SENTENCE CHANGES There’s talk that serious changes in sentencing might not make it through this year’s Oregon legislative session. But when you have the hard-nosed coalition of DAs, who have been most opposing to relaxing the sentencing rules, getting behind some serious compromises, you have to think that something may be coming. Something, along the lines of figuring that the prosecutors wouldn’t be doing this if they didn’t some wall handwriting. Not that it’s all a settled deal. But a useful piece in the Eugene Register Guard does suggest some lines along which a final substantial bill may emerge.

RANDY STAPILUS   The View from Here

Here’s one that sounds like a feel-good deal on the surface, and maybe will never be more than that … but opens the door, just a crAck, to something much larger. As John Lennon exhorted, imagine …

For-profit corporations set up under a legal framework in which they are required to operate not exclusively for the the purpose of enhancing shareholder value, but also with the requirement that recognition of the public interest and fair play with their business partners – customers, vendors, employees and others – also be a required, and demonstrable, part of the mix.

Do that – change the century-old (it isn’t much more than that) requirement that for-profits operate solely for their stockholders’ immediate financial benefit, and you could have a truly significant global game-changer.

The Oregon House Bill 2296a, which cleared the Senate 22-8 (and now goes to Governor John Kitzhaber for likely signature), doesn’t go that far. It’s a lot less ambitious, merely setting up a new kind of business structure:

Currently, legal designations for corporate and business organizations focus the duties of corporate officers on matters of financial stability and success. Businesses that wish to provide a larger community benefit under the current structure must validate these benefits in the context of the financial viability of the organization. Under HB 2296A, a company can add a social or environmental benefit as a key mission of the business in addition to profit.

“By establishing benefit companies, we can attract new businesses to Oregon that focus on serving the greater good while providing a real economic value to owners, employees, and communities,” said Senate Majority Leader Diane Rosenbaum. “Today’s vote is a step towards making Oregon a true leader in a new economy that encourages more businesses to pursue more than just profit.”

HB 2296A allows companies of varying size to adopt the benefit company designation, and requires these companies to compile an annual report about the social or environmental benefits provided by the organization.

It’s a small step. But who knows where it might lead?

RANDY STAPILUS   West of the Cascades

Among the many lessons of the Portland flouride vote concluding Tuesday was, as the Oregonian pointed out, this: Money does not always win elections; it more often follows a likey winner than dictates who one will be.

The movement in favor – led by a city council that decided to bring flouride to a city that repeatedly had rejected it – spent more than three times as much as the scattered opposition, which seemed to have a disorganized message (ranging from conspiracy theorists to people who simply like their relatively pure water the way it is) and disorganization as well. It surely did not break on any conventional ideological line; in this election, liberals battled liberals.

But people wanted what they wanted, and that was more or less what they wated before – and by comparable margins: The rejection vote was borderline landslide, so there was no mistaking it.

On the other hand was the expression-of-opinion vote in Clackamas County on the Tri-Met light rail development into that county – periodically dubbed Clackistan – where a good many resident fiercely dislike any intrusion from the big city to the north and like to maintain their independence from it, such as they can. The light rail project, which is good to go and set for completion in another couple of years, wasn’t going to be stopped however the vote went.

The takeaway from the vote was this: A middle. There were two ballot issues, and they actually cut differently. On one of them, about 57% of voters said they did not want county resources to be used on the project. (The county split geographically; areas to the north were strongly in favor.) But a second measure to allow property transfers involved with the project passed.

Parse carefully.

Northwest Reading

States like Idaho wondering what’s going on with other states that got fully on board with the Affordable Care Act, might take a look at Oregon. The latest update on its progress, out today:

A report presented to the Oregon Health Policy Board today provided information on key health and financial metrics for the Oregon Health Plan. The metrics will be used to help drive improvement and innovation under the state’s health system transformation plan.

“This report brings more transparency and accountability to health care by showing us where we are starting and where we need to go,” said Gov. John Kitzhaber. “I am confident that together we can make Oregon’s health system transformation a success and meet our goals for better health, better care and lower costs.”

