Ridenbaugh Press/Northwest

Ron Wyden

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden doesn’t often find the word “radical” in close proximity. His manner doesn’t suggest it, and neither does his trademark bipartisan work; such gripes as you hear about him back in Oregon tend to come from the left, form people arguing that he’s too compromising.

So even in the context - mainly supportive - what President Barack Obama had to say about Wyden’s health care plan, using the term “radical” to describe pieces of it really jumped out.

The point of difference is Wyden’s proposal to move the linkage between people and health insurance from employers to individuals.

Politically, Obama has a point here. As corrupted as the health care system is overall, a great many people still have health coverage that works decently for them, and they’d reasonably be very concerned about something that would upend it quickly. Obama said that such a “radical restructuring” would face “significant political resistance . . . families who are currently relatively satisfied with their insurance but are worried about rising costs … would get real nervous about a wholesale change.”

Our view has been that employer-based insurance is a structural mistake, and it should be based around individuals. Getting from here to there, though, might have to be more than a one-step process.

Making that change would pull a lot of the structure out of the Wyden proposal. Could be, as the tale progresses in the next few weeks, that large chunks of the rest of the plan are strip-mined for pieces fitted into a different framework.

Obama didn’t sound, in this Oregonian interview, critical of Wyden and sounded as if he was open to working with him: “”He was in the Oval Office just two weeks ago where we spent time thinking about this. He is a real thought leader, and I’m confident his voice will be prominent in the debate going forward.”

Your thoughts, senator?

Representative Arnie Roblan at one of the last debates/Oregon Channel

Oregon House Speaker Dave Hunt had remarked that he hoped to adjourn for the year by sundown today. He missed that mark, but by less than an hour - a close bit of timing, indicative of the kind of tight operation the Oregon Legislature (moreso in the House, but largely too in the Senate) has had this year.

There are a number of familiar complaints from the not distant past you can’t make about this session. You can’t say it was unproductive; this may have been the most productive session in a generation (probably moreso than 2007, which also delivered a lot of substance). You can’t say it was an especially bitter session; there were occasional scrapes, but the House particularly seemed (at least so far as we could tell) to run without excess conflict. Did it address the issues before the state? It clearly did.

The big unanswered point is what Oregonians will make of all that productivity. Were the answers - most notably on taxes, but maybe on some other subjects as well - acceptable? Did the controlling Democrats, in other words, overreach?

The initial guess here is, probably not; the tax measures and a lot of the most sensitive legislation generally seemed pretty carefully trimmed and crafted to survive attack. But it’s a close call. Ballot issues are in the wind, and they may provide a good indicator of what the 2010 voters have to say about the makeup of the next legislature. And other offices too.

A fun thread about Oregon gubernatorial prospects for 2010 at Blue Oregon; a longish list of prospects followed by some (sometimes cutting) reviews.

Don’t miss the comments by Jack Roberts, a Republican who gives his nickel’s worth along with the Democratic regulars.

Bottom line after review: The odds seem to favor a wide-open situation, though mainly if you think that the ultimately candidate sheet won’t include the names of DeFazio, Kitzhaber or Walden (which is probably where the weight of guessing would go).

Our current president is a former U.S. senator, but historically that’s an anomaly: In recent decades, and even no so recent, a lot of them have come from the ranks of governors. (Bush II, Clinton, Reagan, Carter . . .)

So Ken Rudin of National Public Radio decided, just as an exercise, to rank the nation’s current Republican governors - Republicans since Democrats probably have their next party nomination taken care of - in terms of probability of ever (either in 2012 or later) becoming president. His top-ranked was Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (our guess, until the last moment, for GOP VP last time), and second is Utah Governor (though not for long) Jon Huntsman. Alaska’s Sarah Palin was 7th.

In the Northwest? Idaho Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter came in 15th out of 22. Though considering that Rudin still has South Carolina’s Mark Sanford at number 9, Otter certainly should rise at least one spot.

This list was shortly followed with another one (developed by other bloggers) for Democratic governors, which was led by Brian Schweitzer of Montana. Washington’s Chris Gregoire was No. 9. Oregon’s Ted Kulongoski did less well, ranking at 26 (out of 28 total).

