Editorials from around Oregon

Selected editorials from Oregon newspapers.

The (Bend) Bulletin, Dec. 8, on the use of “emergency” bills

Oregon lives in a state of emergency, or at least lawmakers seem to think it does. How else can they explain the emergency clauses attached to nearly half the bills introduced in the 2015 Legislature?

The clauses allow the bills to become law immediately and, in doing so, make it impossible for citizens to gather signatures and refer unpopular measures to the voters. Among the Legislature’s emergencies last spring was the measure tightening background checks on gun sales in Oregon.

It’s easy to see why some would want the emergency definition on the background check bill, and it’s equally easy to see why others would not. But for many bills, the value of or need for an emergency declaration is less clear.

Lawmakers declared an emergency so banks and credit unions could immediately hold raffles to lure customers into opening savings accounts. They did so again when they created the office of state resilience officer, a position that had formerly been voluntary. A third time, they made “emergency” changes in the state’s agricultural mediation service.

It’s no wonder, then, a Wilsonville lawyer and the anti-tax group Taxpayer Association of Oregon are working to make changes in the state’s constitution that would limit the practice of attaching emergency clauses so freely.

The petition would require a two-thirds majority of lawmakers to attach an emergency clause to the four laws mentioned above. At the same time, it would carve out exceptions for measures dealing with “catastrophic disaster,” ordinary spending measures and bills cutting funds if revenues come up short.

In other words, its crafters seek to strike a balance that would allow lawmakers to address real emergencies in a timely fashion even as they create a major hurdle for less legitimate emergencies.

It’s too soon to tell if the effort to get the petition on next year’s general election ballot will be successful, but if fairness plays a role, it should. Lawmakers should not be allowed to run roughshod over voters when they’re concerned bills will be so unpopular that voters will decide to weigh in on them. This petition would end that practice.

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The (Corvallis) Gazette-Times, Dec. 8, on diversity at Oregon State University

As we were recently exploring issues surrounding diversity at Oregon State University, we stumbled across minutes from a Faculty Senate meeting.

Here was the gist: OSU has been working to increase the number of minority faculty members, but progress has been slow. The provost of the university reported that OSU has targeted the recruitment and retention of minority faculty members as a top priority; the senate weighed the merits of various plans to do that. At the time of the meeting, minorities made up about 7 percent of OSU’s faculty.

Those minutes were from a Faculty Senate meeting in March 1995.

We don’t bring this up to rip into OSU for moving too slowly in its goal of creating a more diverse faculty; rather, we offer these as an illustration of the difficulty of the task. One of the more difficult parts will be attracting minority faculty members to OSU.

This is a topic that is always timely, and it’s particularly so now, as OSU works through some of the themes raised Nov. 16 at a public event during which students described experiences of both subtle and overt racism.

On Monday, OSU President Ed Ray announced that he’s creating a position of chief diversity officer to oversee the university’s efforts regarding diversity, equity and inclusion. That was the headline, but OSU announced a variety of other steps as well, including establishing a separate office to provide oversight for a variety of on-campus programs designed to promote diversity.

Obviously, we’ll need to watch to see how the promising moves Ray announced Monday work out over the long run. Ray and the rest of the OSU administration will need to make it clear early on that these moves are intended as something considerably more than window dressing - and OSU will need to ensure that the position is strong enough to endure beyond the inevitable change in the university’s administration.

In terms of the student body, OSU’s minority enrollment has doubled over the last decade. OSU’s student body already is more diverse than Oregon, but let’s be honest: That’s not particularly challenging, and that’s not really the point: OSU needs to prepare its students to work in an increasingly diverse future beyond the state’s borders.

Part of that will require concerted effort to make sure that minorities are well-represented on OSU’s faculty. OSU appears to have made strides since that 1995 Faculty Senate meeting - the total percentage of minority faculty members now appears to be about 12 percent. But the number drops when you just take into account particular minorities, including American Indians, African-Americans, Hispanics and Pacific Islanders: There, the numbers consistently drop into the single digits in percentages.

This isn’t a problem just at OSU: It’s an issue that affects universities nationwide. And the competition for qualified minority faculty members is intense.

OSU has initiatives underway to identify and hire minority faculty members when possible. That’s good, but it’s just part of the battle.

