Selected editorials from Oregon newspapers:
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The Oregonian/OregonLive, May 30, on saying ’no’ to Wells Fargo:
On Thursday, Portland City Commissioners are poised to consider a new five-year deal for banking services with an old partner - Wells Fargo.
Mayor Ted Wheeler himself questioned whether the city should end its relationship with Wells Fargo just last year. The San Francisco-based bank has paid or agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines, class-action lawsuit settlements, refunds and other penalties in recent years in connection with customer-fraud allegations. While the bank has made management changes and is trying to rebrand itself, federal regulators were so concerned about its governance that in February they opted to put restrictions on its growth.
Admittedly, switching banking partners now would take more work at the negotiating table. And the contract itself isn’t particularly rich - the city won’t pay more than $600,000 over the life of the agreement for the business of maintaining the city’s deposits, helping city bureaus issue payments and offering basic branch services for employees. But Wells Fargo’s misleading answer on its application to a question on corporate responsibility should raise concerns as to whether the bank is truly past its misleading practices. Commissioners should consider that evaluators ranked J.P. Morgan Chase a close second to Wells Fargo. And importantly, while Wells Fargo scored better than Chase on its pricing proposal, Chase scored higher on corporate responsibility.
That’s not a surprise. And it’s not insignificant.
The city should take the smart step of ensuring that the values of its banking partner line up with the values of its constituents.
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Albany Democrat-Herald, May 29, on federal memo on marijuana striking the right balance:
Billy Williams, the U.S. attorney for Oregon, recently announced his office’s guidelines for cannabis enforcement in the state, and you have to give the prosecutor credit for consistency.
In a memo, Williams said his office would target the illicit marijuana market (with an eye toward pot overproduction and interstate trafficking), work to protect minors, and “prioritize enforcement of federal marijuana violations that involve or pose a substantial risk of violence.” (A copy of Williams’ memo is attached to the online version of this editorial.)
Williams issued the memo after U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions decided to jettison an Obama-era policy (laid out in the so-called Cole memorandum) that largely tolerated marijuana in states, like Oregon, where the drug is legal.
Nothing in Williams’ memo should have come as a surprise to anyone who’s been following his reaction to Oregon’s continuing experiment with legal pot. And the memo strikes us as a canny attempt to find a response that balances the concerns of Sessions with Williams’ legitimate worries, all the while trying to leave adequate space for the state’s nascent marijuana industry.
The essential conflict here is this: Despite the decisions by Oregon voters to legalize marijuana for both medical and recreational use, it remains illegal at the federal level. The feds even continue to (ludicrously) classify marijuana as a Schedule I drug, the category reserved for substances with the highest potential for abuse and with no proven medical benefit.
As Williams, his predecessors in Oregon and his colleagues across the United States dealt with efforts to legalize pot, the Cole memo gave them some guidance.
The election of Donald Trump added uncertainty, since it wasn’t clear what Trump thought about the issue - but the appointment of Sessions, a longtime foe of legalization, seemed to tip the president’s hand. Sure enough, earlier this year, Sessions revoked the Cole memorandum. Williams’ memo came as a response to Sessions’ decision.
The Williams memo carried two overall messages: First, he said, his office has serious concerns over how marijuana legalization is playing out in Oregon.
But it also had this message: In general, legitimate marijuana businesses do not need to live in constant fear that federal agents will be knocking at the doors, although he declined to give the pot industry the assurance that Gov. Kate Brown sought, that he never would go after a legitimate marijuana business: “I will not make broad proclamations of blanket immunity from prosecution to those who violate federal law,” he wrote.
Still, it was enough to calm some of the fears of the state’s marijuana businesses: “I am not going to advise clients to shutter their businesses and I frankly don’t think this will change anyone’s view on investment,” Dave Kopilak, a Portland lawyer who advises cannabis businesses, told The Oregonian. “I don’t think this will have a chilling effect on the investment side of things. … It could have been worse. It could have been better, but this is definitely down the middle of the road and a continuation of what we have done for years.”
With that said, though, it’s clear that marijuana overproduction continues to be a sore spot with Williams: “This will be a top priority until overproduction that feeds exportation of marijuana across Oregon’s borders stops,” he wrote. “Notably, since broader legalization took effect in 2015, large quantities of marijuana from Oregon have been seized in 30 states, most of which continue to prohibit marijuana.”
He also hit on a relatively newer point, one that was highlighted during a February marijuana summit he convened: enforcement of federal marijuana violations that have “serious adverse effects on federal land or natural resources, including water, air, and listed species.” Examples he gave include cultivating marijuana on federally managed lands, using unlawful pesticides or using large amounts of water for grow operations without authorization.
