Rogue Valley News, Wednesday 6/21 – Josephine County Enforcement Team Serves Another Illegal Grow Search Warrant, Missing Woman’s Remains Found in Shan Creek

On June 20, 2023, the Josephine Marijuana Enforcement Team (JMET) with the assistance of Rogue Area Drug Enforcement (RADE) and Josephine County Public Health & Building Safety, executed a search warrant in the 2000 block of Crow Road, Merlin, regarding an illegal marijuana grow site.

Josephine County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue team located Berna Leahy, deceased, about 1/4 mile from where she was last seen. There is no foul play suspected. No further information is being released.

JACKSON COUNTY, Ore. – Earlier in the school year, four local high schools began building bumpers for Jackson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) Emergency Vehicle Operators Course (EVOC). The students were tasked with building front and back bumpers onto JCSO Patrol vehicles that could withstand impacts during EVOC training.

Last month, JCSO deputies used them to practice Pursuit Intervention Technique (PIT) maneuvers with high school students and teachers along for the ride. Many thanks to the students and teachers from Eagle Point High School, Phoenix High School, Rogue River High School, and Rogue Valley Adventist Academy. A special thanks to Brill Metalworks and J.W. Hurd Fabrication for donating the supplies.

Oregon DOJ Consumer Protection Office Urges Oregonians To Be Proactive In Wake Of DMV Data Breach

The Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles confirmed Thursday that cybercriminals copied information on an estimated 3.5 million Oregon driver’s licenses and identification card holders , as part of the global MOVEit Transfer attack.

That’s bad news because your driver’s license contains plenty of information about you, including your birthdate, home address and even your height, weight, and eye color. Scammers can use some of this information to steal your identity and apply for credit cards, loans, and unemployment benefits in your name.

“Learning that personal information most Oregonians gave to their government has been exposed in a data breach is highly distressing,” said Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum.  “While the state works to identify who was impacted and what data was exposed, please follow these recommendations to stay safe.”

If you have an Oregon driver’s license or ID card, here’s what you should do:

• Order copies of your free credit reports and review them for inaccuracies.

You are entitled to a free copy of each of your three credit reports, one each maintained by the national credit bureaus of Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion, each year. You can get these reports from www.AnnualCreditReport.com.

These reports list your personal information, any recent bankruptcy declarations or foreclosures, and your open credit card and loan accounts, including how much you owe on each of these accounts.

If you notice loans or credit accounts on your reports that you know you never opened on your own, you know someone is using your personal information to steal your identity.

Fortunately, even if thieves have already opened accounts in your name, you can take action to stop future damage.

You should notify the banks or financial institutions behind the credit card or loan accounts opened fraudulently in your name. Explain to these institutions that you did not apply for these accounts or loans and that you are a victim of identity theft. The financial institutions will close these accounts. If you act quickly, you likely will not be responsible for charges made on fraudulent credit cards you didn’t apply for, and you may not have to pay back loans that thieves took out in your name.

• Consider freezing your credit.

A credit freeze prevents creditors — such as banks or lenders — from accessing your credit reports. This will stop identity thieves from taking out new loans or credit cards in your name because creditors won’t approve their loan or credit requests if they can’t first access your credit reports.

When you freeze your credit with each bureau, it will send you a personal identification number. You can then use that PIN to unfreeze your credit if you want to apply for a loan or credit card. You can also use the PIN to freeze your credit again after you’ve applied for loans or a new credit card.

You will have to freeze your credit with each bureau: Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.

• If you have been a victim of identity theft, place a one-year fraud alert on your credit reports.

This alert tells creditors that they must take reasonable steps to verify that it is actually you who is applying for credit or loans in your name.

To do this, you only need to contact one of the three national credit bureaus. That bureau must then inform the other bureaus of your fraud alert.

• If you receive notices from the Oregon Employment Department about benefits you’ve never applied for, contact them as soon as possible. 

Go online to unemployment.oregon.gov and click on “ID Theft” to fill out an ID Theft Reporting Form.

• Set up a profile change alert if you use mobile or online banking tools.

If your personal information on your bank’s website or app changes without your authorization, that is typically a sign of identity theft.

To stay safe, set up a profile change alert through your bank’s website or app. The alert can warn you when there’s been a change to your login information.

• If you have been a victim of identity theft, report it immediately.

If you suspect that a criminal has used your driver’s license information to steal your identity, make a report online at IdentityTheft.gov.

For more information about identify theft, visit the Oregon Department of Justice online at https://www.doj.state.or.us/consumer-protection/id-theft-data-breaches/identity-theft/ or call the Attorney General’s Consumer Hotline at 1-877-877-9392.

Wildfire Prevention and Other Bills Passed By Oregon Senate Now Headed To The House

State officials announced on Tuesday the passage of a bill designed to help Oregon’s wildfire preparedness efforts.

