Editorials from around Oregon

By Associated Press - Associated Press - Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Selected editorials from Oregon newspapers:

The Albany Democrat-Herald, May 25, on self-serve gas:

It could be another crack in the wall of Oregon’s longstanding refusal to pump its own gas.

Or it could just be a recognition of the reality of life in Oregon’s rural counties.

In either event, a bill allowing self-service gasoline in several rural counties has passed the Legislature and is en route to Gov. Kate Brown’s desk.

The bill, House Bill 2482, allows people to pump their own gas at all hours in counties with less than 40,000 residents. The list includes Malheur, Union, Wasco, Hood River, Jefferson, Crook, Baker, Morrow, Lake, Grant, Harney, Wallowa, Gilliam, Sherman, and Wheeler. (If you’re counting, that’s 15 of Oregon’s 36 counties each with less than 40,000 people - and, perhaps more to the point in this case, these are counties that cover a big chunk of geography.)

Drivers in Tillamook, Curry and Clatsop counties would be allowed self-service fueling between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., although the bill mandates that gas stations with convenience stores still have to offer full-service fueling during business hours.

The bill passed with broad support in both houses of the Legislature and cleared the Senate recently on a 26-1 vote. The bill earlier won approval in the House of Representatives on a 56-0 vote. (Mid-valley senators and representatives voted for the measure, although Rep. Dan Rayfield did not vote.)

House Bill 2482 is a successor of sorts to House Bill 3011, which won approval in the 2015 Legislature. That bill authorized self-service gasoline at retail outlets in low-population counties between the hours of 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. in certain circumstances. The idea behind that bill was that access to self-service pumps in those locations would prevent travelers from being stranded until stores opened. Although one of the bill’s backers, Sen. Ted Ferrioli, insisted that it was not meant as an end run around the state’s ban on self-service, it represented the first crack in Oregon’s status as a full-service state.

Oregon and New Jersey remain the only states that restrict the ability of people to pump their own gasoline.

In Oregon’s case, the law banning self-service gasoline has been on the books since 1951, and the law lists 17 separate justifications for the ban. Those justifications include some that likely have occurred to you: For example, the ban creates jobs. However, some of the other justifications seem to be - how to phrase this? - a little silly. For example, the law notes that there is a safety issue involved with gasoline in that it is flammable. Perhaps you have noticed, however, that the daily news reports are not filled with accounts of careless motorists setting themselves ablaze at gas stations elsewhere in the nation.

If you remain concerned about the safety issue, though, you can relax: Among the talking points provided in summaries of the bill to concerned legislators was this one: “Modern fuel pumps are much safer than those from decades ago.”

That’s good to know.

Despite the recent advances in fuel-pump safety, lawmakers have not been eager to embrace a full-fledged effort to repeal the ban on self-service, even though some evidence from polls suggests that younger Oregon voters might embrace the opportunity to pump their own gas. And a study by an economist has estimated that the ban might add 3 to 5 cents per gallon to the cost of gasoline in Oregon. But the overall sense is that the ban remains popular among older residents - the type of residents who are more likely to vote.

House Bill 2482 essentially just expands on the realities of rural life that helped to drive the 2015 bill. But don’t be completely surprised if it lays the groundwork for a move to allow self-service gas throughout Oregon. And then poor New Jersey would be left in the lurch.

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The Oregonian/OregonLive, May 24, on lawmakers controlling spending:

On the surface, it appeared the recent revenue forecast of an additional $187 million to flow into Oregon’s coffers was good news.

But the report last Tuesday that Oregon could take in a record $21 billion over the next biennium didn’t provide Democrats with the best of days. The extra cash complicates Democrats’ session-long message that the state, facing a $1.4 billion deficit for the 2017-2019 biennium, needs more revenue to cover costs.

Republican leaders were quick to chime in on the conflicting narrative. House Republican leader Mike McLane called the new forecast “evidence of the fact that our government needs to tighten its belt and get serious about slowing the unsustainable rate of spending in Salem.”

But in recent weeks, it is evident that in fact, serious bipartisan work had begun on both spending controls and identifying a new, more sustainable revenue stream. And that work must continue with rigor in these waning weeks of the legislature.

The state’s top budget committee made several solid recommendations to Democratic leaders in recent weeks. Committee members logically called for increasing the amount current and future PERS members pay toward their retirement costs. They also suggested the smart move of looking for savings by combining two health care providers that have separately served public employees and employees of school districts and community colleges.

Then they provided the “well, duh” - but obviously necessary - list of cost-saving budget principles recommending against the creation of new programs without money to fund them. They shunned the practice of automatically replacing lost federal or other funding. And committee members also correctly called for requiring analysis of ongoing costs when creating the budget rather than initial costs for all new programs.

