Moving power line not a solution

To the editor:

We are concerned about the growing perception that simply moving the Boardman-to-Hemingway high voltage line to public land is the answer.  Even on public land, the line is sure to run close to private property because that is where the access roads are. These are often dusty single-lane roads like the one serving our small farm near Durkee. The construction phase will be three years of misery, and after that we will have the permanent visual and environmental intrusion of the towers and lines.

The Oregon Trail Interpretive Center seems to be enjoying a minor revival of sorts.

We hope this is the case.

The BLM center on Flagstaff Hill, about five miles east of Baker City, immediately joined the region’s roster of top visitor attractions upon its opening, May 23, 1992.

Deservedly so.

The Interpretive Center expertly blends entertainment and education. If you don’t own oxen and a prairie schooner, spending a few hours strolling through the Interpretive Center will give you as vivid a view of life on the Oregon Trail as you’re likely to get.

During its first 4fi months of operation, the Center attracted 201,000 visitors.

In its second full year (BLM visitor counts are by federal fiscal year, Oct. 1-Sept. 30, not by calendar year), the Center lured 348,000 people to Baker County.

The increase is not surprising: The Center was still almost new in 1993, and that year was the 150th anniversary of the first great migration along the Oregon Trail.

Whether Oregon voters will agree to tinker with the state’s nearly sacred income tax “kicker” in the November election depends largely on whether they trust the Legislature.

Their recent passage of two tax increases suggests voters have a certain level of faith in their lawmakers.

But we’re withholding judgment, and here’s why:

We don’t yet have all the information we need to answer the fundamental question: Can the Legislature be trusted to keep even more tax dollars, even when the state is not mired in one of its periodic budget crises?

Unfortunately, we don’t know whether this most recent crisis, which precipitated Measures 66 and 67, was as dire as the measures’ proponents claimed.

Worse still, the Legislature doesn’t know either.

At the heart of this uncertainty are the “ending fund balances” scattered about the state’s $50 billion budget.

Die, for instance.

Fortunately we’re dying in our cars far less often in Oregon than we used to.

Last year 381 people were killed in crashes in Oregon.

A terrible toll, to be sure.

But that’s also the fewest traffic deaths in the state in any year since 1949, when 356 motorists were killed.

This hopeful trend has continued into the first month of 2010, as well.

A dozen people died on Oregon roads in January.

That’s the fewest in any month since the state started keeping track in the 1930s, said Troy Costales, Safety Division administrator for the Oregon Department of Transportation.

The average for January is about 33.

January was also just the third month in which fewer than 20 people died in Oregon wrecks. The two others are February 2009, when 16 motorists were killed; and February 1999, when 18 died.

The Baker City Council can take a collective breath and relax.

That, at least, is something we hope they can agree about.

The Council has dealt with the most pressing matter on its agenda by hiring Steve Bogart as city manager for at least the next year.

This was a wise decision.

It’s budget-planning season for the city, and overseeing that process is one of the manager’s main duties.

Bogart knows how to do that. He worked on the city budget during his 2004-05 stint as manager while Jerry Gillham was serving with the National Guard in Iraq.

In any case the Council had to get a commitment from somebody.

The American Indian tribes of the Northwest gave up a lot when their leaders signed treaties with the U.S. government in the mid 19th century.

They gave up a lot of land, in particular.

But one thing the tribes, among them the Nez Perce and Umatilla, refused to surrender was a vital part of their culture and history: the right to hunt and fish and gather roots and berries, just as they ancestors had for millennia.

In exchange for their comparatively small reservations, the tribes sold, or ceded, millions of acres of their traditional homelands to the government.

The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla, for instance, accepted in their 1855 treaty a 172,000-acre reservation, but ceded more than 6 million acres in Northeastern Oregon and Southeastern Washington.

But that treaty, in common with those that most other tribes in the region signed, also guarantees tribal members the right to hunt and fish.

If you’ve paid much attention to reactions to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling regarding campaign spending on federal elections, you’d be forgiven for believing that the high court had decided that your vote counts for less than it used to.

Also that corporations and unions now get to vote too.

We don’t think the effects of the ruling will be nearly so dire, or so undemocratic.

Firstly, we can’t see how a ruling that frees groups as different as corporations and labor unions to lavish even more of their millions on political campaigns is likely to tilt the odds steeply in either direction.

Critics of the 5-4 opinion, among them President Obama, argue that overturning provisions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law sullies the sanctity of the electoral process.

Obama: The ruling will result in a “stampede of special interest money in our politics.”

Does the president believe the vast fortunes already spent on campaigns (including his own successful one in 2008) are for something other than a “special interest?”

Every dollar that goes into a campaign is for a special interest — to elect a “special” candidate or to pass a “special” piece of legislation or ballot measure.