The Williams memo won’t be the last word on this topic, of course: Legalization efforts may finally bear fruit in Congress. Or the next U.S. attorney for Oregon could take a harder line. But taken on its own, the memo is a nice piece of work: It doesn’t send a deep chill across the state’s growing marijuana industry, but it doesn’t shy away from the serious issues that have emerged in the wake of legalization.
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The Bend Bulletin, May 29, on tweaking regulations for over-the-counter birth control:
Oregon takes pride in being first on such things as statewide land use planning and requiring deposits on returnable bottles. Add to that list the 2015 and 2017 bills that allow pharmacists to prescribe and sell most kinds of hormone-based birth control even if a woman has not seen a physician.
The law aimed to make birth control more widely available across the state. It was sponsored by state Rep. Knute Buehler, R-Bend. The 2017 measure expanded the earlier one to include such things as Depo-Provera, a contraceptive administered quarterly by injection.
The law has had some success, though there’s plenty of room for improvement, as Markian Hawryluk pointed out in an article in Tuesday’s Bulletin. The Legislature can improve the situation, and it should do so.
A big part of the problem, though, is not an issue for the Legislature: Too few women know about the change. They can go to a pharmacy, and, if a pharmacist has been trained, receive birth control pills and the like without having to go a doctor first.
There’s another problem, however, and it’s one lawmakers should fix. Insurance companies have moved slowly to pay pharmacists for the cost of consulting with patients before giving out birth control. That could be because the law is relatively new. It might be because of medical liability, billing codes or other reasons. Lawmakers could require insurance companies to pay for such coverage quickly. Oregon already requires that prescriptions for birth control be issued for a full 12 months - a way to prevent insurance providers from demanding 12 separate co-pays.
Insurance providers have had three years since Oregon’s first over-the-counter birth control bill became law. Unless the insurance industry can point out a good argument why pharmacist consultation should not be covered, the Legislature should require that it is.
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The Register-Guard, May 28, on Oregon finding a better tax dodge:
Congress and President Trump targeted blue states with last year’s tax cut legislation, notably with a $10,000 limit on state and local taxes that can be deducted from federal income tax payments. The cap hits states that rely heavily on property and state income taxes - including Oregon. Many states are seeking ways their taxpayers can sidestep the cap - and Oregon’s dodge looks like one that may pass muster with the IRS.
The most common approach, being pursued by half a dozen states, is to create a “charitable fund” to pay for state and local services. Taxpayers would make donations to the fund, and claim these donations as a credit against their state and local tax liabilities. Charitable donations of more than $10,000 are deductible on federal tax forms, so presto: People with high state and local tax liabilities can evade the federal cap.
Not so fast, says the IRS: “Despite these state efforts to circumvent the new statutory limitation on state and local tax deductions, taxpayers should be mindful that federal law controls the proper characterization of payments for federal income tax purposes,” the agency said in a recent letter of guidance.
Oregon, however, has taken a different approach. The Legislature set aside $14 million in Oregon Opportunity Grants, which are distributed to college students on the basis of financial need, for purchase by taxpayers. The purchases can be used as credits to offset state tax liabilities, bringing purchasers below the $10,000 limit on federal deductibility. Oregon has had a similar tax credit program for film and video production since 2003, and the IRS has raised no objection.
The IRS guidance suggests that the agency believes it will be able to disallow state charitable funds established to allow taxpayers to avoid double taxation. But it could take an act of Congress to block Oregon’s Opportunity Grant credits. And maybe Oregon is a small enough state that the feds won’t notice.
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The News-Review, May 24, on the people suffer when the press gets kicked out:
Worrisome news broke out of New York on Tuesday as word came of a reporter from The Associated Press who was allegedly grabbed by the shoulders and shoved out of an Environmental Protection Agency building by a security guard while trying to cover a meeting on water contaminants.
Some members of the media were welcomed to the meeting, while others were not, according to an AP report.
Later, it should be noted, an aide to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt called the reporter - AP’s Ellen Knickmeyer - to apologize and say the entire incident was being looked into.
And Knickmeyer, who said she wasn’t hurt, was later let into the meeting when the EPA reversed its bizarre decision and opened the meeting to … well, the public.
But last Wednesday, CNN reported that journalists had again been barred from attending the meeting.
Now, if you’re reading this and you aren’t upset, you should be. Because whether you agree with Pruitt’s politics, or characterize AP’s coverage as “fake news,” kicking the media out of public meetings, barring reporters from entering, or, to a lesser extent, refusing to answer basic questions, has terrifying repercussions.
As the editor of Politico put it, her publication “would much rather be writing about the agency’s efforts to address this health problem than about reporters being excluded.”
Journalists all across the world act on behalf of the public. So when the government - local or otherwise - shuts out the media, it slams the door in the people’s face.
Which is important to remember when reading headlines about this sort of thing, because it wasn’t just an AP reporter who was grabbed by a government security guard.
It was you.
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