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March/April 2025 Pineros In Southern Oregon: How Jackson County Became a Center for Guest Workers in Forestry

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JEFFERSON JOURNAL (ISSN 1079-2015), March/April

2025, volume 49 number 2. Published

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FEATURED

In Southern Oregon: How Jackson County Became a Center for Guest Workers in Forestry

By Justin Higginbottom

Non-logging forestry work, like planting trees or fuels reduction, is big business in Oregon. But if you’re picturing those doing this work as classic lumberjacks — plaid shirts, big beards, white guys — think again. Foreign guest workers make up much of this labor. And Jackson County is a national center for the industry.

8 A Biomass Plant Stands Amidst a Climate Debate on the Northern California Coast

By Roman Battaglia

The tiny town of Scotia, California on the state’s remote Redwood Coast was built up entirely around a large sawmill. An attached biomass plant that burns the wood waste for electricity stands in the middle of a climate debate in the region.

CREDIT:

APPLEGATE VALLEY OREGON

“Aside from the excellent Applegate wines I’ve had from producer, Vineyard, made such an impression on me over the last few years that I from the July the attitude, which are

“But Aside from the excellent Applegate wines I’ve had from Willamette producers, the wines of one producer, Troon Vineyard, made such an impression on me over the last few years that I drove seven hours from the Mendocino Coast in July to pay a visit to Applegate Valley, While I admire the way Troon farms and its empirical attitude, the proof is in the wines, which are invariably fresh, lively and expressive,”

—Eric Asimov The New York Times

—Eric Asimov, The New York Times

PAUL WESTHELLE

A New Test TUNED IN

In recent weeks the Trump administration has taken several steps that cast an ominous shadow on public broadcasting and may forebode future actions that attempt to weaken the role public radio and television stations play in communities across the country.

The first step was the announcement by Brendan Carr, the new head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), that he was ordering an investigation of NPR and PBS to determine if they, and their member stations, were breaking FCC rules by airing commercials as opposed to underwriting announcements. Public broadcasting stations are prohibited from running commercials, but can, and actually must, identify for-profit entities that provide funding to support their programming. These announcements can also describe the products and/or services underwriters provide, but must do so in a way that does not include qualitative language, calls to action, or inducements to buy a company’s products (things like sales and price information). In what may become one of the most boring government investigations of all time, I actually look forward to the debate over if words like “fresh” are descriptive or qualitative.

But in addition to announcing the investigation, Carr’s letter to NPR and PBS contained statements that many believe signal the real purpose of the FCC. Near the end of the letter, Carr wrote, “For your awareness, I will be providing a copy of this letter to relevant Members of Congress because I believe this FCC investigation may prove relevant to an ongoing legislative debate. In particular, Congress is actively considering whether to stop requiring taxpayers to subsidize NPR and PBS programming. For my own part, I do not see a reason why Congress should continue sending taxpayer dollars to NPR and PBS given the changes in the media marketplace since the passage of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.”

Reasonable people could debate how the “media marketplace” has changed since 1967. In my view, the fact that public broadcasting stations like JPR have stepped up to hire more local journalists in response to the dramatic decline of local newspapers across the country, creates a strong case for increased funding. The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 was the legislation that created our nation’s public broadcasting system, establishing standards and goals for the system and providing baseline federal funding for qualifying stations.

Carr’s record on public broadcasting is not a mystery. He wrote the chapter on the FCC in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 report, which many believe is being used by the Trump administration as a blueprint for strategy and policy. In that report, Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at Heritage, calls for the elimination of funding for public broadcasting, writing: “… the next conservative President must finally get this done and do it despite opposition from congressional members of his own party if necessary. To stop public funding is good policy and good politics.”

Other recent steps taken by the Trump administration to threaten and decrease the influence of public broadcasting include the activities of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by Elon Musk, and the Defense Department’s eviction of NPR from its workstation at the Pentagon. In early February, both NPR and PBS received letters from Marjorie Taylor Greene, Chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, announcing that the subcommittee is “planning a hearing on federally funded radio and television, including its systematically biased content.” And, under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon dislodged eight news organizations from their work stations at the Pentagon, including NPR, the New York Times, NBC News, CNN, the Washington Post, Politico, the Hill, and the War Zone. According to NPR, seven conservative outlets took their spots, including Breitbart radio, One America News Network, Newsmax and the New York Post.

Since 1967 when the Public Broadcasting Act became law, there have been healthy debates about the value of public broadcasting in American society. And, every time these debates have taken place a bi-partisan consensus has developed in Congress based on the public’s overwhelming bi-partisan support in poll after poll for the service provided by both public radio and television stations across the country. But, what’s happening today is different. The Trump administration, which ironically has made deregulation

Continued on page 32

Pineros In Southern Oregon: How Jackson County Became a Center for Guest Workers in Forestry

By JUSTIN HIGGINBOTTOM

On a Saturday afternoon, the parking lot of The Laundry Center in Medford sees a steady stream of white vans, or “crummies,” come and go. Inside those vehicles are forestry workers, like Jose Luis Arredondo. He’s using his precious spare time to wash clothes before setting out to another work site to plant trees, clear understory or light prescribed burns to reduce the risk from wildfires.

Arredondo is from Mexico and has an H-2B visa, commonly called a guest-worker visa. Those are used by employers to hire seasonal, non-agricultural labor. Forestry workers like him, from Latin America, are also commonly called pineros. They make up much of this kind of labor in the country.

Last year, the federal government approved nearly 13,000 H-2B visas for this work, according to data from the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services and the American Immigration Council. Jackson County, where the contractor that hired Arredondo is based, accounted for over a quarter of those — by far the highest in the country. Since 2018, that number has grown by over 40%.

But Oregon’s forestry labor didn’t always look like this, according to Brinda Sarathy, a professor at University of Washington Bothell and author of the book Pineros, which looks at the evolution of the industry.

“There’s this transition that you see in the early to

mid 1980s of largely white contractors starting to hire more Latino workers,” says Sarathy. “Most of those workers would have been, at that time, probably undocumented.”

She says that migrant labor transitioned from picking crops, like pears in the Rogue Valley, to forestry. They were mostly planting trees at first, competing with the worker cooperative Hoedads. Contractors hired migrants because they would accept lower wages, she says, and work for longer hours.

“They’re seen as compliant. Many of them don’t complain about injuries on the job. There’s no workers [compensation] worries, unfortunately,” she says.

Like she mentions, most of the workers from Latin America were undocumented early on. But that changed in 1986 when President Ronald Reagan passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which gave citizenship to many of the migrants living in the country illegally. As citizens, pineros could start their own contracting businesses, vying for federal contracts.

She says the first Latino contractors appeared around 1988. By 2005, they dominated much of the industry in Oregon.

According to federal databases, in the last seven years the government has certified H-2B visas for over 50 Jackson County- based forestry contractors (75 businesses were identified statewide). For approval, employers must show those jobs cannot be filled by U.S. citizens.

Nearly 80% of those contractors are classified as Hispanic-owned by the federal government. Rogue Valley businesses have brought in over $879 million dollars in federal contracts according to public data.

But labor advocates have criticized the industry, saying contractors can more easily exploit foreign workers.

Recently, a former pinero sued three Rogue Valley businesses for $42 million after an accident. The worker was using a chainsaw, without proper training according to the lawsuit, when a tree limb injured his spinal cord.

“This labor broker essentially failed the worker,” says Mayra Ledesma, an attorney in that case. “Ultimately, I think the government definitely has a hand to play in that.”

“ They’re seen as compliant. Many of them don’t complain about injuries on the job. There’s no workers [compensation] worries, unfortunately.”

Brinda Sarathy, author of the book Pineros

Ledesma says safety regulations can go unenforced and contractors can skimp on training and safety equipment. According to labor advocates, workers are often apprehensive about reporting their bosses for fear of retaliation.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, forest and conservation workers have one of the highest rates of injuries.

Since 2020, the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Division has inspected only four labor-intensive forestry contractors in the state. Three of those inspections occurred after a complaint. A spokesperson with the division estimates they have at some point over the years inspected 31 out of 75 contractors statewide.

“Oregon OSHA maintains the third-highest inspection presence in the United States,” according to a statement. “Oregon OSHA does not have unlimited resources to inspect every workplace, so we focus on high-hazard industries, including forestry.”

Over 9% of Oregon forestry contractors that use foreign guest workers have had wage complaints filed against them in the last ten years according to public records from the Oregon Bureau of Labor & Industries.

“It’s not just the H -2B program. It’s a systemic, underclass industry that really came out of the boom-and-bust of logging,” says Marko Bey, founder of the non-profit Lomakatsi Restoration Project which partners with both federal agencies and contractors for forest restoration.

“Service contractors have always been a lowball, cutthroat-type industry, just because of the way it’s structured,” says Bey.

Federal contracts for forestry work are awarded based on “best value” determinations, meaning bids are judged on contractor’s experience and benefits to the local community rather than only cost. But in practice, according to Bey, contracts often still go the lowest bidder.

“Service providers, generally, in what we would call the lowbid kind of universe, will often have to cut corners,” says Bey. “Sometimes those corners unfortunately become the well-being and the safety of the workers on the ground.”

Back in Medford, while Jose Luis Arredondo waits for his clothes to dry, he says he doesn’t have any complaints at his job. Although, he says, the tiring work often done in extreme temperatures isn’t for everyone. But he likes it. And he says it helps him support his mother back in Mexico. In April, Arredondo will return home where he plans to renew his visa.

So far, President Trump’s administration hasn’t targeted the H-2B visa program. Last time he was in office, he actually increased the number of those visas available.

His businesses rely on those workers too.

This is part of a series on the workers performing labor-intensive forestry. That’s all the work in this country’s forests that isn’t logging — vital services like reforestation and fuel treatment. In our previous story (50 Years in the Woods: How Oregon’s Forestry Workforce has Evolved), we looked at a large worker cooperative in Oregon that did much of the region’s tree planting 50 years ago. These stories and more are available at www.ijpr.org

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).

Undated photo of a crew with the worker cooperative Hoedads Inc. resting between planting trees.

A Biomass Plant Stands Amidst a Climate Debate on the Northern California Coast

By ROMAN BATTAGLIA

The biomass plant in Scotia, California on December 10, 2024.

