Dayton Chronicle - Your Hometown News Source

DAYTON–Pandemic-affected workforce, vaccination, housing shortages, childcare unavailability, forest fires and forest management, rural broadband and Snake River dams were topics touched on by Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers during her tour of Washington's Fifth Congressional District last week.

"It's energizing to be able to be together again," McMorris Rodgers said of being with a group of masked and unmasked constituents for an informal discussion.

In her forays across the Fifth District, McMorris Rodgers has heard that finding employable workers is a big problem. "I'm hopeful we can get more people back into the workforce," she said. "That's probably the number one issue that I hear everywhere I go is the need for employees."

Across the U.S., McMorris Rodgers said, some 10 million people need to return to the workforce. Bette Lou Crothers commented that businesses along Main Street can't get people who want to work. "It's everywhere I go," McMorris Rodgers said.

"But in Columbia County, we have the least number of unemployed people we've ever had in my career here," said Jennie Dickinson, Port of Columbia Executive Director.

Dickinson suggested that Columbia County may be in a down cycle with the aging population "catching up" with the community, fewer young people to fill the jobs, people retiring and lack of childcare, among some of the factors. "We're at a 4.6% unemployment rate," Dickinson said. "There's only 82 people unemployed in Columbia County."

McMorris Rodgers pointed out that Ways and Means did an analysis and it showed an annual income of $109,000 for a family of four, where both were unemployed, and getting unemployment, through September 30 this year. "But that's coming to an end. There's been a lot of help that's been sent out, but I do think that has contributed to some people not coming back to work," she said.

"People are changing careers and the Baby Boomers are retiring, McMorris Rodgers said. "The number of people in health care that have had a really tough year and a half, and my sense is, and I've heard enough anecdotal stories, that maybe they weren't thinking about retirement, maybe they were. But it's like, 'okay...if they can' [retire, they will]..."

Shane McGuire, CEO of the Columbia County Health System, noted that the pandemic-affected labor situation may have pushed health-care workers into contract work rather than be a shift employee who is asked to work a double shift, or called in to fill a shift. "They're going to contract labor because they're picking the contracts they want for the length of time they want to work," McGuire said. "It's been really challenging. It could be $140 an hour to get a nurse now, and traveling CNA wages are at nurse-floor wages. I've had nurses in Columbia County who have signed a contract and can't find a place to live."

McGuire made reference to Governor Jay Inslee's vaccine mandate and said a number of staff in the hospital are "pretty intent on not getting vaccinated" and being terminated, and if they're terminated, they will be eligible for unemployment benefits.

"It's almost an incentive to not be at work," McGuire said. Exemptions to the vaccine mandate include religious and medical grounds, McGuire said, "plus some want to stand up for their ability to make a choice rather than being told what to do."

It's another challenge for us and on that unemployment conversation you were having, "pushing people toward an unemployment decision instead of being fully gainfully employed in our hospital," McGuire said. "And the time frames are short, too."

McMorris Rodgers asked McGuire what the hospital was seeing regarding covid. "There's a lot of activity in our community," he answered. "They're at 95% capacity in ICUs across the state. I can't get stroke and heart folks out of here. It takes me hours."

Part of the capacity problem, McGuire noted, is that Dayton General Hospital is in the middle of a CARES-funded project so the hospital has three rooms empty rolling as it's legal capacity. There was another issue with CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid] survey that McGuire deferred going into due to time, but noted that it means 12 rooms must be empty.

"Which is not helpful because the capacity around us is so high and they need to discharge to us," he said. "We've got a lot of challenges with that capacity...it's not that there aren't beds, it's just that there aren't people to take care of patients who are in those beds. And that's affecting a lot of the health systems around us.

"They're offering incredible bonuses to get nurses to come to work and it's a challenge," McGuire said.

McMorris Rodgers agreed, noting this situation is nationwide and that nurses are suffering fatigue from the intense work environment due to the pandemic for a year and a half.

McGuire briefed McMorris Rodgers on the current state of nurse staffing, indicating that nurses are leaving busy places to less-busy hospitals or offices, and that housing and child care are significant issues.

Discussion shifted to the Health System's Early Childcare Initiative, and that the congresswoman's support would be appreciated, McGuire said. The District is working on a partnership with the YWCA in the community, to fill child-care need but also the early childhood education component as well.

CMR commented that the system in Newport and Pend Oreille attempted a childcare coalition but gave up because of onerous government requirements.

