September/October 2026
The Alturas Indian Rancheria Is Tiny. Its Fight Over Money and Power Is Anything But.
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6 The Alturas Indian Rancheria Is Tiny. Its Fight Over Money and Power Is Anything But.
By Justin Higginbottom The Bureau of Indian Affairs says the Alturas Indian Rancheria is illegally running businesses on Federal land near Yreka. That’s just the latest legal trouble for the tiny Modoc Country tribe. As JPR’s Justin Higginbottom reports, members have sparred over control of the Rancheria’s government for years.
Justin Higginbottom Regional Reporter
Karen Doolen – Medford
Paul Westhelle Executive Director
September/October 2026
Liam Moriarty Digital Editor Maria Carter News Director Morgan Ackley Jefferson Exchange Assistant Producer/Weekend Host Kara Everitt Jefferson Exchange Assistant Producer/Weekend Host Kenyon Mayers Music Librarian Theo Greenly Southern Oregon Coast Reporter Peyton Gast Snowden Intern
JPR News Contributors Juliet Grable
Programming Volunteers Noah Brann-Linsday Ed Hyde Derral Campbell Alan Journet Cindy DeGroft Alex Krach Craig Faulkner Don Matthews Eric Houghton Frances Oyung
Raymond Scully Shanna Simmons Lars Svendsgaard Traci Svendsgaard Richard Van Hoose
JEFFERSON JOURNAL (ISSN 1079-2015), September/ October 2026, volume 50 number 5. Published bi-monthly (six times a year) by JPR Foundation, Inc., 1250 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520. Periodical postage paid at Ashland, OR and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to The Jefferson Journal, 1250 Siskiyou Blvd. Ashland, OR. 97520 Jefferson Journal Credits: Editor: Abigail Kraft Managing Editor: Paul Westhelle Poetry Editor: Amy Miller Design/Production: Impact Publications Printing: Oregon Web Press
Jefferson Public Radio is a community service of Southern Oregon University. The JPR Foundation is a non-profit organization that supports JPR’s public service mission.
5 Tuned In | Paul Westhelle 13 JPR News Focus: Law & Justice | Mia Maldonado 15 JPR News Focus: Economy | Alex Baumhardt 17 JPR News Focus: Politics & Government | Roman Battaglia 19 JPR News Focus: Education | Jane Vaughan 21 JPR News Focus: Poverty & Homelessness | Jane Vaughan 23 JPR News Focus: Science & Technology | Courtney Sherwood 24 JPR Radio Stations & Programs 26 News Briefs 31 Inside the Box | Scott Dewing 33 JPR News Focus: Environment, Energy & Transportation | Theo Greenly
35 Underground History | Chelsea Rose 37 Recordings | Dave Jackson 39 JPR News Focus: Health | Kristen Hwang 41 NPR News Focus: Health | Alex Olgin 44 Superabundant | Heather Arndt Anderson 46 Poetry | Daphne Clifton and Susanne Petermann cover: Cover illustration inspired by the Modoc Plateau landscape surrounding Alturas, Ca., home to the 20-acre Alturas Indian Rancheria and 170 miles away from the federal allotment in Yreka, Ca.
Jefferson Public Radio welcomes your comments: 1250 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520-5025 541-552-6301 | 1-800-782-6191 530-243-8000 (Shasta County) | www.ijpr.org jprinfo@sou.edu
TUNED IN PAUL WESTHELLE
JPR Next: More Local News
I
n the last issue of the Jefferson Journal, I wrote about JPR’s plans to expand our local news coverage over the coming year. I thought it would be helpful to give you a closer look at how we plan to do that—and what you can expect as you listen to JPR and read our reporting on ijpr. org and our mobile apps. The first step in growing our newsroom was adding a reporter dedicated to the Southern Oregon Coast. In July, we welcomed Theo Greenly to that role. Theo brings extensive experience covering coastal communities across the West. Most recently, he reported from the remote Aleutian and Pribilof Islands in Alaska, covering fisheries, environmental issues and Indigenous communities. Theo interned at NPR, where he worked on long-form podcasts including Invisibilia and Louder Than A Riot. As an independent journalist, he reported on homelessness and racial inequality for the Santa Monica Daily Press and produced stories for NPR member stations around the country. In Alaska, he pursued stories by boat, helicopter and, on one occasion, jet ski. During his first month at JPR, Theo has already reported on Port Orford’s effort to become a South Coast seafood hub, the Port of Coos Bay’s plan to end its role operating Oregon’s state dredging vessels, and the impact of tariffs on South Coast seafood processors. We’re excited to have his experience and perspective in the JPR newsroom. The next phase of our expansion will add two journalists based in Ashland this fall, each filling an important need as we broaden our coverage. The first will be a reporter dedicated to environmental coverage. This position will deepen JPR’s reporting on the environmental and scientific issues affecting communities across Southern Oregon and Northern California—from wildfire and water to forests, public lands and climate resilience. The reporter will help listeners understand the complex environmental challenges facing our region and how communities and civic leaders are responding to them. The second will be an Assistant News Director/Editor. As our newsroom grows, additional editorial leadership will be needed to support a larger and more ambitious local news operation. Working alongside JPR News Director Maria Carter, a new Assistant News Director/Editor will help coordinate daily coverage, edit stories, identify opportunities for follow-up reporting and improve how we plan, present and sustain our journalism, particularly across digital platforms. The position will strengthen
our newsroom capacity while maintaining high editorial standards and making the most of every story we produce. Early next year, as funding is secured, we plan to add three more regional reporters to the newsroom, based in communities within JPR’s service area: Klamath Basin Reporter — This reporter would provide consistent, in-depth coverage of Klamath and Lake counties, a large rural region of Southern Oregon where many important issues receive limited sustained attention. Coverage would focus on health care, education, water, agriculture, public lands and local government. Northern California Coast & Tribal Affairs Reporter — This reporter would deepen JPR’s coverage of Humboldt and Del Norte counties while providing sustained attention to tribal affairs and community issues on the North Coast. Coverage would include tribal governance, local government, higher education, public lands, fisheries, health care and local economies. North State California Reporter — This reporter would expand JPR’s ability to provide sustained accountability reporting in inland Northern California, with a focus on county government, elections, wildfire, housing, education and public safety. The position would strengthen JPR’s presence in a large and diverse part of our service area where reliable local reporting is especially important. Together, these additions represent an important investment in local journalism for the communities JPR serves. Our goal isn’t simply to produce more stories, but to provide deeper, more relevant and useful journalism— reporting that holds local governments and institutions accountable, helps citizens make informed decisions and keeps people connected and engaged with their communities. We’re grateful to the JPR donors who have stepped up to help us take on this important work, particularly in the mostly rural communities we serve, where local journalism has declined sharply over the past decade. We also know that sustaining this effort will require continued support from all of us who believe that strong local journalism is essential to a healthy democracy.
Paul Westhelle is JPR’s Executive Director.
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The Alturas Indian Rancheria gas station, located on a federal allotment in Yreka, with the tribe’s excavation work in the background on July 15, 2026. The Bureau of Indian affairs says the tribe is trespassing on this property.
By Justin Higginbottom The Alturas Indian Rancheria has only a handful of members but has taken in millions of dollars as years of lawsuits, allegations and shifting alliances divide the Northern California tribe.
O
n a hot summer day in 2012, Jennifer Chrisman watched a black SUV pull into a school parking lot in the small town of Grenada, California, just south of Yreka. Inside sat Darren Rose, a fellow member of the Alturas Indian Rancheria. He had promised her a deal, Chrisman said, but only if she came by herself and kept the meeting secret from her brother.
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The tribe’s few members had been divided for years, fighting in court for control of the rancheria leadership and finances. And now, as she walked over to the vehicle under a hot afternoon sun, she wondered what was coming next. “I asked him what he wanted and why he called me, because I want nothing to do with that man,” Chrisman said. Rose presented her with a contract to give up her voting rights and all future shares of the tribe’s revenue. In return, she would be named the tribe’s associate gaming commissioner and receive $10,000, health benefits and a $3,000-a-month salary for life. Chrisman said the offer came with a threat.
PHOTO BY JUSTIN HIGGINBOTTOM
The Alturas Indian Rancheria Is Tiny. Its Fight Over Money and Power Is Anything But.
“The tribe is so small. One member could shift the balance of power.” —Wendy Del Rosa
PHOTO PROVIDED BY JENNIFER CHRISMAN
PHOTO BY JUSTIN HIGGINBOTTOM
Desert Rose Casino on the Alturas Indian Rancheria in Modoc County
“‘We’re going to go after you for embezzlement,’” Chrisman said Rose told her. “‘We are going to disenroll you and your brother.’” After she left Rose’s vehicle, she called her brother Joseph Burrell. He had already signed a similar deal, although his agreement relinquished his tribal membership. She signed too, after Rose added a waiver of the tribe’s sovereign immunity, allowing her to sue if Rose didn’t honor the contract. The promised payments, she said, came sporadically, and she never received health benefits. “If they just don’t like something you’ve said about them in public, they stop paying,” Chrisman said. Chrisman said she now has terminal cancer. Treatment costs thousands of dollars a month. She said her husband has spent most of his retirement savings. She’s used that sovereign immunity to sue the tribe repeatedly in Sacramento Superior Court, with no judgment yet over healthcare. Over the last 15 years, the Alturas Indian Rancheria has brought in tens of millions of dollars from tribal businesses and federal funding. Chrisman and another member, Wendy Del Rosa, said public money and profits now go to Rose and Wendy’s brother, tribal Chairman Phillip Del Rosa, rather than tribal services. “Nobody ever saw anything of those funds,” Wendy Del Rosa said. “Darren [Rose] got half. Phillip got half.” She claimed they even transferred her private retirement funds into a tribal account she cannot access. Phillip Del Rosa and Rose denied those accusations and said the tribe has paid Chrisman. They also claimed Wendy Del Rosa and a former top official in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Wayne Smith, have stolen money from the tribe. They contend years of infighting can be traced back to Smith. The result is a dispute whose scale is difficult to reconcile with the size of the government at its center. The Alturas Indian Rancheria is one of the smallest federally recognized tribes. For years, its handful of members have been divided by shifting alliances and accusations of fraud, embezzlement and forgery. At times, there have been more lawsuits than tribal members.
Family business The Alturas Indian Rancheria was always a small settlement. In the 1920s, the federal government purchased about 20 acres near Alturas, the only incorporated city in Modoc County, for displaced Pitt River families. In the beginning, only 10 or so people lived on the small parcel on the Modoc Plateau. Over the years, the numbers dwindled as people left in search of work. Chairman Paul Del Rosa, a local stock car racer, opened the Desert Rose Casino in 1999, a modest operation intended to provide the rancheria with a steady stream of income. He wouldn’t live long to see the fruits of his effort. Paul Del Rosa died in a car accident in 2002. After Paul Del Rosa’s death, the rancheria had four enrolled members: his children, Wendy and Phillip Del Rosa, and his niece and nephew, Chrisman and Burrell. But the tribe soon turned to a novel strategy for increasing its population — and business opportunities. It began adopting members. Wendy Del Rosa said attorney John Peebles introduced the tribe to Rose, then a member of the Karuk tribe. Rose joined with promises. He said he controlled an interest in a 160-acre federal allotment in Yreka, about 170 miles away from the rancheria, where the tribe could build a second casino. For Chrisman, it was a mistake that would tear apart the family. “It went south the minute Darren Rose became a member,” Chrisman said. “It’s gone horribly wrong since then.” In 2009, the tribe expanded membership to those without known Native American ancestry. Wendy Del Rosa said the tribe adopted Calvin Phelps, a tobacco businessman from North Carolina, and Don Packingham, a retired law enforcement officer from New Mexico, to help the rancheria break into cigarette manufacturing. The combination of gaming and tobacco appeared to offer the descendants of that small band of dispossessed families a route to prosperity. Instead, the tiny tribe began to fracture. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 7
PHOTO PROVIDED BY WENDY DEL ROSA
The Alturas Indian Rancheria event center in Modoc County.
Rose faction vs. Del Rosa faction Rose’s plans for a new casino ran into legal roadblocks. The BIA questioned Rose’s ownership of the Yreka allotment. The rancheria hired Smith to help push approval for the casino. Smith had previously served as the deputy assistant secretary at the BIA before resigning amid an investigation into influence peddling. As tribal administrator, Smith was paid $15,000 a month, according to court documents. But even with Smith’s help, the BIA refused to approve the 25,000-square-foot gaming facility in 2006. Despite no new casino, Rose remained a voting member of the Alturas Indian Rancheria. And he was going to play an active role in the tribe’s future. In 2008, he accused Phillip Del Rosa, serving then as chairman, of embezzling tribal money. Rose organized his ousting with the support of Chrisman and Burrell. Chrisman said she was already talking with Department of Justice investigators about Phillip and Wendy Del Rosa allegedly siphoning tribal money. She said Rose convinced her that he would right the rancheria’s course. In the courts, Rose, Chrisman and Burrell became known as the Rose faction. On the other side was the Del Rosa faction, made up of the Del Rosa siblings and newly adopted cigarette manufacturers, Packingham and Phelps. The two sides held competing elections in 2010 to elect officers in the tribe’s three-person business council, which controls the rancheria’s pocketbook. The Rose faction argued that Phelps and Packingham did not have voting rights, so the Del Rosa faction’s election wasn’t valid. This situation put the BIA in a bind. Both factions had submitted competing proposals under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, which allows tribes to run services otherwise provided by the federal government. The agency didn’t know which faction to fund. Judges couldn’t even figure out if Packingham and Phelps were in the tribe. Finally, the BIA recognized the last uncontested tribal election, which was in 2008, consisting of Phillip Del Rosa as chair8 | JEFFERSON JOURNAL SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026
PHOTO PROVIDED BY JENNIFER CHRISMAN
“ The exact same thing they’re accusing us of doing is what they’ve done.” —John Peebles
Wendy Del Rosa.
“It’s really not even a tribe. They’ve made it into their own private enterprise.” —Wendy Del Rosa
man, Rose as vice chairman and Wendy Del Rosa as secretary-treasurer. The BIA described its decision as interim while this intra-tribal dispute played out. And the conflict between members continued In 2013, a majority of the Alturas Indian Rancheria voted to remove Phillip Del Rosa from his leadership position over allegations he stole tribal funds. The order was signed by Rose, Chrisman, Wendy Del Rosa, Burrell and Phelps. Phillip Del Rosa denied the allegations and has said the removal was invalid. He has never been convicted of embezzling tribal funds. Rose, who is currently allied with Phillip Del Rosa, said Smith manipulated him into signing the document. Even the tribe’s mail became a fight, reaching the courts of the U.S. Postal Service in 2015 with Rose and Wendy Del Rosa both claiming their home as the tribe’s official address. “The Tribe’s chaotic governance is mired in continual litigation. Allegations of fraud, embezzlement, forgery, and perjury abound even within this administrative case dealing only with mail delivery,” said Administrative Judge Gary Shapiro. “It has become clear to me that the disputants and others involved in the Tribe’s governance will act in whatever manner seems expedient to them at the moment, depending on the situation at the time amid continually shifting alliances.” He ruled the Postal Service would deliver tribal mail to Rose. Wendy Del Rosa said alliances have shifted several times over the years.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY JENNIFER CHRISMAN
PHOTO PROVIDED BY WENDY DEL ROSA
PHOTO PROVIDED BY WENDY DEL ROSA
PHOTO PROVIDED BY JENNIFER CHRISMAN
A photo taken in the 1950s of Paul Del Rosa (middle) and siblings on the Alturas Indian Rancheria.
Wendy Del Rosa’s great grandmother, grandmother, uncle and aunt. The infant is Jennifer Chrisman, Del Rosa’s cousin.
“The tribe is so small,” Wendy Del Rosa said. “One member could shift the balance of power.” Wendy Del Rosa said Rose and Phillip Del Rosa eventually began working together, excluding her and her cousins from decisions about tribal funds. Chrisman, once a member of the Rose faction, said she now blames him for the infighting. “Darren [Rose] was using all of us as pawns,” she said. Wendy said the tribe hasn’t held an election for the business committee in over a decade, since the BIA made its interim decision on the rancheria’s leadership. She said she hasn’t spoken to her brother in just as long. Phillip Del Rosa and Rose can outvote her on the three-person committee for any official business. Peebles, the tribe’s longtime attorney who now sides with Rose and Phillip Del Rosa, said the tribe can’t hold an election while there is a dispute over members. Wendy Del Rosa and Smith would challenge any vote in court, he said. “It’s been their refusal to determine and to come to an agreement as to who the tribal members are that has prevented us from holding an effective election,” Peebles said. He said Smith at one point even drafted a resolution to make himself a member of the tribe, something Smith denied. “It was basically to always give [Wendy Del Rosa] a majority, so she always had the power,” Phillip Del Rosa said. “For her and Wayne, for their benefit.” Peebles said Wendy Del Rosa and Smith raided the Desert Rose Casino in 2014, taking over $1 million. They accused Wendy Del Rosa of using tribal funds to pay Smith hundreds of thousands of dollars. “The exact same thing they’re accusing us of doing is what they’ve done,” Peebles said. Smith said Wendy Del Rosa, as the secretary-treasurer, put the casino money into an account for safekeeping. “She thought that Phillip [Del Rosa] and Darren [Rose] were going to take the money,” he said. In 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency debarred
Jennifer Chrisman.
Wendy Del Rosa and Smith for improperly spending funds granted to the tribe, meaning they couldn’t apply for federal grants for three years. Wendy Del Rosa claims the grant-funded water monitoring work could not be completed because Rose and Phillip Del Rosa obstructed the work. Phelps, meanwhile, pleaded guilty in an unrelated federal fraud case and was sentenced to three years in federal prison in 2014. Prosecutors said the tobacco executive bought two corporate jets and a Maserati with $8 million he bilked from his companies. Even while in prison, Phelps managed to vote in a tribal election as part of the Del Rosa faction. But Wendy Del Rosa said he eventually relinquished his membership. She told The Sacramento Bee in 2015 that the rancheria disenrolled Packingham “for many attempts to overthrow the tribal government.” “He wasn’t the most stable of people,” Wendy Del Rosa said. “People will do a lot of things out of greed, a lot of things.” Phillip Del Rosa and his faction said Smith, who now works for the Buena Vista Rancheria, is still pulling strings from afar. “I haven’t had anything to do with these people for over 12 years,” Smith said. Referring to Phillip Del Rosa and Rose, he said, “I think they’re despicable human beings.” During these years of shifting allegiances, backstabbing and litigation, the tribe has continued to take in millions of dollars through businesses, gaming payments and federal programs. State and federal agencies have alleged that not all of the money was obtained legally.
Cigarettes, marijuana and cement The casino proposed for the federal allotment in Yreka was never built. But the tribe didn’t let the land go to waste. In mid-July of this year, a steady stream of cars exited I-5, driving into the dry hills above Yreka to visit an Alturas Indian Rancheria drive-thru smoke shop and gas station. Fuel there cost about 20 cents less per gallon than in the valley below. Across the street was an unfinished commercial building. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 9
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PHOTO BY JUSTIN HIGGINBOTTOM
Farther down the road, dust rose from AIR Construction and Excavation trucks transporting material to a nearby cement batch plant, another company run by Rose and Phillip Del Rosa. The BIA says it’s all illegal. In June, the agency filed a cease-and-desist order against Phillip Del Rosa and Rose, informing them again that the federal government never approved commercial activity on the allotment. The warning was not the first. In 2014, the BIA also issued an order to stop commercial activity on the land and to pay trespass damages. The agency’s regional director, Darin Jarnaghan, said the tribe has been trespassing on the property since 2005. Peebles said the cease-and-desist letter is a big misunderstanding. “We’ve had a number of meetings with [the BIA] since that time,” he said. “They had not done their research.” He said the tribe is still planning to build a casino on the land. In a statement, the BIA confirmed it communicated with the tribe but disagreed with Peebles’ interpretation. “Unless and until the required federal approvals are obtained, commercial activities on the allotment remain unauthorized,” the agency said. But the businesses on this allotment aren’t the only rancheria operations to run afoul of the law. The tribe managed to break into the cigarette business, with or without help from Packingham and Phelps. According to state prosecutors, Rose, as president of Azuma Corporation, began selling contraband cigarettes in 2009. The BIA and California Attorney General’s Office have long alleged the business failed to collect taxes or file required federal paperwork. The agencies sent cease-and-desist letters to Rose from 2009 to 2012, ordering him to stop selling cigarettes. A court found Rose guilty of 51,000 violations of California’s Unfair Competition Law in 2013, fining him $765,000 and prohibiting him from selling cigarettes to anyone besides members of the rancheria on the tribe’s land. But prosecutors allege Rose only grew the business. “Expanding beyond Rose’s previous retailing of contraband cigarettes, Defendants used Azuma and other tribal businesses to establish a vertically integrated contraband cigarette operation, importing, manufacturing, distributing, and retailing contraband cigarettes throughout California,” according to court documents. The state claimed Azuma became the “primary source for contraband cigarettes” in California, with Rose himself often making deliveries in unlicensed vehicles to avoid detection. Last year, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Rose and Phillip Del Rosa cannot claim sovereign immunity after violating state and federal tobacco laws.
The Alturas Indian Rancheria smoke shop located on a federal allotment in Yreka on July 15, 2026. State prosecutors say the tribe has used this location to sell contraband cigarettes.
The state’s lawsuit is still in court. Prosecutors are seeking a fine of three times California’s damages for alleged violations of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Rose and Phillip Del Rosa also tried their hand at the marijuana business. That business venture also ended in legal trouble. Following a tip from Wendy Del Rosa that Rose and Phillip Del Rosa were using the tribe’s event center to process cannabis, Drug Enforcement Administration officers raided the Alturas Indian Rancheria and nearby XL Rancheria in 2015, seizing 12,000 plants. Canada-based tribal tobacco magnate Jerry Montour allegedly funded the operation. Phillip Del Rosa said their marijuana venture was small and noted that authorities filed no charges. At one point, the tribe was reported to be on the verge of opening the country’s first tribal online gambling platform. Wendy Del Rosa said she believed the venture, once again, would have been illegal. Phillip Del Rosa and Rose blame Smith for derailing the venture. In a lawsuit against Smith, Phillip Del Rosa and Rose allege the failed online gaming deal cost the tribe millions of dollars. Wendy Del Rosa said it was her efforts to stop the cannabis operation and online gaming business that motivated Rose to take control of her retirement account. “Darren Rose stated that I cost him a lot of money,” she said. “That’s why he wanted to take something from me.” Phillip Del Rosa said the financial company managing her retirement transferred the funds into a tribal account because the retirement account had exceeded contribution limits. He said neither he nor Rose had anything to do with it. Wendy Del Rosa said Rose and Phillip Del Rosa are more interested in using the tribe to make money for themselves. “It’s really not even a tribe,” Wendy Del Rosa said. “They’ve made it into their own private enterprise.”
Federal funding The Alturas Indian Rancheria has also brought in plenty of public funds. Over the past 25 years, California paid the tribe more than $27 million as part of the state’s Indian Gaming Revenue Shar-
“ A sovereign government doesn’t have to tell you anything it doesn’t want to.” —Matthew Fletcher
ing Trust Fund, which splits gaming revenue among tribes. During the coronavirus pandemic, the tribe received more than $3 million through the American Rescue Plan Act and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, according to a 2021 paper from the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. The paper described the payout as “disturbing” and “nothing short of shocking.” The authors found Alturas had the highest per-member payout in the country. The tribe’s application listed only three members. The researchers concluded the federal formula placed too much weight on tribal employees, regardless of whether they were Native American. Phillip Del Rosa’s wife, Sarah Del Rosa, who works as a tribal assistant, said the federal money went to support the tribe’s fuel stations and convenience stores. “The COVID funds were used to create businesses to put people back to work,” she said. The rancheria received other federal assistance as well. In 2023, the BIA awarded the tribe $227,273 to research the effects of climate change on the 20-acre rancheria. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development sends the tribe a yearly Indian Housing Block Grant — last year about $110,000 — to support affordable housing. Over the last decade, the federal government has paid the tribe more than $3 million through contracts that allow tribes to administer services otherwise provided by federal agencies. Known as 638 contracts, they are authorized under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act. Wendy Del Rosa’s attorney contends the tribe has actually received more than $8 million. Sarah Del Rosa said that revenue has nothing to do with funding education or health care for the Alturas Indian Rancheria. Instead, she said, the funds mostly go to administrative costs associated with tribal businesses — office space, postage, travel, audits — and legal fees. “All of these issues that Wayne [Smith], Wendy Del Rosa and Jennifer [Chrisman] are causing are very expensive,” Sarah Del Rosa said. Wendy Del Rosa said Peebles has made a lot of money representing the tribe. “I think he’s dishonest,” she said. “You’re talking a lot of billable hours.”
Tribal Sovereignty “To be quite honest, the BIA could fix everything tomorrow,” Chrisman said. “And they haven’t.” Peebles made a similar complaint about federal agencies. “Once they determine it’s an internal tribal fight, they stay out,” he said. But federal agencies are limited in what they can force the Alturas Indian Rancheria to do because of tribal sovereignty.
The BIA largely stays out of membership and governance, said Matthew Fletcher, a professor of American Indian law at the University of Michigan and editor of the blog Turtle Talk. “Tribal sovereignty creates sort of this black box of lack of knowledge,” he said. “A sovereign government doesn’t have to tell you anything it doesn’t want to.” Fletcher said tribal sovereignty is an important principle, but the legal limitations can make solving disputes difficult. “I feel bad for the Interior Department officials who have to try to decide if there’s actually a functioning tribal government,” Fletcher said. The federal government has encouraged tribes to adopt a corporate-style governing structure, he said, because it provides an efficient way to deal with agencies and accept federal funding. But he said it can also lead to the same power plays found in the corporate world. “As a consequence of that, you have situations like this that arise,” he said. California’s rancheria system can further amplify those power struggles. Some rancherias have very few members, meaning a single person or family can shift the balance of power. “Lots of weird things can happen, especially when your numbers are so low,” Fletcher said. “California has a handful of these rancherias that have terribly small citizenship numbers, and Alturas is not the only one where this is happening.” The members at the center of the Alturas dispute have scattered. Phillip Del Rosa lives in Medford, where he runs a trucking company. Tax records show he and Rose own a $4 million home in Hawaii. Wendy Del Rosa lives in Susanville, California, and Chrisman lives in the city of Alturas. More than a century after the federal government purchased the land for displaced Pit River families, the rancheria has brought in millions of dollars but has also become the center of a decades-long struggle over who controls its government and money. “It’s just a shame that we all can’t benefit from something that his dad left, because this wasn’t his dad’s dream,” Chrisman said. “Phillip [Del Rosa]’s not the leader his dad was.” Today, no one lives on the 20-acre rancheria.
Justin Higginbottom is a regional reporter for Jefferson Public Radio. He’s worked in print and radio journalism in Utah as well as abroad with stints in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. He spent a year reporting on the Myanmar civil war and has contributed to NPR, CNBC and Deutsche Welle (Germany’s public media organization).
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JPR NEWS FOCUS
LAW & JUSTICE
MIA MALDONADO
“At a time when homeownership is more expensive than ever, the Trump administration is trying to make it even more costly with these unlawful rules.” — New York Attorney General Letitia James
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n Aug. 11, a coalition of 10 Democratic-led states, including Oregon, sued the Trump administration over a new rule that could cost homeowners hundreds or even thousands of dollars by preempting state laws that require mortgage lenders to pay interest on the money borrowers deposit into escrow accounts to cover taxes and insurance. Mortgage lenders generally require borrowers to make monthly payments into savings accounts, called escrow accounts, to cover the cost of annual property taxes and home insurance premiums. Because homeowners pay monthly but taxes are due once a year, those escrow accounts generate interest for the lender. At least 12 states since the 1970s enacted laws requiring mortgage lenders to pay homeowners interest for the money they have in their escrow accounts to prevent predatory lending practices. The Oregon Department of Justice estimated the state’s law results in the state’s mortgage holders receiving an average of $200-$300 per year in interest payments. However, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a federal agency that supervises and examines banks, issued two new rules in May to prevent those state laws from applying to national banks and federal savings associations, thus slashing the interest many homeowners receive for the money in their escrow accounts. The rule does not apply to state-chartered banks, which plaintiffs say leaves smaller banks at a competitive disadvantage. Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield and New York Attorney General Letitia James are leading the lawsuit alleging the federal agency is violating the limits Congress placed on it when it passed the Dodd-Frank Act, a massive consumer protection law passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis aimed at curbing risky financial industry practices. “At a time when homeownership is more expensive than ever, the Trump administration is trying to make it even more costly with these unlawful rules,” James said in a statement. “Big banks and mortgage lenders should not be able to force homeowners to lock away significant amounts of money without paying interest.” The coalition also includes the attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Vermont — all of whom represent states with interest-on-escrow laws. In Rhode Island, Attorney General Peter Neronha said the law results in borrowers recouping thousands of dollars each year. “In the midst of a national affordability crisis, those who have scraped together the money to buy their own home and stay in it
can’t afford to lose money they are entitled to under state law,” he said in a statement. “These state consumer protection laws have been in place for decades to ensure that Rhode Island borrowers receive every penny they are due, and the administration’s attempt to pull a fast one on consumers is uncalled for and unlawful.” The states filed their suit in U.S. District Court in Portland and are seeking a court order deOregon Attorney General Dan claring the rules illegal and pre- Rayfield and New York Attorney venting their implementation. General Letitia James are leadThe case marks Oregon’s ing the lawsuit filed in the U.S. 74th lawsuit against the Trump District Court of Portland. administration, Rayfield told reporters in a virtual press conference Tuesday afternoon.
Interest-on-escrow laws vary per state Under Oregon law, lenders must pay homeowners 2.6% in monthly interest on the money held in their escrow accounts — a rate calculated using the floating interest rate of U.S. Treasury bills minus 1%. Each state has a different set-up, with some mandating a 2% flat rate and others requiring lenders to pay out the rate they offer on a typical savings account, according to Oregon Department of Justice spokesperson Jenny Hansson. There are 703,000 mortgage holders in Oregon, and the amount they receive in interest varies depending on where they live and their property’s value. “Because we barely look at that statement that comes in the mail every month, frankly, I think the Trump administration thought they could get away with this because most of us probably wouldn’t notice,” Rayfield said. The lawsuit is a simple way to keep money in citizens’ pockets, Rayfield said. Mia Maldonado covers the Oregon Legislature and state agencies with a focus on social services for the Oregon Capital Chronicle, a professional, nonprofit news organization and JPR news partner. She began her journalism career with the Capital Chronicle’s sister outlet in Idaho, the Idaho Capital Sun, where she received multiple awards for her coverage of the environment and Latino affairs. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 13
MIA MALDONADO/OREGON CAPITAL CHRONICLE
Oregon, California, 8 Other States Sue Trump Admin to Protect Interest Payments to Homeowners
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JPR NEWS FOCUS
ECONOMY
ALEX BAUMHARDT
Kotek Data Center Advisers Won’t Say ‘Moratorium,’ Want More State-Local Partnership, Transparency The seven-member group will send regulatory, policy recommendations for the state Legislature to consider in 2027 ov. Tina Kotek’s data center advisory committee won’t recommend a statewide moratorium on new data centers, despite local action and growing calls from Democratic lawmakers, conservation groups, farmers and residents in data-center-heavy areas. The committee, which Kotek assembled earlier this year to help make sense of the costs and benefits of the state’s booming data center industry and recommend policy to lawmakers, wrapped up its public discussion and deliberation this week with the group’s co-chair, Margaret Hoffmann, making clear it would not recommend any sort of moratorium. “That was not our charge,” she said. “The charge really was — how should we do this kind of economic development in Oregon while being good stewards of our natural resources. It did not ask us to consider whether or not to implement a moratorium.” Hoffmann and committee members — a mix that includes a pro-data center county commissioner from eastern Oregon, energy-industry veterans, an environmental law professor and at least two people associated with conservation groups — instead indicated they’d recommend more state and local partnerships and transparency from industry. The group has convened subject-matter experts and met since February to discuss issues related to Oregon data centers’ water, land and energy use, among other issues, and will produce a list of regulatory and policy recommendations for the state Legislature to consider during the 2027 session that begins in January. A lack of sales tax, generous property tax incentives for industrial development and relatively cheap electricity over the years has made Oregon a hot spot for data centers, and today among the top 10 states for housing them. The largest are located in Umatilla and Morrow counties in eastern Oregon, followed by Washington County and Crook County. The first draft of the committee’s report is slated to be ready by mid-September, ahead of its final public meeting on Sept. 23, where advisers will take public comments before issuing a final report in October. The task comes at a time of profound backlash against data centers in the state and across the U.S. Pauses and moratoriums are being floated and passed at the local and state level in Oregon and nationwide, and Kotek recently intervened to stop a data center company in Salem from buying state property.
JORDAN GALE/OREGON CAPITAL CHRONICLE
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An explosion of data center facilities, including the one pictured here in northeast Oregon on May 18, 2026, have been built along the Columbia River Gorge during the last few years.
Data Center Advisory Committee members: Margaret Hoffmann, chair, is a member of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, former energy policy adviser to Oregon governors John Kitzhaber and Kate Brown and former rural development director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Oregon. Michael Jung, chair, is an environmental policy executive and director of the ICF Climate Center, an international tech and energy consultancy. Dan Dorran is chair of the Umatilla County Commission, an area with the highest concentration of data centers in the state. Greg Dotson is an energy and environmental law expert at the University of Oregon. Bill Edmunds is a former private utility executive who teaches energy and business courses at Portland State University and the University of Portland. Tim Miller is director of the nonprofit industry group Oregon Business For Climate. Jean Wilson is a renewable energy executive and former president of the nonprofit Oregon Environmental Council.
A poll from Portland firm DHM Research found two-thirds of Oregon voters support a pause on new data centers used for artificial intelligence. Nearly three-quarters of voters oppose property tax incentives for all data centers. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 15
JPR News Focus: Economy Continued from previous page
The Issues These issues — tax incentives worth billions, data centers’ enormous energy and water needs, the AI industry’s ability to create temporary construction jobs on data centers, and some long-term jobs at the facilities, while on a quest to “probably replace most of the jobs people do today,” according to Open AI CEO Sam Altman — are among those the governor’s advisory committee spent months discussing. The group seemed fairly convinced by officials from Prineville, and committee member Dan Dorran, a Umatilla County Commissioner, that the data centers are creating jobs and boosting local economies in rural Oregon. Prineville City Manager Steve Forrester told them the city went from a 20% unemployment rate after timber mills closed in the 1990s to a 6% unemployment rate following the arrival of Facebook, now Meta, data centers that began in 2010. And Dorran and Blue Mountain Community College officials said tech companies in need of skilled tradeworkers are hiring students out of certificate, degree and apprenticeship programs before they’ve even graduated. The advisers at the Aug. 4 meeting dismissed data centers’ water demands as a non-issue because many use closed systems where the water is recycled over and over, and average demand
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The advisers at the Aug. 4 meeting dismissed data centers’ water demands as a non-issue because many use closed systems where the water is recycled over and over, and average demand is significantly less than that of most large, irrigated farms. is significantly less than that of most large, irrigated farms. But members did not discuss ongoing issues in northeast Oregon with groundwater pollution made worse by heating contaminated water through Amazon data centers, and a recent push by Google in The Dalles — where the company’s data centers consume nearly 40% of the city’s water — for access to more water from the Mt. Hood National Forest. The group seemed most concerned with data centers’ energy demands and keeping up with regional grid capacity, meeting climate goals and addressing the rising costs of electricity. Overall consensus was that the state should leverage the data center boom to increase private investment in energy infrastructure that can benefit all, and members discussed requiring data center developers to build large-scale battery storage projects or clean energy generation projects to serve theirs and locals needs. The issue of whether Oregon’s decades-old property tax incentives meant for industrial developers who create jobs are being taken advantage of by data centers lead to broader discussion about the lack of transparency from local governments and industry about deals and resources. Most deals for 5-, 10- and 15-year property tax abatements for data centers are made at the local level, and it’s difficult to get tax-savings data or details about employment numbers and wages. Data centers in Oregon will get nearly $500 million in property tax breaks this year alone, according to reporting from The Oregonian. Committee members largely agreed that those numbers, along with details on data centers’ water and energy use, should be far easier to find, and that the state should require more transparency from data center companies and local governments. “You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” Hoffmann said. “So having some sort of disclosure database and transparency and reporting feels really important to us to even have a foundational set of information to understand what’s happening and then where do we go from here.”
Alex Baumhardt is a JPR content partner from the Oregon Capital Chronicle. Before that Alex was a national radio producer focusing on education for American Public Media. She has reported from the Arctic to the Antarctic for national and international media, and from Minnesota and Oregon for The Washington Post. 16 | JEFFERSON JOURNAL SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026
JPR NEWS FOCUS
POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
ROMAN BATTAGLIA
A health district operates similarly to a fire or library district, using property taxes to support a hospital or clinic.
Ashland Has $4 Million From Asante. Now It Has to Decide How to Spend It Ashland is weighing how to use a $4 million payment from Asante, with proposals ranging from a local health district to addressing city financial needs. shland has $4 million to spend after Asante ended inpatient care at the city’s hospital. Now, city leaders must decide what to do with the money. On Aug. 5, the City Council heard proposals from community groups seeking a share of the money. Among the ideas are creating a local health district, partnering with healthcare providers or Southern Oregon University, and setting the money aside while the city pursues other funding. The money stems from Asante’s 2013 takeover of Ashland Community Hospital. As part of the agreement, Asante committed to operating the hospital through 2028 or paying the city $4 million. Asante ended inpatient services at the hospital in May and converted it into a satellite campus of Rogue Regional Medical Center. The emergency department and some outpatient services remain open. Ashland Community Hospital had been operated by the city from 1923 to 1996, when it was turned over to a nonprofit that later expanded operations into Talent and Medford. Competition from larger hospitals in Medford contributed to financial problems at the Ashland hospital, leading to the merger with Asante in 2013. Fernando Gapasin of the Save Our Ashland Community Hospital coalition urged the city to create a health district. “We’re going to go against the grain, and we’re going to maintain rural healthcare,” he said. Gapasin and the coalition have spent months exploring what a health district could look like in Ashland. A health district operates similarly to a fire or library district, using property taxes to support a hospital or clinic. There are about two dozen health districts in Oregon, but none are along the Interstate 5 corridor. The majority of revenue for the health districts comes from hospital operations. Property taxes make up a small portion of their budgets. The Southern Coos Hospital and Health Center reported receiving about $860,000 from property tax revenue last year, compared with $25 million in patient revenue. But high operating costs can still leave rural hospitals struggling financially, and property tax revenue can help keep them open.
ROMAN BATTAGLIA/JPR NEWS
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The Asante Ashland satellite campus, formerly the Ashland Community Hospital, August 4, 2026.
Other proposals discussed Monday included potential collaborations with Southern Oregon University and La Clinica, bringing an Oregon Health and Science University medical school program to Ashland, and setting aside the $4 million and instead seeking federal rural healthcare dollars. Some council members, including Dylan Bloom, said the city should consider using part of the money to address the city’s financial woes. “We’ve had conversations around here about how we need to build up our reserve fund, how it has been depleted,” said Bloom. “How we need to fund our facilities fund so that we can repair City Hall. We can repair a lot of deferred maintenance in the city that serves the community as well.” Roman Battaglia is a regional reporter for Jefferson Public Radio. Roman came to JPR as part of the Charles Snowden Program for Excellence in Journalism in 2019. He then joined Delaware Public Media as a Report For America fellow before returning to the JPR newsroom.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 17
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JPR NEWS FOCUS
EDUCATION
JANE VAUGHAN
Judge Finds Bandon School District Violated State Labor Law A judge recommended reinstating four Bandon teachers after finding the district transferred them because of protected union activity. judge found the Bandon School District violated state law by involuntarily transferring four teachers after contentious contract negotiations. In a recommended order issued in early August, Administrative Law Judge Stephanie Miller found the district transferred the teachers because of their union activity and sought to discourage such activity. She recommended reinstating the teachers and ordering the district to pay the Bandon Education Association a $1,000 civil penalty. The decision is not yet final. The Bandon Education Association filed an unfair labor practices complaint with the state Employment Relations Board last summer, arguing the district retaliated against bargaining team members by transferring them to different positions without following proper protocol. Miller held a three-day hearing in February and issued her recommendation Aug. 3. This follows more than a year of turmoil in the small coastal district, including allegations of administrative misconduct, employee and school board member resignations and a third-party investigation. Some administrators mentioned in the complaint, including the superintendent and high school principal, have since resigned. In a statement, interim Superintendent Steve Sugg said the district looks forward to resolving the issue and moving ahead. “The district has received the preliminary order and is working with our legal team on a response and next steps,” he said. “Our focus is on creating a great teaching and learning environment for our staff and students.” Miller’s recommended order is not yet final. Both parties have two weeks to file objections. The Oregon Employment Relations Board will issue the final order. Miller wrote the school district involuntarily transferred the teachers because of their union activity and worked to discourage such activity. Union actions are protected under state law. She also questioned the credibility of some district witnesses, writing that many statements by former Superintendent Shauna Schmerer “strain credulity.” Schmerer did not respond to a request for comment. Miller also said important district meeting notes are missing from the record, which she wrote “gives rise to a reasonable
THEO GREENLY/JPR
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The Bandon School District office, shown on July 28, 2026.
The Bandon Education Association filed an unfair labor practices complaint with the state Employment Relations Board last summer, arguing the district retaliated against bargaining team members by transferring them to different positions without following proper protocol. inference that they would not support the District’s reasons for the involuntary transfers.” The district had argued the transfers were justified by enrollment declines, budget constraints and concerns about instructional rigor. But Miller said the evidence did not support the district’s given reasons for transferring the teachers. In addition to the civil penalty, she recommended that the four teachers be reinstated to their original positions. Three of the four have already resigned from the district. She also recommended that the district be required to post a notice acknowledging its unfair labor practices in prominent places and send it to all union members. “This is a huge win, not just for the union members who were targeted, but for the entire Bandon community, its stuSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 19
6
YEARS
JPR News Focus: Education The Diamond Season
MASTERWORKS 1 Ives • Brahms • Elgar
September 18-20, 2026 Ashland / Medford / Grants Pass
George Li, piano
MASTERWORKS 2
Mozart • Beethoven • Bartók
October 23-25, 2026 Will Hagen, violin
Continued from previous page
2026 / 2027
Ashland / Grants Pass
Vitaly Starikov
dents and educators,” Chico Robinson, local representative for the Oregon Education Association, wrote in a statement. Kate Hawthorne, one of the teachers who was involuntarily transferred, agreed. “It’s been hard to go through this year plus of turmoil over the actions of BSD’s previous leadership,” she wrote in a statement. “I just wish we could go back and have them recognize the error in their ways last summer. The fallout from all of this has been tremendous. I feel vindicated and look forward to moving on.” Union President Jen Ells is the only one of the four transferred teachers who still works at the district. “There is an enormous relief in this ruling, validation that truth can win,” she wrote in a statement. “We look forward to this new school year, building our district back to a place of excellence and integrity.”
PIANO RECITAL
Bach • Shostakovich • Debussy
November 10, 2026 Ashland
Vitaly Starikov, piano
HOLIDAY POPS The Magic of the Holidays
Celebrate the season with music that captures the spirit of the holidays.
December 12-13, 2026 Ashland
MASTERWORKS 3
Beethoven • Dvořák • Tchaikovsky
January 15-17, 2027
Ashland / Medford / Grants Pass
Geneva Lewis, violin
MASTERWORKS 4
Prokofiev • C.P.E. Bach • Foote • Haydn Marina Piccinini, flute
February 19-21, 2027
Ashland / Medford / Grants Pass
MASTERWORKS 5
Walton • Beethoven • Nielsen
April 23-25, 2027
Ashland / Medford / Grants Pass
Joyce Yang, piano
MASTERWORKS 6
Theofanidis • Strauss • Shostakovich Meredith Wohlgemuth, soprano
May 21-23, 2027
Ashland / Medford / Grants Pass
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Jane Vaughan is a regional reporter for Jefferson Public Radio. Jane began her journalism career as a reporter for a community newspaper in Portland, Maine. She’s been a producer at New Hampshire Public Radio and worked on WNYC’s On The Media.
JPR NEWS FOCUS
POVERTY & HOMELESSNESS
JANE VAUGHAN
Attendee Echo Fields encouraged OHRA to take homeless people’s’ input into consideration.
Ashland Nonprofit Working on Plan to Manage Homeless Campsite The nonprofit OHRA will take over management of the site for six months as part of a city pilot program. s the City of Ashland prepares to shift management of its homeless camping lawn to a nonprofit, the community wants to make sure longstanding problems are addressed. Residents have raised concerns about the area known as the night lawn, behind the police station, where homeless folks can camp. They include overcrowding, lack of storage and safety. The city is working on an agreement to transfer temporary management of the site to the local nonprofit Opportunities for Housing, Resources, and Assistance, or OHRA. At a community meeting on Aug. 7, Executive Director Dan Cano told attendees that OHRA is taking its time to make a good plan. “I don’t have all the answers right now, but I do know that the way we do things, it’s going to be thoughtful, and it’s going to reflect some more information that I don’t necessarily have right now,” he said. He said it’ll be eight to 10 weeks before OHRA takes over managing the site under a six-month pilot program, after which point it will be reassessed. Meeting attendees said they wanted the site to be less crowded and have a plan for medical emergencies as well as more reliable water. Chrystal Parker, who currently lives at the OHRA shelter, suggested hiring homeless folks in specific roles. “The peer governed groupings that you can create, or the site ambassadors from lived experienced individuals, have you looked into the possibilities of that?” she said. “That could actually not only lower your own staffing costs if integrated right, but it could also give them the work experience, plus someone that they trust more to go to first before it has to escalate.” Attendee Echo Fields encouraged OHRA to take homeless people’s’ input into consideration. “Success also has to be defined by the people who are on the lawn themselves,” she said. “What’s their definition of what they need? What are their deliverables?” OHRA is still working to gather input and finalize a plan, including soliciting feedback from homeless folks and other stakeholders. A memorandum of understanding with the city also has yet to be finalized. Cano said they’re exploring possibly getting platforms to raise tents off the ground, building better care for those with
JANE VAUGHAN/JPR
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The homeless camping area behind Ashland’s police station, known as the night lawn. Shown on Nov. 24, 2025.
medical needs and potentially creating a separate area for women. He also encouraged the community to get involved. “We need people building capacity that we can’t build ourselves,” he said. “Really we can’t do a lot of things because now we’re the man. We have insurance. We have HR issues. We can get sued.” The Ashland City Council has had a series of discussions recently about its homeless services, including the night lawn and a building at 2200 Ashland St., which has been used as a shelter. The goal is to come up with a long-term plan to address the issue. Meanwhile, Ashland resident Elizabeth Trinchero Adkisson is working to create a resilience hub with supplies and resources, both for homeless folks and the wider community. “We want to be a village. I think it’s in our genes,” she said. “It’s in our DNA to build community and to know our neighbors and to take care of each other.”
Jane Vaughan is a regional reporter for Jefferson Public Radio. Jane began her journalism career as a reporter for a community newspaper in Portland, Maine. She’s been a producer at New Hampshire Public Radio and worked on WNYC’s On The Media. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 21
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JPR NEWS FOCUS
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
COURTNEY SHERWOOD
State leaders wouldn’t say if the attack was linked to a swarm of cyberattacks that the Times said were initiated by hackers in Iran. Oregon is still assessing the impact of the attack, and officials contacted by OPB would not identify which water district was targeted.
Oregon Drinking Water System Accessed in Recent Cyberattacks On August 7, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek’s office told OPB that hackers had gained access to an Oregon water district’s core operating technology. Officials would not identify which water district was targeted. week after a New York Times report revealed that at least 100 water systems were hacked in other states, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek’s office told OPB Friday that hackers had gained access to an Oregon water district’s core operating technology. State leaders wouldn’t say if the attack was linked to a swarm of cyberattacks that the Times said were initiated by hackers in Iran. Oregon is still assessing the impact of the attack, and officials contacted by OPB would not identify which water district was targeted. The cyberattacks, first reported by the Times on July 30, targeted municipal drinking water systems in at least seven states, according to the paper. “The Governor takes matters of cybersecurity seriously, and any threats or intrusions must be investigated thoroughly in partnership with federal law enforcement to keep Oregon’s critical infrastructure secure,” a Kotek staffer said in an email, which referred any follow-up questions to federal investigators. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Portland office did not answer questions from OPB about which Oregon water district might have been attacked, but linked to a July 30 FBI press release acknowledging that cyberattacks have been detected in seven states “and some of that activity degraded water operations.” Hope Hiebert, spokesperson for Oregon Enterprise Information Services, which provides cybersecurity support to state agencies, also confirmed that “Oregon is aware of a July cyber incident involving unauthorized access to operational technology used by an Oregon drinking-water provider.” “Questions about a specific local incident should be directed to the affected entity or appropriate investigative authority,” she said in an email, but did not respond when asked which district was affected. Although her agency consults with water districts on cybersecurity and threat assessments, the state’s drinking water systems are all locally managed, she said. OPB has reached out to some of Oregon’s more than 2,500 water districts, but so far none have confirmed that they were targeted. Brandon Zero, spokesperson for the Portland Water Bureau, acknowledged in a statement that his agency broadly fac-
IMAGE BY HENRYK NIESTRÓJ FROM PIXABAY
A
Hackers gained access to the core operating technology of an Oregon water district, Gov. Tina Kotek’s office confirmed to OPB, just a week after The New York Times reported cyberattacks on at least 100 water systems in other states.
es cybersecurity threats. “In partnership with the City’s Information Security team and agencies like the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Portland Water Bureau routinely examines cybersecurity vulnerabilities to safeguard the resiliency of our system,” he said. When asked if the water bureau had been specifically targeted in July or had seen a recent increase in threats, he responded, “We can’t comment further.” Justin Dyke, spokesperson for the Tualatin Valley Water District, said his district has seen an increase in hacking attempts — but none successful and none that have been reported to the FBI. Officials in Klamath Falls and Corvallis both told OPB their water districts have not seen a recent increase in attacks. Redmond and Bend officials have also not been hacked, according to a report in the weekly Bend-based newspaper The Source. According to information posted online by the FBI, cyberattacks have targeted both drinking water and sewage systems in the affected states. These attacks have targeted devices known as programmable logic controllers, which are small computers Continued on page 29 used to operate industrial equipment. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 23
STAT I O N S
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P RO G R A M S
Classics & News Service Monday through Friday..
3:00pm The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center 4:00pm All Things Considered 5:00pm New York Philharmonic 7:00pm State Farm Music Hall
5:00am Morning Edition 8:00am First Concert 12:00pm Siskiyou Music Hall 2:00pm Performance Today 4:00pm All Things Considered 6:30pm The Daily 7:00pm Exploring Music 8:00pm State Farm Music Hall
Sunday.. 5:00am 9:00am 10:00am 12:00pm 1:00pm 2:00pm 4:00pm 5:00pm 7:00pm
Saturday.. 5:00am 8:00am 10:00am 2:00pm
Weekend Edition First Concert WFMT Opera Played in Oregon
Stations FM Transmitters provide extended regional service. (KSOR, 90.1FM is JPR’s strongest transmitter and provides coverage throughout the Rogue Valley.)
KSRS 91.5 FM
KZBY 90.5 FM
KLDD 91.9 FM
KSOR 90.1 FM
KNYR 91.3 FM
KLMF 88.5 FM
KHEC 91.1 FM
KSRG 88.3 FM
KOOZ 94.1 FM
KNHT 102.5 FM
KWCA 101.1 FM
Grants Pass 101.5 FM Happy Camp 91.9 FM Lakeview 89.5 FM Langlois, Sixes 91.3 FM LaPine/Beaver Marsh 89.1 FM
Lincoln 88.7 FM Mendocino 101.9 FM Port Orford 90.5 FM Weed 89.5 FM
ASHLAND
ASHLAND
FM Translators provide low-powered local service.
Translators Big Bend 91.3 FM Brookings 101.7 FM Burney 90.9 FM
Camas Valley 88.7 FM Canyonville 91.9 FM Cave Junction 89.5 FM Chiloquin 91.7 FM Coquille 88.1 FM
WFMT OPERA Sept 5:
Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti, La Scala Orchestra
Sept 12: Carmen by Georges Bizet, La Scala Orchestra Sept 19: Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi, LA Opera Sept 26: James Conlon Farewell Concert, LA Opera Oct 3:
Das Rheingold by Richard Wagner, NCPA Orchestra
Oct 10:
La Traviata by Giuseppi Verdi, NCPA Orchestra
Oct 17:
Tosca by Giacomo Puccini, NCPA Orchestra
Oct 24:
Die Walküre by Richard Wagner, NCPA Orchestra
24 | JEFFERSON JOURNAL SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026
Weekend Edition Millennium of Music Sunday Baroque American Landscapes Fiesta! Performance Today Weekend All Things Considered Chicago Symphony Orchestra State Farm Music Hall
ROSEBURG
COOS BAY
YREKA
MYRTLE POINT/COOS BAY
Coos Bay 90.5 FM / 89.1 FM Etna / Ft. Jones 91.1 FM Gasquet 89.1 FM Gold Beach 91.5 FM
KLAMATH FALLS
RIO DELL/EUREKA
MT. SHASTA
CRESCENT CITY REDDING
New Host for Exploring Music
Y
ou may have noticed a new, but familiar voice hosting the popular weeknight classical music program, Exploring Music. Beginning August 24th, Peter van de Graaff has taken over as host from the show’s founder, Bill McGlaughlin, who passed away July 21st at the age of 82. Peter van de Graaff is already a well known and loved radio personality for many listeners. For more than 30 years van de Graaf has been one of the hosts of classical music programming heard on JPR in the late evening, and for the past ten years has served as Music Director at KWAX-FM in Eugene, Oregon. Since 2002, Exploring Music has taken listeners on a journey that explores a different musical theme each week, and offers a welcoming place to learn, listen and be inspired one musical adventure at a time through curated recordings and passionate storytelling. Van de Graaff will continue the tradition, with upcoming weeks focusing on themes that highlight the trumpet, music written for European kings and a spotlight on Ralph Vaughan Williams. Exploring Music airs weekday nights from 7-8pm on JPR’s Classics & News Service.
STAT I O N S
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SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 25
NEWS BRIEFS Oregon Awards the Largest Round of Federal Rural Healthcare Grants By Mia Maldonado / Oregon Capital Chronicle The Oregon Health Authority has so far awarded $175.3 million in grants from a new federal program meant to support rural healthcare.
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he Rural Health Transformation Program, established by the massive tax and spending law Congressional Republicans passed in July 2025, dedicates funding until 2030 for projects aimed at improving the health of people living in rural communities. On Tuesday, the agency announced it would distribute $97 million worth of grants to support 136 rural healthcare projects across the state — marking the largest round of funding it has awarded since the program began. Oregon received $197.3 million from the federal government for 2026, and it could receive up to $1 billion over the next four years of the program. Gov. Tina Kotek in a statement said there was overwhelming interest in the program, and the state is working on distributing the funds as quickly as possible. First year grant recipients can begin using the federal funding for projects this month. They must use the funding by September 2027. More than $80 million in the latest round will support 103 projects across 85 organizations that competitively applied for funding. That includes $2.1 million for the Native American Rehabilitation Association of the Northwest, a nonprofit offering education, physical and mental health services and substance abuse treatment to Native Americans. Another $2.3 million will go to the Providence Hood River Memorial Hospital and Mercy Flights, a Medford-based medical nonprofit transportation organization, will receive $300,000. The remaining $17 million in this round will fund 33 immediate projects, including ones that aim to expand mobile dental healthcare along Oregon’s North Coast, improve access to meals for older adults in Oregon’s remote communities and grow mobile prenatal and postpartum services across the Rogue Valley, Central Oregon and Eastern Oregon. “These awards support practical, community-driven efforts to improve access to health in rural Oregon,” said Oregon Health Authority Director Dr. Sejal Hathi. “Rural communities know their needs best, and this funding is intended to help them strengthen local services, expand workforce capacity, and address barriers that make it harder for people to get care close to home.” State officials acknowledged that the program was packed in the same law that slashed an estimated $15 billion in federal funding for Oregon programs that provide health insurance and food assistance. 26 | JEFFERSON JOURNAL SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026
“While the total funding Oregon is receiving through the Rural Health Transformation Program is relatively small when you consider the full impact of recent federal Medicaid cuts, these awards can make a huge difference for individual organizations that are doing much-needed work in rural Oregon,” said Clare Pierce-Wrobel, the health authority’s policy and analytics director. “There’s a lot of variation in vaccination rates across schools,” he said. “What I really want to do is make sure that we are all empowering families to make really informed decisions for themselves and their families.” Some charter and religious schools in Josephine County reported particularly low vaccination rates. At Woodland Charter School in Grants Pass, for example, 39% of students were up to date on all required vaccinations, while 48% had nonmedical exemptions. The state’s nonmedical exemption rate for kindergarten students has climbed to nearly 11%, up from about 7% during the 2021-22 school year. Chiou said kindergarten vaccination rates can help predict future trends among school-age children.
Judge Limits Off-Road Vehicle Use in Oregon Dunes to Protect Coastal Marten By Roman Battaglia/JPR News The temporary court order includes nighttime restrictions, area closures and a pause on new event permits while the Forest Service conducts further environmental review.
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federal judge has restricted off-road vehicle use in parts of the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area to protect the threatened coastal marten. The temporary restrictions include closures in some areas, a nighttime curfew for off-road vehicles and a ban on new permits for off-road vehicle events. They stem from a lawsuit accusing the U.S. Forest Service of failing to adequately consider how motorized recreation affects the rare, weasel-like carnivore. The coastal marten was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2020. Fewer than 400 are estimated to remain, and around 70 live in the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. The Center for Biological Diversity sued in 2024, arguing the Forest Service had failed to complete a required environmental analysis quickly enough. Tala DiBenedetto, an attorney for the center, said martens face several threats from off-road vehicles. “They can be upwards of 122 decibels. They also can rip up vegetation, serving as marten habitat,” she said. “Also because OHVs [Off-Highway Vehicles] are allowed to ride around at
night, they risk vehicle strike. And in the summer, martens are very active. They still have their babies in tow.” U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken said the Forest Service had delayed its environmental review for too long. “The record contains abundant evidence that the agency’s actions not only increased the risk of jeopardy to a threatened species, but also that those actions facilitated the unnecessary destruction of habitat and public resources,” Aiken wrote in her ruling. Aiken ordered some areas of the dunes closed, established a nighttime curfew for off-highway vehicles and temporarily prohibited new permits for off-highway vehicle events. In a news release, the Forest Service acknowledged the court orders and provided maps of the closure areas. “Per the Court’s order, these restrictions will remain in place until the court determines longer-term interim measures related to a complaint filed by the Center for Biological Diversity,” the Forest Service said. The Forest Service is expected to conduct further environmental analysis of how off-highway vehicle use affects coastal martens and their habitat.
Ashland Voters Will Decide Whether Utility Fee Hikes Need Voter Approval By Roman Battaglia/JPR News A November ballot measure would give Ashland voters more control over utility fee increases, despite opposition from several city councilors.
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shland voters will decide in November whether to limit the City Council’s ability to raise utility fees without voter approval.
The ballot measure would require voter approval for most utility fee increases beyond inflation. It grew out of a citizen initiative launched after the council approved new fees for parks, public safety and wildfire prevention last year. The petition fell short of the required signatures because of procedural errors. On Aug. 4, the council voted 4-2 to put a revised version on the ballot. George Kramer, who led the petition effort, told council members they did not have to personally support the measure to give voters a chance to decide. “You are being asked to put it on the ballot so that the voters of Ashland who will be paying these fees get a choice about whether they support it,” Kramer said. The council chose to refer the measure to voters, which allowed it to revise the original proposal to permit fee increases tied to inflation. Councilor Eric Hansen opposed putting it on the ballot, saying it would divide the community. “It’s going to drain staff and citizenry time that we could be fighting for real solutions to real problems,” said Hanson. “This is a solution that I think doesn’t require this amount of effort.” The city manager said only three cities in Oregon — Bandon, North Bend and Reedsport — require voter approval for utility fee increases. With Oregon limiting annual growth in taxable property values, utility fees are one of few ways the city can easily respond to higher costs for things like police and parks Most council members who voted to put the measure on the ballot don’t support it. Only Councilor Gina DuQuenne said she would vote for it in November, while Dylan Bloom said he would actively oppose it. “I hope that it’s defeated,” said Bloom. “And I hope that in the meantime, this council and future councils do a better job of involving the public in the decisions that we make.” Mayor Tonya Graham said she would like the city to require a minimum of three months’ notice and public outreach before deciding on future utility fee increases.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 27
NEWS BRIEFS CONTINUED Shasta County Elections Chief Wants to Hire Convicted Former Clerk Tina Peters Roman Battaglia/JPR News Shasta County’s outgoing elections chief wants to hire Peters as a consultant, but questions remain about parole restrictions and county approval.
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hasta County’s top elections official, Clint Curtis, said he wants to hire former Colorado election clerk Tina Peters as a consultant in the county elections office. Curtis said Peters could replace Brent Turner, his top deputy, who is currently on medical leave. Peters was convicted in 2024 of seven charges, including four felonies, stemming from a breach of election equipment while she served as clerk in Mesa County, Colorado. Prosecutors said Peters allowed unauthorized access to the equipment as she sought evidence to support false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis commuted Peters’ nearly nineyear sentence in May, and she was released from prison on parole June 1. “Tina Peters has a great deal of experience in elections and actually cares if they are fair,” Curtis said in an email. Since leaving prison, Peters has made appearances on news outlets and at events, where she has continued to promote false claims about the 2020 election. “Tina Peters is giving consideration to helping in the efforts in Shasta County, as there most definitely has been monkey business in the way the election was handled,” said Peter Ticktin, Peters’ lawyer. Shasta County has become a center of disputes over election administration in recent years, as some residents and of-
ficials have promoted unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud. The Shasta County Board of Supervisors appointed Curtis as county clerk and registrar of voters in 2025. He pledged to overhaul the county’s election system and make it more transparent and secure. Voters rejected Curtis in the June primary, choosing former Assistant Registrar of Voters Joanna Francescut to replace him. She will take office in January. The Board of Supervisors also recently censured Curtis over findings that he violated county personnel policies and engaged in disrespectful and abusive conduct toward staff. Curtis has disputed the findings and accused employees of sabotaging his efforts to reform the elections office. County Supervisor Matt Plummer said he had received many emails and phone calls from people concerned about Peters potentially working in the elections office. “To the extent it could happen, it seems likely to only increase those divisions and heighten tensions,” he said. Whether Peters could take the job remains unclear. Curtis said he would like to hire her as a consultant rather than as a regular county employee. “That way, I can protect her from false accusations by having her work without actual access to the voting system,” he said. Peters remains on parole in Colorado and would need permission to travel outside the state. Deputy County Executive Officer Stewart Buettell said Peters has not filed a job application with the county. Buettell said hiring a consultant would follow a different process from hiring a regular employee. Curtis may also need approval from the Board of Supervisors before hiring Peters.
ON JPR'S RHYTHM & NEWS SERVICE SATURDAYS AT 9:00AM 28 | JEFFERSON JOURNAL SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026
Science & Technology Continued from page 23
South Coast Seafood Processors Say Tariffs Are an Old Problem, Not A New Crisis By Theo Greenly/JPR News A new state report says tariffs have hurt Oregon’s economy, but seafood processors on the South Coast say the latest trade fight is part of a much older struggle to reach foreign markets.
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state report says President Donald Trump’s tariffs have hurt Oregon trade, but seafood processors on the South Coast say the effects on their industry are more complicated. Oregon’s tariff analysis says the latest trade policies have disrupted exports and created uncertainty for businesses across the state. Oregon importers paid nearly $3 billion in tariffs between March and December 2025, while exports fell 17% over the year. Lori Steele, executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors Association, said tariffs are nothing new for the industry. “There’s definitely concern about retaliatory tariffs, but these are coming in countries where we’ve been dealing with tariffs for a long time,” Steele said. Steele described tariffs as a “mixed bag” for the industry. Companies trying to sell seafood overseas can face higher barriers, while processors focused on the domestic market could potentially benefit if tariffs make imported seafood more expensive compared with U.S.-caught products. The effects also vary by company. Steele said many South Coast processors export less than some of the larger seafood companies elsewhere in Oregon, leaving them less exposed to changes in foreign markets. Steele said the latest tariffs are not among the biggest concerns for processors in the region. State environmental regulations, particularly wastewater requirements overseen by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, pose a more immediate challenge for many of the companies she represents. Still, longstanding tariffs make it harder for some Oregon seafood products to compete overseas. U.S. pink shrimp faces a 20% tariff when it enters the United Kingdom, and Oregon officials have been trying for years to get that duty reduced or suspended. According to a March Oregon Department of Agriculture memo, the state applied to a U.K. tariff suspension program to eliminate duties on several seafood products. The memo, written by ODA trade policy specialist Erick Garman, says those longstanding tariffs have significantly hurt Oregon seafood’s competitiveness in the U.K. market. Those requests were not approved, but the state continues to pursue other tariff reductions.
Between July 27 and July 30, hackers were able to connect to these logic controllers via the internet, then change IP addresses and passwords “resulting in a loss of monitoring and control functionality,” the FBI said in its assessment of the situation. “Operational effects reported to the FBI have included loss of pressure and flooding,” the agency wrote. “Pressure loss in water systems could potentially allow untreated ground water to seep into pipes.” Dyke at Tualatin Valley Water District, which was not the Oregon district that was hacked, said water system operators are aware of cyber threats and prepare for them, while taking advantage of modern technology. Online systems, for example, allow operators to quickly adjust flow rates and water reservoir levels when water demand fluctuates quickly, he said. If those systems go down, operators have back-up plans and make changes manually. Those back-up plans are among the steps the FBI has encouraged water district operators to take nationwide. The agency is also encouraging water systems to limit remote access to their systems and enact a range of security protocols. It issued those warnings after The New York Times reported that at least 100 municipalities had detected recent malicious attacks on their water systems. At least 30 water systems were targeted in Minnesota, where one treatment plant temporarily went offline. In Georgia, one water system saw a reduction in water pressure and briefly told people to boil water as a precaution.
Courtney Sherwood is a reporter for Oregon Public Broadcasting, a JPR news partner. Her reporting comes to JPR through the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.
Terry Gross provides a lively look at entertainment and the arts, combined with in-depth personality interviews, to make you feel like you’re in the middle of the arts scene. Weekdays at 3pm & 7pm Fresh Air Weekend Sundays at 2pm JPR’s News & Information Service SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 29
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SCOTT DEWING
AI Data Center Backlash Goes Local
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n a February evening in New Brunswick, New Jersey, community activist Ben Dziobek ran toward a crowd of hundreds waiting outside New Brunswick’s city hall shouting, “They canceled it! They canceled it!” Inside, the city council had just voted unanimously to kill a 27,000-square-foot data center proposal less than two weeks after the project became public, amending the redevelopment plan for 100 Jersey Avenue to strip data centers out as a permitted use and restore the public park originally slated for the site. The meeting had run over capacity before it even started, more than 300 people packed into a room built for 80. Outside, the crowd was chanting, “The people—united—will never be defeated!” “This is what it looks like when people stand up,” Dziobek shouted to the crowd, his voice cracking. “And we say a big f--you to Big Tech,” he added. “It’s time to build communities, not data centers!” The proposed data center in New Brunswick was, on paper, a small project by industry standards, a fraction the size of the hyperscale data centers reshaping rural Virginia or Georgia. It fell anyway, in under two weeks, on a unanimous vote. This pattern is now playing out nationally and at scale. In the first three months of 2026 alone, American towns stopped the construction of $130 billion of artificial intelligence infrastructure, blocking or delaying 75 data center projects, according to Data Center Watch. The group, which tracks this fight, calls it the largest concentration of blocked and delayed projects on record.
The numbers behind the numbers make this a story about more than zoning. Active opposition groups more than doubled between the end of 2025 and March 2026, from 396 to 833, spread across 49 states. More than 300 cities, towns, and counties have imposed bans or moratoriums on data center construction. In July, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed Executive Order 62, pausing state permits for any data center drawing 50 megawatts or more, the first statewide moratorium of its kind. What makes this movement politically dangerous for the industry, is who stands on its side. The bipartisan Ratepayer Protection Act passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee 52 to 0 in July, requiring regulators to make large data center customers cover their own grid upgrades rather than spreading the cost across electric bills. Its sponsors are a Colorado Republican and a Florida Democrat. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a federal moratorium bill the same season a Florida Republican running for governor introduced a competing ratepayer bill. According to global energy research firm BloombergNEF, data centers are projected to consume roughly 20 percent of American electricity by 2035, up from just under 6 percent today. Before taking any of this at face value, it is worth asking the question the industry itself is now asking loudly: is this a genuine popular revolt, or old-fashioned NIMBYism wearing a new label? Energy-sector commentators have accused national environmental funders of underwriting what look like spontaneous local groups, and a developer backing a Utah data center
PHOTO: STEVE HEAP/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
e:
INSIDE THE BOX
Aerial view of the construction of a massive AI data center campus with 400 million square feet hosting and 600MW capacity in Hutto Texas SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 31
Inside the Box Continued from previous page
project has publicly claimed opponents were bused in. Data Center Watch’s own methodology tracks formal organizations coordinating messaging across state lines, the kind of professionalized advocacy critics say undercuts the grassroots story. Blogger and journalist Matthew Yglesias has argued that data center opposition looks statistically identical to what solar farms and apartment buildings already get: this is simply what large construction runs into in America, AI or not. A recent Gallup poll revealed that the dominant concern among opponents of AI data centers is the use of natural resources, meaning water and power draw, not abstract anxiety about AI. The loudest recent flashpoints were not manufactured by anyone. In Coweta County, Georgia, opposition to a Prologis data center exploded after Georgia Power moved to condemn roughly 300 properties through eminent domain for the transmission line the project required. Professionalized advocacy and authentic grassroots grievances are not mutually exclusive; national funders have organized against pipelines and coal plants for two decades without anyone concluding the underlying anger over polluted water wasn’t real. According to Gallup, 71 percent of Americans oppose the existence of a data center in their own neighborhood, even as the country remains divided on whether AI itself is ultimately good or bad for the world. Whether every group organizing
that opposition is spontaneous or seeded matters less than what the sentiment reveals: the zoning hearing has become the place where an argument about the future of artificial intelligence gets translated into a language every city council already speaks. None of this resolves the deeper argument, however, and it was never going to. Whether a massive AI infrastructure buildout strengthens the country or hollows out its grid and its institutional trust remains open, and reasonable people who read the same reports arrive at opposite conclusions. What has changed is where that argument now gets settled first: not in a Senate hearing room or an OpenAI blog post, but in front of a city council, by people who never thought of themselves as part of any movement, funded or otherwise. Whatever the global AI revolution turns out to be is now being fought locally, one zoning ordinance at a time, in rooms with folding chairs and fluorescent lights, by community members who demand a say in what kind of future gets built next door.
cott Dewing is a technologist and S human writer who hasn’t (yet) been fully replaced by AI.
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THEO GREENLY
Port Orford Wants to Become a South Coast Seafood Hub. Here’s What Comes Next Seawater infrastructure, energy planning and engineering studies are moving forward as part of a broader waterfront revitalization. he Port of Port Orford is laying the groundwork for several projects aimed at moving it closer to its long-term goal of becoming a South Coast seafood hub. The work includes a $500,000 system to bring seawater onto the dock for live seafood, a federal study of the port’s electricity use and an engineering review of the hillside above the only road serving the waterfront. Port officials and contractors outlined the projects during an Aug. 4 town hall. Business Oregon, the state’s economic development agency, is funding the seawater project. Seafood buyers currently lower their own pumps into the ocean to fill tanks for live fish and crab. Port officials say a permanent system would make that process more reliable and help fishermen maintain access to higher-value markets. Philip Russom, a commercial fisherman and port tenant, said seawater access is particularly important for the local fishery. “Rockfish is one of our main staples, and it’s one of our live products that we need the seawater system to be able to maintain our markets for,” Russom said. Portland-based NWR Construction is designing the system. The contractor expects to have a firm design by the end of September and hopes to have the system operating by summer 2027. The project will require permits from several state and federal agencies to draw water from the ocean and return it. The port is also studying how much electricity it uses now and how its needs could change as new facilities are developed. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy research lab, recently installed monitoring equipment at about 30 points around the port. Electrical engineer Jason Pope said Port Orford’s utility system should be able to accommodate the port’s expected growth. The study will also examine backup power, energy storage and possible on-site generation. Those questions are particularly important at Port Orford’s unusual dolly dock, where fishing boats are stored out of the water. Electric cranes lower the boats into the ocean and lift them back onto the dock. “They’re very important because the boats rely on them to get in and out, and so if they don’t operate, it could potentially be a big deal,” Pope said.
THEO GREENLY / JPR
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A fishing vessel sits below the Port of Port Orford’s dolly dock, Aug. 5, 2026.
Port officials envision a facility that could support seafood processing, live holding, direct sales, research and other waterfront businesses. Researchers will use the new monitoring equipment to measure current demand and identify which operations would need electricity during an emergency. A separate engineering project will study the hillside above the port’s only access road. The work is expected to determine whether and how the ground is moving and identify options for stabilizing the area. Fieldwork could begin in September, with the study scheduled to conclude by June 30, 2027. The larger seafood hub remains a longer-term proposal. Port officials envision a facility that could support seafood processing, live holding, direct sales, research and other waterfront businesses. The port submitted an application for federal construction funding in June and expects a decision late this year or in early 2027. Theo Greenly reports on Southern Oregon coastal communities for Jefferson Public Radio. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 33
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UNDERGROUND HISTORY CHELSEA ROSE
Archaeologists and Historians Work to Demystify the Legacy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Eastern Oregon Broken bottles, old letters and one of the world’s largest collections of traditional Chinese medicine shed light on the life and career of Ing Hay, Eastern Oregon’s beloved family doctor. This story is a special collaboration with the Southern Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology and the Oregon Historical Society, with support from Roundhouse Foundation.
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BY IAN POELLET / WIKIMEDIA.ORG
he Kam Wah Chung and Company (金華昌) building has been a constant in the town of John Day for more than 150 years, where it has served as a home, store, medical practice, religious and community center, and — most recently — a museum. Under the ownership of Ing Hay (伍于念) and Lung On ( 梁光榮), both immigrants from southern China, the business quickly became an anchor in the community. It continues to serve as a key economic driver to this day as tourists flock to the site in what now is a popular state park. Even though only one building out of the dozens that once stood in the John Day Chinatown remains, “You think about all of the communities where the apothecaries, the businesses, the stores are no longer standing,” said historian Tamara Venit Shelton. The loss of these physical remnants of Chinatowns and Chinese businesses highlights how vulnerable this part of Oregon history has been, and how much has been erased.
The life and legacy of ‘Doc Hay’ The John Day Chinatown grew up along the banks of Canyon Creek in the 1860s, where its residents mined for gold near the confluence of the creek with the John Day River. By the 1870s, over 80% of the miners in Grant County were of Chinese descent, and John Day was one of the many communities that sprung up to provide goods and services to this growing population. The Kam Wah Chung and Co. sold sturdy shovels, specialized picks and a variety of snacks to hard working miners but evolved over decades to fill other gaps in the market and serve the larger community of the region. While the merchandise store was the backbone of the company’s operation, Ing Hay’s medical practice was, in many ways, the heart. Accounts differ as to where Ing received his medical training, but none question his skill in the medical arts.
Lung On’s general store in the historic Kam Wah Chung Company Building, John Day, Oregon.
While Ing’s fame as a doctor is notable, he was actually just one of many serving the region in the 19th century: Grant County had three Chinese American doctors listed in the 1870 Census and five in 1880 along with at least three non-Chinese physicians. However, unlike many of his colleagues, Ing stayed and served generations of patients well into the 20th century. Thanks to the favorable environmental conditions, archaeologists and historians not only have unprecedented information about Ing’s life and practice through his recipes, documents and patient oral histories, but also through the surSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 35
Underground History
JPR News Focus: Performing Arts
Continued from previous page
Continued from previous page
COURTESY OF THE SOUTHERN OREGON UNIVERSITY LABORATORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY
Honoring Eastern Oregon’s most famous family doctor
Picture of 21-year old Doc Hay, “Ing Hay” of John Day, Oregon.
vival of his robust apothecary of traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) — believed to be one of the best-known such collections in the world. Shelton noted that “Pieces of different apothecaries exist in Boise, in Los Angeles” but the Kam Wah Chung and Co. “is like Tutankhamun’s tomb.” Shelves and boxes of herbs, roots, minerals and other ingredients survive, along with bottles, vials, mortars and pestles that allowed Ing to practice his craft, making it “even better than a tomb, because someone lived here.” While securing ingredients relied on complex global networks — which is especially impressive in a town like John Day that never saw the railroad — Ing got creative in the way he would fill gaps in his rural market. He incorporated local ingredients where he could and repurposed empty soda, beer and booze bottles to deliver his medications into the homes of his patients. An oral history with former patient George Benson recalled, “There were three doses in one of those quarts. You poured it out in a cup and warmed it up before you drank it.” Archaeological investigations by the Oregon Chinese Diaspora Project (OCDP) uncovered hundreds of glass bottle fragments potentially slated to be used for medicinal preparations, along with bottles containing commercial medicines sold in China and the United States.
36 | JEFFERSON JOURNAL SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026
Now a State Heritage Site, the Kam Wah Chung and Company Museum has dozens of letters and oral history accounts describing the ways in which “Doc Hay” treated the residents of the region and beyond. He saw patients in person, made house calls and sometimes diagnosed and treated some ailments through the mail. Even now, when working at the site, museum visitors often have personal tales of family members that were patients of Ing Hay. He treated blood poisoning for local ranchers, healed sick children and offered women access to healthcare in a way they never had before. A letter preserved in the museum from a woman in Burns, Oregon, asks Ing for a herbal remedy to help shrink a tumor on her neck, “Because otherwise, I have to go see the doctor. And I have such a dread of the knife.” The discretion, herbal remedies and noninvasive treatment such as pulse diagnosis appealed to the many women who had bad experiences or were distrustful of Western medicine. This patient demographic was not only cultivated through word of mouth, but also through targeted advertising to the women of the region. Over the course of his career, Ing Hay built trusting relationships with his patients and forged an influential role in his community long after the John Day Chinatown was abandoned. Serving as a family doctor in a small community is what Shelton describes as an intimate economy, “You know a lot about them, about their bodies, but also about the environment in which they live. So, he was a sort of extended part of a lot of people’s families.” This story was written and reported by Chelsea Rose, edited by Arya Surowidjojo, and digitally produced by Winston Szeto. The short documentary was filmed and edited by Christie Goshe.