CREDIT: ROMAN BATTAGLIA / JPR NEWS

The low thrum of this biomass plant permeates the town of Scotia, which used to be a company town owned by the Pacific Lumber Company. Next to the plant sits a massive pile of wood chips, sawdust and other waste from the nearby sawmill. The pile is as tall as some of the houses with rear windows facing the plant. This mountain of wood waste is burned to generate electricity.

“At this point, we’re getting about 20% of our total electricity needs from that one local biomass plant in Scotia,” said Richard Engel, the Director of Power Resources at the Redwood Coast Energy Authority, or RCEA.

This community-owned electric provider in the region buys the power produced by the biomass plant. Looking at this industrial behemoth belching out smoke, the first words that come to mind likely aren’t “renewable energy.” But according to the state of California, it is.

“Biomass is viewed differently because you’re taking carbon that, in the absence of the power plants, would still go into the atmosphere as the wood rots or breaks down or through other processes,” said Engel.

As long as you’re growing as many new trees as you’re cutting down for this biomass plant, it’s technically carbon-neutral.

But, the way these plants work, and their role in the climate crisis, is why activists like Wendy Ring want to see this plant shut down.

“Even if, over the long term, burning biomass is carbon neutral, it’s not climate neutral, it’s not warming neutral,” Ring said. “Because it starts warming as soon as it hits the atmosphere. And then that is starting feedback loops of other things like melting of permafrost that emits methane and promoting wildfires. So we have to get out of this spiral.”

Ring said this 40-year-old plant is also inefficient compared to newer biomass plants.

Ring worked as a doctor in Humboldt County and ran a mobile clinic for 20 years. After learning more about the current threat of climate change, she focused her full energy to advocate for action locally.

Ring said stopping this biomass plant is the easiest way for the county to reduce its emissions significantly. She said transportation is the biggest source of greenhouse gas for the county, but, “We do not have great public transit system, the distances are large. But the biomass plant emits around 300,000 metric tons of CO2 a year, which is about 75% of all the emissions from Humboldt County’s passenger vehicles.”

Representatives for the Humboldt Sawmill Company, the plant’s current owner, declined to be interviewed for this story. Instead, they pointed to Julee Malinowski-Ball, a state energy lobbyist for the biomass industry.

“Even if, over the long term, burning biomass is carbon neutral, it’s not climate neutral, it’s not warming neutral.”

Malinowski-Bal said biomass is an important resource because it provides a steady, consistent supply of energy, unlike other renewable sources like solar or wind.

“Redwood Coast Energy Authority needs base load resources because we just can’t build a grid on peaking intermittent resources alone, and we don’t want to back that up with natural gas base load,” she said. “We want to back it up with renewables”

The future of this biomass plant will come to light in the next six years. The contract to buy power from this plant by the Redwood Coast Energy Authority ends in 2031. The RCEA’s Richard Engel said they’ve incorporated feedback from the community into future plans for power procurement.

“One of our strategies that we’re operating under is to plan for a transition away, over the long term, from reliance on this combustion of biomass,” he said.

Despite the plan to move away from biomass power, Engel said the agency hasn’t committed to

Local climate activist Wendy Ring at her home near Arcata, California on December 10, 2024.

Humboldt climate activist Wendy Ring

www.landconserve.org

Photo: Frank Lospalluto

getting rid of biomass in 2031, when their contract is up. Activists like Tom Wheeler, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center, a Humboldt-based conservation nonprofit, want RCEA to phase out the power source by then.

“We want the Redwood Coast Energy Authority to use this purchasing power in such a way to ensure that we have clean air in our region,” he said.

By drawing a line in the sand now and saying that the contract with the biomass plant won’t be renewed, Wheeler said that gives the sawmill company time to figure out what to do with the plant.

Biomass industry lobbyist Julee Malinowski-Ball said they’d likely be able to find another buyer for the energy if RCEA cuts ties. That’s why Engel said having a contract with the plant gives RCEA some leverage in how it’s operated.

“We set up a memorandum of understanding with them, starting a few years ago, in response to these community concerns that gives us more transparency into their operations, their emissions, what feedstocks they’re using, things like that,” he said.

When presented with that argument, activist Wendy Ring scoffed, saying that RCEA chooses to ignore environmental violations by the plant. It received at least 15 violations in 2023.

Engel said they regularly keep in touch with the local North Coast Unified Air Quality Management District about any violations the plant faces.

“Is this driving 58 in the 55 zone, or is this a flagrant violation that really needs to be addressed,” Engel said.

According to the air quality district, the plant hasn’t been a bad actor in the region, and those violations aren’t enough to warrant terminating the contract.

Ring reached out to the Environmental Protection Agency last year about the plant and some permitting issues she found related to its permit the EPA requires.

Through that, she said she learned that the air quality district hasn’t officially renewed the permit for the plant for over 20 years. It’s supposed to be renewed every five years.

“All they were doing was extending the expiration date, sort of arbitrarily, without going through the process of a permit renewal,” said Ring.

She said that’s important because the permit renewal process is open to public comment. It’s also a chance to insert new, sometimes more stringent regulations that have come out since then.

Brian Wilson, the air pollution control officer for the district, acknowledged the record is hazy about what happened to the permit between the first time it was renewed in 2003 and the present. But, he said the permit is modified frequently when changes are made to the biomass plant, and that matters.

“So the public, in all those cases, have had numerous public comment periods or the EPA has reviewed the permit,” Wilson said. “So it’s not a dormant permit that was issued 2003 and looks the same and hasn’t been touched since then.”

He said during those modifications they try to update the permit with new regulations from the EPA.

“Biomass is viewed differently because you’re taking carbon that, in the absence of the power plants, would still go into the atmosphere as the wood rots or breaks down or through other processes.”

Richard Engle, Director of Power Resources at the Redwood Coast Energy Authority

Wilson said he wants the public to trust the process, and moving forward, they plan on doing the permit renewal separately from other actions to ensure that it’s a cleaner process.

The plant will soon be conducting a health risk assessment, expected to be released this year. That’s something Ring wanted to see the plant do. The assessment will look at the possible exposures to chemicals the community faces, and the health risks associated with that.

That will provide more information to the public and to the air quality control district as they begin the process to renew the permit for the biomass plant this year.

Roman Battaglia is a regional reporter for Jefferson Public Radio. After graduating from Oregon State University, 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.

The large pile of wood chips leftover from the sawmill that’s used to fuel the biomass plant, December 10, 2024.

CREDIT: ROMAN BATTAGLIA / JPR NEWS

DOWN TO EARTH

ALEJANDRO FIGUEROA

Oregon Legislators Want to Understand Harms of ‘Forever Chemicals’ from Treated Sewage on Farms

Fertilizer made from treated sewage water is popular with some Oregon farmers. But growing evidence shows toxic PFAS in treated water may be contaminating fields and animals.

Fertilizers made from municipal wastewater, known as biosolids, are popular with some farmers in Oregon. They are nutrient-rich and cost-effective alternatives to synthetic fertilizers. But growing evidence shows toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS may be contaminating fields and animals. And Oregon environmental advocates have questions about how these chemicals are spreading on farms and the soil.

ville, who’s sponsoring House Bill 2947 to study PFAS in agricultural fields, said at a House hearing on Feb. 10.

PFAS are man-made chemicals that don’t break down, and most wastewater facilities can’t treat them. High exposure to the chemicals has been linked to several illnesses, including cancer, decreased immune response and liver disease.

While DEQ and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency require treatment facilities to test biosolids for pathogens and heavy me tals to protect human health and the environment, there are no standards for PFAS.

It’s why researchers and industry groups are again asking Oregon legislators for money to study how PFAS chemicals from wastewater biosolids spread through Oregon’s agricultural soils.

“Right now, we just don’t know Oregon’s story. PFAS are very hard, if not impossible, to get rid of in air, soil, water and animals, including humans,” Rep. Courtney Neron, D-Wilson-

The chemicals can be found virtually everywhere and are in many products people use, such as in cookware, clothing and cleaning supplies. And they can be found in biosolids, a byproduct from municipal wastewater treatment plants.

Officials stress wastewater facilities are not the direct source of the chemicals in biosolids. Usually, they come from human waste that is flushed down the toilet. About 95% of biosolids generated in Oregon are applied on farm fields that grow hay, wheat or pasture, according to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. That agency is charged with regulating biosolid fertilizer in the state.

Continued on next page

A wheat field, east of Salem, OR.

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Officials maintain that levels of PFAS in Oregon wastewater biosolids are low. But while DEQ and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency require treatment facilities to test biosolids for pathogens and heavy metals to protect human health and the environment, there are no standards for PFAS.

It’s driving some states to take a closer look at biosolids. In the Midwest, some states are beginning to test for PFAS in municipal water systems, watersheds and sites with suspected contamination and at least one state, Maine, has limited the use of biosolids on farms all together.

As other states take regulatory action, Oregon advocates say the state must do its part too, though they warn legislators shouldn’t make any decisions without first understanding the problem.

“Oregon must do the work necessary to ensure that PFAS is not contaminating products consumed by people or by animals, or our soil and water,” said Karen Lewotsky, the water program director at the Oregon Environmental Council. “The PFAS levels in our biosolids are far below those like Maine and Michigan. However, we have to clearly understand our situation so that Oregon leaders, municipal wastewater utilities and farmers can make sound, geographically-specific decisions about the future of those practices in our states.”

This is at least the third attempt at funding such a study. A similar bill was proposed during the 2024 legislative session, though it stalled in a House committee. If this current bill is approved by legislators, it will direct Oregon State University researchers to sample select agricultural fields and biosolids from wastewater facilities to find out whether PFAS chemicals are in agricultural soils, and to what extent to help inform mitigation efforts.

“To me this is a win-win in order for our agriculture community to understand what they’re putting on their fields so that we can correct any issues if they occur,” said Mark Owens, R-Crane, co-chair of the House agriculture committee.

The bill does not indicate how much the study will cost, though officials estimate it to be around $800,000. The bill also requires researchers to submit a final report to the House agriculture committee by summer of 2028.

Alejandro Figueroa is a reporter for Oregon Public Broadcasting, a JPR news partner. Alejandro is a graduate of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. His reporting comes to JPR through the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

JPR NEWS FOCUS ECONOMY

JAKE THOMAS

“I don’t want anyone else to experience what I’m going through: The pain of having a family member go through a medical crisis and dealing with the astronomical costs. It’s as overwhelming as it gets.”

