The latest news stories and stories of interest in the Willamette Valley from the digital home of Southern Oregon, from Wynne Broadcasting’s WillametteValleyMagazine.com
Tuesday, December 13, 2022
Willamette Valley Weather
Albany Police Seek Information in Fatal Hit and Run as Investigation Continues
Update on Hit & Run Investigation: 12/12/2022 — The Albany Police Department is seeking any information on the pictured vehicle. We believe it to be a mid-1980’s-mid 1990’s dark colored, single cab pick up truck, possibly a Nissan.
The victim of the Fatal Hit & Run was Albany resident, Alexandria Lee Mulrooney, age 30. She was pronounced dead at the scene when she was discovered in the middle of the road at 4:22am on Saturday morning, December 10th. Our condolences go out to the family and friends of Ms. Mulrooney and we are diligently investigating every lead and encouraging anyone with information about this crash to contact us.
We are also still asking our community for any video surveillance in the area of Geary St SE between Pacific and Queen in the hours of 4:00-4:30am on December 10, 2022.
As the investigation is continuing anyone with information is asked to call the Albany Police Department Detective Unit, 541-917-7680. Case #22-07895 Albany Police
December 10, 2022 at 4:22am Albany Police responded to a 911 call of a person down in the roadway in the 1500 block of Geary St. SE. Upon arrival, Officers began life saving efforts, but the female was pronounced dead at the scene. The victim was a 30-year-old female and Albany resident. Her name will be released at a later time, pending family notification. We believe the female was struck by a car and the unknown vehicle left the scene. We are looking for any information that could assist in finding the suspect vehicle and driver. We do not know the make and model of the vehicle at this time, but it will have front end damage per evidence left at the scene.
The Albany Police are requesting residents with video surveillance in the locations below please contact us.
• Geary St SE between Pacific Blvd and Queen Ave
• 16th Ave at Geary St. SE
• 17th Ave at Geary St SE
As the investigation is continuing anyone with information is asked to call the Albany Police Department Detective Unit, 541-917-7680. We appreciated assistance from the Albany Fire Department, Benton County Sheriff’s Office and Linn County Sheriff’s Office.
Lane County Sheriff Arrests Man for Sexually Abusing a Child
On 12/07/2022 deputies from the Lane County Sheriff’s Office received information that a child under the age of 12 had disclosed being sexually abused by an adult male known to her. The male was identified as 36-year-old Adam Jason Morgan of Eugene.
Deputies conducted an investigation and established evidence that Morgan had sexually abused the child on multiple occasions. Morgan was taken into custody and lodged at the Lane County Jail on the charges of Sex Abuse in the 1st Degree, Sodomy in the 1st Degree, and Rape in the 1st Degree. LCSO Case #22-6786 —
Authorities Name Eugene Man Who Drove Wrong Way On Beltline
In an update on Saturday night’s crash on the Beltline that stalled traffic on the eastbound lanes near the Coburg Road exit, Eugene Police have identified the wrong-way driver as 48-year-old Justin Jon Mundell of Eugene.
He was driving his Mercedes SUV westbound in the eastbound lanes and crashed head-on into a Kia Spectra.
The 41-year-old driver of the Spectra suffered serious injuries and was trapped inside her vehicle. She had to be extricated by Eugene Springfield Personnel.
She was taken to a hospital and stabilized. The crash site was shut down for just over two and a half hours while investigators reviewed the scene.
Mundell was arrested and taken to the Lane County Jail. He is charged with driving under the influence of intoxicants and assault in the second degree.
Kotek Announces 36-County Tour And Framework For First Year As Governor
Gov.-elect Tina Kotek is already at work with plans to visit all 36 Oregon counties over the next year in an effort to build trust in the state government, she announced during an annual business gathering Monday.
Kotek was the keynote speaker at the Oregon Business Plan’s Leadership Summit, which has drawn hundreds of business leaders, elected officials and lobbyists to Portland for the past 20 years.
She laid out her plans for her first year in office, which she said will encompass three overarching goals.
First, she aims to build trust across Oregon. That includes meeting with Oregonians in their communities, with a statewide tour she’ll start with trips to Yamhill and Douglas counties before her Jan. 9 inauguration, as well as her pledge to meet every two weeks with Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler as the state’s largest city addresses homelessness.
That goal also includes fulfilling campaign promises to address Oregon’s twin housing and homelessness crises, lack of mental health and addiction providers and flailing schools, as standardized tests show Oregon students falling far below their national average in math and reading.
“Despite challenges, Oregonians don’t back down when things get hard,” Kotek said. “We dig in, we think outside the box when times get hard.”
Second, Kotek said she’ll focus on increasing accountability and oversight in state government, taking a customer service approach to public service. She said she’ll deliver a list of expectations to each state agency when she takes office in January.
After her speech, Kotek told reporters she’s “possibly” considering replacing the heads of two troubled Oregon agencies: Colt Gill, director of the Oregon Education Department, and David Gerstenfeld, acting director of the Oregon Employment Department.
