Oregon Editorial Rdp

Editorials from Oregon newspapers

Albany Democrat-Herald, July 30

Headline: “Keeping a spotlight on youth suicide”

It was a relatively small but dedicated group that gathered on a recent Saturday morning for a low-key march, but the message the marchers carried was an important one - even if it’s an issue that many of us would prefer to ignore.

Nearly 100 people, from both Linn and Benton counties, met in front of the Benton County Courthouse to share stories about youth suicide.

Some of the speakers on that sunny Saturday had lost family members and wiped away tears as they told their stories. Others were simply shocked by the toll that youth suicide has taken on the mid-valley over the last couple of years.

The organizer of the march, Vanessa Frias, memorialized the victims: “They were really special people,” she said. “They meant a lot to other people, and we’re going to remember them today.”

Among the speakers on the steps of the courthouse was state Rep. Sara Gelser, who helped to pass a bill this year to add a second statewide youth suicide prevention services coordinator position. She thanked the group for focusing public attention on the issue.

“We really don’t talk about it enough,” she said.

That’s for sure. The organizers had hoped to wrap up the event by marching 10 times around Corvallis’ Central Park - one circuit for every young life lost to suicide in the mid-valley over the last two years. But they couldn’t get an accurate number.

In the Democrat-Herald’s recent series of stories on youth suicide, we identified 11 suicides stretching back to 2012 involving mid-valley residents 24 years and younger. Since the series ran, we’ve learned of at least one more case. So the toll, as far as we know, has reached a dozen in the space of less than three years. But we can’t say for sure that our count is completely accurate.

Regardless, even one circuit around the park is too many.

Gelser’s bill should help clear away at least some of the shadows regarding youth suicide in terms of providing better information about the issue. And efforts such as the recent march could help clear away at least some of the silence and stigma that still surround the topic.

Another speaker at the event was a woman who lost her 14-year-old daughter to suicide. She wrapped up her comments with words of advice to anyone considering suicide. They also are words that the rest of us need to keep in mind as we fight against youth suicide: “If you’re hurting, talk to somebody,” she said. “Suicide is final, and silence is deadly.”

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The (Bend) Bulletin, Aug. 3

Headline: “Change state’s rules for smoke”

Almost every summer the smoky air from wildfires lingers over Central Oregon. No matter how many fire crews are deployed or how quickly they respond, the fires and smoke come.

The cruelest twist is that the very rules the state has in place to keep smoke away from Bend and Redmond could make it worse.

The state’s smoke management plan declares that there should be no “smoke intrusions” in Bend and Redmond because of their denser populations. So when the Forest Service is doing a prescribed burn to reduce the chance of a devastating wildfire, it designs the burn as best it can. The aim is for the main smoke plume to be vented up, out and away.

That was the plan this past spring. The Forest Service spent years coming up with a thinning/burning operation west of Bend in the area around Phil’s Trail.

There’s no doubt it’s needed. The 22,000-acre area has been in awful condition, right in Bend’s backyard. A Forest Service analysis says it’s a “hazardous fuels” condition that put the project area near the city of Bend “at risk of stand-replacing wildfire, such as occurred in 1990 with the Awbrey Hall stand-replacing fire.”

The Forest Service did a prescribed burn on 275 acres this spring on part of the project. It all went well during the day. Overnight, the fire smoldered. Smoke was picked up by air quality monitors in Bend.

Nick Yonker, the smoke management meteorology manager with the Oregon Department of Forestry, and others arrived to investigate. The ODF manages smoke from prescribed burns for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

Yonker told us that people sometimes “lie” about the fuels on the ground as a way of getting permission to burn larger areas. He said he wasn’t talking about the Deschutes National Forest. But later he said that the Forest Service reported less fuel on the ground than he and others calculated was there - about half. “They were not reporting the duff.”

He declared the next burns would have to be much smaller, about 40 to 50 acres. He said it might be possible to go bigger, to 100 acres.

At that rate, with the limited number of days suitable for prescribed burns in the spring and fall, the needed work is not at all likely to get done. The zero-tolerance smoke policy means the areas that need the treatment the most won’t get it.

Last week, the Deschutes County Commission approved a letter to the state asking it to modify its smoke rules.

The right fire at the right place and time is good for the forest. There will be smoke. And that can be an irritant or much more serious to some people. But that smoke is much less serious than a wildfire right next to Bend.

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Corvallis Gazette-Times, July 31

Headline:: “Smoking ban on beaches seems like a done deal”

The state of Oregon is taking steps to ban smoking on all 362 miles of beaches along the Pacific coast.