Absolutely nothing scientific about any of it.

Richard Devlin

It was supposed to be dead. Although a lot of the individual members of the Oregon Legislature were on board, a measure enabling easier and more widespread activities by minor political parties, including explicitly approved cross-nomination, seemed dead in the water. (The Oregon Education Association was apparently one of the key reasons for that.)

Just now, however, Senate Bill 326 passed the Senate - concurring with House amendments - and from a minor-party point of view, it’s a big deal. A quick rundown from the Oregon Independent Party (via a release):

SB 326 consists of two parts:

1) It repeals HB 2614 (2005), a law that made it much more difficult for non-affiliated candidates to obtain sufficient signatures to be nominated for public office.

2) It now includes the provisions of what used to be HB 2414 (prior to its recent gutting), which allows a candidate who is nominated by more than one party to list up to 3 such party names on the ballot next to her name. More information on HB 2414 is available at http://indparty.com/node/174.

Despite strong bi-partisan support, the passage of the provisions contained in this bill have been in doubt for much of the latter part of the legislative session. For details see: http://wweek.com/editorial/3531/12669/

SB 326 (including the terms of HB 2414) passed last week in the Oregon House on a vote of 42-17. The provisions of this bill are among the top legislative priorities of the Independent Party of Oregon.

Senator Richard Devlin, D-Tualatin, said the finished bill had flaws, but he would push for correction in those in next year’s session (since this year’s is fast approaching completion). The few senators who voted against (all Democrats) said they did so out of concern for the flaws, but all said they’d be at work on those. Meantime, the small partiers should have an existing law on books - not a bad place from which to defend unflawed provisions.

Many are the paths to passage.

Parading in Carlton/Stapilus

As residents of a bona fide small town (Carlton, Oregon, population still well shy of 2,000), we’ve never quite figured out those qualities that are supposed to distinguish the authentics of the small town from the phonies of the larger. People are people. Most of the people here, as in most small towns, have in any event close ties (jobs, families, other connections) to larger communities anyway.

But you don’t usually see in larger communities the kind of small town events - or at least, the all-community feel of them - that sometimes you get in places like this. Today was the peak of the annual Carlton Fun Days, the main events of which were a sort of festival in the larger city park, and before that a parade. Which, between those who marched (and anyone who wanted to, could) and those who watched on the sidewalks, seemed to bring in most of the town’s inhabitants. A real civic get together.

In between was this: A crowd shot of the people (or at least a large fraction) of Carlton, all in one group, outdoors downtown. Couldn’t do that in Seattle.

Not all the decisions in the effort to do something useful about health care are necessarily easy. But some of them - a considerable number - simply seem to be no-brainers, proposals whose downside is awfully hard to find.

Consider Oregon House Bill 2376, passed today by the House, which “requires manufacturers of pharmaceuticals and other medical products to report to the Department of Justice gifts, fees, payments subsidies or other economic benefits the manufacturer provides to purchasers, providers or dispensers of the manufacturer’s drugs in the state. The bill also requires the Department of Justice to establish a readily searchable database and website for the public to search the database.”

In other words, it says that if your hospital or physician is being given drug samples or other goodies by pharmaceutical companies, you should be able to know that . . . so you can determine if, for example, there’s some relationship between a company’s sales efforts and the drugs you’re prescribed.

The House Democrats said in a release that “citizens today are acutely aware of the pharmaceutical industry’s efforts to market prescription drugs directly to the consumer. However, most people are not aware that pharmaceutical companies spend billions more dollars contracting with, and marketing to, doctors who, in addition to prescribing drugs, also advocate for their use at medical conferences and in medical journals.”

There are some legitimate questions of details (at what monetary amount do you have to report?) but the point seems painfully obvious.

There was House floor debate against. (It passed 34-25, not a huge margin.) As the Oregonian reported:

“We’re going to drive jobs out of the state of Oregon,” said Rep. Ron Maurer, R-Grants Pass.

Rep. Jim Thompson, R-Dallas, said the bill would have a “chilling effect on our ability to attract research dollars to Oregon.”

The bill, of course, has nothing to do with research. And jobs lost are those of drug pushers who are making ever more expensive and distorted our health care, then the problem doesn’t seem significant.

