Editorials from around Oregon

Selected editorials from Oregon newspapers:

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East Oregonian, July 24, on wishful thinking hurting recycling efforts:

When it comes to recycling, Oregonians have been fooling themselves for years.

We’ve been placing all sorts of items in curbside recycling bins, assuming that was appropriate because, well, it seems as if they should be recyclable - garden hoses, diapers, pots and pans, plastic bags, wire hangers, clamshell food containers . even bowling balls.

However, such “wishful recycling” continues to undermine the recycling process by gumming up the sorting machines and creating more work for crews, who had to get rid of the items. Meanwhile, some non-recyclables still made it through the recycling stream, ending up in bales of cardboard, paper or sorted plastics.

That contamination no longer is acceptable to the world’s largest market for recycling paper and plastics: China.

As of this year, China is rejecting imports of sorted paper and post-consumer plastics that exceed 0.5 percent contamination. That’s almost impossible for most countries to meet. Despite Oregonians’ passion for recycling, their “wishful recycling” has resulted in a contamination rate that averages from 8 percent to 13 percent, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality.

The DEQ said that with the Chinese market now closed, more than 10,000 tons of comingled materials have wound up in Oregon landfills this year.

That is less than 2 percent of all material collected for recycling. Still, Oregonians have to change their ways.

Jurisdictions that offer curbside recycling are now looking at raising collection fees, because they must pay companies to accept certain recyclables.

Plastic is a prime concern because different plastics must be recycled differently - if there even is a market for them. For example, plastic bags are recyclable, but not in curbside bins because they snarl the sorting machinery.

So what can we do?

. Pay attention to packaging and lifespan when making purchases. Strive to reuse whenever possible, instead of discarding.

. Carry our own containers for water, coffee and other beverages instead of using disposable cups.

. Learn which materials can be recycled at curbside. Instead of assuming something is recyclable, we need to be realistic.

. Remember that some items can be taken to recycling depots that pop up around Eastern Oregon. These include plastic bags, shredded paper and certain metals.

. Make sure all recyclables, whether put on the curb or taken to a depot, are clean. For example, shredded paper taken to a recycling depot should not include shredded plastic credit cards. Neither should food scraps be put in with recycling.

Meanwhile, as individuals and as organizations, we must do all we can to encourage expansion of local, regional and U.S. markets for recycled materials. That means we should purchase more products made with recycled materials, and support corporations who are working to reduce waste.

That is a long-term process but ultimately a better solution than relying on other countries to welcome our garbage with open arms.

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The Register-Guard, July 23, on preparing for a smoky summer:

Oregon’s wildfire season is well underway, although you’d be hard pressed to tell it from the Eugene-Springfield air.

But don’t let the blue skies fool you. It’s only courtesy of the whims of nature - where lightning has struck so far this summer, which direction the winds are blowing - that the last few weeks have been kind to the Willamette Valley.

It’s a different story in southern Oregon. From the Umpqua Valley south to the Oregon-California border and just beyond, about a dozen sizeable fires have chewed through 50,000 acres of forests. The fires have grown aggressively over the past 8 to 10 days, blanketing communities in smoke.

Winds in western Oregon in recent days have primarily been from the north, keeping the smoke in the Medford-Ashland-Klamath Falls area, or pushing it into California. Air in Medford and Ashland has been ranked unhealthy or very unhealthy for the last few days.

Don’t expect that favorable (for Lane County residents) wind pattern to hold. Already, some variable wind patterns brought traces of smoke to eastern Lane County on Monday.

Lane County residents who endured last summer’s record-breaking smoke doubtless dread a repeat.

Setting aside debates about climate change, forest thinning, firefighting budgets and the like, here are some lessons learned from last summer:

1) Resolve the stay indoors when the air gets foul. The tiny particulates in smoke are demonstrated to cause serious lung damage.

2) Prepare: Buy particulate masks for yourself and your family. Make sure you get NIOSH N-95, or, better yet, N-100 masks. Properly used, they can spare your lungs a lot of grief. Last summer, stores sold out of the best masks.

3) If you have planned outdoor activities, especially exercise events, be prepared to call them off, and warn participants about the possibility.

Forest fire smoke - just like forest fire itself - is a serious business.

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Corvallis Gazette-Times, July 23, on a framework to assess ballot issues:

Oregon voters will be facing an unusually light load of statewide ballot measures in this November’s election.

Just five statewide measures appear to have qualified for the ballot. Over the last two decades, Oregon voters in an even-numbered year have been forced to plow through an average of 14 such measures.