Gill has been blamed for long school closures that contributed to learning loss. Gerstenfeld, who was elevated in 2020 after outgoing Gov. Kate Brown fired the previous employment director over the state’s botched pandemic unemployment response, has presided over an agency that is still struggling to make pandemic-related payments and has been slow to organize a paid-leave program that’s supposed to start next year.
The head of the Oregon Health Authority, Patrick Allen, will step down as Kotek takes office, as will Steve Allen, the agency’s behavioral health director. Kotek pledged during her campaign to replace both Allens, who are not related.
She said her focus on accountability will include changing how her team thinks of success. In the state Capitol, where Kotek served as a representative since 2006 and as speaker of the House for nearly a decade, she said it was too easy to declare victory once a vote was over or a bill signed into law without keeping sight on the end goal.
“The real victory doesn’t come until that working mom enrolls her kid in an affordable child care program,” she said. “Success doesn’t come until that veteran who’s been living on the street moves into permanent housing. And we certainly won’t claim success until that student who’s been struggling to read knows the satisfaction of reading her first book.”
Finally, Kotek said she’ll encourage new and more robust partnerships between state and local governments and between the public and private sector. That includes continued work on housing and homelessness, child care and infrastructure, she said.
And it includes making sure Oregon receives a substantial chunk of the $280 billion in available federal funding from the CHIPS and Science Act for semiconductor manufacturing and technological research passed in July. Brown and a task force that includes business leaders and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, are working on a plan for the Legislature including a new tax credit and other business incentives.
Kotek said she supports the broad strokes of that plan, which she has heard could cost between $200 million and $300 million. She’s waiting to see specific dollar amounts, she said. “We have to be aggressive if we’re going to get part of what’s coming from the federal government,” Kotek said.
Wyden told attendees the Legislature needed to work quickly to make sure Oregon receives its share of the semiconductor funding. Oregon has long been a leader in the semiconductor industry, with 15% of the nation’s semiconductor workforce here. But other states, including New York and Texas, are trying to take the lead, Wyden warned. “The days are over where we take a back seat to any of them,” he said. “We’re going to out-compete all of them in the days ahead.”
Housing, one of Kotek’s top priorities, will also be a top focus for the Legislature, said House Speaker Dan Rayfield, D-Corvallis, and Rep. Dick Anderson, R-Lincoln City.
“We’re 110,000 houses short,” Rayfield said. “That’s unacceptable. We need to make stuff work.”
He promised legislation and funding to help build more houses. Anderson, the former mayor of Lincoln City, said the focus will be on so-called workforce housing, for people who earn between 80% and 120% of the median income in an area. That cohort typically includes police officers, hospital employees, city workers and other professionals who are typically considered to be part of the middle class.
Those workers often make too much to qualify for subsidized housing but not enough to spend 30% of their income or less on market-rate rent or mortgage payments. Employers in the public and private sectors have anecdotally reported struggling to recruit and retain employees because of housing costs.
“We for decades have talked about the housing crisis in Oregon,” Anderson said. “We’ve done things about it, but we’ve not treated it as a real crisis, a real emergency.”
Environmental and industry groups are urging Gov.-elect Tina Kotek to increase staff and budgets to tackle water, wildfire, agriculture, climate and energy concerns in the years ahead.
About 240 people joined a video call hosted Friday by Kotek’s transition team intended to help the incoming governor prepare her first natural resources budget to present to the state Legislature Feb. 1.
The budget will cover needs for 14 state agencies for the next biennium, including the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, the Water Resources Department, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Forestry.
The requests for more money for natural resources programs come as legislative budget analysts warned legislators may need to cut spending. Budget documents released this week show a nearly $560 million gap between the money available to spend and the $30.7 billion it would take to continue funding programs at the same rates as the 2021-23 budget.
Right now, Oregon ranks at the bottom for mental and behavioral health access. But change could be on the horizon in the near future.
New legislation kicking in at the start of next year is expected to help the state turn a corner and get more people access to mental health services.
Many people have struggled to get critical mental health care in Oregon, simply because there are not enough mental healthcare workers to treat them. The legislation going into effect aims at addressing the workforce shortage by improving wages.
House Bill 5202 offers staff who care for Medicaid and Oregon Health Plan patients a permanent 30% increase in rates and pay codes in the new year. The federal government recently approved this increase. The bill also ensures ongoing funding for behavioral health in Oregon.
“The mental and behavioral health crisis is affecting every community in Oregon. If we haven’t been personally impacted, we all know someone who has,” said Representative Tawna Sanchez (D-North and Northeast Portland), Co-Chair of the Joint Ways and Means Committee. “Paying providers what they deserve is a major step in the right direction and I look forward to ensuring we continue these efforts to expand access to care.”
Rep. Rob Nosse (D-Portland) chairs the house interim committee on behavioral health. He says this change is helping local mental health centers go from paying therapists $45,000 to $60,000 per year.
