A nice, tidy, typical year-end editorial would be the easy thing to conjure up for this week, and maybe more appropriate than what will be below.

But an article in this week’s Chieftain warrants comment.

The Page A8 article from one of our sister papers points out the fact that hospitals and health care facilities in the region received almost $8 million in American Rescue Plan money to help with the fallout from the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.

The most fascinating detail of the story, though, isn’t that the region got this money. It is that Portland health care facilities got almost one-quarter of the $118 million earmarked for rural areas.

It seems as though a loophole allowed these locations the ability to apply for funding if they simply had patients from a rural location.

While more questions need to be asked, this, at first glance, feels very wrong, and feels like those in urban areas are taking from those in need of these funds.

The article points out that these Portland-area hospitals already had access to $9 billion that was earmarked for them — a pool of cash 76 times greater than the rural amount. Why, then, were they allowed to dip into the funds set for rural places?

We don’t necessarily begrudge these facilities for trying to gain funding. After all, the health care industry has been ravaged during the last two years, and could be in for another rough swing depending on what omicron brings in upcoming months.

We do begrudge, though, the idiocy that appears was behind this loophole even being in place.

The first question is why? Why would urban locations be able to pull from the pot set aside for the rural portions of the state? And why would it be approved? That is an additional $30 million that these often struggling locations would have had access to. Maybe the $7.8 million for the region could have been $10-$11 million.

It also feels like it flies in the face of what is often preached about equity, as here, the rich area is getting richer, and the poor area is getting poorer.

There may be more here than meets the eye, which is why we don’t want to say too much just yet. Maybe there is, indeed, a good reason for this. Maybe this region of the state will have other opportunities to get finances to help it through this pandemic.

But if there is a “good” reason for it, we don’t see it yet.