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About The Blue Mountain eagle. (John Day, Or.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 16, 2019)
STATE MyEagleNews.com Wednesday, October 16, 2019 A7 Recall petition against Gov. Brown comes up short By Claire Withycombe Oregon Capital Bureau Supporters of a petition to recall Gov. Kate Brown came up short of the signa- tures needed for a ballot chal- lenge, Oregon Republican Party Chair Bill Currier said Monday. Currier made the announcement midday on the Lars Larson Show, a conser- vative talk show. Supporters needed at least 280,050 valid signatures by 5 p.m. Oct. 14 to put a recall on the ballot. One effort, filed by Cur- rier, fell short by about 8 percent, or about 22,400 signatures. A separate effort, known as “Flush Down Kate Brown,” received 100,000 signatures by people who were not on the GOP’s sig- nature list, Larson said on the show. Larson said that effort also was not as successful as the party’s. Michael Cross, the lead sponsor of the “Flush Down Kate Brown” petition, deliv- ered nine boxes of petitions to the Secretary of State’s office around 2 p.m. on Monday, according to the Secretary of State’s office. Wo r k - ers counted all 23,926 signature sheets. But Gov. Kate since each Brown sheet can only have, at most, 10 signatures each, after counting the sheets it was clear there weren’t enough signatures for that effort to qualify for the ballot. Currier told Larson that there was “absolutely” sup- port for another recall effort. “This fight is not over,” Currier said. Currier said that between the two efforts, enough valid signatures were collected. “Another way to put this, is, there were enough signa- tures collected … they just can’t be combined,” he said. Currier also said that the petition received quite a few invalid signatures that he said could be easily corrected if petitioners file again. Many invalid signatures were “sim- ply illegible,” Currier said. He said over the weekend, they had been able to iden- tify about 100,000 invalid Oregon Capital Bureau/Claire Withycombe Carol Williams, petition coordinator for the Oregon Republican Party, indicates a box where signatures in support of a petition to recall Gov. Kate Brown are housed. More signatures are in the safe behind her. signatures by registered vot- ers whose signatures could be converted into valid signatures. “We have an address and a name, and with a little bit of research, we can tie that to a specific person and make that valid,” Currier said. “And there were other folks who didn’t put the correct information down, they put the wrong address, and so we can tie them back to a correct address.” Currier did not return requests seeking further comment Monday. Brown, a Democrat, was first appointed governor in 2015 after John Kitzhaber resigned after an influ- ence-peddling scandal. She was elected to fill Kitzhaber’s unexpired term in 2016 and reelected in 2018. In the election last year, Brown received 50.05% of the vote, or 934,498 votes, according to Secretary of State data. Her main oppo- nent, Republican Knute Bue- hler, received 814,988 votes. Currier said the public and the party’s volunteers were committed to the cause of removing Brown. The GOP petition said Brown has “overturned the will of the voters” by allow- ing undocumented immi- grants to get driver’s licenses, “failed to protect Oregon’s foster children” and “failed to address” the state’s public pension debt, among other grievances. “The volunteers are, for the most part, so committed to seeing Brown removed that we can carry this for- ward,” Currier said on the show, “but we do have to work out details like tim- ing, when we begin round two, setting up the infrastruc- ture for all of that to happen. So this fight is definitely not over.” Brown’s supporters say she has fulfilled her cam- paign promises. “Gov. Brown ran a cam- paign promising to move Oregon forward by invest- ing in our schools, creat- ing paid family and medi- cal leave, and protecting the environment,” said Thomas Wheatley, political adviser to Brown, in a written statement Monday. “That’s exactly what she did this year.” Wheatley contended that “recalls should be used only when an elected official has committed a crime, not when someone disagrees with the policies of the governor or another elected official.” “The extremists push- ing reckless recalls want to overturn the will of the vot- ers who elected Democrats by wide margins,” Wheat- ley said. “In rejecting this recall, the public has sent a clear message: Oregonians don’t want to waste their tax dollars on a reckless recall against Democratic lawmak- ers who are moving our state forward.” Currier said that the num- ber of signatures they gath- ered in three months was “historic.” Experts had observed that getting enough signatures within 90 days with an all-volunteer cam- paign would be a steep climb. “I think people need to understand that we had 90 days to collect twice as many signatures as a normal petition, which gets a whole year to do that,” Currier said. “So this is historic.” OLCC kicks off six-month ban on flavored vape products Ban takes effect Oct. 15, as OHA and OLCC to create work group to investigate cause of vape-related outbreak By Sam Stites Oregon Capital Bureau Oregon’s Liquor Control Commission and the Oregon Health Authority on Friday, Oct. 11, rolled out a ban on the sale of all flavored canna- bis and nicotine vaping prod- ucts in response to a grow- ing number of cases of acute respiratory illness and death linked to vaping OLCC board members unanimously approved tem- porary rules proposed by the Health Authority after a Portland meeting. The board was responding to Gov. Kate Brown’s Oct. 4 order plac- ing a temporary ban on the products. OLCC’s ban takes effect Oct. 15. The ban is expected to affect approximately 4,000 retailers statewide. “We’re dealing with a national epidemic with a growing number of cases,” said Jeff Rhodes, the gover- nor’s senior policy adviser to OLCC. “The latest num- bers are 1,299 cases and 26 deaths, two of which occurred in Oregon.” In Oregon, an outbreak of Oregon Capital Bureau/Sam Stites OLCC Director Steve Marks addresses the media following the OLCC board’s unanimous approval of implementing a six-month ban on sales of all flavored vaping products as directed by Gov. Kate Brown’s executive order. nine cases of acute respira- tory illness caused the Health Authority and Brown to issue warnings in late September for Oregonians to stop vap- ing. Brown asked the Health Authority to propose options up to and including a tempo- rary ban which she issued a week earlier. According to OLCC offi- cials, the agency will call manufacturers and retailers across the state this weekend to inform them of the new rules and distributing signs notifying consumers of the ban. The ban does not include tobacco-flavored tobacco or nicotine products. It also doesn’t include marijua- na-flavored marijuana and THC products on the market. OLCC Marijuana Techni- cal Unit Manager TJ Sheehy said that 10 percent of all marijuana vape products would be affected by the ban. A process to handle excep- tions could be in place by Nov. 15 at which time man- ufacturers can apply to have products sourced from natu- ral botanicals exempted from the ban. “It’s important to note that most of these cases report- ing vaping of THC products, some of them using exclu- sively THC products, but also some using exclusively nicotine products,” said Dr. Dean Sidelinger, state health officer. “In working with the CDC, we still don’t have a definitive cause of this injury, or what ingredient or ingredi- ents are causing it.” The OLCC and the Health Authority will create a work group in the next six months to examine the source of these illnesses. FALL FOR A NEW KUBOTA! 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