LOCAL
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
HerMIsTOnHeraLd.COM • A3
Hermiston’s Joseph Franell testifies before Congress
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
Eastern Oregon Telecom Pres-
ident Joseph Franell jumped into
the fray of Congress’ net neutral-
ity debate Thursday.
Franell traveled from Hermis-
ton to Washington, D.C., to tes-
tify in front of lawmakers from
the House’s Energy and Com-
merce Committee by invitation
of Rep. Greg Walden, the com-
mittee’s top-ranking Republican.
Walden has introduced legislation
that would prohibit internet ser-
vice providers from practices such
as blocking or throttling traffic to
lawful websites and requiring sites
to pay for prioritization.
The idea that all websites, from
the page of a small local business
to Amazon.com, should be treated
equally is known as net neutral-
ity. Video of Franell’s opening
remarks shows he told lawmak-
ers he believed internet service
providers, such as EOT, should be
able to prioritize some traffic over
others — a 911 call over other
calls, for example, or emergency
medical information over online
gaming.
“Students participating in dis-
tance education or online stan-
dardized testing should get priority
over those streaming online mov-
ies for entertainment,” he said.
Defenders of net neutral-
ity — which Franell accused of
“fear-mongering” —have pushed
back on the idea of allowing inter-
net providers to pick and choose
which traffic they prioritize. They
say it would open the door to less
ethical practices, such as slow-
ing traffic to websites owned by
a competitor or promoting a polit-
ical ideology the provider dis-
agrees with.
Advocates for a “free and open”
Contributed photo
Joseph Franell, president of Eastern Oregon Telecom, testifies before the Energy and Commerce Committee on
Thursday in Washington, D.C.
internet want to preserve an inter-
net where a local news website or
personal blog is on a level play-
ing field with websites like Net-
flix, which could afford to pay if
providers like Comcast or Charter
started charging fees for access to
their customers.
In 2015, to enforce net neutral-
ity, the Obama-era Federal Com-
munications Commission classi-
fied broadband internet as a Title II
utility, allowing the FCC to heav-
ily regulate service providers. In
2017, under the Trump adminis-
tration, the internet was reclassi-
fied as a Title I utility, ending net
neutrality.
Franell told committee mem-
bers Thursday that the Title II era
had a “dramatic chilling effect on
rural telecommunication in the
Pacific Northwest.” Investors were
extremely hesitant to invest in
rural broadband, he said, and com-
panies had to spend large amounts
of time and resources on reporting
to the federal government, draw-
ing those resources away from
serving customers and expanding
service to more rural areas.
Franell urged lawmakers to
avoid changing the internet back
to a Title II utility as they consid-
ered rules to prevent bad behavior
by service providers — behavior
he said EOT and other rural inter-
net providers in Oregon have never
engaged in, even when legal.
“I believe Title II had begun to
harm the internet in the U.S., and a
reapplication of it has the very real
possibility of resulting in unfore-
seen and irrevocable damage,” he
said.
In a news release, Walden said
Title II had given “big government
unlimited authority to microman-
age every single aspect of a pro-
vider’s business.” He said since its
repeal both Democrats and Repub-
licans have agreed that there does
need to be limits on some behav-
iors, however, such as, arbitrarily
blocking access to websites.
Walden told the other mem-
bers of the Energy and Com-
merce Committee on Thursday
that the internet was “the sin-
gle most important driver of eco-
Hermiston nonprofits help people stay warm
By JAYATI RAMAKRISHNAN
STAFF WRITER
Hermiston has been
experiencing a cold snap,
with a winter storm that sent
snow Friday night through
Monday. Eastern Oregon is
expected to get more snow
before the month is out.
That has some local orga-
nizations busy trying to help
people stay warm.
The Warming Station,
which offers a free, warm
sleeping place during win-
ter months, has hosted 12
to 14 people a night in the
past week. Addie Zumwalt,
vice chair of the nonprofit’s
board, said the emergency
shelter usually sees more
like eight to 10 people.
“We’ve had a little more
than usual,” she said.
Zumwalt said when it
gets extra cold or snowy
numbers don’t jump up
as significantly as might
be expected because the
weather often inspires extra
generosity from friends and
family of potential guests.
The shelter has a capacity of
24 people, including the two
volunteers per shift.
Some local groups have
seen an uptick in the num-
ber of people coming in
seeking warm clothing.
Jamie Crowell, a com-
munity health educator at
Good Shepherd Medical
Center, said they just fin-
ished a monthlong coat
drive, and distributed some
of them during last week’s
Homeless
Point-In-Time
count.
Crowell said they gave
out eight to 10 coats, as well
as gloves, hats and socks,
but they still have lots left
over.
“Anybody that needs
them can get one from us,”
5 Theater Cineplex
she said.