“This is a really big deal,” said Nosse. “Ideally, we finally start to get people better pay and then make it attractive to do this work. They stick with the job — and then when people start calling 311, we’ve got people that we can deploy, people who are trained and then we’ll have spaces and places for those folks to go.”
With 1.3 million Oregonians on Medicaid, leaders hope this change will help turn a new leaf on a long, underfunded issue.
“Portlanders and residents of Multnomah County and other parts of the state that are experiencing people dealing with mental health challenges will start to see some progress,” Nosse said.
The House Bill appropriates more than $42 million of state money to better fund mental and behavioral health every year — which will be matched by $100 million in federal funding annually.
Leaders of OHA think Oregonians will start seeing benefits from this investment within the next year. However, it’s unknown when the state will be able to get out of crisis mode regarding mental health.
Oregon’s Secretary of State Seeks More Money To Combat Election Misinformation
Citing an increase in misinformation, complaints and time-consuming public records requests from election deniers, Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan is seeking roughly $2 million over the next two years to hire more staff dedicated to election security and oversight.
That sum includes two new election complaint investigators, two more employees dedicated to combating misinformation and one senior employee to oversee public records requests and coordinate with election administrators in Oregon’s 36 counties. It’s part of more than $15.5 million Fagan is seeking beyond the office’s baseline budget, which has surpassed $90 million in recent two-year budget cycles.
This comes as Oregon is losing its second elections director in as many years with the current one announcing her resignation, saying the job is extremely challenging and citing uncertain funding.
Elections Director Deborah Scroggin told Secretary of State Shemia Fagan in her resignation letter Friday that “we are at an extraordinarily challenging time for elections officials.” Fagan herself appeared remotely a day earlier before an Oregon House committee, where she outlined those challenges and appealed for more funds.
Fagan, who began her term as Oregon’s top election official two days before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, told the House Rules Committee on Thursday that the incident sent a clear message to election officials that they couldn’t take trust in democracy for granted.
“My mission as Oregon secretary of state is to build trust between Oregonians and their state government so that Oregonians will trust the services that make an impact on their daily lives, and nowhere is that more important than in the elections division,” Fagan said.
She said her office has received more than 300 election law complaints this year and has only 1.5 full-time employees dedicated to those complaints. Adding two more could help resolve those investigations more quickly than the average four months it now takes to complete an investigation.
Legislators gave the office $370,000 for statewide public service announcements this spring, and Fagan said the ’70s-style animated videos drove traffic to the state website with voter information, Oregonvotes.gov. Unique pageviews increased from just over 100,000 in the month before the 2018 election to more than 400,000 in the leadup to the 2022 election.
Fagan is also seeking $1.17 million to begin replacing the state’s outdated campaign finance database, ORESTAR. The system has been in place for 20 years, runs slowly and can’t be opened in more than one tab or window, among other frustrations for users.
The $1.17 million wouldn’t actually be spent on a new campaign finance reporting tool, but rather on analyzing needs and requesting quotes.
The proposal referred to making sure any future campaign finance database can adapt to new campaign finance laws.
Governor-elect Tina Kotek pledged to support caps on campaign contributions while running for office. After declaring victory, she said she would support campaign finance reform measures passed by the Legislature and ballot initiatives if the Legislature doesn’t act.
Fatal Crash – HWY 39- Klamath County
On Saturday, December 10th, 2022, at approximately 6:28 PM, the Oregon State Police responded to a vehicle vs pedestrian collision at the intersection of Hwy 39 and Fargo St, in Klamath County.
The preliminary investigation indicated a white GMC Sierra, operated by Christina Mueller (22), of Klamath Falls, was traveling eastbound in the fast lane when it struck a pedestrian, Jerri Vaughn (53), of Klamath Falls. Vaughn was wearing a green jacket and jeans, was not in a crosswalk and was struck in the eastbound fast Lane. The visibility on the roadway was poor due to it raining and being dark at the time of the collision. Vaughn was pronounced deceased at the scene due to injuries sustained in the crash.
Highway 39 was open during the investigation with the westbound lanes being reduced to two-way traffic while the eastbound lanes were shut down for approximately 3 hours.
OSP was assisted by the Klamath County Sheriffs’ Office, Klamath County Fire District 1, and ODOT.
Medical Examiner Says Body Of Woman Found In Portland Remains Unidentified
The Multnomah County Medical Examiner’s Office is asking for the public’s help identifying the body of a woman who died Nov. 28 in Portland.
The Medical Examiner describes the woman as white, between the ages of 20 and 40 years old. They say she also was about 5′4″ tall, weighing 139 pounds. She had medium to long brown hair with brown eyes.
The woman also had pierced ears, with scars on both forearms and the following tattoos:
- Right wrist: Faith Hope Love
- Left wrist: Amirah
- Right Shoulder: Black and red butterfly
Anyone with information about the woman is asked to call the Multnomah County Medical Examiner’s Office at (503) 988-0055 and reference case number #MU-221128-812.
