We haven’t had occasion to write this often, but we’re pleased today to do so:

Thank goodness for Ted Kulongoski.

Last week Oregon’s governor dismissed a proposal to close three state prisons — including the Powder River Correctional Facility in Baker City — with all the haste the idea richly deserved.

Just a handful of hours, in fact, elapsed between the governor’s office announcing a list of proposed cost-cutting measures, and Kulongoski’s spokeswoman Anna Richter Taylor saying this:

“The governor will not allow three prisons to close and release 1,000 prisoners.”

With that said, and we hope settled, we remain perplexed about why the Department of Corrections suggested such drastic measures.

Yes, we understand that Oregon officials need to plug a $577 million breach in the budget for the current two-year cycle.

And we’re aware that Kulongoski ordered all state agencies to send him strategies for trimming 9 percent from their budgets.

We humans just expect too much from fish.

Sometimes this causes us all manner of unanticipated trouble.

Some perch aficionado tosses his favorite fish into Phillips Reservoir, for instance, and pretty soon puny perch are about the only thing an angler can hook in the reservoir, which once was renowned for its plump rainbow trout.

A similar sort of problem, albeit a rather more serious one, plagues Malheur Lake.

The piscatorial plague there is carp.

The species insinuated itself into the local ecology almost a century ago. Apparently landowners transplanted carp into the nearby Silvies River because the fish eat aquatic plants and algae that could clog irrigation ditches.

But the carp weren’t content playing ranch hand.

The fish migrated into Malheur Lake, which connects to the Silvies during wet years. Before too long the carp population in the massive (50,000 acres) but shallow (average depth: 18 inches) lake exceeded 1 million.

Baker County’s floodwaters have begun to recede, and now begins the wait on various bureaucracies.

We hope it’s a short one.

Although the extent of the damage can’t be tallied until the ground dries, it’s obvious that federal and state aid, both financial and technical, would help to salve the economic sting of the county’s worst flooding in more than a decade.

First, the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest will need help — and potentially millions of dollars — to repair sections of the Wallowa Mountain Loop Road between Halfway and Joseph.

Swollen North Pine Creek chewed off at least half the roadway in four places, and in another the entire two-lane paved highway in essence disappeared.

The Loop Road is a popular recreation route and part of the Hells Canyon National Scenic Byway. The byway is also one of Oregon’s few All-American Roads.

Several other forest roads, including ones in the Eagle Creek recreation area, were damaged by high water, as well.

Although we’re fans of the Oregon law that requires political  committees to regularly report their donations and expenditures, the law is not perfect.

Its purpose is unimpeachable: To ensure that the public knows who bankrolls candidates and citizen-sponsored measures such as recalls and initiatives.

But there’s a peculiar provision in the law that seems to us to work against that basic premise of financial transparency.

Last year’s failed attempt to recall Baker City Councilors Dennis Dorrah and Beverly Calder highlights this troubling aspect of the law.

First, though, the good stuff.

Campaigns that receive more than $100 in cash or in-kind contributions from a person in the same calendar year must list that contributor’s name on the campaign’s forms. Those forms are easily accessible online via the Secretary of State’s Orestar system (https://secure.sos.state.or.us/eim/jsp/CEMainPage.jsp).

Now for the glitch.

Among a newspaper’s vital roles is encouraging its readers to express their opinions about important matters.

And so we bristle a bit when we believe that any of our readers might, out of fear for the ramifications, crumple the letter to the editor they had been composing.

Or, more likely these days, press the delete key.

We are concerned that the million-dollar civil lawsuit former City Manager Steve Brocato filed last month could be just such a deterrent to the free exchange of opinions.

Brocato, who claims he was defamed by the four city councilors who voted to fire him, and by a city resident, cites as examples several of their letters published in the Herald and in the Record-Courier.

It is of course up to a jury to decide whether Brocato has proved defamation.

But having read the excerpts cited in the lawsuit, it seems to us that whether or not Brocato succeeds in court, by simply including those letters in his lawsuit he might well persuade people to avoid participating in reasonable public discourse, lest they see their name above the dreaded word “defendant.”

Councilor Aletha Bonebrake, for instance, wrote in a letter to the Herald: “Brocato has been unwilling to accept responsibility for his bullying tactics and displays of temper toward citizens and Councilors.”

We’re trying mightily to muster a shred of sympathy for Oregon state government and its budget mess.

Trying, and in the main failing.

We would likely have more success were the state’s lone problem the recession.

It’s easy to understand how the government coffers suffer when tens of thousands of the taxpayers who fill the bucket aren’t bringing home a paycheck.

But although that’s part of the problem, Oregon’s troubles run far deeper.

It turns out that state tax collectors failed to compare their data on who owes how much with federal reports of the same sort.

Which seems to us an egregious lapse, considering the IRS has a pretty fair reputation for tracking down dollars.

Exemptions to Oregon’s public records law keep turning up at the Attorney General’s office, like spring dandelions in an otherwise well-tended lawn.

And they’re about as welcome, in our estimation.

Fortunately, Attorney General John Kroger shares our distaste for these obstacles which, far more sinister than common weeds, thwart the public’s legal right to figure out what the government is up to.

Kroger wants to pluck some of these pests from Oregon’s law books. We’ll be watching his efforts with keen interest.

Kroger is working with the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association (ONPA) to craft a set of suggested changes to the state’s public records and public meeting law. He’ll send the list to the Legislature when it convenes in January.

The Baker School Board wisely agreed to settle the teachers union’s grievance.

The board’s decision earlier this month probably saved the school district thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees. Also, the union agreed to forego a cost-of-living raise next school year.

That’s a good deal for taxpayers.

Nonetheless, we’re not satisfied that this settlement actually settles the key issue or protects those taxpayers in the future.

That issue being the district needing to end the school year early and to cut teachers’ pay as a result.

Which, of course, is what the district did in 2009.

Voting by secret ballot is an amusing way to decide who picks up a dinner tab, but it’s no way to conduct public business.

Oregon’s Public Meetings Law is quite explicit on this.

The Baker County Transient Lodging Tax Committee blatantly violated that law on Monday when its members voted by secret ballot to decide which of two candidates for marketing director the committee would recommend to the county commissioners.

Commissioners, who have the final say, agreed with the committee’s recommendation to hire Timothy Bishop for the job.

Although the committee’s role is to advise, not decide, the state law still applies.

But the agency should not mandate that they do so, under force of law.

Hunting statistics simply don’t make the case that requiring such attire — better known as “blaze orange” — is necessary to ensure that hunting remains a safer activity than, say, snowboarding and swimming, to name just two examples.

Oregon is among 10 states that don’t require hunters to wear blaze orange.

The Fish and Wildlife Commission will decide whether to change that, at least for certain hunts.

The idea behind blaze orange seems logical. Why would any hunter shoot a person clad in that color, given that elk and deer and other animals are decidedly more drab in appearance?