The metrics provided show statewide data on everything from how often women receive pre-natal care to how often people use the emergency room for care that could be done better and more affordably elsewhere. The list was created by a nine-member stakeholder committee.

The first coordinated care organizations (CCO) began serving Oregon Health Plan clients in August of 2012 and were brought online throughout the year. The report takes data from 2011 – before CCOs were started – and compares it to benchmarks for each metric. The state’s health system transformation plan calls for closing the gap between all baselines and benchmarks within 10 years.

The report also includes stories about innovations happening statewide and in each coordinated care organization.

“This is how we transform the health care system. Set clear goals to improve the quality of care and let each local community work together to meet those goals in the way that works best for the people they serve,” says Bruce Goldberg, director of the Oregon Health Authority.

The report can be found at www.health.oregon.gov.

Representative Suzanne Bonamici (center) at the McMinnville town hall. (photo/Randy Stapilus)

The 50 or so people who turned out at the McMinnville town hall of Representative Suzanne Bonamici mostly probably already were aware that getting much done in Congress is, at best, a problematic idea. Bonamici pretty much confirmed that.

Asked at one point what she would do about immigration if she had her druthers – if working with Republicans and the various interests involves weren’t a factor in the equation – she got around to answering the point, but made a strong point first of emphasizing just how hypothetical that was.

There are efforts, though, and part of what came clear in the talk was which areas shee was most interested in, and working on – not all of them equally. Education – early childhood and schools – clearly continue to be a focus for her. One of the points she came back to, repeatedly, was the effort to amend the math/tech STEM emphasis in many schools to add an art and design components (‘STEAM’).

In some other areas, she spoke more generally, and she may be developing background in some others (banking, forests and some others).

But this fit in to some extent with the interests of the audience, which were more local than in many recent town halls (including those of the U.S. senators). A large and controversial local garbage depository near McMinnville came in for repeated discussion, as well as the Highway 99 bypass around Dundee and a large economic dvelopment projects. What was being sought in these cases wasn’t legislation, but rather working with federal and other agencies.

That may be the more useful part of a member of Congress’ job at this point.

Cormorants perched above the water, on an estuary along the Oregon coast. (Image/Oregon Fish & Wildlife)

An image from the Oregon Weekly Briefing, a year ago. Good odds that the cormorants are back again.

Worth a note on a fine spring day in most of the Northwest.

With all the talk about Montana Senator Max Baucus leaving Congress at the end of this term, there’s talk in some quarters about his prospective replacement as chair of the Finance Committee: Ron Wyden of Oregon.

It’s a little remarkable, since the senator Wyden replaced – Republican Robert Packwood – also held the job, and waited longer for it than Wyden has. It made Packwood a major-clout senator, and would do the same for Wyden (considerably more than his current chair, significant as it is, at energy and natural resources).

What might that mean? There’s a fine Ezra Klein (Washington Post) blog entry from a year and half ago, newly re-posted, profiling Wyden, that gives some sense of that.

It keys off his account of a joke Wyden staffers periodically tell each other: “You got a problem? Ron Wyden has a comprehensive, bipartisan solution to fix it.”

Further down, Klein’s observation: “Wyden’s office is a small outpost where the natives imagine how Congress would behave in a parallel universe.”

Northwest Reading

The Independent Party of Oregon recently polled members on a variety of issues, and released the results this week. From their statement on the polling results, in a party very roughly positioned between Democratic and Republican:

82% agreed that “The cost of PERS exceeds the state’s ability to pay and should be reformed to reduce expenses.”

A majority supported each of the reforms contained in the Oregon School Boards Association Proposal for PERS reform. The most favored reform was stopping payments to out of state retirees to cover their Oregon state taxes that they do not actually pay.

A majority did not support “rate collaring” as a means of reducing PERS costs.

Only 11% thought that PERS reform was not needed.

Only 6% stated they were “willing to pay more in taxes in order to protect retirement benefits for state workers.”

76% favored reducing tax breaks for wealthy individuals.
69% favored reducing tax breaks for corporations.

