Editorials from around Oregon

Selected editorials from Oregon newspapers:

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Corvallis Gazette-Times, June 20, on outdoor effort possibly paying off for Oregon:

The state of Oregon recently hired a director for its new Office of Outdoor Recreation: Cailin O’Brien-Feeney, a graduate of Lewis and Clark College, nabbed the job.

O’Brien-Feeney brings what appears to be a strong resume to his new post: He’s worked in outdoor recreation for 15 years and has worked for the U.S. Forest Service and as a river guide in Idaho. Most recently, he worked for the Outdoor Industry Association, a trade group that represents recreation-based businesses and promotes outdoor participation.

All that experience should dovetail nicely with the task facing the Office of Outdoor Recreation, which was created by the Legislature in 2017. The office’s charge is to build outdoor recreation into an economic powerhouse for the state.

Some of that already is occurring: The popularity of outdoor activities is growing. And regardless of your outdoor preference - whether it be camping, hiking, fishing, hunting, snow sports, trail sports, wheel sports, water sports, off-roading, motorcycling, wildlife viewing or what have you - these are activities that drive commerce: Many outdoor activities require gear and lead to travel spending.

According to a report released this year by the Outdoor Industry Association (yes, O’Brien-Feeney’s previous employer), American consumers spend more on outdoor recreation than on pharmaceuticals and fuel combined, a total of $887 billion annually. The spending supports 7.6 million jobs and generates $125 billion in tax revenue for federal, state and local government.

Oregon, with its wealth of natural resources, from the coast to the mountains to the high desert, is starting to cash in on that spending. But there’s no reason why the outdoor recreation couldn’t be even bigger business for the state. The primary function of the Office of Outdoors Recreation, then, is to make sure more of that $887 billion pie gets served up right here in the state.

To that end, the office is working with the state’s tourism bureau, Travel Oregon, as well as local and regional destination marketing organizations, such as the Albany Visitors Association, Visit Corvallis and the Willamette Valley Visitors Association.

As for Travel Oregon, it’s leading a collaborative effort through the Oregon Outdoor Recreation Initiative to expand outdoor recreation opportunities. And Gov. Kate Brown and first gentleman Dan Little have launched a complementary initiative, “Roadmap to the Outdoors,” aimed at increasing access to the outdoors. The nice idea behind the “Roadmap” project is to reach people who don’t typically venture out to Oregon’s beaches, trails, mountains and sand dunes. If that clicks, it could be a smart way to increase the size of that pie.

One of O’Brien-Feeney’s tasks in the months ahead will be determining where his new office fits in among all these moving pieces. Our sense now is that there’s enough room for all these entities, but there’s always a risk of needless duplication and agencies working not to cooperate, but to protect their own turf at whatever cost. It will take O’Brien-Feeney and his staffers some time to work out the lay of the land, so to speak, but we’re optimistic about the office and its potential.

A boost in outdoor recreation could be particularly helpful to Oregon’s rural areas, where the economic recovery has not been as vibrant as it has been in urban areas. But there’s an asterisk here, and that’s something we have to keep in mind: Outdoor recreation and tourism are not, by themselves, panaceas for rural economies. We still need to get people back to work in our forests, although the emphasis now needs to be on adding value to the natural resources harvested there.

But working to diversify the economies that support our rural communities is a step forward. Here’s hoping the Office of Outdoor Recreation can help with that important task.

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The Register-Guard, June 19, on court punting on gerrymandering:

Gerrymandering - drawing political districts to achieve a particular result - is nearly as old as the republic, but the U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on the practice except in regard to minorities’ voting rights. It ducked the issue again this week, declining to rule in a pair of cases for technical reasons. But states and voters have an urgent need for the court’s guidance before the 2020 Census triggers a national wave of redistricting.

The urgency arises from the fact that gerrymandering has been turbocharged by technology and partisanship. Mapping software and voter databases allow district lines to be adjusted with fine-grained precision. The widening ideological gulf between the major parties has raised the stakes when districts are drawn.

One of the cases rejected by the court arose from Wisconsin, where in 2012 Republicans won 48.6 percent of the votes but gained 60 of 99 seats in the Legislative Assembly. Guess which party drew the map of legislative districts after the 2010 Census?

Yet defining impermissible political gerrymandering won’t be easy. Voters gerrymander themselves into like-minded communities, and districts reflecting such geographic sorting may be fairly drawn. Districts drawn to perfectly reflect the partisan makeup of an entire state’s electorate could resemble the salamander-shaped district drawn by Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry in 1812.

It might be possible for the court to judge the fairness of political districts by examining the process rather than the result. Some states, including Washington and California, have established non-partisan redistricting commissions. Oregon Secretary of State Dennis Richardson has appointed a committee to study the state’s redistricting process.

