We’ve heard a lot of stories over the years about Oregon’s Public Employees Retirement System (PERS).

PERS provides pensions to most local, county, state and public school employees in Oregon.

We don’t question that the the Baker School Board, should it choose to do so, can enact a policy that prohibits its employees who have a license to carry a concealed handgun from bringing a pistol to work.

The district’s legal authority to impose such a restriction is clearly established in a 2009 case involving a Medford high school teacher.

Trouble is, the policy the Baker School Board is considering adopting goes well beyond that authority.

There’s an interesting discussion brewing in Congress that has to do with the president’s power to, in effect, manage federal land with his pen.

Interesting, and worthwhile.

The impetus for this debate is a group of six bills that would either limit the president’s authority, or repeal it altogether.

The issue is hardly a new one.

At its center is the 1906 Antiquities Act. The law allows the president, without congressional approval, to designate national monuments. That designation greatly limits how such land can be used, including restrictions on such things as logging and mining.

We were pleased to learn recently that the veterans’ section at Baker City’s Mount Hope Cemetery is getting the attention it deserves.

The city, which owns and manages the cemetery, has set up an advisory group that will propose improvements to the section that includes more than 350 graves of military veterans.

For more than a century, a piece of ground on the east side of Richland was put to one of the highest uses — it was the site of three public schools.

The first was built in 1888. It was replaced in 1912, and again in the 1950s with the building that still stands today.

Since 2007, though, when the Pine-Eagle School District closed Richland Elementary due to declining enrollment, the building has not fulfilled its full promise.

Yes, the Baker County Library moved its Richland branch into the former school.

Based on a cursory look, it’s hard to make a compelling case that Sept. 11, 2001, changed Baker County in any obvious way.

There are no memorials here where buildings once stood.

No scars in a fertile field where an airliner struck with unimaginable force.

Yet you needn’t widen your perspective far at all to see that, just like America itself, our home was irretrievably altered, albeit in ways less visible than smoking rubble, by the faraway events that have made that simple sequence of numbers — 9/11 — a symbol for tragedy.

Baker City’s rare, privately owned complex of four grass tennis courts continues to generate controversy.

Sorting out the current disagreement could prove trickier than past conflicts, though.

At issue is the extent to which the city should, or legally can, limit how, and how often, the courts are used.

In one respect this is a simple matter. A 2004 conditional-use permit allows the courts’ owner, Don McClure, to play host to tournament play on no more than 22 days per year, spread among a maximum of six separate events.

Top officials in the Portland Public Schools have proved, once again, why we as voters should be diligent in searching for objective sources of information whenever schools want more of our tax dollars.

Last week a compliance investigator from the Oregon Secretary of State’s office concluded that eight employees of Portland Schools, including Superintendent Carole Smith, broke state elections laws by trying to persuade, rather than inform, voters about a $548 million school construction and retrofitting bond on the ballot this past May.

Voters rejected the measure — the largest in Portland history — by less than half of one percent.

We’re disappointed that convicted sex offender Dean Barnes’ prison term for abusing two teenage girls in Baker City was cut nearly in half earlier this year.

And we’re dismayed that 13 local residents signed letters supporting the reduction in Barnes’ sentence from more than 16 years to 10 years.

Barnes’ original sentence, handed down by Baker County Circuit Court Judge Greg Baxter in 2009, is appropriate.

There was considerable publicity earlier this month regarding some “good” economic news in Oregon.

We encased that word in quotation marks not because the news is in fact bad.

But we’re not convinced that it’s quite as good as some commentators have made it out to be.

Here’s the news: The Oregon Lottery, during the fiscal year that ended June 30, brought in more money than the previous year. That hadn’t happened since 2008.