50.0% favored capping at $30,000 per person the income tax deductions and credits claimed on state income tax returns.

No other proposals for cutting costs or increasing revenues earned majority approval.

The most popular potential additional tax was a sales tax (38% approved), while increases in income taxes and property taxes were highly disfavored.

IPO Members strongly support consumer protection & economic development legislation.

89% opposed a 2011 law that repealed a 2005 statute prohibiting private utilities (like PGE) from charging ratepayers for “income taxes” that the utilities actually do not pay.

Large majorities favored legislation intended to protect consumers from unfair practices and greater public review of health insurance rate hikes.

Large majorities approved awarding government contracts under rules giving preference to Oregon-based companies and providing tax credits for capital construction in Oregon for companies that hire new Oregon workers

50% approved of automatically registering to vote all persons who prove their U.S. citizenship and Oregon residency to government agencies, such as DMV.

Increased spending on transportation infrastructure received only 45% approval. IPO Members strongly support opening Oregon’s primary election to all minor parties.

98% agreed that Oregon should allow minor parties to participate in the state’s primary election instead of being compelled to conduct their own primary elections or caucuses.

RANDY STAPILUS   West of the Cascades

Politics – in the campaigning end of it, that is – is full of people “stand firm”, who are resolute, who have the backbone to stick fiercely to their principles.

Most of this is garbage, of course. Effective political people know that blind adherence to points of view often generates either little accomplishment or, sometimes, deep defeat. For a politician, it can put you at risk. For an organization, too.

Which brings me to two widely disparate kinds of groups with similar problems: The National Rifle Association, and Oregon’s public sector unions.

After the Sandy Hook shootings late last year, my thought about what the NRA ought to do, as a matter of self-preservation and in the real interests of its membership, was simple: Compromise. Give in a bit on some of the ideas, such as universal background checks, that even President Wayne LaPierre strongly supported only a decade ago. A few such modest moves would be enough to position the NRA, and by extension many gun owners, as well within the mainstream, without giving up anything very important to their interests. Politically, that was the smart move.

As we know, they didn’t do that. Short term, this may not matter, but long term, after a few more mass shootings (which as we all know will happen), this will be an over-stiff branch that rather than bending with the wind may be broken by it.

Similar point, and the real subject today, applies to Oregon’s public section labor unions.

The topic of the day for them is singular, but in-state significant: What to do about the heavily escalating cost of PERS, the public employee retirement system, which is one of the most generous in the country.

The costs of paying for those obligations is cutting deeply into budget for public schools and almost everything else, and probably only a sliver of people in Oregon would argue that costs ought to be trimmed. That could be done with no substantial damage to retirees, as part of an overall budget and revenue package. The Oregon school boards association has proposed a PERS change that might in fact bear down in some retirees, but Governor John Kitzhaber has proposed one that seems to hit a sweet spot – saving quite a large chunk of money but impacting retirees only very lightly or, in most cases, not at all. Proposed in his state of the state, it would objectively seem easy to support. Continue Reading »

One of the changes in this year’s Idaho legislative session from last was … no public hearings on the budget. Last year, hundreds of people jammed hearings on budget settings. This year … no hearings.

As to why no hearings this time, we’ll leave aside. But it’s worth quoting for a moment from a press release issued last week at the Oregon Legislature, which also is bearing down on budgeting.

Senator Richard Devlin (D-Tualatin) and Representative Peter Buckley (D-Ashland), co-chairs of the Legislature’s Joint Ways and Means Committee, announced today that the committee will hold six public hearings across the state to consider comments on the state budget.

The hearings will begin in Eugene and will include stops in Ashland, Bend, Hermiston, Portland, and Tillamook as well as a hearing at the State Capitol. Several of the meetings will offer live streaming of the meetings, and the Hermiston meeting will offer video conferencing so participants in other eastern Oregon locations can participate remotely.

Northwest Reading

The whole question in health care of who gets the money – which relates directly to how much money is in the system – hasn’t yet gotten near enough attention. But all it would take is the asking of a few pertinent questions.