—Toni Burton, Clackamas County resident

Bill Would Shield Oregonians’ Credit Scores from Medical Debt

Supporters say opaque health care billing practices can destroy lives when mixed with credit bureaus, the ‘gatekeeper’ of our economy

Toni Burton has health insurance and a job, but after her daughter received residential care for severe depression and anxiety, she fell behind on monthly payments on her debt and collectors garnished her bank account.

Her credit was in tatters, with loans out of reach.

Burton is among the 30% of Oregonians who have incurred medical debt in the last two years, according to one survey More than 100 million Americans are estimated to have unpaid health care bills, with credit ratings that often make it harder to get jobs, housing and loans.

Oregon lawmakers are considering whether to join other states and a federal agency that have restricted medical debt from appearing on credit scores. Backers say medical debt is not an accurate measure of creditworthiness and keeps people mired in economic instability.

“I don’t want anyone else to experience what I’m going through: The pain of having a family member go through a medical crisis and dealing with the astronomical costs,” Burton, a Clackamas County resident, told the Oregon Senate Labor and Business Committee Thursday. “It’s as overwhelming as it gets.”

But critics say the way Oregon’s bill is written would allow patients to dodge paying debts and increase costs for other consumers.

Backers say medical debt is different than other debt

Colorado, California and New York have banned medical debt from being used in patient’s credit scores. In the final days of the Biden administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau adopted regulations banning the practice nationwide. The regulation is being challenged in court. But bureau officials have encouraged states, including Oregon , to enact similar laws.

Senate Bill 605 would prohibit Oregon health care providers from reporting patients medical debt to a credit bureau or consumer reporting agency.

State Sen. Wlnsvey Campos, an Aloha Democrat and cochief sponsor of the bill, told the committee that the measure

was about economic justice. Credit bureaus function as “gatekeepers to our economy,” she said, and people of color are more likely to have medical debt.

The bill is backed by a relatively new group called Oregon Consumer Justice. Its policy director, Chris Coughlin, told The Lund Report that medical debt is complicated by the murkiness of the U.S. health care system.

She said that patients often do not immediately have a clear understanding of how much they owe for care as they sort through letters from their insurers labeled “this is not a bill.”

Medical bills are often inaccurate and patients dispute charges as inflated, she said. But those unpaid bills appear on credit reports or are referred to collection agencies before patients can make sense of what their insurance covers.

Burton told lawmakers she made monthly payments of $400 on her debt but fell behind after her son died in 2019 and money became tight during the pandemic. Eventually she was sued by a debt collector who garnished her bank account.

“I’m working to dig out of this hole,” she said. “But my options for staying afloat and covering my bills are limited since my credit score is so low. And it just keeps getting worse by the month because they keep raising it with interest.”

A view of the Oregon State Capitol in November 2024.

JPR News Focus: Economy

Continued from previous page

Opponents say bill is unclear and will have downsides

The bill would redefine the state’s legal definition of medical debt to exclude the amount a person owes to their credit card or company to a bank they used to pay for medical care.

“It contradicts the plain meaning of the definition of medical debt,” David Reid, general counsel for the debt collectors trade group Receivables Management Association International, told the committee.

A consumer could use a home equity line of credit to pay for their child’s braces to avoid it showing up on a credit report, he said.

Fawn Barrie, a lobbyist for the Oregon Liability Reform Coalition, told the committee that the bill’s definitions of contracts and medical providers were confusing and could open them up to penalties or litigation.

The bill would also ban debt patients incur on health care credit cards from being reported to credit report agencies.

State Sen. Cedric Hayden, a Fall Creek Republican and member of the committee, said this could have unintended

consequences and providers who use health care credit cards would have to increase interest or fees to make them viable.

A recent survey by the Oregon Values and Beliefs Center found that hospitals were the source of 41% of Oregonians medical debt.

Troy Duker, lobbyist for the Association of Oregon Hospitals, told the committee his group opposes the bill because it could add more administrative tasks. He also said it was unclear how it would affect Oregon hospitals, which have been subject to multiple bills in recent years intended to prevent low-income patients from falling into debt.

Jake Thomas the legislative reporter The Lund Report. He’s spent over a dozen years at newspapers and magazines covering nearly every beat, including the Oregon and Washington legislatures. The Lund Report is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit, online news source. They exist to provide people in Oregon and southwest Washington with high-quality journalism about health care that promotes awareness and understanding of pressing issues while holding government and industry accountable.

Cheryl Baker, Alturas 2002 Saturn L-Series

“For the past 20 years I’ve driven this dependable 2002 Saturn for my commute to work at the Modoc County library, while listening to the great news, music, and programs on JPR. People recognized me in that car because I’ve driven it for so long. In fact, I was at a gas station and a friend said he didn’t recognize me because I was in a different car! Now I’ve retired from being a county librarian, and I’m ready to pass the car on to a new owner by donating it to Jefferson Public Radio. It’s just a great way to be able to support JPR and NPR. We listen strictly to public radio, and really appreciate having that service available to us in our little [rural] community.”

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JANE VAUGHAN JPR NEWS FOCUS EDUCATION

Many Oregon Students Find It Hard to Return to School Since COVID

Since the pandemic, public schools across Oregon have struggled to reach kids who are still enrolled, but just not showing up.

Thirteen-year-old Isaac Ciongoli often struggles to make it in to Chiloquin High School. He’ll pull out that age-old excuse — he doesn’t feel good — but really, he just doesn’t want to go to school since COVID.

“It’s like going back to school from summer break,” he said. “It’s hard to get back on that track.”

Isaac is just one of many kids having a hard time getting back on track. His mom said remote learning did not work well for him, and he was at a third grade reading level. So, school is difficult, he’s behind and he doesn’t like going.

Isaac has noticed other kids not showing up either, which then feeds into his own desire not to go.

“When your friends aren’t there, it just makes school like prison, kind of,” he said.

This chronic absenteeism — different than leaving public school for homeschooling — has serious impacts.

“Students that are chronically absent year after year, they get out of sync with their peers,” said Jeff Bullock, school improvement director with the Klamath County School District. “They fall behind academically. And in two years, three years, if that attendance rate isn’t improved, suddenly they find out that they’re reading a year or two years behind their peers.”

It’s not that Isaac isn’t curious about learning. He told me he and his dad stayed up until midnight the night before, talking.

“It started with the animal the wolverine, and then it got to like the Aztec sun god thing and Egyptian stuff because the world’s a wonder,” he said.

Isaac’s not the only kid having a hard time going to school. Recent data from the Oregon Department of Education shows that statewide, student attendance is still down 17% since before the COVID pandemic.

And some student groups are absent more frequently than others.

Overall, 66% of K-12 students attended more than 90% of the school days in the 2023-2024 school year.

But almost 53% of Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students were chronically absent, as were over 56% of homeless students and over 64% of currently or formerly incarcerated students.

Karen Wooten and her daughter Katie at their home in Klamath Falls, Ore.

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JPR News Focus: Education

Continued from page 17

‘No one reason’

“There’s no one reason and one solution to this challenge of attendance,” Bullock said.

One factor is mixed messaging about illness since the pandemic, which can be confusing for parents.

“Their concern and willingness to keep their students home to either prevent them from spreading germs or from getting sick at school — that’s a big piece of this attendance puzzle. I mean, we see that in the winter months when cold and flu season hits,” Bullock said.

Some families have also gotten out of the habit of getting up and going to school, especially after remote learning.

“Mornings are easier when you can kind of just wake up and take it easy and relax and wake up slowly,” said Sarah Ciongoli, Isaac’s mom. “Rather than the wake up, hurry up, we have 15 minutes to get there!”

There are many other barriers, too.

Sarah said she sometimes needs Isaac to stay home to watch his little nephew when she has to work.

Other kids have jobs, or are bullied or don’t have stable housing.

“We also have families, of course, that are a little more disengaged in the sense of they are wanting to understand what the purpose of school is,” said Marisa Poling, assistant director of family and community engagement for the Medford School District. “Re-explaining why school is important, how it’s connected to their future and college and career readiness.”

Sometimes families don’t realize how much school their kid has missed or how great an impact that has.

“A lot of it is really bringing these awareness campaigns, helping families understand the impact so they know that 10 days is a lot of days out of school,” said Jeanne Grazioli, Medford’s deputy superintendent.

Then, of course, there are mental health issues.

Karen Wooten’s daughter Katie is on the autism spectrum and has anxiety that sometimes makes her mute. She didn’t want to talk to me, so she typed answers to my questions into an iPad for her mom to read.

“It was very hard for her to access the remote learning. Really challenging. You did not enjoy it, huh?” Karen said to Katie. “That was not your favorite thing, was it?”

Karen said 13-year-old Katie struggled with remote learning, got behind and then suffered debilitating panic attacks when she tried to return to school full-time.

“When you can’t do something, you kind of freeze and panic, huh? Yeah. And then it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, what do I do?’ “ Karen reflected back to Katie. “ ‘Other people aren’t struggling, why am I?’ But really, more people were struggling than you realized.”

Katie now attends Falcon Heights Alternative School in Klamath Falls for 2.5 hours a day, and Karen said Katie’s attendance is much more consistent with a shorter schedule.

“Her needs come first and comfort level. And if it’s a shortened day to do that, it is what it is at this point. It’s all about supporting her,” Karen said.

‘Let’s

hear the why’

Addressing chronic absenteeism is really complicated, according to Jacquie Jaquette, school improvement specialist with the Southern Oregon Education Service District.

“Attendance is connected to so many other things, and it’s such a symptom of so many other reasons why somebody is not coming to school,” she said. “It’s also connected to grades and behavior. They’re all interwoven together. We know it’s a problem, it’s really just hard to break down because we haven’t dealt with anything like this to this magnitude before.”

But she has seen some practices that seem to be working. Some schools have attendance teams to build positive relationships with families.

Other districts are trying incentives and rewards.

“If you had no tardies over like the course of two weeks, they got a dance party in their advisory class,” Jaquette said. “Some people are doing bubble parties at lunch. They’ll hire a DJ on a Friday.”

She said there’s also more focus on project-based, hands-on learning to get kids engaged, especially in career and technical education.

Bullock has seen positive results from that approach in his district.

“[Students] know ‘I’ve got this project I’m working on. I’m building this shed. We’re supposed to be making this meal in fifth period. So I’ve got to be in fifth period because I got a team that’s counting on me.’ That type of thing. I think that makes a difference,” he said.

For his part, 13-year-old Isaac Ciongoli said he wants more breaks during the day and better school lunches. He now meets with a teacher at the beginning of each day to help him catch up, which he enjoys.

