Editorials from around Oregon

Selected editorials from Oregon newspapers:

The Eugene Register-Guard, June 20, on former Gov. John Kitzhaber

Last week’s terse announcement by the U.S. attorney’s office in Portland that no criminal charges would be filed against former Gov. John Kitzhaber or his girlfriend, Cylvia Hayes, is the coda to one of the most traumatic episodes in Oregon political history. Kitzhaber’s resignation, just five weeks after being inaugurated to an unprecedented fourth term, denied him the place he might have claimed in that history. It also cut the trauma short, sparing the state what could have become the protracted ordeal of being led for years by a governor who was under criminal investigation.

If Kitzhaber could have avoided the allegations of influence peddling that forced him from office, he’d now be closing out the last full-length legislative session of his career with an eye toward leaving a legacy that would put him in the ranks of former Gov. Tom McCall. Unencumbered by re-election concerns and with the benefit of long experience in Salem, Kitzhaber might have been the one to forge a bipartisan consensus around the twin goals of bringing state spending under control and providing new tax revenue to restore Oregon’s struggling education system.

But such a success could not have come from a governor who was the target of a federal criminal investigation. Though the allegations are fading from memory, they were serious and growing more numerous by the day. Kitzhaber’s personal finances were tightly entangled with those of Hayes, who kept a desk in the governor’s office and presented herself as Oregon’s first lady. Hayes received more than $200,000 in consulting contracts because of her political connections, and failed to report some of the income on federal tax forms. Hayes also directed state agencies to implement policies advocated by organizations that had paid for her work.

But Kitzhaber could have held on - and a more stubborn, or less realistic, governor might have. The Legislature has no process for impeachment, even if grounds exist. The only way to remove Oregon’s governor is through a recall election, a time-consuming and distracting process better designed for delivering a political verdict than a judgment of guilt or innocence. If there were no recall or if Kitzhaber survived a recall vote, Oregon would have spent the last 28 months in a state of political paralysis. The 2016 elections for legislative and statewide offices would have been all about Kitzhaber.

The U.S. attorney’s office undoubtedly recognizes that its investigation could have consigned Oregon government to a protracted period of unproductive churn. But the length of the investigation - in which the FBI, the IRS and the U.S. Department of Justice also took part - is evidence of its complexity.

The investigation was halfway through when the U.S. Supreme Court decided, in a case involving a former Virginia governor and his wife, that public officials can’t be convicted of corruption without solid proof of an exchange of goods for services. Even with such a high standard in place, the Kitzhaber-Hayes investigation continued for a year.

A spokesman for Kitzhaber and Hayes calls this “exoneration,” and they are entitled to make that claim. But they can’t say they were vindicated. There’s a difference between being cleared of wrongdoing and being found to have been in the right all along. A combination of hubris and recklessness brought Kitzhaber down, and the U.S. attorney’s decision doesn’t change that. There is tragedy, for Kitzhaber and for Oregon, in such a fall. But the worst possible outcome - a legal and ethical cloud over most of Kitzhaber’s fourth term - was avoided.

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The Bend Bulletin, June 20, on Republicans forcing different Medicaid solution

If you think you are paying enough for health care, you’ll love a pair of bills in the Legislature that likely would raise the cost.

House Bill 2391 would increase the cost of health care for many Oregonians. It includes a 0.7 percent tax on hospitals. That may be passed on to patients. But the bill includes a new 1.5 percent insurance premium tax. That would raise the cost of health insurance on school districts, local governments, small businesses and people who buy insurance in the health insurance marketplace.

The second bill, House Bill 3398, takes $50 million that the state has collected in a program to help control costs for insurance companies and returns it to insurance companies.

The Democrats who backed these bills are not out to raise the cost of health care or provide a kickback to the insurance industry. They are trying to come up with a solution to cover a two-year hole of about $882 million in the state’s Medicaid budget.

But there’s a better way to do that than make health care more expensive for everybody else. Of course, Oregon hospitals won’t be so bad off under the Democratic plan. They have benefited from the expansion of Medicaid. More of their patients have insurance. The money they pay for a tax for Medicaid flows back to them in a way in Medicaid payments.

But the same will not be true for people hit by the proposed health insurance premium tax. The Democratic plan jacks up premiums on people hammered by the increases in health insurance. And taxing the premiums of government employees does not create revenue for the state. It takes public money away from schools and other government services and spends it on Medicaid.