Here’s a press release (in e-mail, from the Oregon House majority) about an Oregon bill that poses some of those questions. If it now passes the state Senate and is signed into law, it could turn into one of the more consequential measures of the session in its reverberative impact.

A bill that will provide equal pay for Nurse Practitioners and Physicians Assistants who perform the same services as physicians passed the House today.

HB 2902A would help build the skilled and workforce that Oregon needs in order to meet the diverse healthcare demands throughout the state.

“Oregon is shifting toward a healthcare system that focuses on preventative and community-based care,” House Majority Leader Val Hoyle (D – Eugene) said. “Providing equal pay for equal work will help us grow Oregon’s healthcare workforce and improve access to care for more Oregonians.”

HB2902A would require insurers to pay health practitioners the same rate for the same services and reimburse based on an unbiased coding system.

“If two people are trained to perform the same procedure and it’s within their scope of work, they should receive equal payment,” Representative Mitch Greenlick (D – Portland), Chair of the Health Care Committee said. “This bill solves one problem within our healthcare system by following the fundamental principles behind equal pay for equal work.”

House Bill 2902A passed the House 39 – 20 and now heads to the Senate.

INTIMIDATION Seems here that it’s a crime to threaten or intimidate lawmakers. In any event, a light needs to be trained on this, as the Oregonian‘s Steve Duin does in his column today: Gun advocates going a little over the line against legislators with whom they have a difference of opinion on gun regulation. Among other examples Duin cites are several aimed just at one lawmakers, Mitch Greenlick, a Portland Democrat. One describes him “as a “disgusting jew parasite.” Another features, in two compact paragraphs, three anti-Semitic slurs and five of the seven words George Carlin once claimed you could never say on television. A third warns Greenlick, “You have made a grave error” in sponsoring House Bill 3200, and suggests he withdraw his support: “Good choices are the foundation for long and healthy life.”"

Oregon Republicans convened for three days starting March 8 at Seaside, for their annual Dorchester conference. (photo/Randy Stapilus)

RANDY STAPILUS   West of the Cascades

In his opening remarks at the 49th Dorchester conference, the organization’s president remarked that, since former Governor Vic Atiyeh was unable to attend this year’s event, it marked the first time in at least three decades that no current or former governor of Oregon had attended the signature Republican event.

That was as useful a factoid as any to underscore the point and usefulness of the conference: Trying to figure out what the future of the Oregon Republican Party ought to be, and how to make it successful. That was much of the point in 1965, when future Senator Robert Packwood helped organize the first one. It has taken on some urgency now, with Republicans out of power in the legislature and holding but one major office (the 2nd U.S. House seat) in the whole state.

Dorchester is known for blunt talk, a willingness to face up to the problems. So it was on the main event on opening night Friday, when Kerry Tymchuk, formerly of Senator Gordon Smith’s staff and now of the state historical society, moderated and posed questions to a panel of three, selected in part by differing ages, a college student at Portland State University (Tymchuk quipped that her role with the college Republicans would be like heading up college Democrats at Brigham Young University), an ex-urbanite father living in rural Washington County, and a veteran of Oregon Republican politics with background in the 60s of leftist radicalism.

If they didn’t come up with definitive answers on a path forward, they did illuminate some of the obstacles and at least a number of ideas.

Asked why they were Republicans, the answers emerged unsurprisingly: It was the party of personal responsibility, work ethics and limited government and non-reliance on handouts. It did not apologize for the country, they said; one remarked, “it’s the patriotic party, not the pity party.”

Asked what was, in their view, the major issue of the day, “fiscal responsibility” was the prevailing choice. The former 60s radical remarked that “I’m not so much worried about protecting my social security as protecting my freedom,” and she warned, “Communists are out there.”

Following up on some of that, the college student suggested, “If we fall, the world falls.”

Tymchuck asked for some cross-generational commentary, and he got some. The exurban father said of the millennials that they seem not to have a sense of where the money is coming from the pay for all the enormous bills (college costs, presumably, among them) that are being run up. And there was a comment about some younger voters being “brainwashed.”

