Editorials from around Oregon

Selected editorials from Oregon newspapers:

The Daily Astorian, July 7, on a sales tax ballot measure:

’Public employees unions run the statehouse,” said state Rep. Dennis Richardson, during a 2014 visit to Astoria. The unions assert broad influence on the Democratic side of the state Legislature through candidate interviews and campaign funding.

Now the public employees unions are asserting themselves grandly with Initiative Petition 28, the initiative to establish a corporate sales tax on corporations with gross receipts of more than $25 million annually. Paris Achen of our Capital Bureau reported Tuesday that the farm supplies and fuel cooperative Wilco would face a huge increase in its tax liability if IP 28 passes.

Ballot measures are blunt instruments. They are seldom as simple as their proponents make them sound. So what is the reality check on Initiative Petition 28?

The most correct title for the measure is the PERS Bailout Tax. Financial demands of the Public Employees Retirement System will soon increase the load on school districts and municipalities - causing schools to lay off teachers in order to fund retirement pensions.

Legislative remedies to the PERS dilemma - brokered by former Gov. John Kitzhaber - were thrown out by the Oregon Supreme Court. In the face of the court’s judgment, there was a proposal to require new PERS enrollees to contribute to their retirement, in the manner that is common in the private sector. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown would not support that.

Revenue raised by IP 28 is the unions’ answer to the PERS problem.

Achen reported that the Legislative Revenue Office projects the measure’s effects as follows: a contraction of the private sector and an enlargement of the public sector. Another consequence will be price increases for consumers, as corporations cover their big new tax liability.

Initiative Petition 28 is a reach too far.

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The (Albany) Democrat-Herald, July 6, on Oregon employment statistics:

You already know the broad outlines of this story: Unemployment in Oregon and Linn County has been dropping from the days (not too long ago) when the county’s unemployment rate consistently was in the double digits.

Linn County’s unemployment rate in May was 5.5 percent (that number is seasonally adjusted to account for normal variations in the labor market). It’s the lowest unemployment rate in Linn County since state economists started keeping county-by-county figures. (It is likely that the county’s unemployment rate was lower during the heyday of the wood-products industry, but those statistics weren’t kept back then.)

Take a deeper look at some of the recent statistics compiled by the Oregon Employment Department, and the picture comes into sharper focus.

Most of the job growth over the past 12 months in Linn County has come from gains in the private sector: State economists estimate that the county’s private sector picked up 1,650 jobs. The public sector has gained jobs as well, but it’s fair to say that the private sector has been driving much of the recent improvement in the county’s job market. (This is generally true of the state as well, which just increases our bafflement at state lawmakers’ consistent attempts to hogtie businesses - especially small businesses - through an array of new regulations such as wage increases and sick leave and now, possibly, predictive scheduling.)

In a recent release offering additional details about the county’s job market, state economists projected that the private sector would continue to drive the growth in employment: In total, Linn, Marion, Polk and Yamhill counties are expected to gain 24,600 jobs in the 10-year period between 2014 and 2024. Most of those jobs (about 21,500) will come in the private sector, with the remainder in the public sector.

(It’s worth noting here in passing that those projections might change if Initiative Petition 28, the measure seeking to slap certain Oregon corporations with a gross-receipts tax, passes on the November ballot. Two recent studies have concluded that one result of the measure’s passage would be to slow job growth in the private sector and boost the public sector. This is a topic to which we will return in future editorials.)

The release from the Employment Department also laid out projections for job growth in various industries. This is information that could be useful for students or other job seekers seeking additional training so that their skills match up with available jobs.

It won’t be much of a surprise to learn that the sector with the biggest projected job growth (5,600 total jobs) is private educational and health services - and, frankly, most of those jobs will be in the health care industry.

The trade, transportation and utilities sector also is expected to enjoy growth over the next decade, as is the professional and business sector.

In an encouraging sign, the economists also are projecting growth in the natural resources sector and in construction, but that comes with a footnote: Both of those sectors were hard-hit during the recession, and economists don’t expect them to return to prerecession levels by 2024.