The number of measures on the ballot could have been much higher: According to the website Ballotpedia, roughly three dozen ideas for measures failed to earn a place on the ballot. We have no issue with that; it should be hard to get an initiative onto the ballot, just as it should be hard to get a bill passed by the state Legislature.

But the measures that earned a spot on the ballot likely will trigger some heated electoral battles. At least two of them touch on hot-button issues across the nation, immigration and abortion. Two of them, proposed amendments to the state constitution, deal with tax issues. And the fifth measure, referred to voters by legislators, deals with affordable housing.

Here are summaries of the measures that will appear on the ballot. (As far as we could tell, the numbers of the measures as they will be listed on the ballot have yet to be assigned.)

Initiative Petition 31, the first of the two taxation measures, would amend Oregon’s Constitution to require a three-fifths vote in the Legislature to trim tax breaks or raise fees. Already, such a vote is required to impose new taxes; this measure would extend that supermajority requirement to other means in which the state tries to raise revenue.

The other taxation proposal, Initiative Petition 37, would amend the state constitution to ban taxes on food.

The immigration proposal, Initiative Petition 22, would repeal Oregon’s 1987 sanctuary law, which prohibits state and local law enforcement officers from helping to enforce federal immigration law.

Initiative Petition 1 would prohibit state funding for abortion, which is currently covered by Oregon’s Medicaid program and public employees’ health insurance.

The legislative referral in this year’s mix is Referral 401, which would allow local governments to issue bonds to pay for affordable housing projects that involve nonprofits or other nongovernmental entities.

We’ll have more to say about all of these issues as Election Day draws closer. In the meantime, if you’re searching for a framework that will help you assess these measures, consider these points:

. A measure to amend the state constitution, in our view, must meet a higher standard than a statutory measure. So here’s the question: Does this proposal absolutely need to be embedded in the constitution? A “no” answer suggests that you should vote accordingly.

. What is the potential financial impact of the proposed measure? Voters sometimes approve costly measures without worrying about how to pay for them. But state officials said last week that, by and large, this year’s measures either will have limited financial impacts or impacts that are difficult to predict, although that preliminary assessment could change.

The possible exception is the abortion measure: A draft financial impact statement said it could result in a net annual cost to the state of $19.3 million due to increased births and the need to provide health care and other support for low-income families. But the statement also found that the state could receive an additional $14.5 million each year from the federal government for those programs.

. Should the measure be taken up by the Legislature instead? Oregon voters love their ballot measures, but some topics are complicated enough that they deserve detailed scrutiny from legislators, with ample opportunity for public input. On the other hand, if it’s an important issue that the Legislature steadfastly has refused to take up, you can skip this question.

. Finally, remember this: When in doubt on a ballot measure, “no” usually is a honorable vote.

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The Bend Bulletin, July 23, on considering costs with endangered species:

The Endangered Species Act should not ignore the human species. It’s right for the Trump administration to consider ways to change the act to better consider its economic costs.

What became the Endangered Species Act began with the first list of endangered species getting federal protection in 1967, including the bald eagle, the grizzly bear and the American alligator. The actual act was passed in 1973. It says endangered animals and plants contribute “esthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the nation and its people.”

Some benefits are obvious. One that is sometimes missed is the health potential in discovering medicines and treatments from research into plants and animals. Only a small percentage of the possibilities have been studied.

Now try putting a number value on all those benefits. Is there a moral obligation to keep species from going extinct? How exactly do you factor that in?

It’s also hard to get an exact figure for the costs of protecting endangered species. You can look at budgets. President Trump called for a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service budget of about $1.2 billion for 2019 with about $211 million more directly for the act and related programs. But that federal budget only captures a fraction of the costs. They come in many different forms. What about the Oregon rancher who voluntarily doesn’t use all his land to protect sage grouse habitat and keep the bird from being listed as endangered?

One of the most common examples of costs in the West is the impact on the timber industry from the spotted owl. Once it was listed as threatened in the 1990s, the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest fell off a financial cliff. Federal timber sales dropped from a 1983-1989 average of 2.9 billion board-feet in western Oregon to less than 0.5 billion board-feet in 1996, according to the Oregon Historical Society. That meant the loss of thousands of jobs. And now the more aggressive barred owl may wipe out the spotted owl, anyway.

The law’s flaw is that everyone gets benefits while a relative handful of individuals and businesses have to bear great costs to comply with it. It doesn’t endanger the act to find ways to correct that imbalance. It’s only fair.