McGuire said the hospital partnering with the YWCA will hopefully work because the Y is familiar with the regulatory requirements. Paul Ihle is leading the effort to develop the cooperative program.

"I've been doing economic development for 22 years and it just feels like it's turned upside down," Dickinson commented. "When has housing and child care been our problem? We've always had people and needed more jobs."

McGuire brought to McMorris Rodgers' attention that the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) funding was received by the hospital district, a project was started but stalled by circumstances outside the District's control, and now with a June 30 deadline to show how the funds were spent. "We couldn't get people to come do the work," he said. "We're appreciative of the funding, but we're not finding a path to get it spent in the timeframe."

The Hospital District is sitting on $2 million in CARES funding, but can't use it and may have to return it, one project started and another stalled due to contractor and supply issues. "We assume that at some point in time, somebody's going to ask for it back," he said.

McMorris Rodgers pledged to look into the matter.

Chronicle publisher Loyal Baker asked McMorris Rodgers if the region's fires might be of a lesser magnitude if there were more activity in the woods, such as livestock grazing and timber harvest, noting that fires in recent years don't compare historically to past fires as far as intensity, air quality and other factors that may have been mitigated by logging and livestock grazing.

McMorris Rodgers said she received an encouraging update from the Umatilla National Forest the previous day on how different agencies, federal, state and local, are positive in coordination. "There was a sense that these conditions are terrible and we need to take action immediately.

"Our forests are unhealthy and we absolutely need to be doing more to ensure that we're passing on to our legacy-the future generations-green, healthy trees, and they are not. And I hope that we can do more to unify around that," McMorris Rodgers said.

Forest officials felt a fire perimeter put in after the School and the Columbia Complex fires worked, McMorris Rodgers said. Fire-fighting efforts may also include wilderness areas, something which hasn't been done locally in the past, she said.

"They've said that but they haven't actually done it," added Marty Hall, Columbia County Commissioner. "They're just not as aggressive" fighting fire in wilderness, and "safety trumps everything," Hall noted after having toured the fire a week earlier.

McMorris Rodgers felt a "significant shift" evidenced by better coordination, specific goals to "put the fire out," and the absence of finger pointing and blame shifting. "That's why it was a more encouraging report," she said.

"I do continue to believe that we must do more in our forests. We fixed fire borrowing a few years ago-we used to borrow from management funds from the U.S. Forest Service to fight fires-this year they're tapped. Resources are a big issue." McMorris Rodgers said.

"I continue to support and advocate for the Resilient Forest Act, which would allow more partnerships," she said. "It would allow the county to partner in managing parts of the forest."

In the Colville National Forest, the private sector is managing 50,000 acres of the 1.6 million allotted, by conservation groups, the recreational community and the grazers.

Grazing permittees were "protected" during the fire, McMorris Rodgers said. Initially, grazers were ordered out, but because the livestock need a place to be and feed, fire officials allowed them to stay. "I just felt like there was more of a community, listening to all of the stakeholders and saying 'okay, how do we work this together,'" she said. "That was encouraging."

"We have to address bug infestation, and diseased and dying trees," McMorris Rodgers said. "We've been very reactionary versus going in and being good stewards. Being good stewards does not mean 'we want to save this for future generations so we're not going to touch it.' That's not being a good steward.

"That results in forests that are decayed and dying," she said.

"A lot of good practices would create income," Hall said. "Logging would create income for the Forest Service as well as the counties, and grazing produces income. They talk about it used to cost so much for brush control. Well, you used to have the rancher pay you for the privilege of doing brush control."

Hall said he recognized that lawsuits and other circumstances holds up activities after a fire, noting that he was aware of a tract of timber that was cruised then, because of a lawsuit, didn't get logged and the trees rotted and were unfit to be logged.

McMorris Rodgers told how she invited the Resource Committee to come out to Washington and hear from private industry and tribes on how they'd operate after a fire. "Tribal interests get into the woods and harvest burned timber immediately to get the maximum salvage value," McMorris Rodgers said. "The logs were smoking on the log trucks."

"There is a significant difference in the way these lands are managed," she said. "I feel like with the larger, catastrophic fires, there's more of a recognition of that."

"Follow that up ten years later," Hall said, "where's the forest health? Where's the game? Where's there more life? It's in the areas that are better managed."