The Oregon Senate passed Senate Bill 80 on June 20, which would develop an advanced Wildfire Hazard Map to identifies areas at risk of wildfires based on such factors as climate, weather, topography, and vegetation, state legislators said. State officials also said SB 80 calls for an active community input process for its implementation.

“We can protect Oregon in wildfire seasons to come only through partnership with the people on the frontlines preventing and fighting wildfires,” said Senator Jeff Golden (D – Ashland), who championed the legislation. “Strong collaboration needs to guide investments that will protect our communities and the immensely dedicated firefighters who put their lives on the line to protect us.”

The bill also establishes the necessary funding through a Landscape Resiliency Fund, state legislators said. State officials said this bill supplements the state’s comprehensive wildfire preparedness bill passed in 2019, SB 762.

The Oregon Senate also passed three other bills on Tuesday, state officials said. Legislators said Senate Bill 3, which adds one-half credit of personal finance education and one-half credit of higher education and career path skills to Oregon high school graduation requirements.

Senate Bill 192 establishes prescription drug price transparency and increasing affordability by requiring pharmacy benefit managers to report the money they receive from drug manufacturers, state officials said.

State legislators said Senate Bill 1 allows taxpayers to voluntarily self-report their race and ethnicity for data collection that will be later examined for developing equitable revenue policies.

All of these bills now move on to the Oregon House for consideration, and were among hundreds of bills threatened by the recent Senate Republican walkout, state officials said.

Oregon Appeals Court Ruling Says Voters Outlawed Civil Forfeiture

State officials are now taking the fight to the Oregon Supreme Court.

The Oregon Department of Justice is scrambling to save the state’s civil forfeiture laws after the state Court of Appeals all but ruled them unconstitutional earlier this year.

The state is looking to the Oregon Supreme Court to save the legal tool, which is most commonly used by law enforcement in busting drug rings. It allows police to seize not only cash and contraband but also the property where the drugs were grown or sold, resulting in long-standing criticism that it represents an abuse of police power. A few states, including North Carolina and Nebraska, have banned civil forfeiture outright, limiting asset seizures to criminal proceedings.

Oregon voters sharply limited the practice with a 2000 ballot measure that required law enforcement to first win a conviction before seizing property and then prove that the value of the seizure was proportional to the crime.

More than two decades later, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled in March that voters did more than just limit civil forfeiture in 2000—they rendered it unconstitutional.

The Oregon Supreme Court is expected to decide next month whether to review the ruling.

A lot of public officials hope it will. Attorneys for the Oregon DOJ, Yamhill County, the cities of Salem, Kaiser, Medford and Springfield, and the Oregon Narcotics Enforcement Association have filed briefs arguing the Court of Appeals overstepped, noting that the ruling “opens the door to a wave of post-conviction claims for violation of the Fifth Amendment” and could have a “potentially substantial fiscal impact” on law enforcement agencies that rely on it for revenue.

In other words, a lot is riding on whether the March ruling, first reported by The Oregonian, is the last word on the matter. “If this case holds,” says Zach Stern, the lawyer who argued the case before the Court of Appeals and won, “civil forfeiture is dead in Oregon.”

THE CRIME – There are, thanks to the legal oddity that is civil forfeiture, two guilty parties in this case.

One is Sheryl Lynn Sublet, a 66-year-old military veteran who, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, became addicted to hard drugs. She subsequently got clean with the help of Central City Concern in Portland, working there for more than a decade as a case manager before moving to Yamhill County.

Then, she relapsed. Police walked into a Lake Oswego storefront of Federal Express and intercepted a package of methamphetamine and heroin bound for her home. Sublet admitted to police the package was hers and that she planned to resell the drugs to 10 customers, according to a probable cause affidavit.

The other party is a piece of real estate: Sublet’s two-bedroom house, which prosecutors argued was instrumental to the crime. The Yamhill County Interagency Narcotics Team searched it twice, the second time in a 2018 raid with 30 police officers armed with flash-bang grenades. There, they seized $50,000 in cashier checks from the sale of her Portland home, digital scales, and “trace amounts” of drugs, according to legal filings.

Sublet pleaded guilty to delivery of methamphetamine, forfeited her checks, and was sentenced to 72 months in prison. And, thanks to a jury ruling in a subsequent civil forfeiture lawsuit, lost her lone remaining asset: her house.

THE ARGUMENTS – Sublet appealed, arguing the seizure was both disproportionate and unconstitutional. The Court of Appeals ignored the question of proportionality and focused on whether Oregon’s civil forfeiture laws were constitutional to begin with.

Sublet’s attorney, Stern, argued that voters had acknowledged the punitive nature of forfeiture by tying it to a criminal conviction. The court agreed, ruling that the case should be dismissed on the basis of double jeopardy. The Supreme Court must now decide whether to review it.

Meanwhile, the cities of Salem, Springfield, Medford and Keizer have signed on as “friends of the court” to fight it. So has the Oregon Department of Justice, which noted there have been 1,200 civil forfeitures since 2009 and that the ruling would “have significant ramifications for criminal prosecutions.” (Disclosure: Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum is married to the co-owner of WW’s parent company.) If the Supreme Court does decide to take the case, a ruling isn’t expected until next year.