And attendance is slowly improving. Statewide rates increased by 4% between the last two school years.

But Jaquette still has concerns about absent kids falling behind, how that might impact their future jobs and the local economy.

Her next step is talking to the kids who are consistently showing up.

“What is bringing you to school? Let’s hear that. Let’s hear the why,” she said.

She hopes understanding why students do go to school will help get more kids back in the classroom.

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.

DIRK VANDERHART

POLITICS & GOVERNMENT

Threatening Emails Could Lead to Jail Time Under Oregon Bill

Holding public office in these politically fractured times often comes with an ugly reality: an email inbox containing threats of violence.

A recent tally by the city of Eugene detailed more than 1,200 threatening messages that had been sent to a wide variety of public officials in recent years — including 56 to the city’s mayor and 133 to the city manager’s office.

“We have seen an uptick among our membership of harassment, threats that in some cases have actually driven people from public service,” Scott Winkels, a lobbyist for the League of Oregon Cities, told a legislative committee on Tuesday Feb. 11. “I’m aware of at least three cases where an elected official either resigned or chose not to run because of their concerns for threatening conduct and their safety.”

The problem isn’t limited to local government.

“If I think about my email and the number of things like, ‘I’m going to cut off your head or burn down your house’ — those are not infrequent,’” said state Sen. Sara Gelser Blouin, D-Corvallis.

Under a bill up for consideration this year, those kinds of emails could lead to jail time.

Senate Bill 473 would outlaw making a “threatening communication” to an elected official or their family — as long as those threats are connected to a person’s official duties and reasonably lead the recipient to “expect the threatening communication to be followed by unlawful acts of violence.”

The bill covers threats — delivered via any means, not just email — against both sitting officials and people vying for public office, and would encompass everyone from the governor to local water district commissioners. A first offense would be a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. Subsequent convictions would be felonies that could net a five-year prison term.

SB 473 was requested by Eugene city officials, who say they’ve grappled with increasing threats in recent years. It is sponsored by state Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee that took it up on Tuesday.

The bill is similar to other laws on the books outlawing harassment, menacing and stalking. But advocates told lawmakers those offenses can be tricky to prove. They pointed to a 2023 Oregon Court of Appeals opinion that reversed stalking and menacing convictions against a man who repeatedly made violent, in-person threats against a Eugene attorney.

Backers also say the prospect of a felony conviction included in the bill could act as a powerful deterrent not available with

other laws. The crime of harassment, which includes many similar elements, is a misdemeanor.

The bill is just the latest example of lawmakers responding to increasing threats against public officials. In 2022, they passed a law making it a misdemeanor to harass election workers after a series of incidents targeting county clerks’ offices.

Last year, the Oregon Secretary of State briefly shut down phone lines after online conspiracy theorists falsely claimed the office had banned presidential candidate Donald Trump from the state’s voters’ pamphlet. That inspired a deluge of calls from out of state, some of them threatening.

SB 473 is unlikely to move forward in its current form. At the Feb. 10 hearing, lawmakers raised concerns about how authorities would distinguish threats written idly from threats likely to raise concerns of imminent violence. Only the latter would be subject to prosecution under the bill.

State Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, filed Senate Bill 473 at the request of the city of Eugene. The bill would make it a crime to threaten public officials in Oregon.

JPR News Focus: Politics & Government

Continued from previous page

State Sen. Mike McLane, R-Powell Butte, said he worried the bill as written could criminalize heated political disagreements.

“We have to make sure we’re talking about threats,” he said.

Gelser Blouin, who spoke of getting threatening emails with relative frequency, said she’s grown accustomed to threats over 20 years in the Legislature.

“When I was first here, it caused me more fear because I had not experienced that as much yet,” she said.

Blouin suggested newer officials might be more likely to flag emails as posing serious threats.

Lawmakers are also facing questions about whether they should shift — and potentially expand — their focus.

On that Tuesday, Oregon Appeals Court Judge Ramón Pagán told lawmakers about months of harassment from a man whose divorce trial Pagan had presided over.

“The litigant had become delusional, had started forming conspiratorial thoughts about me in particular, and had been repeatedly pointing out that he learned where I lived,” Pagán said. Eventually the man began emailing Pagan maps that included places he or his wife had walked their dogs and other disturbing content.

But the man never threatened Pagán. The judge told lawmakers he was only able to go to law enforcement after he

received an email demanding he change his judgment, which amounted to attempted extortion.

Over three months of harassing emails, Pagán told lawmakers he lost 35 pounds, changed his household routines, and got a new dog.

“My life changed entirely because he was smart enough to know not to put an imminent threat into any of those emails,” Pagán said. “But he made sure that he knew that I was going to pay for every minute that I was a judge that affected his life.”

Pagan suggested lawmakers should change the bill to outlaw communications that seek to coerce public officials.

State prosecutors are also asking for a change: They’d like the state’s Department of Justice to handle any prosecutions under a new law, since county district attorneys invariably know many local officials who are subject to threats.

Prozanski, the bill’s chief sponsor, said he would convene a workgroup to consider changes.

Dirk VanderHart covers Oregon politics and government for Oregon Public Broadcasting, a JPR news partner. His reporting comes to JPR through the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

POLITICS & GOVERNMENT

JUSTIN HIGGINBOTTOM

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon says the federal decision will lead to the “uncontrolled escalation of gambling.”

Feds Approve Coquille Casino in Medford

The federal government has approved a new casino for the Coquille Indian Tribe in Medford. That comes after over a decade of pushback from state and local officials, as well as other tribes in the region.

On Jan. 10, the U.S. Department of the Interior put Coquille property in the Rogue Valley under federal trust, effectively expanding the tribe’s reservation. The tribe’s headquarters are in North Bend on the coast.

“Waiting almost 13 years for an environmental review process to review two acres was a ridiculous weaponization of the federal NEPA process used to punish the Coquille Tribe for taking a legal course of action to provide for its own citizens after termination,” said Brenda Meade, chair of the Coquille Indian Tribe.

Currently Roxy’s Bar & Grill, and formerly a bowling alley, the tribe can now open a Class II casino on the Medford property. That type of gaming facility allows bingo and bingobased games where players bet against each other rather than the house. The tribe runs a Class III casino in North Bend that includes Las Vegas-style slot machines and card games.

“This finally allows the tribe to just start the project. For many, many years… this project has languished. And now we’re going to be able to provide hundreds of new jobs in our community,” said CEO of Tribal One, the Coquille tribe’s economic development arm, Judy Farm.

Tribal opponents of the project say the new casino will drain customers from their own casinos and upend an informal onecasino-per-tribe agreement in the state. This month, a judge denied a request by three regional tribes — Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, Karuk Tribe and Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation — to halt approval of the project. That complaint alleged federal authorities didn’t properly consult with the impacted tribes.

In its final days the Obama administration also gave a favorable ruling to the proposed casino, before that decision was reversed under President Trump. Carla Keene, chair of the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, said in a statement that allowing the Coquille to claim lands outside their ancestral territory harms other tribes.

“We have seen this play before, and it is not the final word. Secretary Haaland is following in the steps of the Obama [Bureau of Indian Affairs], issuing a decision that, were it legitimate, would have been approved long ago and in the light of day, not the 11th hour before leaving office,” said Keene.

A law passed by Congress in 1989 to restore Coquille lands lists Jackson County as a potential service area for the tribe.

In a statement, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon says the federal decision will lead to the “uncontrolled escalation of gambling.” He said he’ll fight the decision with all options available, including the Congressional Review Act that “empowers elected representatives to battle back against rogue federal agency decisions just like this one.”

Judy Farm, with the Coquille’s economic branch, said the tribe is prepared for more battles.

“I guess I would say we’re not afraid of any legal maneuverings or things that might be coming our way. We’ve overcome a lot. And we’ve prevailed,” said Farm.

An artist’s conception of the proposed remodel for turning a bowling alley in south Medford (inset) into a casino for the Coquille Tribe.

COURTESY OF BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS

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March 1 – Carmen by Georges Bizet

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Composer Jake Heggie returns to the Met with his 2010 adaptation of Herman Melville’s epic Moby Dick. Tenor Brandon Jovanovich stars as the monomaniacal Captain Ahab.

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NEWS BRIEFS

Josephine County Chooses Third Commissioner to Fill Very New Board

Jane Vaughan / JPR News

This move finalizes the makeup of an inexperienced board in the wake of controversy over previous commissioners.

In mid-January, Andreas Blech was chosen in a 2-0 vote to fill the seat vacated by John West, who was ousted in a recall election in December.

Blech recently served as interim commissioner after Dan DeYoung stepped down in July when he was found to have violated the county’s sexual harassment policy.

“Commissioner Blech is probably the most neutral person to come in with some experience already from the last board,” Commissioner Chris Barnett said in an interview. “He’s been around here a long time and comes in with kind of a fresh start.”

Blech is the only commissioner with any experience on that board, as both Barnett and the third commissioner, Ron Smith, were just elected in November.

Blech beat out 15 other applicants for the position, including recent Commissioner Herman Baertschiger. He said he had planned to retire and chose not to run for re-election in November, but then applied for this seat to ensure “continuity” on the board.

Commissioners Smith and Barnett interviewed both Blech and Baertschiger that morning, before making their decision.

“I feel that part of the problem is a baggage situation, what prior baggage the person has,” Commissioner Smith said. “There were certain people that applied for the job that I thought the baggage would be a hindrance and their history might be a hindrance to their serving in the office. And that’s kind of influenced my decision making a little bit.”

In his interview, Blech said he would like to focus on spreading correct information in the county through its public information officer.

“I believe that that position needs to be used to disseminate the information as to what’s happening in the county, both the

good and the not-so-good. I think that’s something that has been, in the past, underutilized,” he said.

He said he will also prioritize public safety funding.

According to a press release from the county, Blech is a former small-business owner with experience in aerospace manufacturing, agribusiness and land development.

His term runs through the end of 2026.

Now the new board must move forward with pressing county issues.

Barnett said he would like to work on the budget, “build up more positivity in our county for our commission” and “keep the truth out there. There’s a lot of misinformation.”

Commissioners also recently gave the Grants Pass Library 30 days’ notice to terminate its lease agreement with the county in an effort to negotiate a new lease agreement.

“Nobody’s being evicted, and there is no notice to vacate,” Barnett said Tuesday. “We would like to discuss some building repairs that need to be talked about according to their current lease. And that’s what we’re trying to do, is talk about those repairs.”

