STATE
MyEagleNews.com
Wednesday, August 11, 2021
A9
Legislature faces 46-day race to fi nish redistricting
Eleven state lawmakers on
Thursday will begin a politi-
cally Herculean task with his-
torically small odds of suc-
cess: Draw 96 new political
districts in 46 days that will be
used beginning with the 2022
election.
The six Democrats and fi ve
Republicans on the House and
Senate redistricting commit-
tees are set to receive block-by-
block U.S. Census data chock
full of population and demo-
graphic changes since the last
map-making 10 years ago.
The COVID-19 pandemic
caused a six-month delay in the
delivery of the geographically
microscopic analysis. It’s a
key to ensuring district designs
don’t violate the 1965 U.S.
Voter Rights Act or state rules
to link “communities of inter-
est” together when possible.
Top court is redistricting
traffi c cop
The delay caused the state
to blow by several deadlines
for redistricting. State leaders
were unsure of who had the
Draw six congressional
districts — one more than
now exists — each with about
706,209 residents.
History shows getting any
legislative plan implemented is
a longshot.
Only once in 110 years
has the legislature come up
with new district maps that
were approved by the gover-
nor and faced no court chal-
lenges. It was in 2011, when
a rare 30-30 split of House
seats between Republicans and
Democrats required unavoid-
able compromises.
All the other times, either
the legislature couldn’t agree on
a plan, it was vetoed by the gov-
ernor, ended up in the lap of the
secretary of state or attracted a
dog pile of court challenges.
Bend and Portland bulges
preface big changes
The fi nal 2022 district maps
likely won’t be seen until well
into autumn. But the initial
release of state, county and city
totals show undeniable patterns
of where districts are likely to
stretch or shrink.
Oregon received a new con-
gressional seat by outpacing
the nation in adding more peo-
ple. The 2020 population is offi -
cially 4,237,256. Oregon grew
by 10.7% since 2010, above the
U.S. Ag Secretary Vilsack: Nation,
Oregon facing ‘larger challenges’
By Peter Wong
Oregon Capital Bureau
Reveille for GOP
House Minority Leader
Christine Drazan, R-Canby,
recently fi red a verbal fl are
to get Republicans’ attention
Contributed photo/Governor’s offi ce
Willamette Valley farmers showed U.S. Agriculture Secretary
Tom Vilsack and Gov. Kate Brown plants damaged by excessive
heat. Vilsack said the federal government would have to step up
to help states overcome agriculture challenges.
are, plus ports and water-
ways. It’s also about the green
infrastructure.”
Vilsack leads the U.S.
Department of Agriculture,
the parent agency of the For-
est Service, which oversees
10 national forests in the state
and a total of 16 million acres,
about 25% of Oregon.
“We heard from the brief-
ing today that close coordina-
tion has been one of the keys”
to a successful state-federal
relationship, Vilsack said.
“But that takes you only so
far. That is why it is necessary
for Oregon to do what it has
done with its new legislation,
and for us to do what we need
to do … to have the resources
to step up our game in terms
of personnel and step up in
terms of forest restoration,
better management and more
resources for suppression.”
Federal plans
Bipartisan legislation for
public works was whittled
down in the Senate from Pres-
ident Joe Biden’s original $2.6
trillion to $550 billion. But it
left $50 billion intact to help
Western water storage and
other projects better withstand
the eff ects of climate change,
such as wildfi res.
Biden has created but
not funded a Civilian Cli-
mate Corps, a new version
of the New Deal-era Civilian
Conservation Corps, which
between 1933 and 1942 put
thousands of primarily young
men to work in the forests —
including what is now Silver
Falls State Park east of Salem.
That corps and other money
for climate-change work is
likely to await a separate $3.5
trillion budget package yet to
be shaped in the Senate.
“By creating the corps and
encouraging young people
to participate in those activ-
ities, we will help create that
next generation of fi refi ght-
ers and folks willing to work
for the state and federal gov-
ernments in forest manage-
ment,” Vilsack said. “Not only
do we want these forests to be
healthy, we want them to be
great places to recreate.”
Vilsack and Brown agreed
on a need for more feder-
al-state projects such as the
Good Neighbor Authority to
reduce wildfi re threats.
focused on the new maps that
will be used until the 2032
election.
Drazan noted Democrats’
dominance of all the key roles
in redistricting from superma-
jorities in the Legislature to a
sweep of state executive offi ces.
Though offi cially nonpar-
tisan, all seven justices on the
Oregon Supreme Court were
elevated by Democrats (there
hasn’t been a Republican gov-
ernor since Vic Atiyeh left
offi ce in 1987).