Even the economists who prepare these predictions will tell you to take them with a grain of salt. But they can be useful to give us general guidance on what job-training programs we need to train the workforce of tomorrow. And they also serve to remind us of how important private business will be in growing our economy, a point lawmakers would do well to remember when they return to Salem. (mm)

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The East Oregonian, July 8, on the massive earthquake expected on the Cascadia Subduction Zone:

The power is out, and will remain out for 6-8 weeks. The food in your cupboards may be all you have access to in that time, and the same goes for the fuel in your vehicle’s tank. There is no internet, no cellphone reception.

On the other side of the state, a massive earthquake on the Cascadia Subduction Zone has wreaked havoc on cities, homes and infrastructure. Everything west of I-5 is toast. Hundreds of thousands of refugees from the disaster of the century are headed this way with only the clothes on their back.

This is not a certain future, nor is it a purely speculative scenario. Experts at Oregon State University have predicted a 40 percent chance of the big one - magnitude-9 or higher - hitting the Pacific Northwest in the next 50 years, and the exact fallout is unknown.

But many people have decided not to shrug it off as a possible problem for some future generation to deal with. They are treating it as a “when” instead of an “if,” and assuming the tectonic plates beneath our feet give us a few years of lead time before acting out their natural cycle, we can be prepared to deal with the crisis in a way that limits the catastrophe.

Just because the damage in Eastern Oregon will be less extensive doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be thinking and planning. Those who make it out of the chaos west of the Cascades will need supplies and shelter, and we may be the most stable place around.

Joseph Franell, chair of the Oregon Broadband Advisory Council, is concerned specifically with communications in the aftermath of Cascadia, but spoke last month at a Hermiston Chamber of Commerce luncheon about the larger part Umatilla County can play in the days and weeks after the quake.

Many residents of Eastern Oregon take pride in being able to take care of themselves and their own. But even we can take little things for granted - modern conveniences like electricity and running water, for instance, and the even more modern luxury of instantaneous communication.

Franell suggested keeping a stockpile of 6-8 weeks’ worth of essentials for your family. That means bottles of water, preserved foodstuffs and batteries. And keep in mind that you may have displaced family and friends showing up looking for help.

If we are prepared to take care of our own, it will take a great strain off emergency responders helping those who are displaced and far away from their homes.

Businesses should also be thinking about how to serve the quickly swelling population. At the East Oregonian we are considering how we will spread urgent and essential news when the usual networks are down. We hope those who provide similar important services are considering how to meet the demand.

It’s hard to even wrap our minds around such a large-scale catastrophe, the worst natural disaster in recorded U.S. history. But by taking it to a personal level, and then community-wide, we can at the very least keep our own families safe, and at the best provide care for a region in crisis.

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The (Eugene) Register-Guard, July 10, on education reform:

Figuring out how to improve public education is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Hundreds of different pieces are on the table - different sizes, different shapes - but until someone steps up and puts them together, there is no clear picture.

Many people, non-profit groups and government agencies in Oregon have been working to put the pieces together. Here and there on the tabletop, parts of the puzzle are coming together. But there’s still a long way to go before a complete picture emerges.

School funding from tax revenues will always be a major part of the puzzle. But, absent major reforms that would funnel more money into schools, many districts continue to look for ways to improve educational outcomes.

One of the key parts of the picture that has been emerging in recent years is the critical importance of pre-kindergarten learning.

The sheer volume of information available - from research done by universities and foundations to one-page tip sheets for parents that can be downloaded free from the state Department of Education - can be overwhelming.

And the information serves little purpose unless people caring for and educating children know this information is out there and how to gain access to it.

While Oregon has made full-day kindergarten a reality across the state, a laudable achievement, it’s increasingly well-understood that much of brain development occurs long before age five.

This means that first grade, or even kindergarten, is too late to begin tackling educational challenges.

Achievement gaps between children already exist by the time they enter kindergarten. And these gaps - which often are linked to a family’s income level - widen each passing year, with children who lagged initially falling further and further behind.

Children who are not reading proficiently by the end of third grade are four times more likely to not graduate from high school than those who have mastered reading, according to research from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Add poverty into the mix, researchers found, and those third-graders who can’t read well are more than six times more likely to not graduate.

But, while evidence of the importance of pre-kindergarten education continues to mount, educators and parents often struggle with how to transfer the reams of information produced by foundations, universities and government agencies into the real world. It is often difficult to find ways to connect resources and the people who can make best use of them - parents and others who care for the youngest children.