SOU President Says University Is Staying the Course for Now Amid Threats to Diversity Programs

Roman Battaglia / JPR News

Dramatic shifts in federal policy are leaving universities wondering how to respond while maintaining their role as a nonpartisan educational institution.

Oregon universities are having conversations about how they should be responding to threats to diversity programs and immigrant students by the Trump administration.

That could have major implications for schools such as Southern Oregon University in Ashland, which prides itself on creating an inclusive environment for every student. President

Rick Bailey spoke with staff on Feb. 10 about how the university is responding to the changing political climate. He said there’s currently an attempt to force institutions into the political sphere.

“We probably can’t be apolitical. Politics is all around us,” he said. “What we can do is fiercely continue to push to be nonpartisan. And so that’s what I want SOU to do. We have to continue to do that.”

Bailey said the university will have to follow the law, and will essentially be forced to change if its federal funding is on the line.

“I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that Title IV money, which is Pell Grant, is really critical to student success,” said Bailey. “So we want to make sure that we are not put in a position where that comes at risk.”

He said he wants to find a way to keep SOU’s core values intact even if it’s forced to dismantle things like diversity, equity and inclusion programs. But right now, Bailey said he doesn’t have a solution for that.

He said Oregon’s seven public universities are in communication with each other about this, and that each of them may navigate it differently.

President Trump ordered the secretary of education to provide guidance to universities on DEI programs by the end of May.

Humboldt County Supervisors Sign onto Historic Water Agreement for Eel River

Roman Battaglia / JPR News

On Feb. 11, Humboldt County Supervisors signed onto an agreement on that will pave the way to remove two dams on the Eel River to improve fish habitat.

The agreement has been in the works for over a year and a half, according to county staff. It spells out how water will continue to be diverted from the Eel River south to Mendocino, Sonoma and Marin counties for irrigation. Humboldt County has for over a century opposed these water diversions because it leaves less water for downstream uses.

Supervisor Mike Wilson said he’d like to let the river flow naturally, but…

“We are humans on this planet, and it turns out we need to move a bit of water around here and there, whether it’s for domestic or other uses,” he said.

Hank Seeman with the county public works department said future water diversions will better meet the needs of fish species.

“The proposed criteria would result in a reduction of the annual volume of diversions compared to historical volumes, and the vast majority of the diversions would occur in the winter and early spring during the wet season, when the flows are highest in the Eel River,” said Seeman.

The agreement also transfers the water rights from the utility PG&E to the Round Valley Indian Tribes. The tribes will use the money from selling the water to fund restoration projects on the Eel river.

PG&E has been planning on dismantling these dams for years, which aren’t used to generate power anymore. The Eel-Russian Project Authority will take over water diversion operations, and will build a new pumping facility to pull water from the Eel River and send it south.

The agreement states that a maximum of 30% of water from the Eel River will be diverted in the winter, and 20% during all other seasons. That percentage ramps down if water flows on the river drop below certain levels.

Some county supervisors expressed some reservations about the agreement. Supervisor Rex Bohn said that the potential for increased diversions in the future is worrying.

“When the straw is there, it’ll be used. There’s going to be a valve, and we can’t out-vote the people from the South,” he said.

But, they unanimously agreed to sign it, saying it was the best chance the county had to get the dams removed.

The removal of the two dams on the Eel River isn’t expected to start until at least 2028.

Shasta County Hires Controversial Figure as Health Care Consultant

Roman Battaglia / JPR News

On Feb. 4, Shasta County supervisors voted to hire a new health care consultant to help address the shortage of providers in the county. But the person they chose has a controversial history.

Chriss Street was hired by the five-person board, with a payment set at $40,000 for his work.

Street is known for his ties to a California secessionist movement and the fact that he was almost hired as the county executive officer in 2023. Back then, supervisors rescinded their offer after receiving a background check on Street. They did not provide a reason why the offer was rescinded, and the background check was never made public.

The current CEO, David Rickert, recommended Street out of only two final candidates.

“I took it upon his experience in turning around a medical care company, he had extensive experience with turning that organization around,” Rickert said.

The lone dissenting vote, Supervisor Allen Long, was concerned the county was rushing into this decision.

“Let’s do it through a formal Request for Proposal when we can reach as large a group as we can to see and hire the person

Continued on page 29

NEWS BRIEFS

that is the most qualified to help move the needle on getting more doctors here.,” Long said. “We all want that same goal.”

This effort began back in November, according to Supervisor Matt Plummer. Plummer said that he’s going to be keeping a close eye on Street, and already plans to meet regularly to receive updates on his work.

Street was previously the treasurer for Orange County. He was eventually forced to give up his authority to manage that county’s investments and criticized for wasting taxpayer dollars, according to the L.A. Times.

The members in support of this hiring said it’s time to try something new to address the lack of health care providers.

Board Chair Kevin Crye said he expects to have some answers on how to solve this problem within six months.

Klamath County Fire District Board Members Under Investigation by State Ethics Commission

Jane Vaughan / JPR News

Four board members of Klamath County Fire District 3 are being investigated by the Oregon Government Ethics Commission for potentially violating Oregon Public Meetings Law.

The complaints date back to two meetings last summer in the rural district, east of Chiloquin.

A preliminary review by an OGEC investigator found four board members may have violated state law by holding a meeting outside the boundaries of their district and by not providing adequate notice of two meetings. One meeting notice also failed to specify where it would be held.

The review also says it appears the Board failed to properly convene executive sessions, among other things.

“Since no one from the public had attended a Board meeting in over 2 years, it was determined that the general public was not interested in attending meetings,” District Counsel Michael Spencer wrote, according to the preliminary review.

However, the OGEC investigator wrote, “There is no provision in the Public Meetings Law that allows a governing body to skip providing notice to the public simply because they conclude the public is not interested in attending their meetings.”

Board Chair Dan Hudson did not respond to requests for comment. Board member Dennis Woorden also declined to comment. Board member Cameron Duncan declined to comment until OGEC completes its investigation. A voicemail left at a number listed for board member Allison Dob was not returned. A voicemail and email to her attorney Michael Spencer were also not returned.

“We are attempting to do our best as a [B]oard with some very tough decisions in a very short time,” Worden wrote in response, according to the review. “I would be greatly surprised if we did not make errors on the way. I and the other [B]oard [M]embers are attempting to do the best we can and learning as we go. It seems a community that could care less about the operation of the fire [District] in the past are now all experts on fire management and [B]oard procedures.”

These complaints are currently being investigated, and the Commission hasn’t found that any violations occurred.

The complaints were brought by Christine Friend, the former chief of the district, who was fired last August due to budget shortfalls and what the board called inappropriate use of grant funds.

The review also says it appears the Board may have violated state law by engaging in “private serial electronic communications.”

“In these emails it appears a quorum of the Board was deliberating or making a decision regarding Fire Chief Christine Friend. Because the electronic communication involved a quorum of the Board and concerned a decision or deliberation, that communication constituted a meeting subject to the Public Meetings Law,” the review reads.

Some district residents had previously raised concerns about a lack of transparency from the board.

If the parties don’t settle, the case will be brought back before the Commission later this year. If the Commission finds that a violation occurred, civil penalties, like fines, could be imposed.

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JPR NEWS

FOCUS WILDFIRE

ALEX BAUMHARDT

Golden said he wants to salvage the usefulness of the map without creating more harm. He said it can still be used to help the state understand where best to direct resources or to advocate for community risk mitigation work.

Sen. Golden Proposes Changing State Wildfire Map to Curb Anger and Rumors

The Ashland lawmaker wants the map to designate the risk level of broad areas rather than naming the risk of individual properties.

Nearly four years ago, in the aftermath of the state’s most destructive wildfires in history, the Oregon Legislature passed a bipartisan package of wildfire prevention initiatives, including one that required state experts to create a map showing high wildfire risk areas statewide.

The point of the Wildfire Risk Map, first published in 2022, was to inform lawmakers and agencies like the Oregon Department of Forestry and the Oregon State Fire Marshal’s Office about where to best deploy limited resources to prevent fires. But the map provoked backlash from homeowners in some high-risk areas who were worried about wildfire insurance rates and coverage, and potentially having to comply with new building requirements.

State foresters and university experts redid the map, renamed it the Wildfire Hazard Map, changed some designations and put it online, searchable by address. But many homeowners are still unhappy about what the designations mean or feel the wildfire mitigation work they’ve already done hasn’t been factored in.

Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, who supported creating the map, said it’s become counterproductive in its current form.

“So many people see ‘high hazard’ as basically ruining their lives,” Golden said. “I don’t think anybody dreamed we’d have this problem on the ground.” he said about when the Legislature passed the wildfire package mandating the map in 2021.

Golden, who chairs the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Wildfire, wants the Legislature to pass an amendment to Senate Bill 762, the wildfire funding package first passed back in 2021 to remove the property-level risk designations in the wildfire map and replace them with low-, medium- and high-risk designations for broad areas.

The map’s architects have not voiced strong opinions about the proposal, which is not yet in bill form. Rob Odom, an Oregon State University spokesperson, said the university experts who worked on the maps with the Oregon Department of Forestry would “continue to partner with the state when needed.”

By making the maps identify broader risk areas, Golden is hopeful he can quell anger among property owners over their high-hazard designations and quell growing rumors and conspiracies about what the map was ultimately supposed to achieve.

“The rumor control is a big thing here. I’m really deeply concerned that we’re close to an explosion in rural Oregon that’s going to make our wildfire prevention efforts almost impossible,” Golden said.

Map misinformation

He’s heard from constituents at public meetings and via email who believe officials at the State Fire Marshal’s Office will evict them from their homes if they don’t take certain wildfire prevention measures or will prevent them from rebuilding if their house burns down.

Those are patently false, Golden said, and illegal.

Others are saying the state is using the wildfire map to try to drive rural people off of their land and into cities where they can supposedly be more easily controlled. The hardest belief to quell among many in his district is that the state map is not behind their rising home insurance premiums.

The rollout of the map in 2022 coincided with a regionwide hike in premiums from wildfires across the West, and some

A fire burns close to a home near the Rogue River.

JPR News Focus: Wildfire

Continued from previous page

insurers choosing not to renew or write new wildfire policies in parts of Oregon and Western states. Despite a law passed in 2023 prohibiting insurers from incorporating the map into their own risk calculus for customers, many policyholders have heard from their agents that the state map plays a role, Golden said, or the timing feels too uncanny.