State officials say that they’re in the middle of collecting public comment on the proposal, but everyone knows how this story will end: The state will ban smoking on the coast, just as it banned smoking in most other state parks.

We confess to some ambivalence about the proposed smoking ban on the beach. We editorialized against the earlier ban in state parks, on grounds that one of the original reasons for the move - Gov. John Kitzhaber’s desire to cut down on the public’s exposure to secondhand smoke - seemed thin when extended to the parks. If you want to avoid secondhand smoke in the state’s parks, just move out of the way.

Now, state officials say, there’s worry that the ban on smoking in state parks will push outlaw smokers to the beach. That strikes us as a silly argument. We also worry about yet another regulation targeting smokers, an increasingly beleaguered minority - and one that state officials typically have no regrets about saddling with additional taxes whenever they need to raise an additional buck or two.

In our earlier editorial on this topic, however, we also noted that a more potent reason for the smoking ban in state parks would be to cut down on the amount of cigarette butts left behind as litter by thoughtless smokers.

That argument may have particular merit when applied to the state’s beaches, one of Oregon’s treasures: The nonprofit organization SOLVE, which stages a pair of cleanups each year on the beach, reports that the No. 1 item collected, year in and year out, is cigarette butts. And those cigarette butts, which can persist for years, can cause harm to marine life, experts say.

Of course, we’re not fans of tobacco use, in any form. We understand that smoking isn’t healthy. We know that it leads to a variety of health problems. But here’s the deal: It’s still legal. And you can make a strong argument that our public lands should be managed for the enjoyment of all Oregonians, even those who still smoke.

With all that said, however, the proposed ban does seem like it’s a done deal. When it’s enacted, state officials should take a cue from the smoking ban in state parks and put the emphasis on education instead of enforcement; in fact, no one has been ticketed this year for smoking in state parks, although rangers have asked smokers to extinguish cigarettes. That sort of slow implementation should be the case when the state extends its smoking ban to Oregon’s beaches.

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The (Eugene) Register-Guard, Aug. 1

Headline: “Curbing campus assaults: Senate bill would reform university investigations”

It’s a familiar story on university campuses in Oregon and throughout the nation: A student reports that she or he has been sexually assaulted by another student, and school officials fail to respond with a timely, professional investigation that protects the rights of the accuser - and sometimes the rights of the accused as well.

If, as has been happening with increasing frequency, a victim speaks out or files a Title IX complaint, school administrators predictably defend their institution’s inadequate performance, while vowing to combat sexual violence on campus.

Then comes another sexual assault, and the cycle repeats itself with another botched investigation and more professions of “zero tolerance.”

A bipartisan group of senators, led by Sens. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., on Wednesday introduced legislation intended to stop this cycle and to curb the appallingly high number of sexual assaults on the nation’s college campuses.

The Campus Safety and Accountability Act would require a uniform process for disciplinary proceedings, eliminating the practice at some schools of having athletic departments independently handle assault cases involving student athletes.

The legislation would require colleges to work closely with law enforcement agencies throughout investigations. Schools that fail to comply with this and other requirements in the bill could face penalties affecting 1 percent of their operating budgets and a $150,000 fine per violation.

The bill would require schools to conduct anonymous surveys of their students to learn more about the problem of assaults on campuses and to make public the results of those surveys - a move that should provide critically important information to parents and current and prospective students. Schools would be required to designate advocates who would make sure that victims are aware of all available options and to coordinate with local law enforcement on how such cases are handled. And schools would no longer be allowed to sanction students who reveal campus violations in “good faith.”

The problem of sexual violence on campus is real and pervasive. An Obama administration task force recently reported that one in five female college students in the United States has been assaulted, and several weeks ago a Senate subcommittee survey revealed that 41 percent of 236 U.S. colleges surveyed had conducted no investigations of alleged assaults in the last five years.

It’s heartening that the White House and Congress have finally realized that they need to pay more attention to the problem of campus sexual assault. Earlier this year, a dozen House members sent a letter asking U.S. News & World Report to include sexual-violence statistics in its popular annual rankings of the nation’s colleges.

The Senate should approve the Campus Safety and Accountability Act, and the House should approve a similar bill sponsored by Reps. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and Patrick Meehan, R-Pa. While Congress has a full schedule in the dwindling number of working days left in the current session, lawmakers should give this legislation the high-level priority it deserves.

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The (Coos) Bay World, Aug. 2

Headline: “An opportunity to rethink incentives”

We shouldn’t be surprised that the Community Enhancement Plan being drafted to govern our business relationship with the Jordan Cove Energy Project would include an option for the company to pull out at a future date.

