Document text
Myers cites methods for safe schools By Peter Wong of the Mail ribune Despite new laws to deter gun violence in Oregon's schools, Attorney General Hardy Myers says they do not solve the problem by themselves. Myers, who was in Medford last week, said the ultimate answers to violence will be provided by people working together in the School/Community Safety Coalition that he is promoting statewide. He said schools and communities have to build on several laws approved by the 1999 Legislature. One law allows schools to share information with county juvenile departments. Another law requires school workers to tell police about students who bring guns on campuses, and authorizes judges to detain those students until evaluations are done. "They are useful laws for sharing information among agencies and for what courts should do when someone in school is apprehended with a weapon," Myers said in an interview. "But they do not go to the wider question of what schools should do with their basic policies and programs to assure maximum safety. I want to be a force to assure safe conditions for our children." Myers said local planning can specify how and when schools interact with law enforcement agencies, and how disputes within schools should be handled before they become serious problems. Myers, a 60-year-old Democrat from Portland, is seeking a second term in the office he won in 1996. He was a state representative from 1975 to 1985, and speaker of the Oregon House from 1979 to 1983. He listed school safety as one of his second-term goals. Among the others are efforts to reduce sexual assaults, work with retailers to further restrict youth access to cigarettes and other tobacco products, improve services to crime victims as a result of higher federal payments, and involve employers in efforts against domestic violence. Among the first-term accomplishments he mentioned are Oregon's share of the national tobacco settlement, the first $25.5 million payment from which is due soon; unification of accounting and enforcement for child support; and improved consumer advocacy. "For lawyers who love law and governing, this is an office made in heaven," Myers said at the 49th annual Roosevelt-Kennedy dinner of Jackson County Democrats last week. "But though almost all the work of the attorney general as chief lawyer for the (state) government has to be nonpartisan -- and it is being carried out in that fashion under my administration -- I have not ceased being a Democrat." Myers' opponent next year is state Rep. Kevin Mannix of Salem, who lost the Democratic nomination to Myers in 1996. Mannix changed parties in 1997 and was elected as a Republican for a final term in the House in 1998. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA