The Baker City Council made the right choice Tuesday, Feb. 23, in deciding not to withdraw from its 2006 agreement with Baker County under which the county administers the local lodging tax.
It’s gratifying to see students from Baker High School and Baker Middle School playing sports again.
House Bill 2485 in the Oregon Legislature sounds like something a newspaper would endorse.
It might be the first time the Baker Bulldog football team used sledding as a workout.
Whitney and Shannon Black, a Baker City couple who own a fuel distributing business, have prompted a worthwhile conversation at City Hall, and in the community, about how pandemic restrictions…
The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) needs to acquire a list of prisons in the state.

The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) finally fixed a glitch in its COVID-19 testing data, and the correction should come in time to significantly ease the restrictions on businesses and other act…
Baker County has been winning the battle against COVID-19 for almost past two weeks.
Oregon is renowned for doggedly refusing to defer to trends that most states embrace, and in matters such as self-serve refueling and sales taxes, the state’s independence is defensible, and t…
President Joe Biden spoke repeatedly of unity during his inaugural address on Wednesday, Jan. 20 in Washington, D.C.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown should give counties flexibility in how they administer COVID-19 vaccines.
Oregon’s sluggish effort to administer the COVID-19 vaccine doses it has received hit a snag on Friday. The governor said on Tuesday, Jan. 12, that starting Jan. 23, people 65 and older, along…
Oregon’s COVID-19 restrictions are not working for Baker County.
It wasn’t a coup.
Oregon has been more efficient at restricting businesses and denying students the best education possible during the COVID-19 pandemic than it has so far proved to be at inoculating residents …
In the end, Oregon officials got it right.
Trees might be leafing out by the time most of us get to decide whether to roll up a sleeve and have a needle pierce our skin and deliver a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
The Herald asked Gov. Kate Brown’s office recently to explain why, during Oregon’s current risk level system for COVID-19 restrictions, restaurants and bars are prohibited from having indoor d…
Baker School District students will start their Christmas vacation on Dec. 18.
At least we won’t shiver.
Every year is unique, but 2020 didn’t need to try quite so hard to be different.
We know it’s likely that either Steve Ashworth or Jonathan Cannon will be the new Baker City manager.
Some day — and it’s a day that can’t arrive too soon — when we head out for a meal at a local restaurant we’ll need to think only about what we plan to order.
Gov. Kate Brown was justified in taking action to try to reverse Oregon’s unprecedented surge in COVID-19 cases over the past couple weeks.
Baker County’s pandemic problems worsened Monday when Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced that the county, along with eight others, including Union, would begin a 2-week “pause” on Wednesday.
The Trump administration’s decision last week to remove wolves from the endangered species list in the Lower 48 states provoked predictable complaints and vows of legal challenges from environ…
President Donald Trump’s slogan is “Make America Great Again.”
We know what happened.
Baker County bucked the statewide and national trends of rising COVID-19 infections for a couple weeks.
The first part of the greatest American tradition has happened.
If you wondered what possible connection there could be between a $1.5 million federal grant to build a wellness center for people undergoing treatment for addiction or mental health issues, a…
The possibility that six of the seven Baker City Council members who plan to hire a new city manager later this year won’t still be councilors when that person starts work seems at first glanc…
Imagine you were deprived easy access to a COVID-19 vaccine simply because you lived on the west bank of the Snake River rather than the east, in Oregon rather than in Idaho.
The gap between reasonable optimism and a reckless disregard for reality isn’t always as wide as the difference in those terms might suggest.
We’ve almost made it.
When the 2020-21 school year for the Baker School District started Sept. 8, students weren’t were they normally are.
Nothing delights politicians more than the chance to rub someone’s nose — figuratively, of course — in a steaming, aromatic pile of hypocrisy.
The newest addition to Geiser-Pollman Park has brought kids to Baker City’s biggest park who in the past weren’t able to play there.
The terms “coronavirus pandemic” and “good news” have not often collided recently in a single sentence. But the latter is appropriate for describing the former regarding the current situation …
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, in a recent interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation,” used perhaps the most apt and succinct term to describe the wildfires that have devastated parts of western and south…
On the worst day imaginable to be reckless with fire, at least two people were.
The scenario sounds farcical, more like a skit on “Saturday Night Live” than reality.
We’ve been waiting for vaccines.
Flames destroy but they do not educate.
The coronavirus pandemic has forced Baker County Sheriff Travis Ash and other administrators at the County Jail to make difficult decisions since March.
Convincing Baker City residents to run for a seat on the City Council has sometimes proved a major challenge.
It’s hard to imagine a better way to encourage people to stay 6 feet apart than to offer them $500 checks on a first-come, first-served basis.
Oregon education and health officials, in setting limits by which schools can resume in-person rather than online classes, this week wisely recognized that the coronavirus pandemic has had dis…
Contact tracing — until this year a process familiar mainly to epidemiologists — is elegant in its simplicity.
The Baker School Board made a disappointing decision Thursday.
The East-West Shrine All-Star Football Game has featured plenty of memorable football plays since the game moved to Baker City in 1973.
Baker City has money to spend and a deadline for spending it.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has given the Baker School District a series of tests to pass before the district can resume limited in-person classes for students starting Sept. 8, a plan the district…
The protesters who gather nightly in downtown Portland should start carrying fire extinguishers as well as signs. The vast majority of the protesters, based on a review of videos, are not igni…
The Baker School District is preparing to welcome students to classrooms, most likely on Sept. 8, for the first time since schools were closed in March due to the pandemic.
Baker County is on Oregon’s COVID-19 “watch list.” This designation, which county officials announced Wednesday, sounds troubling. But the statistics show that Baker County’s situation is one …