Editorials from around Oregon

Selected editorials from Oregon newspapers:

The Oregonian, Feb. 4, on Oregon and President Trump:

Few people in the progressive Oregon that voted for Hillary Clinton misread the conservative campaign priorities of candidate Donald Trump: He’d shouted them out. But few Oregonians, like many across the country, could foresee the daily carnival attending the implementation of executive orders and directives from President Donald Trump.

Thousands across Oregon have protested and otherwise derided Trump as a self-aggrandizing ignoramus whose degradation of women, ban on Muslims and estrangement of international allies, among other things, push the country in the direction of chaos. Disruption often brings chaos. But as a steady state, chaos is dangerous.

Portland and Oregon watch warily. With the exception of Republican Congressman Greg Walden, who has Trump’s ear, Oregon’s congressional delegation has taken a pitched stand against Trump’s actions so far and many of his cabinet nominees. Separately, Gov. Kate Brown last Thursday issued her own executive order to strengthen Oregon’s sanctuary laws while requesting that the state’s attorney general find ways to sue the White House to find remedies to resist the travel ban.

It’s good we have such scruples. But are they handled in such a way as to make good government? Oregon lumbers forward facing a $1.8 billion hole in its budget and the need to fund transportation upgrades and to address the money-eating Public Employees Retirement System. A beset Legislature just convened.

Yet some dots do connect. Oregon found itself off Trump’s list of states provisionally approved for transportation project funding. That could change, and millions of infrastructure dollars are viewed not only as bringing capital improvements to Oregon but jobs and revved-up economic activity.

Enter Walden. Brown publicly described Walden as “very well-placed to deliver to Oregon and Oregonians, and we will work very closely with our federal delegation to make sure Oregon gets its fair share of federal dollars.” No pressure, Walden, but the governor’s assertion came as the Oregon delegation hammered the Trump White House as doing nothing less than pose a threat to democracy. Meanwhile Brown, in a moment of misplaced attention, allowed her campaign folks to launch a social-media-driven call for a “Social Action Team” to resist Trump - as if votes for her reelection are to be found in the Trump-news-is-trending moment.

Walden met for more than an hour with Trump in the Oval Office last week, mainly on the subject of reducing the high cost of pharmaceuticals. But he snagged the president at the end of the meeting to suggest forest management was a particular challenge at home, in Oregon. A Walden spokesman told The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board last week that Trump told Walden that once Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke is sworn in as Secretary of the Interior, the three of them should sit down and discuss more intensive management of forests nationally and in Oregon. That sounds like code speak for increased logging on public lands.

But it could suggest other things, too. Last year Walden unsuccessfully advocated in Klamath Basin legislation for the transfer of federally owned forests to counties; Zinke, however, has a record of opposing the transfer or sale of federally owned lands. In any event, it means Walden, a leading voice against Obamacare, is a trusted voice in the White House. Tactical snag: Official Oregon, for the most part, hates and fears Trump. Tactical question: Should Oregon lean on Walden to make deals with the person its leaders deride as being bent on destabilizing the nation?

Complication extends to Portland, a sanctuary city whose budget features millions of federal dollars. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this year called for a $1 billion-plus cleanup of Portland Harbor under Superfund regulation. The EPA’s plan was 16 years and more than $100 million in the making. But will it actually happen? Will the health threat driven by river-bottom toxics ever be reduced?

Portland officials have no clue. An EPA official in Seattle told the editorial board the agency had heard nothing. Retiring Washington Sen. Don Benton, formerly Clark County’s director of environmental services and now senior adviser to Trump on the EPA’s transition under a new director, told the editorial board only that the agency would likely reduce costs and regulation while improving results. Whatever that means.

Things are so foggy in governance that this much is clear: Reaction will no longer do. Elected leaders at cross-purposes can hurt. City and state leaders must join with the congressional delegation in forging a new conversation in which all parties are equally informed in real time - and in which the Trump spectacle can be separated from the difficult business of government. Leaders need to be as smart as they are angry, as wise as they are surprised, as considered as they can be impetuous.

All Oregonians deserve a government that withstands even the most difficult of tests and finds the resources necessary to support its best purposes.