Daily Kos/Research 2000 has out a fairly thorough set of polling on the 2010 Oregon governor’s race, which yet remains far from filling in clear contours. Just two substantial contenders - Democratic former Secretary of State Bill Bradbury and Republican businessman Allen Alley - are declared at this point, but there’s little sense that the field on either side is near closed. Alley, for some reason, doesn’t even figure in the polling, maybe because his chances of winning the Republican nomination are not great.

That still leaves the pollsters in the position of polling mostly possibilities rather than actual candidates, which could have some results skewed. Still, there plenty here of interest.

The prospects polled were, on the Democratic side, Bradbury, former Governor John Kitzhaber, Representative Peter DeFazio, and 2008 Senate candidate Steve Novick; and on the Republican side, former Senator Gordon Smith (who may have taken himself out of contention), Representative Greg Walden (who seems likely to have done likewise) and state Senator Jason Atkinson, the one person polled who ran for governor in 2006. (Most frequent guesses seem to run against a DeFazio candidacy too, though that’s more speculative.) President Barack Obama also was polled for favorability.

A few observations.

Obama seems to be far more popular (favorable/unfavorable 62-31, or +31) than any of the Oregonians, and practically everyone had an opinion (just 7% didn’t). The Oregon name who really stuck out in terms of everyone having an opinion was Smith, whose “no opinion” was just 13%; but that’s of no help, since his favorable/unfavorable gap is -9, into unpopular territory, no a good place from which to start a campaign. The two candidates with best standing were Kitzhaber at +20 and DeFazio at +25; the difference probably is more or less erased by Kitzhaber’s larger name familiarity around the state (28% had no opinion of him). Bradbury and Novick were in net positive territory, but the more than half of Oregonians polled had no opinion of them, so they would be virtually building from scratch in campaigning terms. Atkinson’s numbers (+10) were in the Bradbury/Novick range, and Walden’s a little better than that (+11) but a favorable still only at 36%.

In head to heads, Kitzhaber and DeFazio were polling at winning not massively but solidly over all three Republicans. Bradbury was seen as winning but within the margin of error in matchups against Smith or Walden but substantially ahead of Atkinson. Novick was polled as losing to all three Republicans.

Of course, all of this is pre-campaign, and these numbers can and do change once campaigns commence. The high no-opinion factor also matters. Even two-term Governor Kitzhaber (who left office back at the end of 2002) will still have some re-introduction to do, to newcomers and some others. But as this begins, the strongest opening hands likely would be those of Kitzhaber and DeFazio; the next question is whether either of them run.

There’s a tendency among people watching - or even involved in - political activities to throw efforts and initiatives into the “win” or “loss” column too quickly: A natural tendency to analyze and work out who the winners and losers are. The problem is that politics isn’t a one-shot over and out; it is ongoing, an evolution. Wins are hardly final, because so often they can be reversed later. Same for losses.

Today’s case in point is Oregon House Bill 2398, the bill classifying the Metolius Basin near Bend as an Area of Critical State Concern, drastically limited development there. It has been one of the hardest-fought bills of this year’s legislative session, and closely-fought. Environmentalists have supported it, but the Democratic caucus has been split, partly out of concern that the bill would undermine local planning and zoning efforts. (House Speaker Dave Hunt was among the nays. Republicans have been solidly opposed.)

Last week, the bill - which has cleared the Senate - narrowly failed in the House, and the storyline was that Democrats were sacrificing environmental issues this year to make up for their string of tax increases. And that seemed that.

Today, the bill was brought back up on reconsideration, and Representative Larry Galizio, D-Tigard, switched his vote from last week - enough, just enough, to pass it.

A veteran and highly successful lobbyist in another state often counseled: Never give up till the session ends; and even then. Good advice all over the place.

Up to this (late) point in the Oregon legislative session, the legislature’s majority and Governor Ted Kulongoski seem to have been on the same page on almost everything. But now that the last of the budget decisions are coming in, that’s changing.

The school budget will either larger - because a rainy-day fund was heavily raided - or smaller - because it was only lightly raided - at the end of this. Right now, indications are that Oregon’s legislators are in favor of a heavy raid, while Kulongoski is flatly opposed, to the point of veto. The full scale of the conflict is likely to showdown next week.

