PENDLETON — Elected leaders from Eastern Oregon counties who signed on to a letter asking Gov. Kate Brown for changes to her approach to COVID-19 shutdowns say the letter was not in direct response to the current two-week “freeze,” but was crafted over several weeks as an outline of what they hope to see happen as the state continues to address fluctuations in COVID-19 numbers.

The letter, dated Wednesday, Nov. 18, and signed by 51 county commissioners and state legislators, asks Brown to allow restaurants and bars to stay open throughout the pandemic, to fully reopen schools, to reopen state agencies, such as DMV offices, to the public and to allow religious leaders to use their own best judgment in operating their places of worship. It also urges her to allow local elected officials to work with county health departments to come up with their own versions of Phase 1 and Phase 2 for COVID-19 regulations.

“A one-size-fits-all approach to shutting down the state was logical and appropriate in March when the onset of this pandemic was new and was unknown,” the letter states. “Over time, we have learned, adapted, adjusted and improved. Keeping counties and regions in a Phase II for an indefinite period of time is a one size fits all approach that does not work any longer.”

More autonomy for local officials

Sen. Lynn Findley, a Republican from Vale, said he and other legislators had been working on drafts of the letter for about three weeks before sending it to the governor’s office on Nov. 18.

Since discussion of the letter started weeks ago, the COVID-19 landscape in Oregon looks different. On Nov. 1, Oregon Health Authority reported 524 new cases of COVID-19. Since then, the state has repeatedly set records for daily case counts, and on Thursday, Nov. 19, reported 1,225 new cases.

Findley, whose district includes parts of 11 counties, said his main goal is to promote a “dialogue” between the governor and other state officials and legislators, county commissioners, school administrators and other local officials in rural counties.

He said he wants the state to give more autonomy to local officials in designing strategies to combat the spread of COVID-19.

He notes that during the spring, the state required counties to submit detailed plans for state approval before moving into Phase 1, which relaxed some of the restrictions on businesses, church services and other activities that the governor had imposed in March at the outset of the pandemic.

Findley contends that approach “is totally ignored now.”

He laments that in place of pandemic planning that acknowledges the different effects the virus has had in rural Oregon, state officials have switched to a “one-size-fits-all” strategy, including the two-week statewide freeze in effect from Nov. 18 through Wednesday, Dec. 2.

He concedes that one reference in the letter about rural communities slowing the spread of COVID-19 has been overtaken, to some extent, by subsequent trends in new cases.

“Clearly the situation seems to continue to escalate, and the numbers in most of the (legislative) districts are pretty darn high, which is unfortunate,” he said.

Nonetheless, Findley stands by his belief that statewide restrictions, such as the two-week freeze, fail to reflect the differences between rural and urban areas.

Wheeler County, for instance, has reported only one COVID-19 case during the pandemic.

Three other counties in his district have had fewer than 100 cases — Lake, with 82 cases as of Nov. 19, Harney, with 78, and Grant, with 74.

House District 58 State Representative-elect Bobby Levy, R-Echo, added her signature to the letter because she believes the individual differences of counties should be taken into account.

“I signed onto this letter because I believe it’s true. Hospitalizations in the metro shouldn’t automatically mean that our rural communities suffer the consequences,” she said. “Our children need to be in school full time. Our churches need to be open to attend. State business needs to open back up and serve the communities they have left behind.”

Levy signed the letter before the governor’s freeze took effect and said her feelings about the COVID-19 lockdown issue have not changed since then. She remains very concerned about how the state’s handling of the pandemic is impacting the district she is set to represent.

“We have small communities that heavily rely on summer tourism and rodeos that were unable to count on those funds to carry them through the winter months,” she said. “We all are doing our best to help keep our communities safe and financially afloat — but shutting down businesses, schools and churches that have no correlation to outbreaks is not the answer.”

Levy will succeed three-term Rep. Greg Barreto, R-Cove, when she is sworn in January. Barreto, who did not run for reelection, signed the letter for a fundamental reason.

“I read it and I agreed with it,’’ he said.

The state representative said he objects to how the governor’s mandates are the same for all counties despite their differences. A point also made in the letter.

“The shutdowns are carte blanche throughout the state,’’ Barreto said.

He describes Brown’s measures as unnecessarily draconian, ones which are having draconian-like impacts.

“You can not shut down schools and businesses and not expect huge consequences,’’ Barreto said.

He also said the governor should not be focusing on COVID-19 rates but rather at how many cases of it are hospitalizing people and requiring respirators. Barreto said these are the statistics which really matter.

Barreto said that rather than issuing strict orders, Brown should be asking people to take individual responsibility and providing guidelines for them to follow in an effort to reduce COVID-19 rates.A chance to offer more input

Union County Commissioner Donna Beverage said the start of the freeze was the right time to release the letter that had been in the works for about a month.

She said one of the most important parts of the letter is an early passage which says the state’s uniform approach to dealing with COVID-19 is no longer applicable. She said all the Eastern Oregon’s counties really want is a seat at the table when the state is determining what should be done to reduce COVID-19 rates. She believes county commissioners and local health department officials should be involved with discussions with the state.

“We all want to be safe and to make sure that we do not lose people to depression or suicide or have people lose businesses,’’ Beverage said.

The Union County Commissioner said the governor’s staff in the past couple of days has seemed to become more receptive to the individual needs of counties. Beverage said that in the past when the governor’s office called Eastern Oregon counties about COVID-19 it told officials what to do.

“Now it is giving us a chance to give more input,’’ said Beverage, who was reelected to a second term in May.

Paul Anderes, chair of the Union County Board of Commissioners, said he hopes the letter opens lines of communication between the governor’s office and Eastern Oregon. Anderes, like Beverage, wants representatives of Eastern Oregon counties to be at the table with the governor’s staff when considering what to do.

“We want to be part of the discussions and decision making,’’ Anderes said. “We want them to let us in on decision making rather than having the state make decisions with a wide blanket,’’

Anderes said he senses that Brown and her staff are beginning to listen more to Eastern Oregon officials.

“I’m encouraged by the direction it (communication with the governor’s office) is going now,’’ the first-term Union County commissioner said.

Union County Commissioner Matt Scarfo, also in his first term, is another letter signee. He said he wants the governor to look at the COVID-19 situation regionally and not statewide.

“We want to be involved in the conversation (about what should be done),’’ Scarfo said.‘Small social gatherings that causes our community spread’Baker County Commissioner Mark Bennett said he and fellow commissioners Bruce Nichols, along with nine other commissioners from rural counties, had a conference call with the governor on Nov. 18.

Although that conversation happened before the letter had been sent to Brown’s office, Bennett said he and the other commissioners broached the same topics outlined in the letter, namely their insistence that counties should have autonomy in crafting their strategies to stem the rising tide of infections.

“We’d like to see that the local level is where the decisions are made,” said Bennett, who has served as Baker County’s incident commander during the pandemic.

Bennett pointed out that during the spring Baker County officials, while writing a plan to allow the county to move into Phase 1 of reopening, assembled a robust contact tracing and case investigation plan.

Although he acknowledged that the county’s case rate has accelerated during November — about 38% of the county’s 240 cases have been reported since Nov. 1 — Bennett said he objects to the current statewide freeze not only because it ignores geographic differences but because it imposes severe restrictions on restaurants, bars and churches, none of which has been identified as a significant source of COVID-19 spread.

“It’s the small social gatherings that causes our community spread,” Bennett said.

Tyler Brown, who owns Barley Brown’s Brew Pub and Tap House in Baker City, said the restrictions imposed on restaurants have been “incredibly frustrating.”

He hopes the letter the legislators and commissioners signed will prove influential in Salem.

Brown, whose pub and tap house are both on Main Street in downtown Baker City, said he’s had no feedback from state officials about whether previous requirements for restaurants, such as limiting seating capacity and requiring diners to wear masks, actually helped stem the spread of the virus.

“We’re not getting any information,” Brown said.

The two-week “pause”announced on Nov. 9 for nine counties, including Baker, required that restaurant owners limit indoor capacity to 50 people, including customers and staff.

Brown said those restrictions had been in effect for just two days when the governor announced that the pause would be superseded by the two-week freeze, and that restaurants would be limited to takeout meals only from Nov. 18 through at least Dec. 2.

He said he’s been frustrated since the early days of the pandemic, during the spring, by what he considers the state’s inconsistent approach to regulating businesses to combat COVID-19.

In particular he said he is annoyed every time he visits a grocery store.

“You don’t get the feeling that there’s any sort of emergency going on when you’re at a grocery store,” he said. “The only thing you see that’s apparent is when you drive by and see restaurants closed.”

He said the changes at grocery stores, such as taping directional arrows on the floor to encourage shoppers to walk one way down aisles, and the installation of plexiglass shields at checkout counters, seem to him modest compared to the restrictions imposed on restaurants and bars.Letter should have been sent soonerWallowa County Commissioner Todd Nash said many who signed the letter hoped to get it to the governor sooner.

”There were a number of us that wanted to send this letter some time ago, but felt like there was a decision made to not send it prior to the election and make it a political stand,” Nash said.