___

The (Corvallis) Gazette-Times, Feb. 5, on making changes to the state’s pension system:

There was a promising sign last week out of Salem as the Legislature settled down to work: Lawmakers appear to be serious this session about trying to find money-saving options to the state’s troubled public-pension system.

PERS issues grabbed the spotlight as the Senate Workforce Committee met on Wednesday, the official first day of the 2017 session. And the committee’s chair, Portland Democrat Kathleen Taylor, made it clear that the committee would entertain any PERS proposal from legislators.

“All bills will be treated equally,” Taylor was quoted as saying in a story in The Oregonian, “and all will be brought out into the public light so everyone can see what we’re grappling with.”

In fact, Taylor and her Republican co-chair, Sen. Tim Knopp of Bend, have invited legislators to submit any of their own PERS proposals by the end of the month. In a memo they issued last week, they even listed the nine criteria they would use to evaluate the proposals: They include items such as constitutionality, cost savings, impact on employer contribution rates, the impact on the public workforce, and so on. (The online version of this editorial includes a copy of the memo.)

The idea is that the committee’s staff will evaluate each proposal and prepare a summary.

For his part, as we’ve noted in previous editorials, Knopp already has filed a pair of PERS bills, Senate Bill 559 and 560. One of the bills would change the calculation of members’ final average salaries used in benefit calculations to an average of five years instead of three. The other would redirect employees’ 6 percent retirement contributions, which now go into supplemental retirement accounts owned by the employee, to pay for their pensions.

The committee also heard the first of two scheduled presentations by Steve Rodeman, the executive director of the Public Employees Retirement System, that served notice that substantial PERS reform won’t be an easy task.

Rodeman emphasized that the 2015 Supreme Court decision that invalidated most of the PERS reforms approved by the Legislature in 2014 made it clear that benefits can only be changed going forward. And, he noted, any changes the Legislature makes to PERS in this session are certain to be challenged in court.

All that, obviously, increases the degree of difficulty legislators face in coming up with meaningful PERS reform. And, as we have noted before, it’s becoming increasingly clear that there likely is no magic bullet solution - one answer to all of our PERS issues.

Still, it was gratifying to see the committee take up the PERS issue on the session’s first day, especially in light of the Legislature’s general reluctance to tackle the topic at all in its last couple of sessions. Proposals to reform the system didn’t get much traction at all in the 2015 and 2016 sessions, as the PERS deficit ballooned to $22 billion and state and local governments dealt with the prospect of steep rate increases that will take a bigger and bigger bite out of their budgets. Legislative leaders seemed to think that they had taken their best PERS shot, and it had been rejected by the Supreme Court, so there was really nothing they could do.

Of course, it still could be that these new legislative efforts, promising as they seem today, still could come to naught: These sessions are long and twisty affairs, and we still don’t sense much enthusiasm among Democratic legislative leaders to tackle PERS reform. But the Senate Workforce Committee appears to be off to a good start, and the committee’s efforts could well be one key to a successful session.

____

The Daily Astorian, Feb. 6, on ODOT problems:

Those who proclaim government agencies should be run like businesses are, in some ways, wrong.

A case in point: If government services and infrastructure were awarded to low-population areas in proportion to the income they produce, large swaths of America wouldn’t have paved roads, bridges or anything but one-room schools. Basic politic principles and simple fairness would never allow such overt neglect in the U.S.

When it comes to the Oregon Department of Transportation, however, a valid argument definitely can be made for a somewhat more businesslike approach to such fundamental procedures as setting priorities, seeking out differing opinions and measuring how well goals are being achieved.

With a budget of roughly $2 billion a year and thousands of employees, ODOT is one of the state’s largest organizations. It’s no Nike or Intel, but it’s big enough - and so crucial to the state’s safety and success - that it must adopt at least some lessons from the private corporate world in order to achieve all it needs to do with the resources it has available. It wants even more. ODOT, along with Oregon’s counties and cities, suggests they might need up to an extra $5 billion a year to preserve roads and bridges, ease congestion and bolster public transportation.