The other half - perhaps the hardest part - is to make sure those faculty members feel welcome and supported, not just on campus but throughout the community. Success on that front likely will result in a campus that is more welcoming to minority students.

It’s a tall order. OSU’s moves on Monday are welcome steps forward. But plenty of difficult work lies ahead, and the burden of creating a more welcoming community for students and teachers of color does not lie entirely with the university.

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The (Eugene) Register-Guard, Dec. 12, on the U.S. Coast Guard’s impact on the Oregon Coast

The U.S. Coast Guard conducts between 40 and 50 rescue operations a year with its helicopter stationed in Newport. It’s a near-certainty that lives would have been lost if the Coast Guard had been allowed to move its helicopter from Newport and provide search-and-rescue coverage from North Bend or Astoria. Congress was right to intervene, but the threat of losing a service that is important to the entire Oregon Coast remains.

The Coast Guard has five helicopters in North Bend. Since 1987 it has kept one of them on rotation in Newport, along with a crew of four. Under pressure to cut its budget, the Coast Guard proposed ending the rotations in 2014. Congress managed to win a one-year reprieve. This week, facing a Jan. 1 deadline, Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Springfield, persuaded the House of Representatives to approve a Coast Guard reauthorization bill that keeps the helicopter in Newport for another two years. The Senate is expected to approve the legislation.

The Coast Guard estimates that keeping its helicopters based in North Bend would save $6 million a year. But it’s possible that much of the expense is a result of rotating equipment and crews between two locations. The Coast Guard should investigate whether savings would result from having one or more helicopters permanently based in Newport, rather than continually shuttling back and forth to North Bend.

Cost aside, the Newport helicopter is needed. According to the Coast Guard’s own standards, cold-water rescue operations should have a response time of no more than two hours. It would be hard to meet that standard if an hour or more is consumed by travel from North Bend or Astoria. The extra time required for frequent dispatches to the Newport area would affect response times the entire length of the Oregon Coast.

Newport is home to the state’s largest fishing fleet, Oregon State University vessels, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s ships and a busy commercial port. An air rescue service should be based there as well - not just for two years, but permanently.

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The Oregonian, Dec. 12, on improvements for Oregon schools under new federal education law

A few hours after President Barack Obama signed a new law that entrusts states with significant education-reform responsibilities, Gov. Kate Brown broadcast her own pledge to Oregonians.

In a short statement, Brown said she is “committed to ensuring every student graduates high school with a plan and opportunities for his or her future” and that under the new Every Student Succeeds Act, the state will continue its focus on “equity, high standards and continuous improvement in our schools.” She lauded the “flexibility” granted by the new law, which, as The Oregonian/OregonLive’s Betsy Hammond reported, transfers the authority to set goals, define progress and select other accountability measures from the federal government to states.

Healthy skepticism is warranted. Oregon does not do accountability well, whether it’s in education or any other number of areas (see our Department of Energy editorial for an example of a state agency that has long escaped it). But more important, how states use their flexibility under the new law can be the difference between a tailored system that rigorously evaluates and seeks improvement for schools and one that hides its failures - such as Oregon’s low graduation rate, chronic absenteeism and persistent gap in progress for low-income students with students overall - behind a façade of weak metrics. Oregon’s success under the new law will require strong educational leadership from an administration that has, so far, shown little interest in making politically difficult decisions.

To be fair, there have been other fires to put out since Brown abruptly became governor last February when Gov. John Kitzhaber resigned amid influence-peddling accusations. But it didn’t take long for legislators to roll back, with Brown’s blessing, one of his key reforms. The Legislature dismantled the Oregon Education Investment Board created by Kitzhaber in 2011 as an effort to comprehensively remake the educational system for children from birth to age 20.

Personnel changes also set back educational initiatives. State Schools Chief Rob Saxton, a strong proponent of adopting higher standards and expectations in schools, retired from the state to take a lower-profile position with the Northwest Regional Education Service District. And the state’s chief education officer, Nancy Golden, whose position was also pared down after Kitzhaber’s resignation, retired three months ago. The position has been filled on an interim basis by Brown’s education policy adviser, Lindsey Capps, a former teachers’ union leader who has no experience as an educator.

