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Wednesday, December 18, 2019
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Senators reworking cap and trade concept
By Claire Withycombe
Oregon Capital Bureau
The environmental plan
that launched a thousand log-
ging trucks is getting a make-
over in the Oregon Senate.
Private negotiations among
state senators have led to a
new legislative concept. It’s
the skeleton of what could be a
new system to gradually clamp
down on greenhouse gas emis-
sions from Oregon companies.
The Senate president’s
office has been soliciting feed-
back from interest groups in
recent days. The Oregon Cap-
ital Bureau obtained the con-
cept, dated Dec. 11.
A previous effort to control
emissions and impose signifi-
cant fees collapsed in the 2019
Legislature.
That proposal, which set
up a market system to encour-
age businesses to reduce their
carbon emissions and would
have connected Oregon to cap
and trade systems in Canada
and California, passed in the
House.
But it prompted ire from
Senate Republicans, who even-
tually fled the Capitol to pre-
vent a vote on the bill. They
maintained the proposal would
hurt their largely rural districts.
House Bill 2020 also
sparked a protest from tim-
ber companies and logging
truck drivers, who spent a day
in June encircling the Capitol,
blowing horns to exhibit their
discontent. The timber indus-
try would have been exempt
from regulation under the plan,
however.
But Democrats are adamant
they’ll get a policy through
next year to address the grow-
ing threat of climate change.
Sen. Michael Dembrow,
D-Portland, a leading advocate
for a climate policy, stressed
on Friday that the concept is
“extremely preliminary,” and
that he hopes another, updated
version will become public in
about a week.
“It’s very much a work in
progress,” Dembrow said.
The new proposal creates
a staggered system to reduce
carbon emissions. It provides
most polluters with emissions
allowances. The allowances
would scale back over a mat-
ter of years.
The allowances can be
traded among those busi-
nesses covered by the policy
so that firms who don’t use all
their allowances could sell the
excess to those that don’t have
enough.
Unlike the earlier proposal,
Oregon would be flying solo,
rather than connecting to cap
and trade programs in other
places.
“The limit, broadly speak-
ing, is on our state emissions,
and it’s got to come down each
year gradually in order to get
to where we need to be in the
future,” Dembrow said. “And
industries or sectors that can’t
be below that amount will
have to purchase allowances
to continue to emit above that
amount.”
The earlier proposal would
have created a new state
bureaucracy to manage the
program. The current concept,
instead, puts the oversight role
under the Department of Envi-
ronmental Quality, Dembrow
said.
It also takes a different
approach to a major point of
contention last year: its impact
on prices at the gas pump.
Republicans argued rural Ore-
gonians would feel the effects
of a carbon policy more acutely
because of the longer distances
they must drive to get to work,
school and to other duties of
everyday life.
Fuel suppliers would have
faced added costs under the
original proposal that would
have been passed on to
consumers.
The new proposal would
instead mean that companies
importing gas into the state
would only adhere to the emis-
sions system in the Portland
area at first, starting in 2022,
and then, three years later,
metro areas with populations
of 30,000 or more.
“That’s a big change,”
Dembrow said.
While the details aren’t
“quite there yet,” he added, it’s
generally an idea he supports.
“I think it really does
address a lot of the concerns
that we heard that the bill
would put inordinate costs on
our rural residents,” Dembrow
said, “so delaying the imple-
mentation for the most rural
parts of the state is an acknowl-
edgement that we’re trying to
address those concerns.”
Dembrow said the cur-
rent concept doesn’t include
what he feels are import-
ant aspects of last year’s pro-
posal, such as worker retrain-
ing for those who could be
impacted by economic changes
wrought by a new climate
policy.
The Oregon AFL-CIO, a
federation of unions repre-
senting about 300,000 Oregon
workers, issued a rejoinder to
the draft on Friday.
Graham Trainor, Ore-
gon AFL-CIO president, said
the current draft doesn’t help
workers whose industries
could be affected by a climate
policy and doesn’t direct pro-
ceeds from the policy to cre-
ating “family wage, quality
jobs.”
“We have always believed
that workers must be at the
center of policy when debat-
ing how their work could be
impacted, and especially in a
cap and invest program that has
the potential to produce major
shifts in Oregon’s economy,”
Trainor said in a written state-
ment Friday.
“Any climate action that
leaves behind workers and
communities disproportion-
ately impacted by the effects
of climate change is a policy
and a process that should be
rejected,” Trainor said.
Sen. Fred Girod, R-Stayton,
considered to be a point person
for Senate Republicans as they
negotiate a new climate policy,
couldn’t be reached for com-
ment Friday afternoon.
Sen. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario,
who is resigning to run for
Congress in early January, has
taken a step back from his pre-
viously front-and-center role in
carbon policy for Republicans,
and said when reached Friday
that he hadn’t seen the latest
proposal.