Chelsea Rose is the director of the Southern Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology (SOULA) and host of the Underground History podcast, which airs during the Jefferson Exchange on JPR’s News & Information service and can be found on all major podcast platforms
RECORDINGS DAVE JACKSON
In short, like all art, great songwriting is defined individually by the listener (and by pundits who write about songs instead of writing songs).
What Makes Songwriting Good?
I
’ve said it before, and I’m not alone believing that Jason Isbell is among the songwriting GOATs of this century. His songs focus mostly on his personal feelings and bare his soul with raw honesty. Whether he’s writing in first-person or through a character, the feelings are real. His song, “If We Were Vampires”, suggests that what makes anything precious, love in that song, is the fact that we are here for a finite amount of time. During a performance of “If We Were Vampires” in 2018, when I choked up a bit myself, I noticed couples in the crowd holding each other with tears in their eyes. Isbell is often asked about who he’s trying to reach when he writes. In one of the more colorful answers, he suggested that if he wrote for the entire audience, it would dilute the message, and he’d end up with “Big Macs.” He goes on to say that he tries to single out one person “kind of an asshole” who would like to enjoy what they’re hearing but has heard it all before. I felt like he was speaking to me. While I enjoy sifting through new music, I do eat an awful lot of Big Macs if you will, and sometimes I get heartburn. Good/great songwriting isn’t required for a good song. There are lots of empty carbs in songs like “Pour Some Sugar on Me”, “Tubthumping”, and “Louie Louie” and yet they’ve stood up to generations of listeners, continue to get feet tapping and butts shaking and karaoke bars singing along. I love jam bands, but other than the Grateful Dead and a few Allman Brothers Band songs, it’s often the vibe around the lyrics or a great lyrical hook that draws you in rather than soul-baring, life-enhancing content. Great songwriting is different. A well-written song needs to have an element of relatability. There are a million and one love songs in popular culture, in most of them, like commercially successful burgers, you know what to expect, and don’t get any surprises. In the song 50/50, John Craigie spells it out “you know we write our best songs, after the first date and the last.” They’re easy to relate to, when you’re falling in love, you understand the happy ones. When you’re heartbroken, the sad ones hit home. But it’s hard, with all the competition, to write one that truly stands the test of time. Frank Sinatra once called The Beatles’ “Something” (one of George Harrison’s contributions to Abbey Road) one of the best songs ever written. It has staying power even holding up as recently reinterpreted by Lucinda Williams in her signature gravelly tone. Adele and Taylor Swift write relatable love songs straight from the heart, and breakup tunes that make men think to themselves “I’m glad I’m not that guy.” Our current political climate is fertile ground for new protest songs. Last year I wrote about the emergence of Jesse Welles, who went from Tik Tok star to major success in 2025. He continues to speak his truth with unbridled passion and honesty.
PHOTO: DANNY CLINCH
s
Widely regarded as one of the leading contemporary songwriters in his genre, Jason Isbell is known for his honest, emotionally resonant lyrics.
His output is all but unmatched, drawing comparisons to John Prine, who would debut songs he’d written on the way to the gig. This type of output and songwriting relies less on cerebral deep dives and heart-string tugging emotion, than on quick wit and an unstoppable desire to speak truth to power. Carsie Blanton was detained by the Israeli government last fall for being part of the flotilla attempting to bring aid to the people affected by the war in Gaza. She remains undaunted, continuing to use humor, and in spite of everything, a positive attitude to keep her message alive. Welles and Blanton join a group of veterans such as Joan Baez, Neil Young, Bruce Springteen, Lucinda Williams, and Tom Morello to show that songs, especially folk and punk are a great way to spread a message and move the world. Good songwriting isn’t always required to do heavy lifting. That would get boring. Tom Petty had a gift for writing vivid stories about everyday life using plain language and few words. In “Runnin’ Down a Dream” Petty writes “The trees went by. Me and Del were singin’ ‘Little Runaway’, I was flyin’.” Here he isn’t saying anything important and isn’t using cryptic metaphors, but the scene is relatable and with very few words, creates an immersive sensory experience. It’s said that brevity is the heart of wit, but it can also be the heart of good storytelling, if you choose the right words. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 37
MARY LOUISE KELLY
A Legacy of Public Radio
...
o much has changed since JPR began in 1969. In many ways, public radio has grown up. What was once a struggling—almost experimental—operation has become a permanent and positive presence in the lives of so many in Southern Oregon and Northern California and across the nation.
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ROBIN YOUNG
A MARTINEZ
We continue to seek and depend on regular membership contributions from supporters, especially new generations of listeners. But in the long run our future will depend, more and more, on special gifts from long-time friends who want to help Jefferson Public Radio become stronger and more stable.
Recordings
Continued from previous page
Sometimes well-written songs can mean nothing, be humorous, or be so cryptic as to leave it open to interpretation even as they convey a message. In David Byrne’s recent tune, “I Met the Buddha at a Downtown Party, he writes “…he was hanging by the pastries and the canapés. Just stuffing himself like there was no tomorrow with a beatific smile all over his face. I said ‘Dude, should you really be eating all that unhealthy stuff. And you, being so enlightened and all, don’t you think you’ve had enough?’” It’s a humorous way to deliver biting social commentary about the Buddha leaving the enlightenment business due to his inability to provide answers. In short, like all art, great songwriting is defined individually by the listener (and by pundits who write about songs instead of writing songs). Most of the time, I’m still looking for an overall sound I like, but songwriting that affects me should have something I can relate to, an element of originality even when telling familiar tales, or something that makes me think.
Dave Jackson curates the music on JPR’s Rhythm and News Service, manages music staff and hosts Open Air, JPR’s hand-picked house blend of music, JPR Live Sessions and Open Air Amplified. The exploration of music has been one of his lifelong passions.
One of the many ways that friends can choose to express their deep commitment to public radio here in our region is by supporting Jefferson Public Radio in their will or trust. This is a way to make a lasting contribution without affecting your current financial security and freedom. To support Jefferson Public Radio in your will or trust, consult your attorney or personal advisor. The legal description of our organization is: “The JPR Foundation, Inc., an Oregon non-profit tax-exempt corporation located in Ashland, Oregon.” If you would like more information about making a bequest to support Jefferson Public Radio call Paul Westhelle at 541-552-6301.
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HEALTH
ALEX OLGIN
Oregon ER Doctors Win A ‘David and Goliath’ Battle Against a National Company
I
n between shifts in the emergency room, Dr. Dan McGee was in an Oregon courtroom. He was fighting for his practice — Eugene Emergency Physicians (EEP). The group of more than 40 doctors and physician assistants work at multiple emergency departments; it was being replaced by a national company. “This was big time, David and Goliath stuff,” McGee said. “You see 14 of their lawyers sitting there and you see three of ours.” Those lawyers argued that ApolloMD, the national company, violated Oregon’s corporate practice of medicine law. The 2025 law bans corporations from taking control of a medical practice’s operations and finances. The case garnered national interest because Oregon’s new law targets the loopholes large staffing firms have been employing to circumvent state corporate medicine laws.
Money for control Most states have laws requiring that doctors own medical practices, not corporations. These rules aim to put patient interests ahead of profit motives. Over the last several years, companies have used a model where a doctor technically owns the local practice, but as Erin Fuse Brown, a professor at Brown University, explains, those physician owners are often not involved in care and cede hiring, firing and other operational functions to the corporation. Fuse Brown said these arrangements are attractive to hospitals because these companies often promise more revenue and take over the responsibilities that come with running an ER. “There’s worry that these investors or these corporate management companies should not be totally controlling the operations and the clinical decisions of those who are trained to deliver patient care,” Fuse Brown said. The connection to patient care concerned Dr. Jonas Pologe, who works for Eugene Emergency Physicians, in the Eugene, Ore., area. ApolloMD offered local doctors’ jobs, but Pologe worried that if he pushed back on decisions ApolloMD made, he could lose work hours. “There’s certainly a chance that if you make enough of a stink, you think that something needs to change, they can just stop giving you shifts,” said Pologe. ApolloMD’s CEO, Dr. Yogin Patel, said the group doesn’t infringe on the way its doctors practice. He says the company is being unfairly lumped in with broader concerns over physicians’ feelings of disempowerment at the hands of corporate medical takeovers.
A closely watched experiment Fuse Brown, policy experts and independent physicians theorized that updating state corporate medicine laws could be a fix to limit the control management companies can exert over medical doctors. Oregon’s the first state to try this, and the case brought by the Eugene doctors group is the first test of that law. McGee, who leads the Eugene physicians group, says colleagues at other hospitals around the state were literally tuning in to their case. “You could hear it almost like background music on an elevator,” McGee says he was told. “At key moments, all of a sudden the nurses would break out in a cheer.” Before any ruling, the hospital system dropped its plan to work with ApolloMD and struck a deal to stick with McGee’s local group of doctors. “This is a big victory for independent physician groups over corporate medicine,” McGee said. “This is a game changer.” The American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM) supported the Eugene doctors as part of the organization’s strategy to protect independent practices. The AAEM president, Dr. Vicki Norton, said Oregon has the strongest law in the country. “This signals that that law works and we need it replicated in other states to really strengthen their corporate practice laws,” said Norton. California and Vermont have passed similar legislation to Oregon, and lawmakers in other states, including Rhode Island and New Mexico, are considering related bills. In Virginia, an independent group of ER doctors who were replaced by a large staffing firm is meeting with state legislators to try to change their laws.
Impact on Oregon physicians Back in Oregon, the open question is about how the law may impact the physician practice market. NPR reached out to a few of the largest staffing companies, Envision Healthcare, TeamHealth and USACS. All declined to answer NPR’s questions about whether this case or the new law changed their outlook on investing in Oregon practices. Of the three, only TeamHealth currently operates there. Opponents of the legislation warned lawmakers that many physician groups depend on outside investment to survive.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 39
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KRISTEN HWANG
In preparation for federal and state cuts, California hospitals have already laid off more than 3,000 workers.
Medicaid Cuts Stand to Hit Everyone (Yes, Even You). Here’s Why… Medi-Cal cuts will strain hospitals already operating at a loss. The fallout: fewer services and higher costs for the privately insured too.
W
hen Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital closed in 2007, neighboring Los Angeles hospitals struggled to keep up with the influx of new patients. They reported emergency department wait times longer than 11 hours, more trauma cases and more uninsured patients. The people who felt the strain weren’t just King-Harbor’s former patients; they were also the privately insured patients of those neighboring institutions. Researchers later concluded that King-Harbor’s closure worsened patient care throughout the region, increasing mortality rates and decreasing access. Experts warn ripple effects like these could happen more frequently as hospitals grapple with a coming spike in uninsured patients. Recent federal and state Medicaid cuts are expected to double the state’s uninsured rate, causing 2.2 million people to lose insurance by 2030. Low-income patients who rely on public insurance programs like Medicaid — Medi-Cal in California — will be hit hardest, but people with commercial insurance will feel the effects too. “The way that everybody feels it is an inability to get access to the care they need when they need it,” said Carmela Coyle, California Hospital Association president and CEO. The healthcare system is deeply intertwined, and research indicates everyone may see reduced services, lower quality and potentially higher premiums.
What happened? President Donald Trump’s tax law last year cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for low-income people, over the next decade. California officials estimate Medi-Cal could lose roughly $30 billion annually. Many low-income adults will now be subject to work requirements and shorter eligibility periods — conditions that kick mostly eligible people off public assistance programs due to bureaucratic errors, research shows. California lawmakers also cut state-funded benefits for undocumented immigrants and refugees. Bukola Olusanya, a street medicine provider with St. John’s Community Health in South Los Angeles, said most unhoused people will be unable to comply with the work requirement even if they have a qualifying exemption such as a disability, leading to massive coverage losses.
“We’re talking about people that do not have access to a cell phone,” Olusanya said. “They don’t have access to internet. They don’t have access to a printer or paper or anything for them to complete the eligibility process.” Collectively, the cuts will erase much of the progress California made expanding insurance over the past decade, said Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA, a healthcare consumer advocacy group. “From a pure dollars-and-cents point of view, it is the biggest rollback in coverage in history,” Wright said.
Hospitals in the crosshairs Hospitals are where the ripple starts. By law, they cannot refuse anybody who comes into the emergency room, so when more patients become uninsured, somebody has to absorb the cost. In California, the hospital association expects uncompensated care to jump from $2 billion to $4 billion each year as a result. That’s worrisome, Coyle said, with more than half of the state’s hospitals already operating at a loss. When hospitals tighten their belts, they reduce services for everyone regardless of insurance status: cutting wages or laying off staff, and reducing or eliminating expensive services like labor and delivery, or shuttering the emergency department rather than taking in more uninsured patients. Quality could decline. Financially fragile hospitals are likely to close altogether. “If you don’t have as many (paying) patients, your income as an organization goes down,” said Nadereh Pourat, associate director at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. “These are nonprofit institutions, so all of that income goes toward delivery of care.” The Affordable Care Act had previously created a “lifeline” for hospitals, Coyle said, by expanding Medi-Cal to millions of previously uninsured low-income Californians. It also created an insurance marketplace for middle-income residents. In the decade before that expansion, 26 California hospitals closed and an additional 22 shuttered their emergency departments. In preparation for federal and state cuts, California hospitals have already laid off more than 3,000 workers.
