Editorials from around Oregon

Selected editorials from Oregon newspapers:

The Bend Bulletin, March 25, on Oregon’s bottle bill:

Oregon’s famed bottle bill has seen the percentage of containers redeemed decline for several years, and now lawmakers should consider ending it altogether.

That’s a better option than what could happen: The deposit on returnable bottles will double April 1, and beginning next year a slew of new bottles will require deposits as well, without a substantial change in consumer behavior.

The deposit increase, to 10 cents per bottle from the current 5 cents, is a sure thing. A 2011 law requires the increase if bottle redemptions fall below 80 percent for at least two years, and the state has been below that mark since 2014. In 2015, for example, only about 64.5 percent of returnable bottles were redeemed. Some other percentage was recycled, however.

Meanwhile, starting January 1, Oregonians will have to pay deposits not only on beer, soda and water bottles, but on everything from orange juice to kombucha and coconut water. A measure in the Oregon Legislature, House Bill 3349, would delay expanding the bottle bill’s reach until there are enough redemption centers to handle all the returnables that come in.

Today there are only 21 redemption centers in the state, with just three in Southern Oregon and four east of the Cascades, according to the Oregon Bottle Drop website.

The price increase may persuade some to be more conscientious about redeeming bottles, but there’s no guarantee of that. The process for many Oregonians is both messy and smelly, and putting cans and glass into curbside recycling bins feels like a reasonable alternative. Grocery stores hate having to deal with frequently dirty, smelly returnables, which must be stored until they’re picked up by distributors. And, as the redemption center program lags, grocers are stuck with a redemption business they’d rather not have.

With curbside recycling available to the vast majority - about 80 percent - of Oregonians, it makes little sense to keep the bottle bill alive. DEQ officials argue redeemed bottles are easier to deal with: They need not be separated from other recyclables, including paper and some plastics that are routinely part of what’s in curbside co-mingled recycle bins. But what’s easy for those who send Oregon’s returnables on for further use is not necessarily easier for consumers, and in the end, that’s what counts. Without consumer buy-in, even a 10-cent deposit will accomplish little. Better to rely on recycling and let the bottle bill go.

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The East Oregonian, March 22, on problems with using cyanide traps to kill Oregon wolves:

It has been a bad month for Wildlife Services.

The federal agency accidentally killed a wolf in Wallowa County with an M-44, a cyanide-based trap that shoots poison into the mouth of a canine. The traps are intended for coyotes. Just a week later, a family dog was killed by an M-44 in Idaho, and a young boy who was nearby was injured when the trap went off.

The incidents were matching black eyes for an agency that likes to stay out of the headlines as it kills hundreds of thousands of nuisance animals across the country each year. That list includes pigeons and starlings, coyotes and badgers and bears. When wildlife becomes a problem, Wildlife Services likes to be the solution.

And in plenty of cases they do important, difficult work that saves the lives of many animals by culling those causing a problem. In other instances they are killing non-native and invasive species en masse, doing the difficult work that many of us are incapable of doing.

Still, there are problems. And a black eye can cause people to notice those problems. A pair leads to some serious questions.

M-44s are one such problem for a state that has an increasing wolf population. Maybe you don’t like wolves and hope they are poisoned. But you cannot argue the fact that taxpayers have spent a lot of money - and our government has spent a lot of time - working on their recovery. Each accidental death, especially those caused by the government, increases the money taxpayers will pay to fend off lawsuits, and the more active government will have to be in wolf recovery. The more active the management, the higher the cost.

And, as a side note, it’s a good time to talk about how wolves help control coyote populations.

But it isn’t just about money. Placing something in our woods that indiscriminately kills canines - be they wolves or coyotes or family dogs - is not smart. For the safety of our family pets, and our family members out traipsing around the hills, removing all M-44s makes sense.

Oregon has put so much money and so much effort into improving and conserving the environment in our state, for the benefit of elk and salmon and forests and water and humans and wolves. Any fatal actions must be taken with extreme caution.

Paying government trappers to kill predators may seem like a 19th Century concern, but it’s happening to this day in rural Oregon. There is still some need for it, but it should be updated to include 21st Century technology and ethical and social mores.

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The (Albany) Democrat-Herald, March 24, on state education goals:

Back in 2011, the Legislature rolled out an ambitious set of goals for the state’s educational system.

By 2025, legislators declared, every adult Oregonian would have a high school diploma. Some 40 percent of adult Oregonians would have an associate degree or some sort of post-secondary credential. The remaining 40 percent of adult Oregonians, legislators decreed, would have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher.