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The Oregonian/OregonLive, July 22, on a few guiding principles for health care reform version 2.0:

In the midst of the Great Recession, Oregon leaders gambled big. With then-Gov. John Kitzhaber leading the way, legislators in 2011 authorized a restructuring of how Oregon provides health care to its poorest residents. Designed to treat patients holistically while containing costs, the plan called for the Oregon Health Authority to contract with “coordinated care organizations” that would take charge of delivering medical, dental and mental health care to Oregonians on Medicaid.

Seven years later, it’s time for a reboot, and health officials are again setting their sights high. Since launching in 2012, the coordinated care model has notched many successes in improving the quality of health care for Medicaid recipients while costing taxpayers an estimated $2.2 billion less than expected under an unrestructured system. With those initial contracts set to expire next year, the health authority is mapping out what care organizations should strive for in the next phase of health care reform in an effort dubbed “CCO 2.0.”

But while policymakers should keep pushing hard for innovation and cost efficiencies, they should keep the unrealized goals of CCO 1.0 front and center in building the next generation. They should also temper their ambitions with respect for the fine line that separates thinking big from tackling too much. With those concerns in mind, here are a few guiding principles that health policymakers should consider.

Improving behavioral health services should be the top priority. In a letter to policymakers, Gov. Kate Brown has already highlighted the need to improve behavioral health services, which includes substance abuse treatment along with mental health. With good reason. Although integration of physical, behavioral and dental health was a primary goal of the restructuring, the system has a long way to go. While some primary care clinics have added behavioral health providers, there are still obstacles, from billing to records sharing, standing in the way of giving behavioral health the emphasis it deserves.

Many Medicaid recipients, particularly those in rural areas, have few options for mental health providers in their region or face long wait times. Providers complain that they aren’t compensated adequately for services or are shut out of coordinated care organizations’ network.

Beware of mission creep. Among the ideas under discussion is whether to require coordinated care organizations to address the lack of housing in their communities as part of a contract with the state. While Oregon Health Authority director Patrick Allen told The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board that the state does not want health organizations building housing, policymakers are looking at how to get them more involved and invested in the housing problem. That focus reflects the overall belief that health organizations can help improve health by focusing on poverty-related problems such as homelessness or hunger.

It seems to be common sense that a person who lacks stable housing or a secure source of food would suffer health problems. But policymakers should tread carefully in asking health organizations to step into these areas. For one thing, they don’t have the expertise. For another, they aren’t meeting all the expectations of their primary mission to deliver high-quality health services. And there are many other organizations in their communities that are set up precisely to address housing - and to make a difference in more than a symbolic way.

Housing isn’t important only for better health. It is the foundation for a better education, giving children the stability to learn at a single school rather than hopscotch from one to another. It allows for steadier employment, where people don’t find themselves pushed into longer and longer commutes as they chase scarce housing. In other words, the lack of housing isn’t just a health problem - it’s a life problem that exceeds the capacity of coordinated care organizations to address. It arguably makes more sense to simply require contributions to a statewide housing fund that would then be distributed to those already working in this field.

Keep Medicaid money for its intended purposes. Most of the 15 coordinated care organizations in Oregon are for-profit operations, raising fears that they may put shareholders’ interests above Medicaid recipients. Theoretically, their local community boards and their contractual obligations should prevent that from happening. But state policymakers should look at how they can link increasing profits with increasing benefits for patients and the surrounding community.

Another concern, highlighted by Rep. Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland, is the millions of Medicaid dollars that coordinated care organizations have given to political action committees. He sought unsuccessfully to pass a bill restricting contributions from entities that receive more than half their money from contracts with public funders. It may be tricky to build in such restrictions via contract, but both underscore the need for the Oregon Health Authority to explore how it can ensure that Medicaid money is going to the purpose for which it has been given.

Focus on what’s working. Part of the promise of the 2012 reforms was that it promoted flexibility for coordinated care organizations to pursue different strategies in meeting the goals set by the Oregon Health Authority. But there’s been little analysis of what methods have been successful and whether they can or should be replicated at others. The agency should identify the data it needs from organizations in order to conduct such analysis and help turn innovative strategies into common practice.

Keep drama to a minimum. The Oregon Health Authority has had more than its share of scandal and embarrassments in recent years. But credit Allen, appointed by Brown to take over as director last September, for restoring some credibility and stability to the agency. He has shown a keen ability to diagnose structural flaws in the agency, reorganizing staff to better match resources with the health authority’s objectives, such as his shifting of Medicaid-program personnel to work under the Medicaid director. Steady, accountable leadership, as well as a disciplined focus on what health reform should - and should not - achieve will be critical for determining whether CCO 2.0 is the successful upgrade Oregonians need.