What makes this particularly difficult is that funding for public schools generally isn’t provided for the pre-kindergarten programs. Money for these programs would have to be diverted from kindergarten through high school programs, many of which are already stretched thin financially.

But there have been some encouraging developments in Lane County in recent years, where partnerships of non-profit groups, schools and parents have found funding for successful programs targeting the critical pre-kindergarten years.

Among these is the Kids in Transition to School (KITS) project - which began as a pilot project in the Bethel and Springfield school districts in collaboration with United Way of Lane County and the Oregon Social Learning Center.

Among other things, KITS teaches pre-schoolers pre-reading skills, such as letter names and sounds, and social skills, such as taking turns, that prepare them for kindergarten. Parents also are invited to workshops on topics such as how to prepare their kids for a strong start in school and establishing homework routines.

KITS has been successful in finding grant funding through United Way, but not all districts are able to, or know how to, gain access to this type of financial support.

How this was accomplished in Lane County, and the results the program is showing, could be useful to other districts in the state. But, without a central clearinghouse, or system, for sharing this type of information across the state, it is difficult to disseminate the how-tos of success stories such as this.

Many districts struggle with similar issues, particularly when it comes to the pre-kindergarten years that can set up a child for success in school or doom them to failure.

Finding children who need help before they enter school, reaching parents who are often working long hours, and sometimes dealing with language barriers, can be challenges for many school districts and early-education programs.

The KITS program has been able to overcome many of these hurdles, in part because it was able to build on an existing cadre of dedicated volunteers in the Bethel and Springfield districts. This, too, is a success story that other districts around the state could learn from.

What is happening locally is part of a larger picture, which is that parents, educators and taxpayers all have an interest in seeing children succeed and that a comprehensive, coordinated approach - starting in the key years before kindergarten - would help everyone.

Too often school districts, teachers and parents are working in isolation, unable or uncertain how to find the information and resources they need. This has become more evident with the growing body of research showing the importance of early learning, which operates mainly outside the existing public education system.

This is why a big step forward would include setting up a centralized system to share information on programs that are working, including funding sources, that could be replicated, or modified for use, elsewhere. If less time is spent reinventing the wheel, and more time spent moving the cart forward, everyone benefits.

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The Bend Bulletin, July 10, on drone laws:

Adding to the ways neighbors can irritate neighbors, technology has delivered hobby drones. Fantastic and inventive ways to make use of drones have and will be found. But what about when somebody is buzzing over your home with a camera and directional microphone?

The laws for drones in Oregon are not particularly clear, and the Legislature needs to continue to refine them to protect privacy.

Hobby drones may not be a serious issue yet, but the intrusions into privacy have begun. The Redmond City Council has struggled over what to do with complaints about drones over homes. Bend Police Chief Jim Porter told us he was trying to have a peaceful walk in Shevlin Park with his wife. They were followed overhead by a drone.

Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel had his staff research the question of when a drone is trespassing when it is flying over a person’s property. Staff found a gray area.

If a drone is flying below the tallest tree or structure on a property, Hummel believes that is criminal trespass in the second degree under Oregon law. If a drone is flying above 500 feet, it would not be trespassing. But below 500 feet and above the tallest tree or structure, there’s a gray area. Things like intent, how often, how long and so on would have to be weighed.

Even the gray area is a gray area. Other attorneys believe the boundaries of 500 feet or the tallest tree or structure will not necessarily hold. Courts may consider what is reasonably required for the enjoyment of private property. There may well be exceptions for drones flying swiftly overheard en route to some other location or to make a delivery.

Trespassing is not the only legal issue with drones. A hobby drone flying over someone’s property collecting data without the person’s consent is likely an actionable public nuisance.

But is the law good enough to protect the privacy of Oregonians? Is it clear enough for law enforcement?

We agree with Hummel. No, it is not.

Hobby drones are different than planes and helicopters. They give almost anyone the ability to “lurk, harass, annoy, and/or record video and audio of activities inside people’s homes,” Hummel wrote in an email. The law has not kept up.

State Rep. John Huffman, R-The Dalles, who has become the de facto leader on drone legislation, told us in an email he believes judges will side with people being harassed by drones. We hope so, too. It would help if the Legislature did its best to provide greater clarity to protect privacy.