions. “He’s a good gentle- man,” Hamsher said, adding that he believes “a lot of the head butting will come to an end” over forest manage- ment disputes. Hamsher joined Har- ney County Commissioner Mark Owens, Wallowa County Commissioner Todd Nash, Baker County Com- missioner Bill Harvey and Union County Commis- sioner Donna Beverage for the March 1-7 trip to the nation’s capital. The primary reason for the trip was to talk with For- est Service offi cials about exempting the counties from the Forest Service’s travel management plan, Hamsher said. “We’re still awaiting word on that,” he told the Eagle. Hamsher, Nash and Harvey, who serve on the National Associa- tion of Counties’ Public Lands Steering Committee, attended the 2019 legisla- tive conference. The list of offi cials Ham- sher met with included Agriculture Undersecretary James Hubbard, Agricul- ture Acting Deputy Under- secretary Daniel Jiron, For- est Service Legislative Affairs Director Doug Cran- dall, Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen, Agricul- ture Undersecretary Senior Advisor Debbie Pressman, Interior Deputy Director of External Affairs Tim Wil- liams, Interior Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks Andrea Travnicek and Inte- rior Deputy Solicitor for Fish, Wildlife and Parks Karen Budd-Falen. Hamsher also met with Sen. Ron Wyden’s advi- sor for energy and natu- ral resources and took part in a news conference with Wyden and Sen. Jeff Merk- DATA SHARING Students share research at Grant Union Science Fair Floyd, Blood earn gold in contest By Angel Carpenter Blue Mountain Eagle T wenty Grant Union high school students shared the hypothe- ses and conclusions of their research during the school’s March 14 science fair. Grant Union teachers Sonna Smith and Randy Hennen’s stu- dents took part in the competition. Smith said her chemistry stu- dents were required to take part in the fair. Smith, who has taught at the school since 2002, also teaches physics and health. She said the students who met their benchmarks since September had the most in-depth projects. “Some of the ideas they came up with were beyond our ability to test,” she said. “The hardest part is picking a project.” The two gold winners were junior Samantha Floyd and senior Kade Blood. Floyd won best of fair with her project titled “Perceived Recogni- tion Memory vs. Actual Recogni- tion Memory.” She said she had some sur- prises along the way in the project that she developed to help her 12 Eagle photos/Angel Carpenter ABOVE: Grant Union Science Fair judge Neil Bauer visits with junior Samantha Floyd about her project, titled “Perceived Recognition Memory vs. Actual Recognition Memory.” Floyd won fi rst place and Best of Fair. LEFT: Kade Blood stands next to his winning research project display titled “How does Armarilla Fungi Impact Forest Vegetation Growth and Composition?” at the Grant Union Science Fair. See Fair, Page A16 ley where Secure Rural Schools and payment-in- lieu-of-taxes funding was discussed. The busy visit also included attending a speech by Kellyanne Con- way and receiving updates from Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and HUD Secretary Ben Carson about how counties can plan for a future economy. Hamsher said he spoke with offi cials about how the Forest Service should coor- dinate its management plans with county governments. See Hamsher, Page A16 Teen survey looks at social wellness By Richard Hanners Blue Mountain Eagle While few 11th-grade students in Grant County said in a 2018 survey they didn’t go to school because of safety concerns, more than half said they skipped school in the past four weeks. Those are just two results from the anonymous and voluntary Oregon Student Wellness Survey of students in grades 6, 8 and 11 con- ducted in spring 2018. The survey is designed to assess a wide range of top- ics, ranging from school cli- mate, positive youth devel- opment, mental health and physical health to substance abuse, problem gambling, fi ghting, harassment and other social problems. Results for Grant County were presented to the Grant School District 3 board of directors at their Feb. 20 meeting. The 113-page tabula- tion of county-wide survey results also compare results from the state for the report- ing years from 2012-2018. Alcohol use or binge- ing by 11th graders in the past 30 days has trended slightly downward for both the county and state. In 2018, nearly a quarter of Grant County 11th graders See Survey, Page A16 January unemployment spike related to shutdown By Richard Hanners Blue Mountain Eagle A larger-than-expected uptick in Grant County unemployment numbers for the month of January resulted from the partial government shutdown that ran from Dec. 22 to Jan. 25. The unemployment rate, which had been steadily dropping from 14.2 percent in September 2012 to a low of 6.2 percent in July 2018, rose quickly to 8.5 percent in Janu- ary 2019. That was the highest January unemployment rate of any county in Oregon, according to the Oregon Employment Department’s season- ally adjusted fi gures based on esti- mates from household surveys. Unemployment rates in many The Eagle/Richard Hanners With about 12 percent of Grant County workers employed by the federal government, including the Forest Service, the partial government shutdown in December and January increased the unemployment rate. Eastern Oregon counties typically increase in winter as there is less work available in the timber and tourism businesses. But the unusu- ally higher increase this winter was related to federal furloughs, accord- ing to regional economist Christo- pher Rich in La Grande. About 45 percent of non- farm workers in Grant County are employed by schools and city, county, state or federal govern- ments. About 11.6 percent are fed- eral workers. The fi gure is similar in Harney County, which also saw a sharp increase in the unemployment rate in January. Other Eastern Oregon counties with a smaller percentage of federal workers, such as Morrow and Union counties, saw a smaller impact from the government shut- down, Rich said. “Furloughed federal employees were classifi ed as unemployed on temporary layoff under household survey defi nitions used to calcu- late labor force statistics, such as the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed,” Rich said. “These See Shutdown, Page A16