But the college student had some suggestions too: Older generations, she suggested, are sometimes “obsessed” with social issues (not spelled out, but presumably including abortion and gay rights) that are turning into big electoral losers for the Republican Party.

“I’m so sick of losing,” she said. (Tymchuck pointed out that Oregon hasn’t had a Republican governor since before she was born.)

That led to a Tymchuk question about whether compromise was, or ought to be, a dirty word among Republicans.

The responses were uneasy and actually somewhat nuanced. There was some acknowledgement that Republicans are increasingly being tagged as uncompromising, and that they’re increasingly getting nothing rather than the half a loaf they otherwise might get. But the 60′s veteran drew cheers from the crowd when she said, “I don’t personally want to compromise with the Democrats … They’re liars.”

Added up, there was certainly recognition that the Oregon Republican Party has some big problems. Solutions? Well, they had the rest of the weekend to continue searching for those.

BARRETT RAINEY   Second Thoughts

Over the last couple of months, several hundred sheriffs in this nation have made some ridiculous, self-serving public statements, passing themselves off as self-appointed arbiters of what’s constitutional and what’s not when it comes to the very public issues of guns, gun ownership and gun laws.

Here in the Oregon woods, our guy was one of the first to sound the “Barney Fife alert,” announcing he would not enforce any gun laws he “believed unconstitutional” nor would he “allow federal law enforcement to do so” in his jurisdiction.

Absent a law degree or a judicial appointment – while ignoring the fact that constitutional determinations are the sole province of our court system – his unwise and certainly politically motivated announcement played only to the far right while undermining the respect a number of us previously had for him. Gun owners or not.

He certainly was not alone out there on his chosen limb. There were some others – in Oregon and elsewhere – who got on the bandwagon to play to the right while making the rest of us wonder about their suitability for the job.

Making the sheriffs appear all the more blatantly political – and all the more out of step with what all polling is suggesting the majority of us want done on these issues – are long-held official positions of the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police. The IACP has over 21,000 members and has formed a number of official positions on guns, gun ownership and gun safety.

Here are some of those IACP statements:

ARMOR PIERCING AMMO: Prohibit the sale of such ammo tested and found to fit the armor piercing description by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN: Opposed the sale since 1992 and members have re-authorized that position several times and currently still do..
CONCEALED WEAPONS: Opposes any federal effort to allow concealed weapons carry in states other than where a permit is issued without new federal requirements. Applies to all citizens – including former law enforcement people.
FIREARMS ENFORCEMENT: Increase federal resources to better allow local enforcement and greater prosecution for Brady Act violations. IACP supports Project Safe Neighborhoods and others local programs because they work.
FIREARMS OFFENDER REGISTRY: Supports a federal registry for offenders convicted of felony or misdemeanor firearms violations similar to the sex offender registry.
PURCHASE WAITING PERIOD: IACP supports legislation creating a mandatory five-day wait- or “cooling off” period – prior to completion of a handgun purchase.
GUN SHOW LOOPHOLE: Wants Congress to close person-to-person gun show sales loopholes. Make all gun registry laws apply as they are supposed to.
ILLEGAL TRAFFICKING AND TRACING: IACP opposes all legislation that would weaken current federal laws dealing with law enforcement’s ability to trace illegal firearms.

These are some of the positions on guns of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Contrast them to the bombast and vote-chasing noises emanating from many of our local sheriffs who’re holding themselves out to be deciders of all things constitutional.

I know who I’d rather have watching my back.

The every-other-year Oregon blue books have had wonderful covers for years, and the new one out today – just online at the moment, though in print in a few weeks – follows the tradition.

The covers are chosen by contest, and hundreds of people typically submit prospects. This one: ““Strawberry Hill Sunset” was taken in March 2011, by John Pedersen of Beaverton. John used his Canon 5DmkII camera and Canon 16-35mm lens to capture this image at sunset on the Oregon Coast, south of Yachats near Strawberry Hill.”

Looking forward to checking out the inside as well …

(Idaho has biennial blue books as well, traditionally with plain but dignified dark blue covers. Washington doesn’t have such a publication.)