These are solid and necessary recommendations to help provide some needed relief from future pension and healthcare costs that threaten to weigh down public schools, agencies and programs in the decades to come. And rightly so, voices on both the left and right are calling for these checks on spending so we can improve education in Oregon and make long-overdue improvements to our public infrastructure.

But the state also needs a new, less volatile revenue stream that can help pay down the massive unfunded pension liability created by years of bad legislative and administrative decisions. Democratic Sen. Mark Hass’ current proposal for a corporate tax that would be levied across a wide range of companies at a low rate appears more fair and attainable than other proposals.

Lawmakers and stakeholders, such as labor and business, who have promised to help Oregon out of this crisis can’t throttle back now. This is not work that should wait. Oregon’s state budget needs to be stabilized now to provide sustained support for those most vulnerable Oregonians in the years to come.

The time has come.

For some, it’s past time. School districts are waiting for solid numbers out of Salem to craft their own budgets, which typically must be released to their communities at the end of May. The end of the school year is just weeks away and like us all, we are waiting on lawmakers to do the right thing and get the work done.

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The Medford Mail Tribune, May 26, on electoral college.

he 73 million Americans who voted for someone other than Donald Trump for president - outnumbering Trump voters by more than 10 million - might understandably support the national movement to sidestep the Electoral College and award the top job in future elections to the winner of the popular vote. Oregon is on its way to joining that movement after the state House voted to do so along party lines.

To abolish the Electoral College would require amending the U.S. Constitution - a daunting task. But it could be circumvented if enough states agree. Here’s how:

Individual states enact legislation pledging their Electoral College votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote, regardless of how their state’s electorate voted. If enough states sign on to what’s called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact to total the magic number of 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House, those states would determine the winner.

That sounds good in theory, but it raises some interesting issues. In the 2016 election, for instance, Donald Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, but won just enough votes in three key states to give him the electoral votes he needed. If Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin had signed on to the Interstate Compact, those states would have awarded their Electoral College votes to Hillary Clinton, even though their voters narrowly picked Trump.

Other states where Trump won handily also would have been forced to deliver their electoral votes to Clinton, if their state had joined the compact. Then there is the likelihood that just enough states sign on to reach the 270 number, but the rest don’t. Are their electoral votes irrelevant?

The 73 million Americans who voted for someone other than Donald Trump for president - outnumbering Trump voters by more than 10 million - might understandably support the national movement to sidestep the Electoral College and award the top job in future elections to the winner of the popular vote. Oregon is on its way to joining that movement after the state House voted to do so along party lines.

To abolish the Electoral College would require amending the U.S. Constitution - a daunting task. But it could be circumvented if enough states agree. Here’s how:

In Oregon, where Clinton won easily, Democratic voters would have been happy to have the Interstate Compact in place. But in some future election, the result could conceivably be reversed, and the candidate chosen by Oregon voters could narrowly lose the popular vote but still get all seven of Oregon’s electoral votes.

Supporters of the Interstate Compact argue that the current system prompts candidates to concentrate their campaigning in swing states, ignoring states they consider safe and those where they have little support. But there is no guarantee that would change appreciably under the Compact system. In fact, candidates would be more likely to spend most of their time and money in big cities and urban states with large concentrations of voters. It was Clinton’s overwhelming wins in the urban parts of California and New York that gave her the bulk of her popular vote margin.

The Oregon House has approved the Interstate Compact three times before, only to have it blocked by Senate President Peter Courtney. This year, he says he will allow a Senate vote if the matter is referred to the voters.

That still would leave the national effort little more than 60 percent of the way toward its goal. If Oregon voters are given a say, they should be sure it’s what they want before voting yes.

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The Bend Bulletin, May 24, on transit tax bill

So much effort has been put into the enormous waste of time that is House Bill 2745. The amended bill is not an improvement.

The bill would grant taxing authority to the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council for bus service in Central Oregon.

Bus service can be a public good for a lot of reasons. And COIC seems to do a good job running the regional bus service under the name Cascades East Transit. There’s the fixed route bus service in Bend and routes that connect places from Warm Springs to La Pine.

Specifically, the bill would allow COIC to go to voters and ask for levies for operating expenses for a bus system. The levy would not have to be the same for, say, Prineville and Bend. Bend voters and city government could decide to have a levy. Prineville’s voters and government could say no.

COIC has highlighted four reasons why the bill is important - local control, maximize efficiency, protecting the budgets of local governments and economic development.

But the bill isn’t needed to establish local control. Local communities can already decide to tax themselves to fund bus service. They have authority under existing Oregon law to vote to create a transit district.

The bill also isn’t needed to maximize efficiency. In COIC’s view, maximizing efficiency is - keeping the bus system operated by COIC. But there is nothing to prevent a local community from continuing to use COIC to operate its bus system, if the local community decides that is best.

