Happy Friday,
I didn’t originally intend it, but this Oregon Roundup ended up mostly about Governor Kate Brown, for better or worse. We’ll return to a more diverse offering next week, I suspect. For now, here’s some stuff you might like:
COVID-19 is in retreat, for now
Have you noticed that COVID-19 hasn’t been in the news as much over the past few weeks? Friends, draw close so I may whisper to you that which is verboten in polite company: that’s because the disease is in retreat. Yesterday, the state reported the lowest number of new cases (212) in the last 10 days. After seeing new cases in the 300s and 400s throughout much of the summer, the trend line is decidedly down. Hospitalizations from COVID-19 have plummeted. Nationally, the trend is also down.
For anyone annoyed with, ya know, the societal and economic carnage, to say nothing of the illness and death, wrought by the disease and government’s response to it since March, this is tremendous news. We’ve seen numbers drop before, but the good news about the decline we’re seeing now is that it seems to be occurring independent of the widespread lockdowns that followed the first spike of the disease in late Winter.
Here in Deschutes County, restaurants and stores are open and, judging by the number of California-plated Range Rovers making a godawful mess of our roundabouts, there are lots and lots of tourists here. Frankly, especially for the hermit-inclined like me, life doesn’t seem too abnormal at all other than the mask-wearing. In spite of all this openness, and without closing an additional single business, Deschutes County’s case numbers have thankfully fallen dramatically in recent weeks. Yesterday, we had four (4) new cases reported in a county of around 200,000 residents (excluding tourists).
With Covid receding for the time being, one would expect Governor Brown to at least contemplate relaxing her grip on our economy and our lives. Instead, she’s telling Oregonians that unless they behave themselves, schools won’t be open for in-person instruction until April, at the earliest. She’s threatening to close indoor restaurant dining and bars again, and to require out-of-state visitors to quarantine themselves. This despite the fact that cases are declining in the midst of the non-quarantined tourist season, and the state doesn’t even know if bars cause the disease to spread because its contact tracers don’t ask if people with Covid if they’d had been to bars.
Yes, we all need to take care to note that case numbers may well increase again, like they did in the late Spring. However, it makes not a lot of sense to threaten wiping away an entire school year and close a bunch of businesses back down when the fact is things are, for now, getting better. The State of Oregon should right now be planning on how to further relax restrictions on people and businesses in the event cases continue to drop.
Schools without teachers are safe
For all kinds of reasons I need not belabor with such an astute group of readers, schools are surely the most important and urgent thing to reopen. Governor Brown famously announced earlier this summer that schools would be online-only until a host of local and statewide COVID-19 benchmarks are met. At the time, while we were still experiencing the mid-summer spike, the criteria seemed impossible to meet. Well, some counties are getting close to meeting them, in particular the more relaxed standards for kindergarten through third grade. For example, Crook County schools look on track to open for K-3 by September 8.
Deschutes County’s Covid numbers aren’t far behind, but the Bend-La Pine school district has decided that even if we meet the requirements for K-3 in the next week or so, it will not re-evaluate reopening schools for in-person instruction until six weeks into the school year, which is the end of October. Many other counties throughout the state, including Lane County, are approaching compliance with the requirements to reopen K-3.
The good news is that some Bend-La Pine schools will be open for in-person child care services staffed by Bend Parks employees. Some of the same kids will be in the same buildings, but without the teachers. The kids will actually be doing their remote online learning in the same schools they otherwise would receive instruction, just with different adults around them.
If it’s ok to open schools to kids with adults who aren’t teaching them, schools should open to kids with the adults who are teaching them.
Going it alone
Governor Brown has been governing Oregonians by fiat, under a declaration of emergency that she herself issued and continues to renew, for nearly six months. The declaration of emergency has two primary effects: (1) it allows the governor to take measures abridging individuals’ liberties in a fashion that would not be permissible without the existence of an emergency; and, (2) it allows the governor to issue policies unilaterally, without the legislature, which she couldn’t do outside an emergency.
Giving governors emergency powers makes sense, within reason, because sometimes things happen to quickly for the legislature to convene, and sometimes people’s liberties need to be constrained temporarily to address an emergent crisis. The continued unilateral nature of her governance, justified at the outset of the Covid era, is no longer within reason. The legislature has convened multiple times since Brown initially declared an emergency, but they have not legislated on the big issues like reopening the economy and schools. There has been plenty of time to allow the normal, constitutional process to work.
The fact that Brown has continued to go it alone is a big mistake. It means that her policies have been made without the direct input of the full legislature, the members of which represent every nook and cranny of this big and diverse state. It also means that she takes the brunt of public scorn about her actions. If she had engaged the legislature, which she may do at any time, responsibility for the resulting policies would be shared with those in the legislature who vote for them.
By going it alone for months on end, Brown has left voters dissatisfied with her decisions little recourse except to recall her. A recall effort is indeed underway, and its organizers are optimistic they will gather enough signatures by next week’s deadline to get a recall on the ballot, despite a number of failed pre-Covid recall attempts. If so, Oregonians will get to vote on the question of whether to remove Governor Brown from office. By continuing to govern by fiat by choice rather than necessity, Brown has helped bring this challenge on herself.
It’s well past time to stop the violence and vandalism
After three months of criminality in Portland, Governor Brown finally had enough on Wednesday:
“Let me be clear: It’s time for the violence and vandalism to end so Portland can focus on the important work to be done to achieve real change for racial justice. Those who have committed acts of violence will be held accountable.”
In addition to its tardiness, this statement represents a fundamental misunderstanding of one of the primary duties of Oregon’s chief executive. One of the main reasons we have government is to stop violence and vandalism. The duty of government to stop violence exists per se, in order to protect potential victims. If cessation of criminality had no impact whatsoever on the pursuit of racial justice, it should still be stopped. because violence and vandalism are bad. If peace allows for a deeper inquiry into racial justice in Portland, that’s great, but the state should not require that type of justification to stop violence and vandalism visited upon Oregonians.
For the same reason government must do everything possible to prevent the unlawful and unjustified killing of black people by the police, it must do everything possible to stop rioters and people opposed to the rioters from inflicting violence or property damage on others.
Were you forwarded this message? Sign up. No sales, no spam, just the weekly(ish) email smart people delete without reading less often than other emails.
Have a great weekend!
Jeff Eager
jeff@eagerlawpc.com
Read past Oregon Roundup editions
What I do:
EagerLaw PC – A business and real property law firm in Bend, Oregon.
Insite LGA Corp. – A campaign consulting, strategic communications and local government monitoring firm.
Waste Alert – Local government monitoring for the solid waste and recycling industry.