The natural gas market can be volatile (and in this case, we mean that purely in the economic sense). There is no guarantee that, if an LNG export plant gets built, it will operate for the entire 19 years under the property tax exemption that’s currently being proposed. So, of course the company, or any company, would want to keep open as many options as possible.

If the early pull out becomes part of the deal, the entities involved - the Oregon International Port of Coos Bay, Coos County and the cities of North Bend and Coos Bay - will need to come up with an alternate plan. Should Jordan Cove decide to opt out, the company would revert back to paying property taxes instead of community contributions. In essence, the communities would be right back where they started, before the Community Enhancement Plan.

We believe this would be the opportunity to eliminate the existing Bay Area Enterprise Zone and the North Bay Urban Renewal District. The fact is that Jordan Cove has said that tax incentives never played a role in the company’s decision to locate here.

The urban renewal district has already done what it can do. It was created by the voters in 1985 as a way to improve infrastructure, and that job is done. Allowed to remain, it would merely suck tax revenues from the gas plant and local leaders would have to come up with some scheme to extract them. It should just go away.

Same with the enterprise zone. It’s set to sunset in 2018, while the plant would be under construction. It should be allowed to die, as well.

The urban renewal district and enterprise zone were created at a time when the region was desperate for whatever solution would raise it out of the economic doldrums. But, other than bringing needed infrastructure to the North Spit, neither incentive has produced much else.

The economic landscape has changed in the decades since. A gas plant will change it again - monumentally.

The urban renewal district and enterprise zone provided a lot of false hope before, and they’re simply in the way now. Scrap them, and let elected officials in the taxing entities continue to work directly with each other - just as they are now with the enhancement plan.

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Klamath Falls Herald and News, Aug. 4

Headline: “Basin water settlement needs a push”

It’s time to get on board, or come up with a workable plan of your own.

The message is directed at public officials and others involved in water policy and is about the Klamath Settlement Agreements. The agreements would put the Basin on a road around hideously expensive water battles and the continued erosion of the area’s agricultural base.

The agreement package was worked out in laborious sessions that had their origin years ago and finally got those who had been opposing such an approach to sign on. They deserve credit for that. Both sides do.

But some farmers and water users have expressed concerns to us that not much seems to have happened in the 2-1/2 months since a bill (Senate Bill 2379) was introduced, and there’s a fear that not much will without a strong show of support for it.

If the agreement package isn’t approved, the result would be little short of catastrophic for the Basin. Farmers and ranchers would have even less certainty about water than they do now.

There needs to be an affirmation coming out of Klamath County directed at Congress in support of the plan.

? Klamath County commissioners Dennis Linthicum, Tom Mallams and Jim Bellet are opposed to the concept and were elected on that stand. We understand that. So what’s your plan and please spare us wishful thinking about water storage. Much as we would love to believe there is a potential storage area out there waiting to happen and it would solve the Basin’s problems, we don’t, and repeated efforts to find one (think Long Lake) have failed. If you don’t have a plan, support this one, but don’t just sit on the sidelines. The issue is too important.

? Then there’s Greg Walden, the 2nd District congressman from Oregon and a top Republican on the national scene. Can you give it a push? Yes, we know, you have problems with dam removal. A lot of people do. But a solution to the Basin’s problems is a complicated proposal that doesn’t come apart easily, if at all, and dam removal is an integral part.

Even the dams’ owners, Pacific Power, want to get rid of them. If the dams stay in, they will have to meet new Clean Water Act standards and will produce less power at a higher cost. You said that despite your reservations on the dams, you would support the bill. Good. But the measure needs a champion in the House, not just another vote.

? Some of the opponents to previous attempts at an all-encompassing agreement signed on to this one because basically it was the only plan left standing and the Basin needed a plan. It still is and even if you don’t like it very much, it’s better than no plan. It needs your active support. Let Walden know how you feel.

This will be one of the worst years ever for water in the Klamath Basin.

If the settlement package had been in effect this year, there would have been more water for irrigators and water for the refuges, according to the Klamath Water Users Association, which is made up of irrigators on the Klamath Reclamation Project. It would also make the water availability more predictable.

The agreement package doesn’t magically create water, though it does include increased inflow into the river system from landowners in the upper Basin of about 30,000 acre-feet on a compensated/ voluntary basis. It would also focus on improved management of Klamath River water releases that would ensure releases at times when experts determine fish need water the most.

The agreements won’t solve the problem of a severe drought. There still won’t be enough water to meet all the demands, but there rarely has been. The federal government over-allocated the water to begin with and water users have been struggling with shortages ever since.

The agreement, though, is a far better way of dealing with the shortages than exists now.

If you think you have a better plan, let’s see it. If not, it’s time to get on board this one.