Brown then delivered her own blow as well. A teachers’ union-led revolt against standardized tests took hold, resulting in a bill that would allow families to opt their students out of the new, tougher Smarter Balanced exam for any reason. Despite extolling the need for data from such standardized tests to track how well schools are teaching students - particularly low-income and disadvantaged students - Brown buckled and signed the bill. Both the old education law and the Every Student Succeeds Act mandate that at least 95 percent of students in tested grades take the exam. Participation for this year’s test just met that minimum.

In an email, State Schools Chief Salam Noor told The Oregonian/OregonLive editorial board that both he and Brown value the data that such tests deliver and that they are committed to meeting the 95 percent minimum.

“First, whether there was a federal law or not, as sound practice and good stewardship, we need reliable student data,” Noor wrote.?”This data is one tool to drive school improvement efforts and aggressively close achievement and opportunity gaps.? The Governor believes strongly in data informed policies.”

In the meantime, the state will solicit feedback from parents, educators and the community about “the kind of inspiring and highly-engaging learning we want to see in our classrooms,” Noor wrote.? “We have to create learning that leads to greater motivation, critical thinking, creativity, and success for every student so students see a connection between their education and their future.”?

The flexibility that Noor and Brown welcome, however, also makes it easy for states to shortchange students, prop up school ratings and weaken teacher evaluations. The U.S. Department of Education is barred from prescribing what measures states should use to track progress or what goals they should set, notes Daria Hall, a vice president with Washington D.C.-based advocacy group, Education Trust. If a state includes school success indicators that mask a problem - for instance daily average attendance, which does not reveal that there may be students who are chronically absent - then students end up losing.

“States will need to take leadership of this,” she said. “But also advocates in the state need to really keep states honest. Let’s make sure this is about rigorous outcomes.”

Considering Oregon - and Brown’s - reaction so far to rigorous outcomes, education advocates face a lot of work ahead.

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The (Medford) Mail-Tribune, Dec. 12, on ensuring safety of marijuana products

Earlier this year, Noelle Crombie of The Oregonian/OregonLive found that lab-tested medical marijuana for sale on dispensary shelves was tainted with pesticides at higher than allowable concentrations, posing unknown but potentially elevated risk to users. And now the Oregon Health Authority, which oversees the medical marijuana program, correctly moves ahead with vastly expanded regulations that will, in June of next year, ensure verifiable testing for nearly 60 pesticides. Oregon will at that time have the most stringent program in the U.S. ensuring product safety.

The problem is the in-between time. That’s why the suggestion of a Portland scientist and entrepreneur to close the gap on pesticide testing deserves full consideration by a panel advising the OHA on its regulations.

Crombie reported this week that Mowgli Holmes, a panel member who co-founded a Portland-based company performing genetic research on cannabis, suggested to his colleagues that the deficient pesticide testing practices now in place in Oregon be tossed in favor of testing for up to a dozen commonly used pesticides. In an interview with The Oregonian’s editorial board, Holmes called the dozen the known “bad actors” among pesticides but noted a dual challenge: Growers of medical marijuana would be pushed to “wean themselves” quickly from their longstanding practices of pesticide use, and the Oregon Health Authority presently lacks direct enforcement authority over laboratories to ensure reliable testing results.

Nobody knows precisely how much exposure to a chemical constituent of a pesticide is needed before a bad health outcome presents itself. But it stands to reason that estimated ranges of safe use be honored, even during an interim period - this to signal to Oregon’s 70,000-plus medical marijuana users that every effort is being made to ensure off-the-shelf products that not only alleviate health conditions but avoid creating them.

A way around the temporary enforcement problem could be that the OHA, in its oversight of the grower-to-dispensary transaction, condition its approvals on prescribed testing. It wouldn’t be air-tight. But it would be a speedy improvement. As Holmes noted, “It doesn’t have to be perfect. Can we do something creative and easy?”

Nothing in the weed business is, particularly. That’s especially true for large government bureaucracies for whom seven months is the blink of an eye but during which time a medical marijuana user could consume a lot of tainted product. The OHA has this year been nothing if not ambitious in setting standards for the production and sale of medical marijuana. But it will need to be downright adroit in quickly closing the gap between current testing failures and helping to ensure the reasonable expectation of product safety before June arrives.

As the state presses ahead in configuring its rules for medical marijuana dispensaries, grow sites and product labeling, it would be utterly appropriate for it to build a temporary bridge from now to then that helps keep folks safe.