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About The Blue Mountain eagle. (John Day, Or.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 18, 2019)
A4 OPINION Blue Mountain Eagle Wednesday, September 18, 2019 A promising start comes to troubling end G an inherent, and unfortu- ov. Kate Brown’s decision to hire Or- nate, tension between gov- ernment officials who hold egon’s first public records advocate in January these records, and members of the public, including jour- 2018 was a promising step nalists, who want to have a toward addressing deficien- look at those records as the cies with how agencies, at law prescribes. both the state and local lev- McCall cited short- el, comply with the state’s comings in how the law is public records law. applied in November 2018 It’s troubling, with her first public though, that the first report about transpar- person to have the ency in Oregon. She job, Ginger McCall, noted, among other last week announced things, that the fees her resignation, effec- agencies charge to tive Oct. 11. McCall supply public records Ginger cited “meaningful McCall are “highly discretion- pressure from the ary” and “a perennial Governor’s General Counsel source of animosity, confu- to represent the Governor’s sion, and frustration for pub- Office’s interests on the Pub- lic bodies and requesters lic Records Advisory Coun- alike.” cil, even when those inter- McCall also pointed ests conflict with the will of out that the law has “lit- the Council and the mandate tle accountability” for agen- of the Office of the Public cies that fail to comply with Records Advocate.” records requests. McCall said that during a A potential model for January 2019 meeting with Oregon’s public records Misha Isaak, the governor’s advocate is the position that general counsel, Isaak told was once relatively common McCall she should be “less in America’s larger newspa- ambitious.” pers but today, sadly, is rare Worse yet, consider- — an employee known as ing the ostensible purpose either the public editor or the of McCall’s position is to ombudsman. ensure that the public — The basic idea was that which is to say, each of us the public editor would hold — has access to records to the newspaper accountable which we are legally enti- for errors but also, and more tled, McCall said she felt importantly, to examine, that Isaak had implied she with the eye of a journal- should not reveal, in par- ist, potential lapses in ethical ticular to journalists, that standards. she was expected to parrot This concept was cred- the governor’s office script even if it conflicted with her ible, of course, only when the newspaper published the beliefs. public editor’s findings, and In other words, the state official supposedly commit- opinions, without alteration ted to transparency says she or influence. Newspapers are private was told to drape an opaque cloak over crucial aspects of businesses. They are not subject to the public records her job. Brown’s communications law. Yet they seem to value director, Chris Pair, disputes the independence of an McCall’s claims that she was ombudsman more than Ore- gon state officials do. pressured. Gov. Brown said last Pair said the Legislature, week that she agrees with in creating the Office of the McCall that the records Public Records Advocate, advocate “should be truly decided that the position independent.” Brown also would be under the gover- said she planned to meet nor’s authority. This might well be part of with McCall to discuss ways to “create a truly indepen- the problem here. dent position.” If McCall’s successor is That shouldn’t be diffi- to truly serve as an advocate cult. The governor should for the public, rather than a start by making sure her mouthpiece for the govern- ment, then he or she needs to general counsel supports the be insulated from influence, independence of the public records advocate rather than whether direct or implied, cajoles that person to defer from state officials. That’s because there is to the governor’s office. GUEST COMMENT Issues with opioid data By Steve Suo I edited The Oregonian/Ore- gonLive article on opioids and pharmacies that your publi- cation critiqued on Aug. 23. Our report was based on The Washing- ton Post’s national ranking of phar- macies by opioid pills purchased, per county resident, per year. You raised concerns about the analy- sis, which put Howard’s Drugs, in Lake County, and Len’s Drug, in Grant County, in the top 0.1 per- cent of 83,000 pharmacies in the country. There is a shortcoming to the Post’s approach. Dividing every store’s pill purchases by its county population dilutes the rates for urban stores, most of which serve only a fraction of their urban markets. Prompted by your article, we asked the Post about its methodol- ogy. Investigative Editor Jeff Leen said that the ideal measure would have been a pharmacy’s pill orders per actual opioid customer. That information was not available from the database, so the Post used an imperfect measure that had sup- port from experts. The choice was made after consultation with math- ematicians for the parties suing opioid manufacturers. The Drug Enforcement Administration has used the same methodology to identify pharmacies for scrutiny. Speed and simplicity were also factors in the Post’s decision to publish the numbers while it con- tinued to work on a more nuanced ranking system. Is there a fairer way to compare urban and rural stores? Since pub- lication, we’ve followed your sug- gestion to divide each county’s population by its number of stores. Howard’s and Len’s would remain outliers, but not as extreme as in the Post’s rankings. They would be in the top 11 percent and 8 percent of stores nationally, but so would dozens of other Oregon stores, and thousands across the country. Of course, this method has its own issues. Some urban pharma- cies presumably have a much big- ger market share than others. Many serve commuters from suburban counties as well as local residents. For another perspective, we examined the Post’s rates for stores in counties averaging less than 1.5 pharmacies in business from 2006 to 2012 (Grant County’s status today). Out of 435 similarly