Drazan said partisanship
could play as big a role as pop-
ulation shifts unless Democrats
have someone looking over
their shoulders.
“We are at high risk of ger-
rymandering,” Drazan said.
“They have the power, but we’ll
be able to question how it is
done.”
Drazan will have outsized
sway over redistricting due to a
deal she struck during the 2021
session with House Speaker
Tina Kotek, D-Portland.
Drazan agreed to stop using
parliamentary moves to slow
the Democrats’ agenda.
Kotek
in
exchange
appointed Drazan to the House
Redistricting Committee. The
move means the committee has
political parity, with three Dem-
ocrats and three Republicans.
No similar plan was worked
out with the Senate. Its redistrict-
ing committee has three Demo-
crats and two Republicans.
How the two politically
asymmetrical panels will be
integrated when it comes time
to debate and vote on new dis-
trict maps is a process still being
hammered out.
If the House and Senate
can’t come up with a plan, or
Brown vetoes their proposal,
there is a backup plan.
Secretary of State Shemia
Fagan would draw legislative
districts, while congressional
maps would be the task of a
fi ve-judge panel created by the
Oregon Supreme Court. They
would have to submit their
work to the court by Oct. 18.
If the maps drawn by Fagan
or the judges’ panel are found
wanting under legal review, the
Supreme Court justices would
draw the lines themselves.
The court has set Feb. 7,
2022, as the latest date for maps
to be fi nalized, including any
legal challenges.
With redistricting settled,
potential major party candidates
would have one month until the
March 8 deadline to fi le for the
May 17 primary election.
Dick Hughes of Oregon
Capital Insider contributed to
this story.
COVID-19 spike would have put most of
Oregon under former ‘extreme risk’ rating
By Gary A. Warner and Bryce
Dole
Oregon Capital Bureau
The faster, stronger delta
variant of the coronavirus is
causing soaring numbers of
COVID-19 infections and
sickness across Oregon, state
statistics revealed Tuesday.
Multnomah County, which
includes Portland, reported
1,013 new cases for a two-
week period for the fi rst time
since the end of April.
Umatilla County had 915
cases per 100,000 people
during the same time, by far
the most in the state.
Wallowa County reported
one out of four COVID-19
tests came back positive.
Lake County was the only
one of Oregon’s 36 counties to
record a drop in reported cases.
An Oregon Health Author-
ity weekly report using a for-
mula to set risk levels for each
county is still published every
week.
Under rules in place for
much of the past year, this
week’s numbers would push 22
counties — likely more — into
the the classifi cation of being at
“extreme risk” of spreading the
COVID-19 virus.
But the once automatic
restrictions on business and
civic life that were imposed
based on various thresholds
were scaled back in recent
months and abandoned alto-
gether as of June 30.
The statistics come out
each Monday in the County
COVID-19
Community
Spread Report.
Total positive cases over the
previous two weeks, positive
cases per 100,000 population
and the percentage of COVID-
19 tests reported positive are
listed, along with the previous
two periods for comparison.
In combinations based on the
size, counties were assigned to
one of four risk levels.
For months from last fall
through early summer, the
report’s arrival was followed
by an announcement from
Gov. Kate Brown with newly
revised risk levels. Counties
could go up, down or stay the
same.
Where a county fell on the
four-tiered chart determined
what businesses could open,
how many customers could
shop in a store, the time of last
call at bars and whether a diner
could sit down for their meal
inside a restaurant, outside —
or had to buy takeout.
Infection rates dived after
April as a majority of Orego-
nians started getting vacci-
nated. With nearly 70% of eli-
gible adults having received at
least one shot, Brown on June
30 unshackled the fate of local
lives and economies from the
impact of the reports.
As Oregon entered July,
decisions on public health and
any restrictions required to
fi ght COVID-19 were decided
by commissioners in each of
the 36 counties.
The weekly reports contin-
ued to come out, but fell off the
public radar since their num-
bers no longer had any imme-
diate impact.
In early July, Oregon
showed a seven-day average
of 110 new cases in the whole
state — the lowest in over a
year.
Vaccines that arrived since
December had not been as
widely embraced in Oregon as
Brown hoped, with daily fi rst
doses falling from a high of
over 50,000 on a few days in
April to an average of just over
5,000 per day in mid-July.
But the Oregon Health
Authority, backed by advice
from the Centers for Dis-
ease Control and Prevention,
were confi dent of no return to
the dark days of winter, when
average daily cases topped out
at 1,515.