This so-called 40-40-20 goal (in retrospect, a better nickname would have been 40-80-100, but we quibble) was widely seen as aspirational. Realistically, everyone knew that these were goals that never would be completely met. And, more to the point, it was unlikely that Oregon would ever have the kind of money available to reach the goal. (In fact, this still seems unlikely, as legislators battle with a $1.6 billion shortfall for the next two-year budget cycle.)

So this year’s session of the Legislature is considering a bill, House Bill 2587, that would make a small but key change to the 40-40-20 goal. Under the terms of the bill, which is backed by the state’s teachers union, the language of the goal would be changed: The state’s education goals now would read that 40 percent of Oregon adults will be “given the opportunity” to earn a bachelor’s degree or higher. Another 40 percent of Oregon adults would be “given the opportunity” to earn an associate degree or a post-secondary credential.” The remaining Oregon adults would have “the opportunity to earn a high school diploma, a modified diploma or extended diploma or any other credential equivalent to a high school diploma.”

We are sympathetic to those who argue that the 40-40-20 goals can never be reached. They’re right, of course: For example, we never will be at the point at which every Oregon adult has a high school diploma or its equivalent. (The most recent statistics, for the class of 2015, show that 78 percent of Oregon high school students earned a diploma within five years after starting school.)

Similarly, the two 40 percent goals for higher education are, to put it mildly, very challenging for a state that traditionally has underfunded higher education.

So, proponents of the bill argue, why should we set ourselves up for failure?

We understand that argument.

But it’s not as if the 40-40-20 goal, as unattainable as it is, hasn’t benefited the state in some concrete ways. The state’s high school graduation rate has inched upward over the last few years, perhaps in some small way because of the attention that rate has received statewide.

And the goal also has put a spotlight on the middle 40 percent - the associate degrees and professional certifications that are awarded by the state’s community colleges. Institutions such as Linn-Benton Community College have been working vigorously over the last few years to make sure that their students complete their courses of study - in other words, that they leave school with that associate degree or certification in hand. Now, certainly, some of that would have happened without the 40-40-20 goal, but it’s clear that adopting the goal helped to highlight the role that the state’s often-ignored (not to mention underfunded) community colleges play in our educational system.

So the goal has had, we believe, a practical impact in Oregon.

And something just doesn’t feel right about putting it on the shelf.

If we believe that education is the key to Oregon’s future, for all of its residents and for the state, why would we choose to say, in essence, well, we know that not everybody will get that key, and that’s OK? Throwing in the towel on the 40-40-20 goal would be setting ourselves up for a much more dangerous failure.

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The (Medford) Mail-Tribune, March 24, on curbing youth smoking:

The Oregon Senate’s vote to raise the legal tobacco age to 21 probably won’t do much about 18- to 20-year-olds who are already smokers, but it will make it harder for teenagers to start.

Senate Bill 754 passed 19-8 on Thursday. No votes included Sens. Herman Baertschiger, R-Grants Pass, and Dennis Linthicum, R-Klamath Falls. The bill moves to the House, where it is expected to pass easily, and it should.

The bill would impose fines of $50 on store clerks, $500 on managers and $1,000 on store owners for selling cigarettes, e-cigarettes or other tobacco products to anyone under 21. Oregon would become the third state to raise the smoking age, after Hawaii and California.

There is no longer any debate that tobacco use is harmful to the health of anyone who uses it, and discouraging minors from starting what can become a lifelong addiction is a worthwhile goal.

Opponents decried the measure as an example of “nanny state” encroachment on individual choice, pointing out that 18-year-olds can serve in the military and vote, but not buy tobacco. And yet no one is clamoring to lower the legal age for drinking or smoking marijuana.

We sympathize with the individual liberty argument to a degree, but the health consequences of tobacco consumption are too serious to ignore, and smoking-related illnesses impose costs on society.

For those 18- to 20-year-olds who already are confirmed smokers under the existing law, raising the legal age is unlikely to get many to quit. They may not be able to purchase cigarettes themselves, but it won’t be difficult to find older friends or relatives to buy smokes for them - especially if there is no risk of prosecution such as with furnishing alcohol to minors.

But for young people who may be tempted to start smoking, the bill would make it harder to purchase tobacco. And parents wanting to discourage their children from taking up the habit would have the built-in argument that it is against the law.

The number of smokers has been steadily declining, from about 21 percent in 2005 to 15 percent in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And anything that helps accelerate that decline is a good thing.

The House should approve Senate Bill 754.