Senate Republican Leader
Herman Baertschiger Jr. of
Grants Pass said he hasn’t
been involved in the discus-
sions over the policy, and said
he hadn’t gotten very far into
reading the 60-page proposal
Friday.
But he said that it was
“madness” to consider sweep-
ing climate legislation during
the five-week legislative ses-
sion. The session starts Feb. 3.
“We think that trying to
run these huge policies that’ll
affect every Oregonian in five
weeks is craziness,” Baertsch-
iger said.
Brad Reed, a spokesman
for Renew Oregon, a coali-
tion of businesses and non-
profits pushing for state pol-
icy to address climate change,
emphasized the concept is an
early “starting point.”
But Reed said the concept is
missing “key components” that
the group pushed for last ses-
sion, and doesn’t go far enough
to make all major polluters pay
or invest in moving the state to
a clean energy economy.
“I want to stress that we
consider this as where they
will start negotiating,” Reed
said. “This is not a piece of leg-
islation that the Renew Ore-
gon coalition would be able to
support.”
Oregon lawmakers prepare for 2020 short session
By Claire Withycombe
Oregon Capital Bureau
While many Democrats
are eager to tackle big-ticket
issues like climate change in
the approaching legislative ses-
sion, legislators also have other
ideas they want to push.
During short sessions,
which take place every
even-numbered year and last
no more than 35 days, sena-
tors can introduce one piece of
legislation and representatives
two. Their concepts are already
being submitted ahead of the
session.
State Rep. Cheri Helt, a
Bend Republican, is teaming up
with state Sen. Laurie Monnes
Anderson, D-Gresham, to ban
flavored vaping products and
flavored e-cigarettes, after a
rash of deaths this year con-
nected to vaping.
“Oregonians should not
be a laboratory for the vaping
industry to determine the dan-
gers of these products,” Helt
said in September, as deaths
headlined national news. “We
need to learn more and have
stronger legal protections to
protect the lives and health of
Oregonians.”
In November, the Oregon
Court of Appeals struck down
an executive order by Gov.
Kate Brown to temporarily
halt the sale of flavored vaping
products.
The vaping ban is likely to
have some support from both
parties. Rep. Janelle Bynum,
D-Clackamas, and Rep. Rachel
Prusak, D-Tualatin/West Linn,
have said they would join Helt
to support the ban.
Some lawmakers view
the short session as a chance
to resuscitate proposals that
didn’t make it through the
arduous slog of this year’s long
session. Rep. Chris Gorsek,
D-Troutdale, is re-introducing
legislation to stop the suspen-
sion of driver licenses for those
who have unpaid traffic fines.
Rep. Jeff Barker, D-Aloha,
introduced the bill last year.
Gorsek said that suspend-
ing licenses makes it harder
for people to get to work and
make enough money to pay
the fine. He said people can be
held accountable in other ways,
such as garnishing wages or
retaining tax refunds.
“This bill really is just about
saying, let’s use other mech-
anisms, but let’s not make it
harder for those folks …let’s
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and hard liquor.
“You can get pot delivered
to your house, but you can’t get
alcohol,” Doherty said.
Deliverers would need a
server’s permit and to check
the purchaser’s age, Doherty
said. It would be optional for
liquor stores and grocery stores
to participate. A legislative
work group will meet in Janu-
ary to finalize the proposal.
“What we’re talking about
is more, I’m having a Super-
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beer, so I want to order a case
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Doherty said.
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Rep. Margaret Doherty,
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Special Thank You Given to
Dr. Keith Thomas and Cyndy Fox
I remember the day in 2004 that Dr. Keith Thomas and Cyndy Fox walked in to my
office at Blue mountain Hospital for an interview and what became a 15-year-long
surgical tenure with Blue Mountain Hospital and Grant County.
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Dr. Thomas and Cyndy over the past 15 years have worked tirelessly developing and
maintaining a surgery practice and surgical clinic in John Day. Both have been huge
supporters of the hospital, Blue Mountain Health Care Foundation and Grant County
in general. Patients were never turned away when they were in need and Dr. Thomas
was always available, indicating “if he was around or in town, he would be available
for surgery at any time.”
(Sal
I enjoyed working with Dr. Thomas and Cyndy for over 10 years at BMH. They were
both professional, ethical and dedicated to their patients, our staff and hospital as
well as Grant County. They were more than work colleagues; they were friends and
our family will miss them.
Grant county owes the Thomas’ a debt of gratitude and as much as we hate to see them
go, we must wish them well and much success in their new challenges in Colorado.
t he y
las t.)
Come in and draw for a 50% off coupon on any
$30.00 to $40.00 any regular priced item.
Thank you Keith and Cyndy and good luck. Remember, you are still a member of our
foundation Golf Tournament Foursome!
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Come and check them out!
Sign up for a drawing on 12/23/2019.
137 E. Main St., John Day •541-575-1637
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