“As a doctor, my goal is to ensure that vulnerable Oregonians on Medicaid can keep their health care, not to impose a new tax on insurance premiums to fund the remnants of Cover Oregon,” said State Rep. Knute Buehler, R-Bend.

House Republicans, led by the work of Rep. Cedric Hayden, R-Cottage Grove, have a better alternative. Hayden sought to fund Medicaid through a tobacco tax, some one-time transfers and to send the $50 million into the state’s Medicaid budget.

Both bills are in the Senate, having passed the House. Republicans have enough voters to block the bills. They should and force an alternative along the lines of Hayden’s plan.

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Albany Democrat-Herald, June 19, on high court getting it right with trademarks ruling

The Portland-based Asian-American rock band The Slants scored a First Amendment hit with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, although the ruling likely wasn’t that much of a surprise to anyone who has followed the high court under Chief Justice John Roberts.

In an unanimous 8-0 ruling (the case was argued before Neil Gorsuch joined the court, and so he did not participate), the court struck down part of a law that bans offensive trademarks, ruling in favor of the rock band - and likely giving a boost to efforts by the NFL’s Washington Redskins to keep its trademark.

The case before the Supreme Court, however, didn’t directly affect the Redskins. Instead, the case involved an attempt in 2011 by Slants founder Simon Tam to trademark the band’s name. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied the request on the grounds that the band’s name disparages Asians. A federal appeals court in Washington later found that the law banning offensive trademarks is unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court agreed in its Monday ruling.

The law, wrote Justice Samuel Alito, “offends a bedrock First Amendment principle: Speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend.”

This particular law is particularly troublesome in that it places the government in a position where it gets to determine what’s offensive and what’s not, a notion that anyone who values free speech should find, well, troubling.

That was part of the reasoning Justice Anthony Kennedy used in choosing to strike down the law: In an opinion that was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonya Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, Kennedy wrote that the ban on disparaging trademarks was a clear form of viewpoint discrimination forbidden under the First Amendment.

“A law that can be directed against speech found offensive to some portion of the public can be turned against minority and dissenting views to the detriment of all,” Kennedy wrote.

As a matter of fact, critics of the law have argued that the Patent and Trademark Office has been wildly inconsistent in applying the law, which lends additional weight to Kennedy’s argument.

Alito took a bit of a different tack in his opinion, which was joined by Clarence Thomas, Stephen Breyer and Roberts: “Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express the thought we hate,” Alito wrote. (The online version of this editorial includes a copy of the ruling.)

For his part, Tam said he was “beyond humbled and thrilled” with the ruling: “This journey has always been much bigger than our band: it’s been about the rights of all marginalized communities to determine what’s best for ourselves.”

In any event, Monday’s ruling is in line with similar First Amendment decisions from the Roberts court. The court has ruled in favor of free speech in a series of high profile cases, including a case involving hateful speech at military funerals. Even the court’s controversial ruling in the Citizens United case drew on the First Amendment.

But it hasn’t been completely consistent: It has ruled against a government whistle-blower, a student expressing pro-drug opinions, a prisoner and a human-rights activist, according to The New York Times. A legal scholar tried to explain the difference this way: “The Roberts court,” he said, “is very pro-speech except when the institutional interests of the government are at issue.”

That’s worrisome. Nevertheless, we’re pleased that the court made the right call in The Slants case. Here’s hoping this ruling leads the way to a continuing string of victories for free speech

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The Medford Mail Tribune, June 17, on Federal Energy Regulatory Commission needing to meet in Jackson County

The decision by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission not to schedule a public meeting in Jackson County and to require commenters to appear one by one with a court reporter is a transparent attempt to avoid confronting opponents of a proposed natural gas pipeline and coastal export facility.

What’s more, the request by Jordan Cove LNG, the company behind the project, to meet privately with Jackson County commissioners at a remote location is not only an insult to local residents but would be illegal under Oregon’s public meeting law. The Board of Commissioners deserves credit for refusing the request and insisting that any meeting take place in Jackson County and be open to the public.

Jordan Cove is proposing a 232-mile, 3-foot-diameter Pacific Connector pipeline from Malin to Coos Bay, crossing Southern Oregon along the way. Natural gas from drilling operations in Wyoming and elsewhere would be compressed into liquid form at a plant north of Coos Bay, loaded onto ships and exported to markets in Asia.

FERC, the federal agency charged with approving pipeline projects, rejected the Jordan Cove application last year, ruling that there was insufficient evidence that the project was needed and any public benefit was outweighed by negative effects on landowners along the pipeline route. The company has reapplied and is trying again to win approval.