Baker pointed out that forest management shifted with the shut-down of the timber industry in the 1990s due to the endangered northern spotted owl. Economists have put a price tag on the cost of it all: $46 billion, or $9 million per owl. She commented that with logging drastically curtailed, owl populations didn't improve.

Kaye Eaton pointed out one of the requirements for the Forest Service was to manage noxious weeds. "What can we do to get this changed to a different management program?" she asked. "Every time there's a forest fire, that is money that has gone up in smoke."

"At a federal level," McMorris Rodgers said, "the larger, catastrophic fires in the West are raising awareness. At a national level, it has been extremely difficult through the years to advocate for forest management up against a lot of people who don't have national forest in their states or in their districts. They have bought the myth that the best way to manage these is a 'hands-off' approach. I think that that's changing, and we've gotten some reforms.

"I've really pushed for collaboratives on these forests," McMorris Rodgers said. "We made significant progress in the Colville National Forest, which is in the northern part of my district-I know it's not the Umatilla-when I was first elected, they were harvesting between 17 and 18 million board feet. The goal was to get to 40. We just went over 100 off the Colville National Forest, and it was lauded by the environmental community, the recreational community, the chief of the National Forest Service...she was out two summers ago and she said 'This is the model for the rest of the country.'

"It was a locally driven process," she continued. "It was a forest supervisor who grew up in that area who knows the forest and really committed himself on pulling the forest together." This supervisor realized that on a 1.6 million-acre forest, that there's going to be parts of it that can address different groups' wants and needs.

"The environmental community wants more wilderness," McMorris Rodgers said. "They're having that conversation. There's other parts where the recreational community wants more trails. So they're figuring out where that makes sense and they're making progress there. Everyone recognizes that we have to do more to take out bug-infested timber-30 to 40 per cent of the forest is bug infested. For industry-for the saw mills, for the paper plant, for the biomass facility-they need timber, and we've got some long-term, ten-year contracts on portions of the forest where they have a certainty as to supply.

"I feel like that's a model...and a lot of that is sitting down and talking," the congresswoman said. "The collaborative have spent hours...they started out warring. Before they started talking, it was just lawsuits."

McMorris Rodgers said there is grazing in the forest and Commissioner Hall agreed, although he noted that one grazing permit was abandoned because of the regulations.

Dickinson mentioned the technical help her family receives to manage its forested property in the Blue Mountains, and that it's acceptable to have sections of with more brush and other sections with less to maintain a diverse ecosystem.

McMorris Rodgers referred to the A to Z Project, which was implemented in the Colville National Forest and shifted the cost of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) study to the private sector. The NEPA study usually made letting a logging contract too expensive. The USFS's partnership with Vaagen Brothers of Colville resulted in a model which seems to address concerns of all the stake holders.

McGuire noted that the thick smoke which infiltrates the valleys and hills during fire season has a negative impact on the public's health.

Dickinson asked the congresswoman for confirmation that local governments' American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) may be used as matching funds for the Port of Columbia's $500,000 match for its $2 million dark fiber project.

"Everything I'm being told is that it can be," Dickinson said, "but I'm having a hard time getting something on somebody's official letterhead that says CERB funds are not restricted and therefore local ARPA funds can be used for match."

After discussion, Dickinson seemed more assured that ARPA funds may be "paired" with ARPA funds allotted to other government entities.

Dickinson said the next challenge is getting fiber to rural areas of Columbia County, and that it may not be feasible to go directly to residences in a county with as few people per square mile, but perhaps a fiber node could be installed atop a grain elevator and from there broadcast wireless. "The closer you can get fiber to the customer, the better the service," Dickinson said.

McMorris Rodgers advised of new technology being developed by Avista Edge in Spokane, which is pioneering a broadband over powerline (BPL) service. She noted that, "with technology today, there are other solutions that are more cost effective."

Dickinson said prior to proposing the Port's dark-fiber network build, it examined all of the alternatives. "When we did our study, we looked at all of them, and we would do the same for the county," Dickinson said. "It would be nice to know the cost of fiber to every home versus the other options."

McMorris Rodgers closed by commenting that spring Chinook salmon runs on the Lower Snake are improving, but the salmon runs that are in crisis in Washington state, are the ones in Puget Sound.

"Puget Sound has 58 wastewater treatment facilities that are dumping millions of gallons into Puget Sound and I'm like, okay, we're doing our part-you do your part," she said.