Oregon’s current districts were drawn by the Legislature in 2011, aided by the fact that the state House was evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans that year. In several preceding decades legislature deadlocks caused the job to fall to the secretary of state. The secretary of state is a partisan official, but his or her work has tended to be politically neutral in this area.

Even so, both the Legislature and the secretary of state would benefit from a clear court ruling on partisan gerrymandering - Oregon can’t presume to be permanently immune to the overtly political redistricting that has occurred in other states.

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East Oregonian, June 19, on Oregon health care:

The state’s top health official is traveling the state, asking the question, “What should health care in Oregon look like?” at 10 public meetings. The responses will help shape health care for about one-fourth of Oregonians, those who are on the state Medicaid program known as the Oregon Health Plan. Many of those clients work at low-wage jobs that lack health insurance.

However, the question matters to all Oregonians. The answers will help determine how our state and federal tax dollars will be used and, over time, how private health care will adapt and mirror the innovations in the Oregon Health Plan. Such practices as developmental screenings for children can become the statewide norm when instituted for the health plan, according to Patrick Allen, director of the Oregon Health Authority.

Allen has substantially improved the management, responsiveness and transparency of the state health agency since taking charge last year. Starting Monday, he is on the road to hear from Oregonians before his agency takes its next steps in transforming health care.

In 2012, Oregon took a bold step to improve health care and control costs.

Coordinated care organizations - now commonly referred to as CCOs - were established throughout the state to ensure that physical, mental and dental health care worked together for people on the Oregon Health Plan.

CCOs are to health care what a high-quality, lifetime bumper-to-bumper warranty is to auto maintenance.

Traditional health care is fee-for-service. Hospitals, physicians and other providers get paid according to the scope of care provided. (Fees can vary widely based on government programs, private insurance or out-of-pocket payments).

In contrast, CCOs receive a set amount of government money each month for Oregon Health Plan clients. The CCOs are responsible for all the patients’ care regardless of cost. Their financial incentive is to keep the patients healthy, thereby saving money - an incentive that can broaden how health care is delivered.

For example, consider a person with high blood pressure who forgets to take his medications and thus repeatedly winds up in the hospital emergency room. It makes more sense - financially, socially and psychologically - for a nurse to call or visit the patient each day to ensure he takes his medication.

Research indicates Oregon’s CCO model is effective but imperfect. Mental and dental health care are not as well integrated into the holistic approach. CCOs have saved the state money, but health-care costs continue to grow faster than the overall economy.

State officials have dozens of ideas for improvement. But they want, and need, to hear what the public thinks.

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Albany Democrat-Herald, June 18, on protecting citizen rights in elections:

Two news stories last week serve as a reminder of how far Oregon has come in its efforts to remove barriers to voting - and to offer safeguards against continuing efforts to hack into the nation’s election systems.

Last Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court - in a narrow 5-4 decision - ruled that states may boot people off voter rolls if they fail to vote in a few elections and ignore notices from officials.

The case involved an Ohio man, Larry Harmon, a software engineer and Navy veteran who voted in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections but stayed home in the 2012 election, saying he was unimpressed by the candidates (which is understandable, but not necessarily a good reason not to vote). He also didn’t vote in the midterm elections in 2010 and 2014.

When 2015 rolled around, however, Harmon found himself wanting to vote against a ballot measure to legalize marijuana. No luck, though: Upon reporting to the polls, Harmon found that his name had been struck from voter rolls. (As it turned out, though, Ohio voters thumped the marijuana measure.)

Ohio’s procedures on purging its voter rolls are the most aggressive in the nation: After voters miss a single federal election cycle, they are sent a notice in the mail. If they fail to respond to the notice, their names are removed from the rolls.

Although that process strikes us as unduly aggressive (every other state follows rules that are more protective of voters), the Supreme Court disagreed, with the majority unwilling to second-guess Ohio’s election laws.

States, of course, do have good reason to maintain some level of hygiene on their voter rolls, but those processes vary from state to state - and it seems to us that it’s best to err on the side of keeping voters on the rolls, especially considering the lack of evidence that widespread voter fraud is a major issue in the United States.

In Oregon, which is justifiably proud of its efforts to remove as many barriers as possible to voting, last week’s Supreme Court ruling shouldn’t have any impact: The state already waits for 10 years of voting inactivity until it moves registered voters to inactive status. (Previous secretaries of state had set a five-year limit, but the current office-holder, Dennis Richardson, recently extended that to 10 years. In addition, Richardson said he’s proposing legislation for the 2019 session that would protect voters from ever being moved to inactive status for nonparticipation. We’ll need to reserve judgment on that until we see the legislation; again, we do see some reasons why states have an interest in trying to maintain relatively clean voter rolls.)

There is another lesson to be drawn from Harmon’s experience, and here it is: Despite the fact that some elections are bound to leave you less than enthralled by the candidates, there’s always a reason to vote every time, if only to ensure that you’ll get the chance to vote next time.