Opposition has been vigorous in Southern Oregon, with property owners along the pipeline route declaring they will refuse to sell easements to the company. Jordan Cove officials say they want to win over landowners so they won’t have to resort to eminent domain to force the property owners to allow the pipeline to proceed.

Asking for a private meeting with county commissioners that would exclude the public doesn’t seem very persuasive. It’s also illegal: Under Oregon law, a meeting with two of the three commissioners constitutes a quorum and must be open to the public.

FERC’s announcement that commenters will be required to appear before the commission one at a time, in the presence of a court reporter, seems designed to intimidate opponents. Certainly, loud and disruptive protests are inappropriate in a public meeting designed to gather public comments, and time restrictions and other limitations are reasonable under the circumstances. But the one-at-a-time format deprives the public of the opportunity to hear what others have to say.

As for FERC’s decision not to hold a meeting in Jackson County, the commission’s Division of Media Relations says FERC is already familiar with the region affected by the project and with landowners’ concerns because of comments collected during previous efforts to win approval. But FERC has scheduled public meetings in Klamath, Douglas and Coos counties, where it also held previous meetings. Perhaps the commissioners don’t remember what people in those counties thought of the project.

Or, more likely, they want to avoid confronting the strong opposition they know they will encounter in Jackson County. They won’t succeed. Opponents are already organizing carpools to the meetings in other counties.

Meanwhile, FERC cannot vote on the Jordan Cove application until it has a quorum of three members. The five-member commission is down to just two members, both Democrats. The term of one of those expires this month. President Donald Trump has nominated two Republicans to vacant seats. They await approval by the full Senate, which is anticipated before the July 4 recess. By tradition, two of the seats should be filled by Democrats and three by members of the president’s party. But Trump has yet to nominate anyone for the two remaining seats.

But the two he has appointed, if confirmed, would give the commission a quorum and a 2-1 Republican edge. If he abides by tradition and appoints a Democrat and one more Republican, the commission would still be under GOP control at 3-2. Either way, approval of the pipeline project would seem more likely.

Jackson County commissioners and U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, who sits on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, have expressed concern about the lack of a Jackson County meeting and the fact that the comment period is just 30 days, rather than the usual 90 days. FERC should extend the comment period and schedule a meeting in Jackson County, and Jordan Cove LNG should meet with the county commissioners in a public session.

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East Oregonian, June 16, on Kenneth Arnold’s UFO sighting

One of this newspaper’s claims to fame, and surely one of its most indelible impacts on popular culture, is the story of Kenneth Arnold.

Without our reporting 70 years ago, the UFO you imagine when you close your eyes would probably look pretty different than it does. So too would “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T.” and countless other movies and television shows, comics and cartoons.

Admit it: Even though we have no blueprints or specs of what an alien spacecraft looks like, we all likely imagine it saucer-shaped and gray, moving horizontally, fast as can be and just too darn fast for our eyes and brains to make sense of it. Popular culture based much of that description on Kenneth Arnold’s sightings near Mt. Rainier in 1947.

Arnold landed in Pendleton and told an East Oregonian reporter about what he saw, the Associated Press picked it up and lent it credibility and the immortal phrase “flying saucer.” Arnold’s sighting helped spur supposed sightings across the Northwest and the world, and the idea of unidentifiable flying objects hasn’t left the human imagination since.

You can believe Arnold witnessed something out of this world, or you can believe it was some trick of the eye or secret government experiment. But there is no dancing around the fact that the explosion of UFO culture helped prove that humans love to believe in mystery, that we relish it and build on it, and that we love to debate it and make art about it and tell stories about it.

Think back on 1947. It was much closer to the Wright Brothers’ first flight than to today’s era of unmanned drones.

Sure, Da Vinci had sketched flying machines in his journal hundreds of years prior, but human beings had only recently figured out how to take to the sky safely, and very few people had actually done it. It was still mysterious and strange and a marvel beyond the comprehension of many.

Add to that another World War, which had also taught us about other kinds of marvels - planes that bomb and shoot. It introduced us to weapons so terrible and destructive that they too were hard to comprehend, though they proved there was technology out there so powerful and so complex that nearly anything was possible.

It was in this moment of technological advancement and aviation experimentation that Kenneth Arnold touched down in Pendleton and touched off the modern UFO craze. The sky was a tinderbox of mystery and hope and fear - and we were all looking up. We were flying, by god. Which begs the question, was someone else flying, too?