Covered California losses Nearly 2 million privately insured Californians have already experienced the repercussions of some of these cuts. Congress also refused last year to renew subsidies — about $3 billion in California — for middle-income families who buy SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 41
Support JPR Today Contribute at least $60 annually, or become a sustainer with ongoing monthly contributions of any amount. Do your part to support public radio in southern Oregon and northern California and you'll also receive an annual subscription to the Jefferson Journal.
For over two decades, The Folk Show has featured an eclectic blend of all things folk and some things not-so-folk. Singer/songwriters, Americana, bluegrass, Celtic, traditional, old-time, and some surprises are featured each week. Hosted by Frances Oyung, Cindy DeGroft, Eric Houghton, Noah Lindsday.
Sundays 6pm–9pm JPR’s Rhythm & News Service www.ijpr.org
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JPR News Focus: Health Continued from page 41
insurance through Covered California, the state’s Affordable Care Act marketplace. Without them, prices rose sharply in January, and many people opted for lower-value plans. About 140,000 people have already dropped out of Covered California since the beginning of the year. UC Berkeley and UCLA project that number will grow by another 176,000. Officials have also announced premiums will rise next year by nearly 10%. When costs increase dramatically, healthy people start to drop coverage, said Charles Bacchi, president and CEO of the California Association of Health Plans. “They’re the first ones to drop coverage because they start to question the financial bargain of the whole thing. Why am I buying this? The cost keeps going up and I don’t use it that much, so I drop it,” Bacchi said. That drives prices up further because only sick people with expensive needs are left behind. Without relatively healthy people subsidizing the cost of care, insurers can’t afford to hold the line on premiums.
Will your premium actually go up? For everyone who gets insurance through an employer, economists and insurers disagree on how much of this hits pre-
miums directly. Studies show that hospitals absorb about 80% of increased costs when there are high numbers of uninsured patients. “I don’t know if privately insured patients really get hurt, and I think that’s partly why Americans seem to be comfortable with the fairly inequitable arrangement we have,” said Tal Gross, a health economist at Boston University. His reasoning: Hospitals should already be charging insurers close to the maximum possible, so there’s little room left to pass costs along. In some cases, more uncompensated care can even push hospitals to lower prices for private insurers to attract more paying customers. Bacchi, of the health plan association, said “that’s just BS.” In many parts of California, there’s very little competition among hospitals, he said, letting them demand whatever price they want from insurers who are legally required to keep them in-network. “Any place that does burns, transplants, any of those highcost services, has absolute control,” Bacchi said. Split the difference, and the concrete estimates on the table are roughly a 1% to 2% premium increase — about $500 a year for the average family — from the federal cuts alone, said Kenneth Thorpe, a health policy professor at Emory University. Separately, and more directly, state lawmakers also passed a new tax on health plans to help backfill Medi-Cal’s federal losses that commercial insurers say will cost people an additional $100 per person each year. “That all hurts compared to what’s happening with wages, which is pretty stagnant,” Thorpe said. “It’s a bad time right now.”
The bottom line Wright with Families USA said coverage loss is painful to the individual and has rolling effects in communities. The same dynamic that turned King-Harbor’s closure into a regional crisis in 2007 — sharp increases in uninsured patients and overwhelmed emergency rooms — may be at play again. Only this time for many more hospitals around the state. “It means people live sicker, die younger and are one medical emergency away from financial ruin,” he said. Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.
Kristen Hwang is a health reporter for CalMatters, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics, and a JPR news partner. She covers health care access, abortion and reproductive health, workforce issues, drug costs and emerging public health matters.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 43
SUPERABUNDANT
Mole is a labor of love, but here it transforms humble pumpkin and tortillas into a luxurious vegetarian main dish.
HEATHER ARNDT ANDERSON / OPB
HEATHER ARNDT ANDERSON
Pumpkin Enmoladas (Enchiladas in Mole Sauce) S
ome dishes are a labor of love, requiring dozens of ingredients, many detailed steps and long cooking times. Maybe this is why grandma-style food rules — it’s not just homey and satisfying, but perhaps more importantly, someone else has done all the hard work. Nothing is as delicious as a Toulouse-style cassoulet (zhuzhed-up pork and beans, basically) because it takes three days to prepare. Mole is another complicated dish that’s worth the trouble. The pre-Hispanic sauce combines an array of dried chiles, fruits, spices, chocolate and various seeds and nuts to make a velvety backdrop to everything from roasted turkey to plain rice. Mole poblano, the OG and best-known mole, originated in Puebla, Mexico, though Oaxaca boasts seven traditional styles of mole (there are more than 50 types in all). I love roasted winter squash with spicy flavors, so here I’ve paired the sauce with roasted pumpkin rolled in fried homemade tortillas (frying them first helps them hold up in the sauce). 44 | JEFFERSON JOURNAL SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026
I’ve seen one mole recipe that calls for animal crackers, some that include peanut butter and another that uses white chocolate chips. Every cook has their own secrets and tricks, and I’m no different — I add a crumbled ginger snap and an hoja santa leaf for extra panache. Adding your own touch is what makes mole so magical. OK, yes, the black and orange of the sauce and pumpkin are a bit on the nose for October, but I’m kind of into it. Best of all, it gives me an excuse to focus energy on the process of toasting, grinding and slowly simmering a ton of wonderful ingredients together like a legit bruja (I swear the mole tastes better cooked in a tiny cauldron). To me, cooking in this way, imbuing each addition to the pot with intention, is a bit like casting a spell. Makes 12 enmoladas Note: This recipe makes about 4 cups of mole, so you’ll have lots left over. It freezes wonderfully.
HEATHER ARNDT ANDERSON / OPB
Ingredients Mole 4 ancho chiles, stems and seeds removed 4 guajillo chiles, stems and seeds removed 1 teaspoon cumin seed 1 cinnamon stick (3-4 inches long), broken into pieces 2 cloves (or a fat pinch of clove powder) 1 bay leaf 1 teaspoon Mexican oregano ¼ cup raisins 4 dried figs ¼ cup chopped almonds, hazelnuts or peanuts 2 tablespoons sesame seeds ¼ medium-sized onion 1 clove garlic 1 plum tomato, halved lengthwise 1 small (4-inches across) hoja santa leaf (or ¼ teaspoon aniseseed) 3 tablespoons piloncillo/panela (unrefined cane sugar) or packed brown sugar 2 tablespoons semisweet chocolate chips 1 tablespoon masa harina (or 1 corn tortilla torn to pieces) 1 ginger snap or molasses cookie, crumbled 3 cups chicken or vegetable broth Salt and pepper Taquitos 1 small pumpkin or other winter squash (~2-3 pounds) Cooking oil 1 small onion, thinly sliced ½ teaspoon ground cumin ½ teaspoon Mexican oregano ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon Salt and pepper ¼ cup chopped cilantro plus more for garnish 12 corn tortillas Crumbled cotija cheese, crema and toasted unsalted pepitas (hulled pumpkin seeds) for serving
3. Pour the mole back into the saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer until the sauce has thickened and darkened a bit, stirring occasionally and adding additional broth or water as needed to keep the mole a spoonable consistency, about an hour. You shouldn’t be able to taste raw onion or garlic and the spices will have mellowed. Taste and adjust salt and sugar as needed (I use homemade chicken stock that’s unsalted, so I have to add quite a bit of seasoning at the end). 4. While the mole is cooking, preheat the oven to 425 F and drizzle a baking dish with oil. Cut the pumpkin or squash in half, scoop out the seeds and sprinkle the cut side with a few pinches of salt. Roast, cut side down, until the tip of a knife easily pierces the squash’s flesh, about 40-50 minutes. 5. In the last 15 minutes or so of the squash roasting, heat a medium-sized skillet over medium heat and drizzle on a little oil. Cook the sliced onions, stirring occasionally, until they’re softened and translucent, about 4-5 minutes. 6. When the squash is cool enough to handle, scoop the flesh into a bowl and roughly mash-cut it with a spoon — you want some chunky texture but it should be spoonable. Fold in the cooked onions, spices and cilantro until evenly mixed. 7. Reduce the oven temperature to 350 F and add a few large spoonfuls of the cooked mole to the baking dish (same one you used for the squash), spreading the sauce to coat the bottom of the dish evenly. 8. Using the same pan as you used for the onions, heat up another drizzle of oil and lightly fry the tortillas on both sides, one at a time, until softened and pliable, about 5 seconds per side. Add more oil as needed to keep the tortillas well lubricated, but shake off the excess oil as you remove the tortillas from the pan. 9. Swab a tortilla through the mole to coat on both sides, then lay the sauced tortilla in the baking dish. Spoon about ¼ cup of the pumpkin mixture into the tortilla, then roll it up into a slim taquito. Slide it over to the edge of the pan and repeat with the remaining tortillas. 10. Spoon more mole over the top of the enmoladas and return the pan to the oven until the centers of the enmoladas are heated through, about 10-15 minutes. (Enmoladas are usually sauced and served as they’re rolled, but these taste better when fully warmed.) 11. Serve with cotija, a dribble of crema and a sprinkle of pepitas.
Instructions 1. Make the mole: In a dry saucepan over medium heat, toast the dried chiles, spices, dried fruit, nuts and sesame seeds, stirring occasionally, until pliable and fragrant, about 2-3 minutes. Transfer to the bowl of a blender (or a molcajete or mortar and pestle). 2. In the same dry pot, char the onion, garlic and tomato until blackened and lightly blistered on all sides. Add them to the blender. Drag the hoja santa leaf across the hot pan a few times to warm it up and then add it to the blender with the sugar, chocolate chips, masa (or tortilla) and cookie. Pour in the broth and blend on high speed until completely smooth, about 3-4 minutes.
OPB’s “Superabundant” explores the stories behind the foods of the Pacific Northwest with videos, articles and a weekly newsletter. Every week, Heather Arndt Anderson, a Portland-based culinary historian, food writer and ecologist, highlights different aspects of the region’s food ecosystem. Her work comes to JPR through the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 45
POETRY DAPHNE CLIFTON AND SUSANNE PETERMANN
Orange Sky and Squash Blossoms
Night Shift
At night he’s an owl whisperer, sensing when the wind is about to change. She explores the spaciousness of dreams— the distance traveled on one breath.
While the owls sang during the night I was carried by dreams to be among people both foreign and familiar, timeless and alive.
That fall the foothills are on fire, as an East wind roars into thirsty West Sylvan forests. When they hear an explosion at midnight, helicopters hovering,
A village solving problems, letting the children run circles around us as we add to the house. Almost visible threads course between us
they ask each other, Is this Level 2? Packing a to-go kit, they wait. And wait. In the morning a blown transformer in their neighborhood makes the news, but their forest is safe, for now.
as we work, breathe each other, sun refracting into rainbows. Suddenly the stairway goes somewhere we might be able to go.
Outside, satiny-soft air pillows an orange sky, aromas of burnt tinder mix with scents of moss and mint, Early Girl tomatoes promise salsa, and squash blossoms shine like giant hibiscus suns.
While owls sang in the night I may have looked like I was sleeping but my cat knows the truth
Even crows keep silent as chickadees step into their birdbath to rinse flight feathers that sieved that thick smoky air. And Sun’s wavy rays touch all that comes between, alighting upon lacy lady fern, nuthatches, mossy fir trees. Too soon it’s night again, when the moon’s shadow searches for solitude. He’s the owl whisperer. She follows him. — Daphne Clifton
Writers may submit original poetry for publication in Jefferson Journal. Email 3–6 poems, a brief bio, and your mailing address in one attachment to jeffmopoetry@gmail.com, or send 3–6 poems, a brief bio, and a selfaddressed, stamped envelope to: Amy Miller, Poetry Editor Jefferson Journal 1250 Siskiyou Blvd. Ashland, OR 97520 Please allow eight weeks for reply. 46 | JEFFERSON JOURNAL SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026
I was elsewhere, working to make of myself more than I was before. — Susanne Petermann
Daphne Clifton lives with her husband in Portland, Oregon, where bird-watching, making art, gardening, writing poetry, and music-making with friends feels just right. Raised in California’s San Joaquin Valley, and moving to Oregon to attend grad school, she’s made many journeys across the state. Her poems have appeared in Artstra—Poetry Moves, Ekphrastic Review, Paper Mountains, Poeming Pigeon, Pointed Circle, Rain, The Avocet, and Voices from the Mill Pond. Susanne Petermann is a Southern Oregon poet who has published her poems in various reviews. A graduate of Macalester College, she spent a decade traveling and studying language in Europe and teaching English in Morocco. A longtime translator of Rilke’s French poetry, she published her book When I Go, Selected French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke through Cascade Books (Eugene, OR) in 2017. She supports her passion for translating Rilke with her other passion: helping people organize their homes and personal belongings, an occupation that she believes promotes world peace.
2026–2027 SEASON Fry Street Quartet with Toby Appel, Viola & Monica Ohuchi, Piano October 2
Balourdet Quartet with Adam W Sadberry, Flute October 17
Arcis Saxophone Quartett November 6
Jupiter Quartet November 21
Aris Quartet January 30
Leticia Moreno & Friends February 12
I Fagiolini
February 27
Pavel Haas Quartet March 12
Curtis on Tour: Canellakis Sextet April 2
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center April 30
Neave Piano Trio May 15
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