Negligence

Foster children are being starved, abused and sent to live in hotel rooms.  School children are being exposed to toxic chemicals and  our day care centers are riddled with safety hazards. Senior citizens repeatedly face neglect, poor safety conditions and abuse at care facilities. There’s no nice way to say it: Gov. Brown and her administration are failing to keep our most vulnerable citizens safe.

The Oregon Department of Human Services ignored repeated warnings about four and five year old siblings being starved by their foster parents.  Four and five year old siblings weighed the same as they did at one and two years. Governor Brown’s administration settled a lawsuit related to the abuse of these children for $7 million in September. Days earlier another multi-million dollar lawsuit was filed against OHA in the death of a 15 year old girl.

Have you ever heard of $10,000 talking points?  That’s about what Governor Brown’s administration is paying a Washington D.C. PR firm to spin its failure to keep our children safe.

The state’s Early Childhood Division suffered a blow to its credibility when children and staff at a Coos Bay day care center suffered swollen eyes and breathing problems from a dangerous pesticide.  The center had developed a rap sheet of violations in the first year of operation, but the state took no action to improve the situation.  Another day care center had over 100 violations before regulators finally shut it down

Gov. Brown’s administration continues to put Oregon’s most vulnerable citizens in harm’s way. They omitted egregious health and safety violations at senior care homes from a so-called consumer advocacy website, leaving loved ones at risk of neglect, poor health and safety conditions and physical and sexual abuse.

Portland schools began the 2016-17 school year by shutting off drinking fountains and providing dispensed water to students.  Turns out 99% of Portland schools had high levels of lead.  If that weren’t bad enough, The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality suspected that Bullseye Glass was emitting dangerous levels of cadmium and arsenic months before the public was notified. Final testing showed arsenic levels 159 times higher than Oregon’s safety goal and cadmium levels 49 times higher.