The report released Tues-
day based on the old risk level
formula shows Oregon is back
to wintery numbers of infec-
tions, with hospitals again
stretched to their limits.
Just as the state opened
up, the delta variant arrived in
force. In areas of the state with
large numbers of unvaccinated
people , it wreaked immediate
havoc.
A saving grace is any rise
in deaths is forecast to be
shorter and shallower than
previous waves because of
the high vaccination level of
the elderly and those with
medical conditions.
But the delta variant has
produced a staggeringly steep
rise in cases, particularly in
parts of Eastern and South-
western Oregon were vaccina-
tion rates have been low.
OHA is investigating the
role of the Pendleton Whisky
Fest country music concert last
month that drew 12,000 and
has led to reports of dozens of
positive COVID-19 cases, pri-
marily in Umatilla County.
The specter of a super
spreader event now shadows
plans for the Umatilla County
Fair, which is scheduled for
Aug. 11-14. Dwarfi ng all
other events is the Pendleton
Round-Up, beginning Sept. 11,
which has drawn up to 50,000
people from across the United
States.
The OHA investigation into
the Whisky Fest has brought
tensions between state and
local offi cials to the surface.
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139101
Agriculture Secretary Tom
Vilsack says Congress needs
to do for the national forests
what the Oregon Legislature
and Gov. Kate Brown have
just done to boost fi refi ghting
eff orts and reduce the threat
of wildfi res, more of them
likely to occur with a warm-
ing climate.
Vilsack spoke with report-
ers Tuesday after he and Brown
toured a farm near Salem and
were briefed by offi cials about
the status of wildfi res, particu-
larly the Bootleg Fire that has
consumed more than 400,000
acres northeast of Klamath
Falls. Much of that acreage is
within the Fremont-Winema
National Forest.
Brown has signed state
legislation (Senate Bill 762)
that stems from recommenda-
tions of her Council on Wild-
fi re Response back in 2019.
Attached to it is $220 mil-
lion in state funds to increase
the number of fi refi ghters on
the ground and modernize
planes in the air, install auto-
matic smoke detection cam-
eras, map high-risk wildfi re
zones and defi ne defensible
space around homes, carry out
projects such as forest thin-
ning and prescribed burning,
and provide clean-air shelters.
“It is a positive and proac-
tive step,” Vilsack told report-
ers at the state’s Emergency
Operations Center. “It shifts
the responsibility to the fed-
eral government to do like-
wise, which is why what is
being debated in the Senate
right now is incredibly import-
ant. It recognizes that, when
you talk about infrastruc-
ture, it’s not just roads and
bridges, as important as those
7.4% national average.
But the growth has not been
evenly spread across the state.
Traditional Republican strong-
holds in eastern and southwest-
ern Oregon have seen tepid
population growth.
The biggest political bounce
could be in the Bend area. The
2010 census put the city’s pop-
ulation at just over 76,700. The
2020 census reported the city
was home to 106,023 people, a
38% increase.
The growth has come with
political change attached. Dem-
ocrats fl ipped the House seat
representing most of the city in
2020. Deschutes County gave a
majority of its presidential vote
to Democrat Joe Biden over
then-President Donald Trump.
Early census data shows the
other big growth area over the
past decade in Oregon was a
suburban arc around Portland.
It stretches from Wilsonville to
Hillsboro, curves through and
around northern Portland then
drops southeast into Clacka-
mas County. All the current rep-
resentatives in those areas are
Democrats.
S254306-1
By Gary A. Warner
Oregon Capital Bureau
responsibility — and political
opportunity — to control the
process.
It took an Oregon Supreme
Court ruling in April to untan-
gle the mess. The justices ruled
the legislature would get the
fi rst shot. But it attached a
crushing deadline.
The redistricting plan had to
be created, debated, approved
by the House and Senate, con-
fi rmed by Gov. Kate Brown
and arrive back at the court no
later than Sept. 27.
Since
the
legislature
adjourned for the year at the
end of June, lawmakers will be
called back for a special ses-
sion on Sept. 20.
What comes out of this high-
speed scramble of the current
political topography is any-
body’s guess.
“Nobody knows what their
district’s going to look like right
now,” Senate President Peter
Courtney said last week. “Some
are going to be dramatically
changed, and some aren’t.”
The arrival of the data this
week will allow the commit-
tees to start on a long to-do list:
Draw 60 House dis-
tricts, each with about 70,621
residents.
Draw 30 Senate districts,
each with about 141,242
residents.
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96 political districts
need ironed out
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