The latest news stories and stories of interest in Eugene-Springfield area and around the state of Oregon from the online digital home of the valley, WillametteValleyMagazine.com.
Tuesday, November 3, 2020 Election Day
Willamette Valley Weather
Today A chance of rain, mainly between 10am and 4pm, then a chance of showers after 4pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 62. Chance of precipitation is 50%. Overnight a chance of showers at times.
Wednesday Mostly cloudy, with a high near 68.
Thursday A chance of rain, mainly after 10am. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 63.
Today’s Headlines
It’s Election Day and almost 74% of Lane County voters have returned ballots.
Nearly three-fourths of Lane County’s registered voters have returned their ballots as of Monday, according to Lane County Elections. That means 200,755 out of the county’s 273,954 registered voters have voted.
Lane County Public Health has added 105 new cases to the county’s total since Friday morning.
This brings the total of confirmed and presumptive cases to 2,607.
One more person has died, bringing the death toll to 28. Officials said a 75-year-old man from the Eugene-Springfield area died Oct. 29 due to complications from COVID-19. He was in the hospital due to COVID-19 at the time of his death. Health officials said they send their condolences to his friends and family.
Of the total cases, 15 are in the hospital and 158 are considered infectious. There have been more than 84,000 negative tests.
Over the span of three days — Saturday, Sunday and Monday — officials from the Oregon Health Authority have reported more than 1,600 new confirmed COVID-19 cases in the state of Oregon. The rise in case numbers, transmission and positivity rate have been occurring in Oregon since mid-September.
As of Monday, the state’s total COVID-19 case count, since the start of the pandemic, has reached 45,978. The death toll is 692.
In another sign that the numbers are going the wrong way, on Saturday authorities reported that 14 people in the state had died from COVID-19, matching the highest death toll reported in a single day as the state struggles to contain the coronavirus. Most recent data from the health authority, released last week, shows that Oregon’s positivity rate remains at 6.5%.
The new cases are in the following counties: Benton (1), Clackamas (93), Clatsop (3), Columbia (1), Coos (1), Crook (2), Curry (4), Deschutes (30), Douglas (6), Jackson (17), Jefferson (1), Klamath (8), Lake (1), Lane (12), Lincoln (1), Linn (11), Malheur (7), Marion (60), Multnomah (199), Polk (11), Tillamook (1), Umatilla (13), Union (1), Wasco (5), Washington (71) and Yamhill (4).
Yesterday Oregon Gov. Kate Brown in a press conference said she has put the National Guard on standby for a 48-hour period around Election Day and used her executive authority to activate a unified command of state troopers, sheriff’s deputies and Portland police to handle any protests. On “standby” say some legislators, will be too late for what might happen.
Portland has seen near nightly protests for five months after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and many demonstrations end in vandalism, arson and violent clashes with officers. President Donald Trump’s call for a crackdown on protests in Democratic-led cities has attracted right-wing groups to the city for “law and order” rallies and pro-Trump events.
The unified command will begin at 5 p.m. Monday and end at 5 p.m. Wednesday. It can be extended if necessary, Brown said.
Around the state of Oregon
The number of unemployed Oregonians stuck in the backlog for adjudicating claims may be more than twice as large as the state has said, according to a deposition filed Friday as part of a class-action lawsuit.
In weekly calls with the media, the Oregon Employment Department has claimed that it is steadily whittling down the adjudication backlog from 52,000 at the end of September to about 42,000 in late October. In an Oct. 16 deposition filed in connection with the lawsuit, though, unemployment insurance division director Lindsi Leahy said the actual number may be as high 96,212.
Employment department Director David Gerstenfeld said last week that the state hopes to clear its adjudication backlog by the end of the year. However, the higher tally suggests that at the current pace of adjudicating claims the work may not be done until sometime well into 2021.
Nike Inc. will lay off at least 700 workers, according to a notice filed with local and state officials.
The national sportswear giant said the update reflects “the number of individuals to be permanently separated” from its workforce at its world headquarters just outside Beaverton, Oregon.
None of the workers being laid off are members of a labor union, the notice added.
The notice was submitted under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, which requires the government to be notified of major layoffs. The company also announced layoffs last summer.
In Springfield, authorities said Monday that they were aware of a report of voter intimidation over the weekend.
According to a letter sent to media outlets by Mary B. McCord, legal director of Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, armed groups turned some voters away at a ballot drop box near a water park in Lane County.
In a press conference Monday, state police Superintendent Terrie Davie acknowledged the incident, saying, “There was an incident down in Springfield over the weekend.” She said local law enforcement was “aware of it and they’re working with the state police in that area and so is the county.” Springfield police said a Patriotic Trump 2020/Make Oregon RED Rally was held in Lively Park on Sunday.
PORTLAND, Ore.— a former civilian program manager for the Oregon National Guard’s Oregon Sustainment Maintenance Site (OSMS) was sentenced to federal prison today for making false statements in representing the operational status of military equipment used to maintain the U.S. Army’s war-ready posture and billing for $6 million in repairs that were never done, announced U.S. Attorney Billy J. Williams.
Dominic Caputo, 49, was sentenced to one year and a day in federal prison and three years’ supervised release.
U.S. Attorney Billy J. Williams said “This criminal investigation and prosecution demonstrates why misrepresenting the availability of essential equipment to the Department of Defense is a serious offense and will be punished accordingly”.
“Mr. Caputo’s scheme to defraud the Department of Defense (DoD) violated the trust afforded to him by the Oregon National Guard, threatened the integrity of the DoD acquisition process, and wasted taxpayer money,” said Bryan D. Denny, Special Agent in Charge of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, Western Field Office. “This investigation is yet another example of our agents and law enforcement partners working together to uncover corruption and protect taxpayers’ dollars entrusted to the DoD.”
“Americans rightly expect that those supporting our armed forces do so with pride and integrity, not indifference and dishonesty,” said Renn Cannon, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in Oregon. “We thank all of our law enforcement and military partners for working together to bring a resolution in this case and ensure the future safety of our troops in the field,”
During sentencing, U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut ordered Caputo to pay $2.6 million in restitution, the amount of overbillings for labor that was never performed by the Oregon National Guard employees at OSMS.