His fear is that if misinformation takes greater root, the state will lose buy-in from property owners it needs as partners in the fight against wildfires, and that those property owners will see state agencies as conspirators rather than collaborators.

Keeping the map

Two other bills proposed in the current session by Republicans would get rid of the map all together or get rid of Senate Bill 762, which also required the electric utilities to create wildfire protection plans, required state agencies to develop new defensible space and building code requirements to protect homes and communities and created programs to mitigate the impacts of wildfire smoke on public health.

The map itself, he said, is based largely on sound science. But in two years of meeting with landowners in his district who are upset about their high hazard designations despite expensive and time-consuming measures they’ve taken to prevent wildfire destruction, he says the map lacks the data to tell the whole story about individual wildfire risks.

“I am not saying the map is totally bogus — it’s based on landscape factors that, as a nonscientist, I believe are really important — but a model that gives no weight to the particular characteristics of the property can’t fly,” he said.

Alex Baumhardt covers education and the environment for the Oregon Capital Chronicle, a professional, nonprofit news organization and JPR news partner. Oregon Capital Chronicle is an affiliate of States Newsroom, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit supported by grants and a coalition of donors and readers. Oregon Capital Chronicle retains full editorial independence, meaning decisions about news and coverage are made by Oregonians for Oregonians.

Tuned In

Continued from page 3

part of its political platform, is using the regulatory authority of the FCC to indirectly challenge funding public broadcasting. It also appears to be using the DOGE committee to circumvent Congressional input.

Where this all lands is hard to know. For its part, JPR has worked in a disciplined way over the past decade, with the help of our listeners, to build a more financially resilient organization. That said, loss of the core funding we receive from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which totals approximately 15% of our operating budget, would have real impact on the work we do and the service we provide to communities across Southern Oregon and Northern California. We encourage you to support our work as generously as you can, and to engage in the political process when public input will have the greatest impact. The best way to stay engaged is to subscribe to protectmypublicmedia.org.

Thank you for your loyal support over so many years and for sustaining JPR as a vital civic, cultural and educational institution for our region.

Paul Westhelle is JPR’s Executive Director.

LEVI

The FAIR Plan is a pool of insurers required by law to provide fire insurance to property owners who can’t find insurance elsewhere.

California Homeowners to Face New Fees to Keep Fallback Insurance Plan Solvent

After saying it would run out of funds by March, California’s last-resort fire insurance provider will impose a special charge of $1 billion on homeowners and insurance companies, the first such move in more than three decades.

The state Insurance Department approved a request from the provider, the FAIR Plan, to impose the charge and ensure it stays solvent as it covers claims from victims of the Los Angeles County fires, the department said in an order by Commissioner Ricardo Lara.

Most California home and fire insurance customers will likely see temporary fees added to their insurance bills as part of the charge, known as an assessment — marking the first time an assessment has been imposed directly on customers rather than just insurance companies.

The FAIR Plan is a pool of insurers required by law to provide fire insurance to property owners who can’t find insurance elsewhere. Its customer base has grown dramatically in the past several years as insurance companies have increasingly refused to write or renew policies in the state, citing increased risk of wildfires. It now has more than 451,000 policies.

Many LA fire victims have insurance through the FAIR Plan. Residents of the Pacific Palisades, where thousands of structures burned last month, held 85% more FAIR Plan policies in September than they had a year prior.

The FAIR Plan assessment is the latest insurance fallout from the LA fires. State Farm, California’s largest property insurance provider, recently asked for permission to temporarily raise its premiums an average of 22% because of the claims it is facing from the fires. The insurance department is still considering that request.

The FAIR Plan’s president, Victoria Roach, had been warning about its ability to pay claims in case of catastrophe, telling a state Assembly committee last year that the plan “one event away from a large assessment.”

As of Feb. 9, the plan had paid more than $900 million in claims, the commissioner’s order said. “A $1 billion assessment puts the FAIR Plan at an estimated cash position of just under $400 million by July 2025, as the 2025 wildfire season is just beginning,” Roach told the insurance department in the plan’s request for the assessment.

Insurance companies will need to submit filings with the insurance department before they can collect the, one-time fees from their customers, said Michael Soller, department spokesperson.

It is unclear on what percentage of policyholders’ premiums the fees will be based.

“The FAIR Plan does not have a role in determining how insurers manage costs associated once an assessment is approved,” the plan said in a press release.

Under new regulations that took effect this year as part of Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara’s effort to address the growing difficulty of finding property insurance in California, insurance customers will now have to shoulder 50% of any assessment through a temporary fee added to their premiums. Before the new rules went into effect, the plan would have gotten the additional funds directly from its member companies, which would have then tried to recoup that money by raising premiums.

The insurance industry supports the change. “This is essential to prevent even greater strain on California’s already unbalanced insurance market and avoiding widespread policy cancellations that would jeopardize coverage for millions of Californians,” said Mark Sektnan, vice president for state government relations for the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, in a written statement.

But Consumer Watchdog, a consumer advocacy group, is considering suing over the fact that consumers are now on the hook for the additional funding for the FAIR Plan, which its executive director calls a “bailout.”

The remains of a smoldering home in an Altadena neighborhood affected by the Eaton Fire on Jan. 8, 2025. California’s insurer of last resort is facing $1 billion in losses from Southern California wildfires.

JPR News Focus: Wildfire

Continued from previous page

“We’ll be exploring every legal option to protect (consumers) from those surcharges,” Carmen Balber told CalMatters.

Balber added that some insurers, such as Mercury General Corp., said shortly after the L.A. fires began in early January that they expected to have adequate reinsurance to cover any possible increased contributions they would have to make to the FAIR Plan. In that case, “are they going to let insurers double dip and charge consumers (anyway)?” Balber asked.

The insurance department said the last time the state approved additional funds for the FAIR Plan was in 1993, after the Kinneloa Fire in Altadena and the Old Topanga Fire in Malibu and Topanga. Some of those areas were also affected by the fires this year. The additional funds approved then are equivalent to $563 million today, the department said.

In a statement, Lara characterized the new regulation as a “necessary consumer protection action.” The commissioner added: “The fact that we are once again facing this issue 30 years after wildfires devastated these same communities highlights the need for change.”

Levi Sumagaysay covers the economy for CalMatters. Previously, she was a senior reporter who covered worker issues, the gig economy, inequality and corporate accountability for MarketWatch. She also was a longtime reporter and tech and business editor at the Mercury News. She is based in the Bay Area.

JPR NEWS FOCUS WILDFIRE

APRIL EHRLICH

Oregon Senators Call for Federal Firefighters to Be Exempt from Hiring Freeze

Oregon could have far fewer firefighters ready to battle blazes on federal lands next fire season — and may do less advance work aimed at mitigating the risk of large fires — due to the Trump administration’s hiring freeze and funding cuts, according to U.S. lawmakers.

Oregon U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley have joined over a dozen other lawmakers, all Democrats, in calling on the administration to issue an exemption for thousands of seasonal firefighters so federal agencies can prepare for “what’s expected to be another devastating wildfire year.”

“The Administration must not sacrifice the safety of the American people for the benefit of implementing a political agenda,” their letter reads

Federal agencies hire about 15,000 seasonal firefighters every year, according to a similar letter U.S. Senator Adam Schiff, D-California, sent Friday.

Staffing shortages might shift firefighting responsibility onto state agencies, or the federal government might need to backfill firefighting gaps with expensive private contractors.

Federal funding cuts have also hobbled fire mitigation work on public lands, according to a letter that Wyden and Merkley signed. Prescribed burning and other fuels reduction projects help tamp down brush and invasive plants that can fuel hotter and more destructive wildfires.

The BLM has issued stop work orders for hazardous fuel reduction projects, the letter lawmakers sent Monday reads. This freeze — which the group of U.S. senators calls “flagrantly illegal” — is part of Trump’s widespread elimination of anything tied to former President Joe Biden’s infrastructure spending.

Trump’s hiring freeze order exempts positions related to “public safety,” but it doesn’t specifically exempt wildland firefighters.

“Seasonal firefighters are essential to the public safety of those who live in fire-prone areas, and I am alarmed that federal firefighters are not party to this exemption,” Schiff wrote.

February and March are a critical time for onboarding seasonal firefighters, who typically renew their contracts each year to respond to summer wildfires. President Donald Trump’s executive order has muddied that process, according to four federal firefighters who spoke to OPB, leaving federal managers unsure whether they can start a monthslong onboarding process.

Trump’s hiring freeze order exempts positions related to “public safety,” but it doesn’t specifically exempt wildland firefighters. As a result, some agency officials have stalled onboarding until they get more clarity.

“We aren’t getting clear direction from the top,” Ben McLane, a Forest Service fire crew captain based in Washington, said. “We’re not getting communication that is explicitly clear that these agencies are to be moving forward with the hiring of every type of wildland firefighter.”

This delay could mean agencies like the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management will start the summer with understaffed teams. These federal agencies are charged with responding to fires on more than 32 million acres in Oregon — over half the state’s total land.

“We are further concerned that fuels projects overseen by the U.S. Forest Service will be next,” the letter says. “These projects are integral to increased safety and resiliency and any delay in implementation puts those communities at greater risk.”

April Ehrlich reports on lands and environmental policy 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.

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Gross provides a lively look

UNDERGROUND HISTORY

CHELSEA ROSE

This might sound a bit like the DEI that has been much maligned of late, but seriously, why wouldn’t we want to learn about all of the people who lived, worked, and died at a site?

The Pacific Northwest, It’s More Than Bigfoot

These days, the Pacific Northwest seems synonymous with things like beautiful hikes, great coffee, and Bigfoot, just to name a few. Despite our recent episode on a bigfoot exhibit at the High Desert Museum, we know that our region has more to offer than good squatching and are always excited to hear about its fascinating history.

I recently spoke with archeologist Doug Wilson about his book entitled Historical Archaeology of the Pacific Northwest (University Press of Florida, 2024) on an episode of Underground History. While there are lots of books on the history of the Pacific Northwest, Wilson’s edge is the use of material culture (artifacts) to explore the past. Dusty archives and census records might factor in a bit, but this story is one that uses buttons, musket balls, and rusty nails to reflect the complex history and people of the region.