Dave Hughes, direc-
tor of Hermiston’s Agape
House, said he hasn’t seen
an increase in people com-
ing in to get food, but has
noticed more people ask-
ing for coats and blankets.
While they still have some
left, the supply is quickly
growing smaller.
“That’s where we can
help,” he said.
“We’ve had a
pretty good increase
in donations
for hot food.”
Glenn Dohman, Volunteer
Desert Rose Minis-
tries, which is open from
9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on week-
days, has seen some more
people coming in to get out
of the cold. But more than
that, said volunteer Glenn
Dohman, they’ve been serv-
ing more hot meals since the
snow fell on Monday.
While some of the people
that spend the day at Des-
ert Rose are people doing
court-ordered Previously
community
service, many others are
homeless. Dohman said in
addition to hot meals, they
can get vouchers for cloth-
ing at the thrift store that
Desert Rose operates. He
said they’ve been giving out
more of those so that people
can get warm clothing and
boots. They also keep hats,
gloves and socks on hand to
distribute to guests.
Dohman said they have
sufficient supplies to get
them through the cold
weather, although they
could use more warm cloth-
ing donations, as well as
sleeping bags, tents, and
tarps for people to sleep on.
“We got very fortunate,”
he said. “We’ve had a pretty
good increase in donations
for hot food.”
Some of the people sit-
ting inside Desert Rose on
Thursday afternoon are no
stranger to having to spend
a night in the cold.
“It’s not fun,” said Mark
Patterson. “It’s not Boy
Scouts camping — it’s sur-
vival 101.”
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Pendleton, OR I-84 - Exit 216
to the upcoming meet-
ing Tuesday, Feb. 26 at
7 p.m. at the Port of Mor-
row Riverfront Center,
2 Marine Drive, Board-
man. A public hearing
will include discussion on
reconfiguration of farm
land, temporary use of a
recreational vehicle for a
medical hardship, and a
proposed aggregate min-
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about the topics is avail-
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Morrow County Planning
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Hermiston High School
MEET
HOLLY!
Small and Large Animal Care
541.567.1138
Morrow County plan-
ning commissioners and
staff have held three work
sessions over the past four
months to gather informa-
tion about how renewable
energy facilities are sited.
At the Jan. 22 work
session, acoustical engi-
neer Kerrie Standlee
shared about wind energy
facilities and sound. Staff
are compiling information
for the Planning Commis-
sion to begin consider-
ation of potential regula-
tions to be applicable to
renewable energy facili-
ties, said Shambra Coo-
per, outreach coordinator.
The public is invited
Antonio Juarez
Mark Sargent, DVM • Brent Barton, DVM
Eugenio Mannucci, DVM, cVMA • Jana von Borstel, DVM, cVMA
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Tue - Fri: 8-5
Sat: 8-12
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Patterson said he has
been coming to Desert Rose
since last summer. During
the winter, he’s been stay-
ing nights at the Hermiston
Warming Station, and going
to Desert Rose during the
day.
He said the stigma of
being homeless, whether in
cold weather or not, is tough
—but he’s glad to have
places where he can go.
“This place has been so
gracious,” he said as he sat
at the table of Desert Rose,
drinking a cup of coffee. “A
warm place to come and talk
to people.”
He said every town could
use more places for home-
less people to stay, if only
to take the pressure off the
organizations that support
them.
“I’m just a lost sheep
looking for his way back
home,” he said. “One day I
will get there.”
nomic growth, job creation, and a
better quality of life for all Ameri-
cans” and it was important to cre-
ate legislation that would pro-
vide more stability for providers
than having the FCC reclassify the
internet at the whim of every new
administration.
“For me, this debate is very
much about the impact on provid-
ers like (Franell) who are trying to
close the digital divide,” Walden
said. “Heavy-handed, one-size-
fits-all regulations hurt small inter-
net service providers like Eastern
Oregon Telecom the most, and this
in turn hurts their ability to expand
broadband to underserved com-
munities in rural America.”
Franell told the Hermiston Her-
ald that he had seen so much mis-
information about net neutrality
that when he was invited to testify
he felt it was important to do what
he could to tell the truth. He said
he was interested to see the emo-
tional progression that took place
over the three-and-a-half hour
hearing.
There was a lot of passion and
anger on display in the first hour,
he said, but as the hearing contin-
ued people on both sides of the
political aisle seemed to realize
“they were on the same sheet of
music for the most part.”
“Everyone thought that Dem-
ocrats were for a free and open
internet and Republicans are
against it, but that’s not true,” he
said. “... Everyone in the room, I
think, agreed that throttling, paid
prioritization and blocking are
wrong.”
He said he felt more confident
at the end of the hearing that Con-
gress can come up with a good
piece of legislation to protect the
internet without unduly burdening
providers.
“It went really well,” he said.
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