In terms of protecting the budgets of local governments, COIC makes the argument that it protects “local governments’ property tax funded budgets from funding conflicts.” That’s because voters could decide to tax themselves extra for buses under the bill. But voters can already do that without the bill, as we have said, by voting to create a transit district. And perhaps more importantly, local control of tax dollars is arguably less protected under the bill. Instead of the Redmond City Council or a Redmond transit district deciding how transit money should be spent for Redmond, the decision would be made by COIC’s regional board.

The economic development argument that COIC makes is specious. Public transit can be good for economic development. But the bill is not necessary to expand public transit.

The recent amendments to the bill do three things - require annual reporting of transit data, require mediation if there is disagreement about how COIC is running things, and require creation of a public advisory council.

First of all, COIC already reports ridership and spending data. Did it plan to stop? Requiring mediation is not such a bad thing, but it could slow down a local government that believes COIC made a bad mistake and the government needs to file a lawsuit. A public advisory council appointed by COIC to advise COIC on transit is certainly a nice nod to public involvement. But it doesn’t resolve the fundamental problem that funding transit under the bill gives a local community less direct control of its tax dollars.

COIC’s HB 2745 is good for COIC. It’s not as good for the people it serves.

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The East Oregonian, May 23, on bipartisan cooperation:

There is no reason that a large-scale transportation plan cannot be a bipartisan project. Republican and Democrat, urban and rural, bikers and truckers, 1 percenters and the rest of us - we all benefit from an efficient, safe and affordable transportation system.

Yet for years now, agreement on transportation and infrastructure work has been lacking on the state level here in Oregon, and for much longer than that on the federal level. It’s an example of the partisan bickering that has come to dominate our political atmosphere. Politicians are worried more about who gets the credit and who gets the blame than solving a problem we all face equally.

The Oregon Legislature is trying to rise above that, attempting now in the latter days of this year’s session to come up with the expansive transportation plan that has recently eluded them. A similar type of bill was rounding third base and headed for home in 2015 when the road was pulled out from under it and it came crashing down. The now much-derided Columbia River Crossing had plenty to do with that bill’s collapse.

But this year may be different. The $8 billion plan remains under development, but it has gone through a much more stringent, public process than its predecessors. It’s also a heck of a lot bigger than the $343 million proposed in 2015. Those on both sides of the aisle, and nonpartisans who have been involved, say lessons were learned in the last go-round and those hurdles have been hopped.

A key cog of the transportation plan is upgrades in Portland. But in order to convince a majority of legislators - who do not represent Portland - they are touting the city’s huge impact on the statewide economy.

Bob Russell, vice president of the Oregon Trucking Association, told the EO edit board that “transit time through Portland is just not reliable,” and that negatively impacts every business in the state - and the region - who need to move goods through Oregon’s largest city. In our neck of the woods, that includes the farmers and food processors, the ports of Morrow and Umatilla, manufacturers and middlemen.

So while solving Portland’s woes at first seems to have limited impact on our side of the state, that’s not quite the case from a business and recreation standpoint. And another way to look at it: The smoother traffic moves in Portland, the less likely those Portlanders are to pick up stakes in the big city and head our way.

But the plan is more than just multi-millions for Multnomah County. Highway 97 would become a divided, improved highway that could handle major traffic if, God forbid, the Cascadia earthquake hits and renders I-5 unusable for a long period of time. Even if that doesn’t happen, Highway 97 between Bend and the Columbia Gorge is as dangerous a stretch of road as any in the state, and improving it will benefit Bend and many Central Oregon residents.

There’s plenty of work planned even farther east. The bill could fund salt storage facilities along Interstate 84, from Idaho possibly all the way to The Dalles. The state experimented with using salt on the always dangerous stretch of highway between Pendleton and La Grande last winter, and is willing to make the changeover. It will take millions of dollars, however, to site the storage facilities and make sure the salt there does not leech into the water table, which can cause environmental degradation.

There may be other benefits to the area: funding for rural airports such as Pendleton’s, increased dollars for city and county road budgets, major construction projects in Hermiston and more.

And we always have our eye on the Interstate 82 bridge across the Columbia River at Umatilla, a quickly deteriorating roadway built in 1955 that a state report showed would not survive a large earthquake.

The political sausage-making factory is operating full tilt right now. And taxpayers will have to pay for whatever compromise is reached - legislators say funding for the plan would come from a combination of hikes in the gas tax and registration and license fees, tolls and new taxes on payroll and purchases of new vehicles and bicycles.

But, if done right, this is one issue that does not just benefit one political party, or one demographic, nor pushes one group forward while another falls behind. A transportation plan can move us all forward, if done right.