Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden has vastly more faith in the power of legislation than we have.

There’s ample reason, in any case, to be skeptical about certain claims Wyden and others are making regarding the forest management bill the senator introduced last week.

It’s called the Oregon Eastside Forests Restoration, Old Growth Protection and Jobs Act.

Wyden was right to list jobs last.

We don’t doubt that the bill, if it becomes law, will protect old growth trees and help to restore ailing national forests east of the Cascades.

Indeed, such measures are the predominant theme in the legislation.

We’re not at all sure, though, that the bill will create many jobs.

Nor are we confident that the bill will revive the region’s timber industry by spurring, as Wyden said in a press release, “a significant and sustainable increase in harvest” of lumber-ready trees from the six eastside national forests. That list includes the Wallowa-Whitman, based in Baker City.

We applaud any effort by government officials to ensure that Oregon’s public records and public meetings laws fulfill their noble goal: to make it as easy as possible for people to see what city, county and state agencies are up to.

To that end, Oregon Attorney General John Kroger recently appointed an attorney to serve as the state’s public records “chief.”

Kroger did the right thing.

But we’re not convinced that his decision will truly make it easier for citizens to understand the workings of their government.

The reason for our skepticism is that the public records chief, according to Kroger, will handle major requests for records kept by state agencies.

Which is fine, except most of the records we’re interested in — and that many people want to see — have to do with cities and counties, not the state.

The task should be simple, except the federal government is involved.

And very few matters into which the federal government insinuates itself could reasonably be described as simple.

Baker City’s public works department wants to replace the century-old concrete pipe that brings drinking water from the Elkhorn Mountains to our faucets.

This makes sense, since the pipeline leaks. Not enough to leave our taps dry, but it’s nonetheless wasteful of our most precious commodity.

The pipeline was laid beneath a narrow dirt road. That road follows the route of a ditch that was dug, in the early days of the Civil War, to supply water to nearby mines.

Baker High School has played in 29 football playoff games since 1940, the year the Oregon School Activities Association started sanctioning the event.

On Saturday the Bulldogs will run onto the artificial turf at Reser Stadium in Corvallis for the school’s 30th playoff.

Or its first, depending on the perspective.

Saturday’s game against Marist, a private school from Eugene, is for the Class 4A championship.

He was perhaps the most accomplished athlete ever to hail from Baker City, yet for decades hardly anyone here knew his name.

We didn’t.

Not until Gary Dielman, a local historian, offered us the story he wrote about this forgotten star who set world records in two events and won a silver medal in the Olympics in a third.

His name was Dan Kelly.

And now that his legacy has been revived thanks to Dielman’s work, it’s time for the city to honor Kelly’s achievements in a more permanent manner than a newspaper article.

Baker City’s drinking water is unusually pure, and we’d like to keep it that way.

On that point, at least, we agree with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

But our paths diverge on the point of what’s necessary to ensure that the water that flows from our faucets continues to be free of microscopic nasties that could make us sick.

The EPA believes Baker City needs to spend at least $1 million.

We’re not convinced.

The superintendents of the Baker, Pine-Eagle and North Powder school districts have a way to save the state tens of thousands of dollars every year.

All that remains is for state officials to take advantage of this chance.

The superintendents want to do what they’ve been doing the past couple years: Have their districts, rather than the Union-Baker Education Service District, run the special education and several other programs for students in their districts.

During that time, the Union-Baker ESD has given state and federal dollars to the three school districts, rather than having ESD employees operate the programs.

The three districts — known as the South Consortium — can do the work for less money in part because district employees and contractors earn less than ESD staff.

The generosity of Baker City’s people has proved to be recession-proof.

The past 18 months have been challenging here.

Gas prices have stayed high.

So have unemployment rates.

Ted Kulongoski sometimes has exceptionally poor timing.

Take, for instance, the Oregon governor’s proposal earlier this year to make things even tougher for the state’s beleaguered private forest owners.

Fortunately, the landowners who testified before the Legislature, including some from Baker County, were more persuasive than the governor.

Kulongoski, faced with an overextended state budget, wanted to require landowners to pay 55 percent of the annual fire protection budget of the Oregon Department of Forestry.

Now, property owners and the state each pay 50 percent of the bill.

Now, 5 percent is a relatively minor amount.

Tens of thousands of Oregonians make less money now than they did before the recession.

But it seems that very few of them work for state government.

Like their counterparts in the private sector, many state workers have had to cut back on their hours this year.

Friday, in fact, is the second of the 10 “furlough Fridays” in which most state workers (not including essential employees such as State Police) must take the day off without pay.

The purpose of the furloughs, according state officials, is to ease the burden on the already beleaguered state budget.