The letter in a nutshell, Nash said, is essentially a request for counties to have their own autonomy when it comes to the COVID-19 response and not be placed under an umbrella that may work for some regions of the state and not others.

”We want to engage with the governor and come up with the plans that best suit our own communities,” he said. “I had access to the governor (Wednesday) night and visited with her a little bit. She’s not ready, at this point, to drop the matrix and just have them be guidelines. She still wants them to be enforceable. I suggested they be guidelines and the state be a place that can be a point of reference for how the caseload is going, what is best practices, those sort of things, and allow the people to monitor their own behavior.”

Susan Roberts, the other Wallowa County commissioner to sign the letter, said she signed encouraging Brown to talk with local leaders, rather than at them.

She also said different counties should be approached in different manners, noting that decisions that would work for Wallowa County wouldn’t necessarily work for Multnomah.

”We are different out here. We are never given the ability to make the decision (for ourselves),” Roberts said.

She said this portion of the state being overlooked isn’t a problem unique to the pandemic, but that it has instead been exacerbated by it.

”This is an ongoing conversation we have had for years. This pandemic just makes it more forefront than other subjects have in the past,” she said. “This is not an uncommon thread for us.”

Roberts noted to another point of frustration in how often details change.

”The changing metrics, and the changing rules, and guidelines, nothing is stable. It fluctuates so much,” she said. “People get really irritated at being told something Monday, something on Tuesday and something else on Thursday….You want the autonomy to make your own decision.”

As for the timing of the letter, Roberts said she wanted it sent “a month and a half ago.”

”That’s where I disagreed with the rest of the body. I thought we should send it when we prepared it,” she said, adding she didn’t see sending it sooner as a political chip. “To us it was a statement we wanted to be involved in our destiny.”

As for the meaning behind a more ominous statement in the letter — “the future of our state’s survival is at risk” — Nash said that referred to businesses that could have to shutter for good and the impact of that move.

”There’s so many broad-reaching impacts,” he said. “If you shut down a restaurant, the high-end steaks that would be served there have an impact on the beef industry. It has a cascading effect and a tremendous amount of dollars that it impacts. We’ve made it through so far, and I won’t speak for everybody, but some people won’t recover from this financially.”

Roberts added she isn’t confident the letter will bring about change or discussion, but said the commissioners intend to continue working for a solution.

”We’ll work through all the channels we normally work through and keep working,” she said. “We keep moving, we keep trying different avenues and methodologies to reach the governor or any of her staff.”

Letter is slightly datedUmatilla County Commissioner George Murdock said although he signed the letter weeks ago, its contents do not necessarily represent where he stands now, in light of changes to COVID-19 case numbers. Though he declined to revoke his signature from the letter, as it fundamentally supported his views, the letter’s claims that the county has “adjusted and improved” are slightly dated when considering the record-breaking spike in coronavirus cases the state has seen in recent weeks, according to Murdock.

“More recently, people have let down their guard,” Murdock said. “We know what we need to do, and right now we’re not doing it.”

He said the county needs to make a concerted effort to get its numbers down, and said although he, too, has families he wishes he could safely see for the holidays, people need to make personal sacrifices to help schools reopen. He expressed concern about a “lost generation” of schoolchildren, and lost businesses.

“Our biggest concern has been restaurants and bars,” he said. “Every time we do something, they get hit. Let’s just focus on areas that are causing the most problems.”

Umatilla County Commissioner Bill Elfering said he has not found the governor or the Oregon Health Authority very willing to sit down and have discussions about a plan “that would have more chances of success.” He criticized what he called blanket solutions that don’t take into account the impact, and said he doesn’t feel counties in Eastern Oregon are being given enough opportunities for input.

“Why are we closing restaurants and bars when we don’t know that’s where the problem is coming from?” he said. “If we’re out to protect our elderly and our vulnerable — those who have underlying conditions — then let’s protect them.”

He called wearing a face mask a “minor inconvenience” that people should be following to help out, along with social distancing and other “logical” steps. He said counties should work with their own health directors and commissioners to put together plans, rather than enforce the overarching mandates that come from the governor’s office.

Umatilla County Commissioner John Shafer said he feels the damage that COVID-19 restrictions are doing to businesses is doing more harm to the county than COVID-19 itself.

“I’m not saying open everything up no holds barred,” he said. “But the restrictions in place a few days ago I think were more than adequate to slow the spread. We’ve got a vaccine coming up. These things are coming. Why crush our economy right now when we’re so close to having a vaccine?”

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EOMG reporters Dick Mason and Jayson Jacoby contributed to this report.