Eastern Oregon legislators hold a virtual town hall. Pictured are, clockwise, Rep. Daniel Bonham, Sen. Lynn Findley and Rep. Mark Owens.
Rodger Nichols photoThe three legislators whose districts cover Eastern Oregon — Reps. Daniel Bonham and Mark Owens and Sen. Lynn Findley — held their eighth biweekly virtual town hall meeting Thursday, Aug. 20.
Sen. Findley opened the meeting by observing that he saw a crowd of 30 people — all wearing masks and social distancing — waiting for the bank to open so they could get an emergency check for $500, since the employment division had not been able to process their unemployment application for months.
“The Oregon Department of Employment is a catastrophic failure,” he said, “because they have not met their obligation to do what we pay them to do every day. They’ve hired 700-some people in the last five months and they’re still not paying the bills. I receive letters every day in my email that talk about how people are in such dire straits. They’ve been trying to get unemployment for 21 weeks, made thousands of phone calls, and not had them returned. As you can probably tell.”
Findley said he has asked the Senate President to make a full investigation of the situation.
On a cheerier note, Rep. Bonham, whose District 59 covers Wasco County, made this announcement:
“I’ve got some great news to share,” he said, “which is that Wasco County has made tremendous strides curving the trend of infection downward and we’ve been removed from the governor’s watch list. Marion County was removed as well. But hats off to Wasco County, our health department and our county commissioners for doing a wonderful job.”
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