In the meantime, Oregon’s vote-by-mail system, in particular the fact that it uses paper ballots, continues to attract national attention. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat who long has advocated for vote-by-mail systems in other states, is among the sponsors of a new congressional measure, the Protecting American Votes and Elections Act. The bill requires the use of paper ballots and statistically valid audits for all federal elections.

One great advantage of paper ballots, of course, is that they leave behind a paper trail that can be audited to thwart cyberattacks on vulnerable computer systems used in elections. These election systems have been targets in the past, and it’s a sure thing that hackers will be trying again. Paper ballots are a relatively simple way to offer a critical measure of security.

It’s good for a democracy to remove as many barriers as possible to voting. It’s just as important to make sure that the results of elections reflect how people actually voted.

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The Oregonian/OregonLive, June 17, on Oregon grocers striking back:

It’s almost a foregone conclusion that Initiative Petition 37, which seeks to ban taxes on sales of groceries, will go before Oregon voters this November. Supporters have submitted well more than the 117,578 signatures needed to qualify the proposed constitutional amendment to the ballot. The deadline to pull the petition has passed. And the machinery both for and against the proposal is already cranking up, as OPB’s Dirk VanderHart reported. The campaign, funded by national retailers, is rolling out videos touting the need to “keep our groceries tax free” while Our Oregon, the political arm of public-employee unions, is prepping its counter arguments.

Feel familiar? Just two years ago, voters endured a knock-down, drag-out fight between businesses and public-employee unions over the union-backed Measure 97, which sought to impose a 2.5 percent gross-receipts tax on corporations with more than $25 million in annual Oregon sales. Despite its touted aim of propping up education and health care, the proposed tax was a blunt instrument that would have hit hard businesses and consumers alike, potentially adding costs onto necessities like milk and vegetables multiple times before they even reached store shelves. Oregonians resoundingly defeated it after the most expensive ballot-measure campaign in Oregon history.

Now, Oregon seems headed toward a sequel. Only this time, it’s corporations pushing the initiative, armed with an unassailable message: Groceries should remain tax free. But while Oregonians need to hear more about the proposal, the initiative petition poses some of the same concerns as Measure 97. As the campaign heats up, Oregonians should evaluate the claims, consider the possible consequences and question the backers with the same thoughtful skepticism that they showed with Measure 97 two years ago.

To be sure, Oregonians shouldn’t even be in this situation in the first place. This brawl over tax revenue stems directly from the lack of leadership by Gov. Kate Brown, Sen. Peter Courtney and House Speaker Tina Kotek in addressing the glaring dysfunction in Oregon’s spending and revenue systems. Oregon just got out of one budgetary crisis and is looking at additional crises for the next few biennia, as spending, driven by pension and health care costs, far outpaces the state’s record revenue growth. Yet even with that fiscal reality staring them in the face, the three decided that serious reform could wait until 2019.

So instead of leadership, Oregonians are getting a free-for-all. Businesses, unions and others nervous about protecting their interests instead are appealing directly to voters, trying to persuade Oregonians that it’s in their interest to take their ideas and vote them into law.

That might make sense in some instances where the goal is narrowly defined and the mechanics of achieving it are uncomplicated. But tax policy is not that. As Measure 97 showed, the one-size-fits all corporate-tax approach detailed in that ballot measure provided no consideration for the razor-thin profit margins of a grocery retailer, the multi-layered complexity of a supply chain or the constraints of a commodity-based business. Sound tax policy requires an attention to detail that a ballot measure designed around a catchy slogan simply cannot provide.

IP 37 doesn’t seek to impose a new tax, and backers contend that their proposal is specifically tailored to a narrow set of establishments - grocery stores, farmers markets, convenience stores, food banks and other such outlets that treat food as necessities, said campaign spokesman Dan Floyd. But it still affects tax policy by declaring one element completely off the table. Oregonians should weigh whether it makes sense for voters to jump into the morass of tax law at all, much less issue such a blanket ban.

That’s especially worrisome considering that the proposed ban on taxing groceries could play out in unintended ways. As VanderHart reported, there’s already disagreement between the state justice department and the backers about whether the law would include restaurants. The state says it would, while backers disagree. Opponents, not surprisingly, raise other questions of how broadly the law could apply, and their potential to affect other revenue streams that the state relies on. Oregonians need to hear concrete responses before committing to a constitutional amendment that could only tie elected leaders’ hands in addressing the fiscal crisis.

That is, assuming that someone in elected office will address the crisis. Which leads to one more question voters should seek to answer for themselves. As they learn more about the proposal, Oregonians should press Brown and her Republican challenger, Rep. Knute Buehler, to weigh in - both on the proposal and on the larger question of how to solve Oregon’s recurring fiscal crisis. Because if the current trend of putting off fixes continues, Oregonians will only be seeing more and more of these efforts to legislate fiscal solutions by popular vote.