What exactly is “historical archaeology” you might be wondering? A clunky and antiquated term, it refers to the sub-discipline of archaeology that focuses on the period after the introduction of the written record. For Oregon, that is the early 19th century. For the east coast, even earlier. Historical archaeology was meant to be in contrast to prehistoric archaeology, but most have now switched to using “precontact” archaeology or something similar. Because, obviously history did not start with the arrival of non-Indigenous peoples to the region. Likewise, Indigenous people did not disappear with the onset of the historical period: they survived and persisted throughout the violent settler colonial processes that unfolded in the Pacific Northwest as the place we now call Oregon became a territory, and later, a state. To add nuance to the term, “historical” does not just represent a temporal marker but is also a commitment to study the history of everyone. While certain things might be “historic” in nature (think George Washington’s birthplace, Fort Vancouver, etc.), historical archaeology deliberately reflects the history of all people and places—those living in shacks, tents, or mansions, working in mines, merchandise stores, or factories, recent immigrants or those who have lived here since time immemorial. This might sound a bit like the DEI that has been much maligned of late, but seriously, why wouldn’t we want to learn about all of the people who lived, worked, and died at a site?

So, who were the people in our Pacific Northwest neighborhood? Wilson spent decades of his career working at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, which was the site of many influential historical events, and home to people from around the world. His expertise made him well situated to compile and synthesize the long an intricate history of this place. He researched the work of decades of dedicated archaeologists

Archaeologists

from across the region, and even showcased SOULA’s work in Jacksonville and the Rogue River Wars (a little humble brag here). In our portion of the Pacific Northwest we have the fur trade, the Oregon Trail, and gold rushes as major agents of migration and change. And the story is too big for one book—archaeologists continue to seek out and document the many people who shaped the region. Some early residents left houses, journals, and documents that mark their lives, and others, through circumstance, discrimination, or choice, have left little mark on the historical record. But they did leave garbage! And it is our mission as historical archaeologists to document the artifacts that represent the choices, opportunities, and access for everyone who passed through or called this place home. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but a broken dish or lost button can be worth at least a hundred if you are paying close enough attention.

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.

SOU Archaeological field school students excavate the remains of a Chinese blacksmith's workshop.

below:

recovered a porcelain doll arm, that reflects the children living on a remote logging camp in the early 20th century.

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ROMAN BATTAGLIA

SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT

Juillerat said there could be significant changes to the amendments based on the public feedback.

Environmentalists Push for Stronger Old-Growth Protections in Northwest Forest Plan

On the evening of Jan. 29, around a hundred community members showed up to the U.S. Forest Service office in Medford for a public meeting about proposed amendments to the Northwest Forest Plan.

The plan was created in 1994 to protect threatened and endangered species, like the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet. It was meant to put an end to the timber wars of the 80s and 90s, when environmental activists protested the overharvesting of trees in the region.

The plan covers all of the Forest Service lands in Oregon and Washington, as well as a small part of Northern California.

While innovative at the time, even environmentalists like Carol Valentine with the Sierra Club believe the plan needs to change to meet our new challenges.

“Tribes were excluded from the original plan, and the fact that that could get remedied in a good way is excellent,” she said. “And we are in an era of climate change, and we need to think about the Northwest Forest Plan in that context.”

A draft environmental impact statement was released by the Forest Service last November. It outlines different paths the agency could take to change the plan. Some of the changes include greater involvement of tribes in forest management, greater emphasis on fire-resiliency projects — including thinning of forests and prescribed fire — and changing how the plan identifies different types of forests in the region.

Environmental activists held a rally outside the Forest Service office to push for stronger protections for old-growth ecosystems in the amendments.

Luke Ruediger has spent his life advocating for forests in southwest Oregon, and is the executive director of the Applegate Siskiyou Alliance. One of the areas he and others have been focusing on is a proposal to raise the age of trees where timber harvests are essentially forbidden from 80 years up to 120 or 150 years.

“A lot of those 120-year-old stands are really providing a lot of key ecosystem services,” he said. “Providing important wildlife habitat, clean water, carbon storage and many of these mature and old growth forests represent very fire-resistant landscapes that should be maintained in the environment.”

Ruediger said that trees between 80 and 120 years old are essentially the ‘future old-growth’ forests that should be protected to cultivate more habitat for species like the northern spotted owl.

Molly Juillerat, forest supervisor for the Rogue-Siskiyou National Forest, said it’s not going to be a black and white approach to managing these forests.

“It’s looking at that landscape holistically and what it needs, and that’s according to things like its fire regime, to the forest type, and what kind of plants and animals are living in that area,” she said.

Juillerat said that the 80-year-old number was fairly arbitrary. The thought process behind it was to encourage the growth of those burgeoning forests into old-growth forests. And now, those forests are over 120 years old, and should still be protected.

Clint Emerson, regional botanist for the Forest Service, said that these numbers aren’t based on a scientific study. He said it’s more of a balance between protecting old-growth forests, harvesting timber and protecting communities from wildfire.

Emerson and Juillerat note that the plan is not finalized. Juillerat said there could be significant changes to the amendments based on the public feedback.

“The draft is very much a draft,” she said. “So comments really do matter. And so I encourage people to look at the different alternatives, and look at the sections that they care about, and make really specific comments about that.”

Environmental activists rally outside the U.S. Forest Service office in Medford, January 29, 2025.

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ROMAN BATTAGLIA / JPR NEWS

A Legacy of Public Radio...

So 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.

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.

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:

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Science & Environment

Continued from previous page

Environmental activist Luke Ruediger said he wants to see greater site-specific management of lands; especially in southwest Oregon, where overly broad landscape management doesn’t fit the diverse types of forests seen in the region.

“The only thing that has protected these forests has been the structure of the Northwest Forest Plan that has forced the agencies to alter their management styles and strategies to allow for the protection of more mature habitats,” said Ruediger.

Because this plan covers such a broad area, and greatly influences forest management by the USFS, Ruediger said it’s important that protections for old-growth forests remain strong.

Comments about the draft environmental impact statement are due by March 17. Juillerat said it’ll take a few months to parse through the comments and decide what changes to make to the plan. She expects a final decision on the plan to come out in the fall or winter of this year.

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Tradition and groovy scene aside, eventually my love for The Dead became about the songs.

Who Are the Grateful Dead and Why

Do They Keep Following Me? Part Two

From their mid-’60s beginnings in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Grateful Dead became key figures in the counterculture movement. They played free concerts. They experimented with psychedelic drugs, especially LSD. They were the house band for many of Ken Kesey’s acid tests, all the while developing the long-form experimental improvisations that became key parts of their live shows.

Owsley Stanley, aka “Bear” was their sound engineer, and clandestine chemist who was known for making the LSD that helped fuel the movement. Additionally, he developed a sound system the band used only for about a year due to its size and weight. The Wall of Sound as it was known, revolutionized stadium sound by piping each instrument and each vocal, as well as each string on the bass and individual drum to its own monitor to create a distortion-free sound.

Bucking the system, the Grateful Dead chose to do all their own merchandising and ticket sales for much of their career. In what turned out to be a genius marketing idea, they let fans record their shows, relying on an honor system that these tapes could be shared and traded but not sold. This gave them free advertising which led to ticket and merchandise sales. You can find a recording, some better than others, of almost all of their shows. One of the missing shows was from February of 1968 at what was then called Southern Oregon College (now Southern Oregon University which is home to JPR).

Tradition and groovy scene aside, eventually my love for The Dead became about the songs. The band worked with two lyricists. Robert Hunter whose love of literature and prose found its way into a lot of their songs often taking on the work of classic writers intertwined with his own interpretations. John Perry Barlow was a childhood friend of singer/guitarist Bob Weir. In addition to writing for the band, he was a novelist, poet and activist. This resulted in songs that didn’t lend themselves to pop radio airplay, but gave them more depth and meaning. Their catalog includes cowboy poetry, mystical journeys, and some songs whose meanings remain mysterious.

The lyrics provided a canvas for the experimental nature of the music behind them. Their songs were structured around blues, country and rock and roll, but the way they went about composing (or more to the point, playing with the sound until they found a groove) made it different. A music journalist whose name escapes me once panned a live show saying that it sounded like six people soloing at the same time. The DeadHeads, practically in unison responded with “that’s the point.” Unlike a traditional rock sound where the kick drum and bass tend to play the same beat and the rhythm guitar follows the snare drum, each member of the band played their

Grateful Dead at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado, with deadheads waiting for concert to start/dancing

Phil Lesh performing in 1976, he died on October 24, 2024 at the age of 84.

own line. When they met in the middle is where the magic occurred. Several distinct parts, like a jigsaw puzzle, revealed a complete picture. Rhythm guitarist Bob Weir is well known for intricate chord voicings. Bassist Phil Lesh, originally a jazz trumpet player, played bass lines that kept rhythm but also added creative low-end melodies to counter the keyboard and guitar lines. Two drummers, Bill Kreutzman and Mickey Hart provided the beat with enough room for Hart to add innovative percussion to the sound. This all created a great platform for solos, primarily from the keyboardist (which was sadly, a rotating position due to a couple of deaths along the way) and Jerry Garcia’s masterful, outside-the-box guitar work.

It’s taken quite a while, but judging from the respect now given to The Dead by other musicians, their influence is wide. The list extends beyond obvious bands like Phish and String Cheese Incident, to bands like The National who spearheaded a 2016 multi-artist tribute, Day of the Dead, to benefit HIV/ AIDs research. Day of the Dead had contributions from War on

Recordings

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Drugs, Courtney Barnett, Phosphorescent, and Mumford and Sons to name a few.

Other artists that have called The Dead influential include Vampire Weekend and Sturgill Simpson, who recently called Jerry Garcia his favorite guitar player after learning some Grateful Dead songs for a legacy act he joined at the invitation of Bob Weir. Simpson credits learning these songs with helping him stay interested in making music.

Grateful Dead songs have been covered in jazz, bluegrass and country. The band Dark Star Orchestra is a major touring act who have now played more shows than the Grateful Dead themselves. They continue to play entire Grateful Dead concerts, song for song, mirroring shows the band played at different points in their career — even matching the instrumentation, technology and vibe from the original material.

Legacy acts like Dead & Co, which featured original members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzman alongside John Mayer, bassist Oteil Burbridge and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, are wildly popular. They played a 30-night residency at The Sphere in Las Vegas in 2024 and are getting back together for another run in 2025.

Phil Lesh and Friends began as a side project and has included a rotating line-up of accomplished musicians. More so than other legacy acts, they stayed true to the original free-

form format of the Grateful Dead. Lesh instructed his guests specifically not to try to capture the original sound, but to do their own experimentation and make the songs their own.