A nearly $1 million performance audit from New York-based McKinsey & Co. - which the EO Media Group/Pamplin Media Group Capital Bureau successfully pressed ODOT to release last month - found the department acts like a complacent family. Nobody in top management rocks the boat by questioning the agency’s decisions. Though the audit is couched in the diplomatic code phrases of managerial consultants, the overall picture of top ODOT management is uncomfortably close to the old cliché of a clubby circle of friends standing around leaning on their shovels kibitzing.

Consultant interviews with senior management found “no example of individuals who considered themselves a ’dissenting voice.’” Government agencies, boards and commissions often go to great effort to ensure such a lack of disagreement within their ranks. However, from a public perspective, too many unanimous decisions within an entity like ODOT are nearly always a sign of trouble. It means no one is really speaking up to question old assumptions or fight for significant changes in budgeting, personnel, project planning and other important matters.

In the case of Oregon’s transportation system, ODOT’s management team is supposed to be accountable to the five-member governor-appointed Oregon Transportation Commission.

However, this effort at citizen oversight is not functioning as it should. On Jan. 10, Tammy Baney, the commission’s chairwoman, sent Gov. Kate Brown a letter asking for quarterly meetings with Brown, along with an independent staff person to carry out commissioners’ requests for information and research. Baney also wants an “active” role in ODOT Director Matt Garrett’s performance review. Most Oregon citizens will be surprised that such basic elements of independent oversight are not already in place. Without routine contact with the governor or a role in reviewing the ODOT director, the commission becomes little but a symbolic shell.

Former commission Chairwoman Catherine Mater said the request for an independent staffer indicates “a complete disintegration of trust” between ODOT and the commission tasked with overseeing it.

ODOT’s front-line workers clearly understand what is going on. They told the consultants: “We need to ensure accountability for performance and behavior problems . High-level managers can talk the talk, but poor performers and poor behavior is still tolerated . Good employees currently work hard through internal motivation and personal dedication to high quality service, not because the agency rewards them.”

There is no doubt that Oregon needs substantial transportation upgrades and maintenance. During a recent visit to Astoria, outgoing Port of Portland Executive Director Bill Wyatt emphasized what most residents already know: Surrounding states invest more heavily in highways, bridges and other essential infrastructure. Though Wyatt understandably focuses most on obvious needs in the Portland metro region, he is largely right in asserting that it is a bottleneck that must be fixed in order to ensure a healthy future for the state’s economic engine.

Ultimately, even if Congress grants President Donald Trump’s wish for major national infrastructure spending, Oregon taxpayers will have to pay much of the tab for the things we need. Deficiencies in ODOT’s management system, along with the debacle of the failed Columbia Crossing project on Interstate 5, necessitate a convincing and thorough rebooting of this critical agency’s managerial and oversight procedures.

It will be a fool’s errand to ask Oregon voters for a major hike in transportation-related taxes until this basic work is done and trust is restored.

___

The Bend Bulletin, Feb. 4, on raising the minimum smoking age:

There’s nothing easy about stopping smoking. It’s better to never start.

That’s why Oregon should raise the legal age for buying cigarettes and other tobacco products to 21 from 18. State Rep. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, D-Portland, has proposed legislation that would do so.

Despite the alarming public service ads and parental finger-wagging, young people still light up. How to douse that? Make it harder for people to start. Raise the minimum legal age.

The minimum legal age for tobacco in most states is the same as in Oregon - 18. California and Hawaii have raised the minimum age to 21. Some cities have, too.

Read the 2015 Institute of Medicine study from the National Academies. Teens are among the most vulnerable to becoming addicted. They generally aren’t as good at impulse control, decision-making and are more susceptible to influence from peers. The data “strongly suggest that if someone is not a regular tobacco user by 25 years of age, it is highly unlikely they will become one,” the study says.

Hayward’s planned bill would not criminalize smokes. It would make it more difficult for people to buy them. That would work, to a degree.

The Legislature should also do something that is not in Hayward’s bill - start treating adult smokers like adults. If a bar or restaurant owner wants to allow adults to smoke in his or her establishment, the owner should be able to make that decision. They can’t now. The Legislature should change that.

Hayward’s planned bill focuses on raising the minimum legal age. It would, indeed, take away some personal freedom. But it would save lives and prevent young people from doing something that many will regret for the rest of their lives. Pass it.