situ- ated, rural stores nationwide, How- ard’s rate was higher than 430. Len’s was higher than 400, and it’s worth noting that one other pharmacy served Grant County throughout this period. Much to their credit, the two Oregon pharmacy owners gave us lengthy interviews and provided needed context that we included in our article. The Lake County owner noted that his was the lone pharmacy for local residents, and the Grant County owner noted the higher rates of injury in rural jobs. We very much appreciate the Eagle’s reporting on this. We will be publishing an editor’s note to highlight the limitations you have identified. In the end, the Post’s ranking system identifies outliers, but other methods put urban stores at the very top. Our story lacked important caveats acknowledging the challenges of reaching a mean- ingful common denominator. Your story is leading us to rectify that in print and online. Steve Suo is the watchdog and data editor for The Oregonian/ OregonLive. FARMER’S FATE Remembering those mental notes H onesty is the best pol- icy, of course, but some- times those little white lies sneak in: My water intake always exceeds that of Gatorade. I would never eat the whole bowl of popcorn by myself. Starting the day before the rooster gets out of bed is exciting. I need that new pair of shoes. I know I’ll find it here again. But the biggest lie I tell myself is “I don’t need to write it down, I’ll remember it.” It’s not a lie I’ve used spar- ingly either. That little lie has seemed to play on repeat through- out my life. “That is such an easy phone number to remember. I don’t need to write it down.” Days later, scrambling through the phone book hoping to remember their last name. Biology class: “That concept is so simple there is nothing to write down at all.” Called on in class later to explain the process, I find myself stammering, flipping through empty notebook pages, hoping to remember at least one key word. Making a men- tal grocery list also seems like a great idea — until I come home and realize that the sale on milk Brianna Walker or eggs had dis- tracted me, and I’d forgotten the two main ingre- dients I was going after. My kids will say or do some- thing really funny, and I momen- tarily think I should write it in their baby books — but it’s so funny that who could forget it? Then that night, trying to repeat the story to my husband, I find I am lucky to even have a gen- eral idea of what the incident was about. Or standing at the parts counter wishing like crazy you would have at least written the fil- ter number in the dust on the side of the pickup. The worst for me is writing material. Something funny will happen, and immediately I’ll think of a great anecdotal story. Sometimes I’ll even share it with my husband, and we’ll laugh and brainstorm about where I could go with it. Then days later, I will pull out my laptop and my note- book where I attempt keep my day-to-day notes — and I will discover that I never wrote those thoughts down. There is little point asking my husband. His long-term memory storage is filled with equipment stats and commodity prices. His short-term memory is basically just to determine if it’s worthy of being in long term before being deleted. He probably couldn’t recall the color of hat I wore yes- terday, but he’ll never forget 14 years ago when I threw out the new Fastline instead of the old one. Now I will sit in front of an empty screen and empty baby books — wishing I would have taken more time to write down the funny stories, the amusing quips, the hilarious snapshots of our life. Maybe I should pick up a bot- tle of ginkgo biloba next time I’m in town — that’s supposed to be good for one’s memory. I think I’ll make a mental note. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Lamenting the loss of Raddue Campground To the Editor: Our family has been camp- ing and having family reunions at Raddue Campground on Beech Creek since at least the 1930s. We were planning on having Blue Mountain EAGLE Published every Wednesday by Grant County’s Weekly Newspaper Publisher............ ......................................Chris Rush, crush@eomediagroup.com Editor & General Manager ...............Sean Hart, editor@bmeagle.com Community News .................................Angel Carpenter, angel@bmeagle.com Sports ........................................................Angel Carpenter, angel@bmeagle.com Marketing Rep .......................................Kim Kell, ads@bmeagle.com Administrative Assistant ..................Makenna Adair, office@bmeagle.com Office Assistant .....................................Alixandra Hand, office@bmeagle.com MEMBER OREGON NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION Online: MyEagleNews.com a family reunion at Raddue this year with family coming from Montana, Idaho, Washington, Nevada and Oregon. We couldn’t have our reunion at Raddue because the picnic table and outhouse were gone. Our family has elders who need these facilities. Also, the road into Raddue had a deep rut, making it hard to enter without damaging your vehicle. 1 YEAR SUBSCRIPTION RATES (including online access) Grant County .........................................$45 Everywhere else in U.S. .......................$57 Outside Continental U.S. ....................$60 Subscriptions must be paid prior to delivery Periodicals Postage Paid at John Day and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER send address changes to: Blue Mountain Eagle 195 N. Canyon Blvd. John Day, OR 97845-1187 USPS 226-340 Phone: 541-575-0710 I am sorry there is no Raddue anymore. It was the last wishes of three of our family members before their death to camp in Rad- due one last time. They loved it that much. Now there is only a sign that says Road 131. This is a big part of our family history that has been taken away. Arvilla Harris Fox Copyright © 2019 Blue Mountain Eagle All rights reserved. No part of this publication covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means — graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping or information storage and retrieval systems — without written permission of the publisher. facebook.com/MyEagleNews @MyEagleNews