Phil Lesh passed away this fall, leaving only three original band members. The family of musicians that have spent time with this music, however, seem poised to pass on its soul and spirit to their musical comrades, keeping this important song catalog and vibe alive for future generations.

For a band outside the mainstream, even feared by some, The Grateful Dead managed to be at the forefront of a lot of late 20th century culture. They pioneered how to manage the business end of music and were innovators of live sound technology. And they continue to create lasting memories for new fans 60 years after they were founded.

Though I’ve tried to describe them, I’m reminded of a line in their song The Music Never Stopped. “They’re a band beyond description.”

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.

INSIDE THE BOX

SCOTT DEWING

AI and The Zebra Next Door

Here are the clues to the “Zebra Puzzle” first published in the December 17, 1962 issue of Life International magazine under the title of “Who Owns the Zebra?”

There are five houses. The Englishman lives in the red house. The Spaniard owns the dog. Coffee is drunk in the green house. The Ukrainian drinks tea. The green house is immediately to the right of the ivory house. The Old Gold smoker owns snails. Kools are smoked in the yellow house. Milk is drunk in the middle house. The Norwegian lives in the first house. The man who smokes Chesterfields lives in the house next to the man with the fox. Kools are smoked in the house next to the house where the horse is kept. The Lucky Strike smoker drinks orange juice. The Japanese smokes Parliaments. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.

From those 15 clues, readers were challenged to figure out the answers to the following questions: Who drinks the water? Who owns the zebra?

The Zebra Puzzle is a logic problem that, since its publication, also became variously known as “Einstein’s Puzzle” and “Einstein’s Riddle”. The folklore surrounding that claim is that it was first created by Albert Einstein when he was just a boy. There’s no good evidence for that and the Kool cigarette brand wasn’t introduced until 1933 when Einstein was 54 years old.

The answers to the Zebra Puzzle as well as the names of the several hundred readers worldwide who solved it were published in the March 25, 1963 edition of Life

SPOILER ALERT: I’m going to reveal the answers so if you want to try to solve the puzzle, STOP. Do not read further.

Okay, you either don’t want to bother with solving the puzzle or you’ve solved it and returned or you’re just curious what all this has to do with artificial intelligence (AI). Well, as it turns out, the Zebra Puzzle became a benchmark test for evaluating the ability of computer algorithms to solve “constraint satisfaction problems”, or CSPs. A CSP is a problem that contains a set of objects whose state must satisfy a number of constraints or limitations.

As I’m sure you noticed, neither “water” nor “zebra” are included in any of the 15 clues. Solving the zebra CSP requires logic and reason to create links and associations as well as disconnects between the various clues. Informally, we call this a “process of elimination”. For example, based on the clues, we can eliminate the Ukrainian and the Spaniard as the zebra owner.

While humans are pretty good at this, generative-AI systems like ChatGPT are not so good at it. That’s because these systems are based on large language models (LLMs) that have been trained to predict the next word in a sequence of words. ChatGPT and other generative-AI systems based on LLMs are

just that—word prediction machines. That’s also what humans do when we read. We predict what’s…well, you already knew what I was going to say.

“They (LLMs) might not be able to reason beyond what they have seen during the training data for hard tasks,” said Nouha Dziri, the lead of a team of researchers at the Allen Institute for AI who recently studied the logic and reasoning limitations of the largest and most popular LLMs: OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude.

“On certain tasks, they perform amazingly well,” said Dziri in a media interview. “On others, they’re shockingly stupid.”

At the time Dziri and her team tested ChatGPT, its success rate for solving the Zebra Puzzle was zero. It couldn’t figure out that the Norwegian drank the water and the Japanese guy owned the zebra.

Since then, however, ChatGPT can mostly solve the Zebra Puzzle. I tested this myself. On my first pass, ChatGPT got the right answers but I noticed it placed the owner of the zebra in the wrong colored house. On a subsequent pass, I used the “Reason” feature, and ChatGPT solved the puzzle in about 20 seconds, breaking it down step by step.

One way LLMs can overcome their reasoning limitations is by increasing the size of the model. Another is by breaking a CSP down into a “chain-of-thought” set of prompts. That’s what ChatGPT did in solving the Zebra Puzzle using its Reason feature, which provided a detailed logical breakdown and explanation of how the solutions were reached.

I was tired and feeling a bit saucy after working through the Zebra Problem myself and then running my own tests on ChatGPT so I decided to throw a curveball into our ongoing chat thread: “Okay,” I asked, “given all the provided clues, who smoked the orange juice?”

ChatGPT responded immediately.

“It looks like you’re playfully mixing up categories!” it said. “Orange juice is a drink, not a cigarette brand. From the puzzle clues, the person who drinks orange juice is the Spaniard. The Spaniard smokes Lucky Strike. So, nobody ‘smokes’ orange juice—but the Spaniard drinks it! ”

Yes, ChatGPT really did include the laughing emoji in its response. Cheeky bastard. I closed ChatGPT and headed outside for a walk around my neighborhood, past the yellow, blue, red, ivory, and green houses, wondering if ChatGPT even knew that no one owned zebras as pets.

Scott Dewing is a technologist, teacher, and human writer who hasn’t (yet) been replaced by AI.

RECIPE

HEATHER ARNDT ANDERSON

Cardamom-Grapefruit Cake with Amaro-Pink Peppercorn Icing

It’s kind of funny how we think of one food as a panacea while considering another ingredient dangerously toxic. And then learn that we were wrong about both.

Take grapefruit, for example — a great source of dietary fiber and vitamin C. Starting with the Spanish flu epidemic of 1919, faddish grapefruit diets were advertised as a cure-all and within 10 days, reported one publishers’ journal, “markets were swept bare” of the citrus. The grapefruit diet variously resurfaced over the following decades with new names like the “Hollywood diet” in the 1930s, the “Mayo Clinic diet” in the 1940s and 50s and the “10 day, 10 pounds off” diet in the 1980s. Of course, now we not only know that grapefruit-only diets are considered an unhealthy approach to weight loss, but grapefruit can dangerously interact with medications prescribed for depression, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

Then there’s the pink peppercorn, popular during the nouvelle cuisine movement of the 1960s and 70s, and then banned in the U.S. after organic chemists found the potential to cause an allergic reaction similar to poison ivy in the 1980s. Both pink peppercorns and poison ivy are in the Anacardiaceae family, which includes cashews and mangoes. After the Food and Drug Administration raised the alarm against pink peppercorns imported from France in 1982 (when the spice was mainly grown in a French territory near Madagascar), the French government responded by submitting research affirming the ingredient’s safety. The ban was lifted within a couple of years, but by then, it didn’t really matter; pink peppercorns had already become passé.

Unlike true pepper (Piper spp., which, confusingly, does turn red when ripe and is often included in peppercorn blends), pink peppercorns are usually from the Brazilian peppertree (Schinus terebinthifolia).

Here, the grapefruit and the peppercorns are both pink, and the piney terpenes in both ingredients complement the sourness of citrus beautifully. The icing gets its blush plus a punch of botanical bitterness from the amaro, but if you don’t want to use a liqueur, use unsweetened grapefruit juice instead; you can add a drop of red food coloring to make the icing pink. Don’t have any pink peppercorns? Try fresh rosemary instead, or even tender cedar sprigs. Either way, you’ll end up with a pretty cake suitable for any occasion (it pairs beautifully with sparkling wine!) or an ordinary afternoon tea break.

Makes 1 loaf cake

Ingredients

Cake:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon ground cardamom

1 cup buttermilk (or ½ cup milk mixed with ½ cup plain yogurt)

½ cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

Zest from 1 grapefruit

Icing:

1 cup powdered sugar

2 tablespoons amaro (such as Campari or Aperol) or grapefruit juice

Pinch of citric acid (optional)

1 teaspoon crushed pink peppercorns

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350o. Grease a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan and line it with a strip of parchment paper.

2. In a large mixing bowl, sift or whisk together the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and cardamom. In another bowl (or in a large measuring cup), whisk together the buttermilk (or milk + yogurt), the oil, eggs and grapefruit zest. Make a well in the dry ingredients, pour in the wet mixture, then stir together until just combined.

3. Scrape the batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake until golden brown on top and a toothpick comes out slightly sticky, with just a little bit of moist crumbs sticking to it, about 50-60 minutes.

4. Remove the cake to a cooling rack, and while it’s cooling, whisk the icing ingredients together, adding a little more or less liquid as needed to make a thick but spoonable mixture. If you’d like the icing a little more sour than bitter, add a pinch of citric acid to it, and once the cake is lukewarm, drizzle it on. If you’d like, sprinkle a little more crushed pink peppercorns on top.

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.

Heather Arndt Anderson is an award-winning food writer and the author of four books on culinary history. She is the producer of OPB's Superabundant newsletter.

POETRY

MARY THIBODEAUX LENTZ

Speaking Out for the River Bar

Moisture rises in the late-afternoon wind, overcast sky coalesces into tiny weights that slip free from scraggly prongs unbraiding. Soft, sideways drifting drizzle wets stiletto bracts of sedges, bristles brows of bricklebush, spatters slender stalks of ragweed and oatgrass, frees seeds like tiddledywinks from pennyroyal husks, sends spiders scurrying under leaf shelters, water striders and biter bugs to rock crevices, tickles the slow surface of the river’s flow, sifts through wagging tongues of algae, cools skinks in their burrows, lacquers the riverbed’s gray cobbles, and quenches bar’s dry, coarse sand.

Fragile home of refugees scrap island of ailing waterway, threatened by diversions and drought, river as endangered as the ancient, silent redwoods that stand watch.

Autumn

Wind leaps tall trees like stepping-stones, bends redwood tops until they groan, rips widow-makers, hurls spears down, stirs canopy with roaring sound.

Tree branches strain with each wild tug in jerky dance of jitterbug, and duff that gathered summer long slip off like notes, in autumn’s song.

Mary Thibodeaux Lentz lives with her husband in Eureka, California. They hike regularly in the nearby national and state parks, and her writing often reflects these experiences and how climate change may affect the unique habitat of her region. Her poems have appeared in the Northcoast Journal, the Toyon (Humboldt State’s literary journal), Wild Humboldt, and the Jefferson Journal. She’s worked as a freelance journalist for the Humboldt Beacon and has had fiction and nonfiction work published in Cricket and U.S. Catholic.

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 self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Amy Miller, Poetry Editor Jefferson Journal

1250 Siskiyou Blvd

Please allow eight Ashland, OR 97520 weeks for reply.