Kevin Jacoby, a lawyer who works on civil forfeiture cases, says the state’s going to have a tough battle. “I think they’re going to be hard pressed to convince the Supreme Court that the Court of Appeals got it wrong,” he tells WW.

In the meantime, Sublet’s sentence was commuted by Gov. Kate Brown. She’s currently living in her house—at least for now, until the courts decide its fate. (SOURCE)

Proposal On Capping Health Care Costs Would Impact Oregonians

When you get a medical bill, even if it’s itemized, it’s not always easy to tell what you’re paying for. While some things, such as anesthesia, an overnight hospital stay or medications are pretty clear, a lot of overhead costs go into your final bill. If hospitals and other providers could keep their costs down, conceivably, our costs as patients could be lower.

Here in Oregon, our elected officials have a history of trying to make things easier financially on patients. In 2019, the state passed a health care cost growth target program, the goal of which is to help “identify waste and inefficiency, address underlying costs in the health system, and provide new, better cost driver information that can help inform policy that will help reduce costs.”

This is accomplished primarily by asking health care entities to meet a target limit on spending increases – 3.4% annually.  At this point, however, the 3.4% threshold is a soft target, without any enforcement until 2025 and without any financial penalties for failing to meet the target until 2027 — that is, if the program still exists in its current form.

House Bill 2045 , a bill that Oregon lawmakers are currently considering, could radically change the rules. The legislation would create a blanket exemption to the target in the form of certain labor expenses from providers. Health care entities would not have to count their payroll outlays for a significant number of workers when determining whether they meet the state-mandated targets. This raises major concerns about the scope of the program and the ability of the target to effectively contain costs.

Labor costs are often the biggest expense for a health care system, according to the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, which represents all of the state’s hospitals. Allowing providers to charge whatever they want to cover their labor costs – and not requiring justification for those expenses – hamstrings the efficacy of a program intended to contain costs.

The program already provides flexibility for entities to exceed the target as long as there’s a “reasonable basis” for it. But hospitals and other providers are asking for exceptions beyond a “reasonable basis” and ultimately, patients will cover those costs through higher premiums and/or medical bills. As recently published in a report from the state program, health care costs are increasing in Oregon, causing people to delay or not seek care, which can be detrimental or even deadly.

Proponents of HB 2045 stated on the House floor that the bill was not a “blanket” exemption, but that misrepresents the effect of the legislation. The bill itself states that “a provider shall not be accountable for cost growth resulting from the provider’s total compensation.” There is no time limit or other justification required for the exemption to be granted. What else is that, if not a blanket exemption?

This bill would set a dangerous precedent while we await the implementation of the cost growth target – one that allows providers to wriggle out of accountability measures. The target isn’t meant to punish hospitals for buying equipment or hiring the staff they need to operate and care for patients. It’s a tool designed to make providers think about how they can cut wasteful – not prudent – spending. Any argument to the contrary is disingenuous.

Oregonians need qualified and competent professionals to be on staff at their doctor’s office and hospitals. But saying labor costs are indemnified from any possibility of wasteful spending and removing any requirement to justify those costs is unrealistic.

Oregon’s legislators got it right the first time with the cost target program. It makes no sense to  gut the program with HB 2045 before it even gets off the ground. (SOURCE)

Federal officials want Oregonians and Californians to weigh in on the potential return of threatened sea otters to their historic home. 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is holding eight open houses along the Oregon Coast this week to share a proposal for reintroducing southern sea otters — one of three subspecies of sea otter — to the Pacific Coast from San Francisco and up through northern Oregon.

The otters have been mostly absent for more than a century, and Oregon is the only state on the Pacific Coast that has no southern sea otters, according to a news release from the federal agency.

The otters are a keystone species, meaning many other marine species largely depend on them, and their absence has myriad effects especially on kelp and seagrass forests and species that depend on those oceanic forests. The otters eat sea urchins that attack kelp.

The otter has been listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act since 1977. They were nearly hunted to extinction for their fur throughout the 1700s and 1800s.

The federal agency wants to give communities the chance to ask questions and to share any concerns about their return, including the potential for economic losses to the commercial shellfish industry. Southern sea otters consume more than 150 different species, including mussels, crabs and clams. The reintroduction of the otters could also result in restrictions or prohibitions on some fishing gear to protect the otters from becoming caught or hurt, according to the news release.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife open houses in Oregon:

Astoria: June 20, 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Astoria Elks Lodge #180

Garibaldi: June 21, 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Old Mill RV Resort

Newport: June 21, 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.,Newport Recreation Center

Florence: June 22, 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Lane Community College

Coos Bay: June 22 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m., Southern Oregon Community College

Port Orford: June 23, 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Port Orford Library

Gold Beach: June 23, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., Curry County Library

Brookings: June 24, 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Coastal Community Center