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State Legislature passes bill A Call to refinance Bay Area Hospital debt for a Veto of HB 4177

HB 4075 is a huge win for the area’s largest healthcare provider

COLUMN ON BEHALF OF THE COOS BAY WORLD

We are asking Gov. Tina Kotek to veto HB 4177, an ill-advised measure approved by the Oregon Legislature that undermines Oregon’s long- revered Public Meetings Law. A work group that proposed HB 4177 excluded media organizations that were deeply embedded in the creation of our Public Meetings Law in 1973 and in subsequent amendments. Coming late to that table, representatives of the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association were shocked to ﬁnd this warning from the Oregon Government Ethics Commission: “This exception would allow governing body members to meet in private and/ or communicate privately with each other, outside of any public meeting, in order to gather information. Much of the information gathering that normally occurs in public meetings (work sessions or executive sessions) could instead be done privately … with no meeting notice, no minutes or recordings, and no news media observers.”

BY NATE SCHWARTZ

Bay Area Hospital’s (BAH) leading legislative priority, House Bill 4075, passed both chambers of the Oregon State Legislature at the close of this short session. The bill authorizes the State to use funds from the Unclaimed Property and Estates Fund as collateral to reﬁnance the hospital’s debt. BAH’s outstanding loan with

the Bank of Montreal (BMO) remains a signiﬁcant ﬁnancial hurdle despite the hospital’s impressive turnaround over the past six months. The outstanding debt stands at $44 million, and while the hospital has never missed a payment, it faces a $35.3 million balloon payment in Dec. of 2030, which presents an existential

Here are additional notes of caution from OGEC, obtained through a public records request:

See BAH Debt Continued on Page 16

Longshoremen of ILWU Local 12 picket at North Bend pellet facility

“It should be noted at the outset that whenever a quorum of a governing body gathers together, whether in public or private, that quorum has the power to exercise government authority and bind the government to any decision. Even if that decision occurs in private and in violation of the Public Meetings Law, the action still binds the government.” “It (HB 4177) is effectively rewriting the Public Meetings Law in ways that create much more ambiguity and inhibit enforcement, and doing so in a short session without any public involvement.” HB 4177 contains signiﬁcant legal and political complications, and there is no emergency needing immediate legislative action without adequate attention to those problems. Some portray HB 4177 as a measure simply to clarify issues related to “serial communications,” which are ‘daisy-chain’ discussions among members of a governing body allowing deliberation without a meeting. Instead, as testiﬁed by citizens, ONPA and OGEC, HB 4177 actually expands permissions for serial communications while allowing full-quorum gatherings of governing bodies with “no meeting notice, no minutes or recordings, and no news media observers.”

The union claims that substandard wages and benefits at Oregon Pellet Mills harm all local workers

BY NATE SCHWARTZ

Members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union from throughout Oregon came to support North Bend’s Local 12 chapter during their picket of the wood pellet ship-ping facility along Highway 101 just south of downtown North Bend. The union claims that owners, Oregon Pellet Mills LLC, are paying the facility’s workers substandard wages and beneﬁts. The Local 12 branch has been a leading proponent of workers’ rights in the South Coast’s maritime shipping industry since 1934, with a 92-year history of similar demonstrations on behalf of not only their members,

but workers of all stripes in Coos County. The Oregon Pellet Mills facility makes use of the Ko-Kwel Wharf for its dock and export facili-ty. When the City of North Bend announced that the warehouse would be built, it stated that it would store wood pellets for shipments to Japan. When permitting was approved for the 95,000 square-foot storage facility, it was reported to cost $6 million to build and would create ﬁve new jobs after construction. According to the ILWU, the company ignored written requests to refute that they were un-dermining accepted best economic practices for the area. They claim that any substandard

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wages and beneﬁts paid by Oregon Pellet Mills harm the area’s shipping industry as a whole by depressing compensation for everyone, union members or otherwise. “We ﬁrst got reports somewhere around 2023, when we had contacted Oregon Pellet Mills about their new development on the Ko-Kwel terminal. We tried to engage with the owner and Oregon Pellet Mill people to no avail, kind of a stonewall position,” said ILWU Local 12 president Ben Forsman. “They’ve opened up a terminal here that works at a lesser rate than anywhere

See VETO Continued on Page 2

See ILWU Continued on Page 2

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