Who prevails? No certainty, but legislators are likely, for now, to reflect the difficulty of making the more conceptual case for a low raid. It’s a good case. But harder to get through to people on a gut level, at a tough time, just after a string of tax increases already have been approved . . .

New Carissa/Wikipedia

Some before too long, someone will write a history of the Pacific Coast - not the land side, but the water. Many things have been happening there in the last few decades. Populations of marine life have risen and fallen. We’ve seen dead zones, and unusual swirls of high-motion water. There’s a whole natural story out there awaiting the telling.

Soon, we’ll have many more of the pieces of that story. Oregon House Bill 3013A, which just cleared the Oregon Senate (of 90 legislators, just three voted in opposition) and likely will soon be signed into law by Governor Ted Kulongoski, sets up two “historic reserves” in areas off the coast, and a process for evaluating four more for inclusion. Each reserve would be thoroughly studied. Much of the money for that (you were wondering, weren’t you?) will come from funds paid in after the grounding of the cargo ship called the New Carissa, just over a decade ago near Coos Bay, spilling fuel and causing other damage.

Senator Joanne Verger, who is from Coos Bay, remarked that “Our community endured a lot when the New Carissa ran aground in Coos Bay. It started out as this huge hassle, eventually it became a great tourist attraction, and then it was taken away over our objections. I am glad this Legislature has recognized the nexus between the damage that was caused and the need to use the money for the betterment of our coastal resources.”

A description from the group Our Ocean:

HB-3013A describes the plan for establishing marine reserves at Otter Rock near Depoe Bay and Redfish Rocks near Port Orford. It also lays the groundwork for a set of community groups to evaluate marine reserves proposed for Cape Falcon, Cascade Head, Cape Perpetua and Cape Arago.
This effort could not be more timely: the ocean faces growing pressure from climate change, pollution and a variety of other human impacts. In May, delegates from more than 70 nations at the World Ocean Conference urged concerted action to address threats to ocean health, and 400 scientists signed a consensus statement describing marine protected areas as part of the solution.
With the approval of HB-3013-A, Oregon is poised to join California and Washington in science-based ocean protection using marine reserves. In total, 22 U.S. states and 29 countries around the world use these proven tools to safeguard the long-term health and productivity of the ocean.

Plenty of eyes will be on the process, and whatever it comes up with.

Melissa Sue Robinson

Provocation - getting right in your face - seems to be the point of one particular municipal candidacy in Idaho this year. Not so much city policies, the qualities of an incumbent, or anything so mundane. From the announcement of a just-declared Nampa mayoral candidate:

My name is Melissa Sue Robinson and I am a Male to Female post-op transgendered person who is hereby announcing my intentions to run for Mayor of Nampa, in the November general election. I am running because I am progressive and I feel that Nampa is a City that needs progressive people in City government. I am the founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Transgendered Persons (NAATP), a transgendered civil rights organization which was founded in Lansing, MI. in 2000. The organization was put on hold due to Michigan’s poor economic climate, my change of careers, and my relocation to Seattle in Jan. 07. I have not only restarted the NAATP, but have also founded a new organization (Equality Idaho), which will also focus on LGBT rights. If elected Nampa Mayor or not I intend to push for a LGBT rights ordinance in both Nampa and Boise in the near future. I am a 58 years old telecommunications worker, and a former owner of Design Masters Construction Co, Inc. (a 25 employee small business) in which I was President for 10 years.

Provocation rather than substantial candidacy, because only one sentence out of seven had anything to do with a rationale for leading the city of Nampa.

She’s not been active in civic life in Nampa, hasn’t been in the city long enough to get to know it, evidently lacks relevant experience at Nampa city hall . . . there aren’t any real qualifications for the job here, and Nampa is a substantial city of more than 80,000 people which needs a leader with some measurable experience. (Incumbent Tom Dale, who was a city council member before his election in 2001, has gotten generally positive remarks for his two terms on the job.) She isn’t a viable serious contender.

But watch the reaction of people in town - and this is what Robinson’s candidacy seems aimed toward. How will they react? What response will there be?

A side note. Consider Stu Rasmussen, the newly-elected (as of last November) mayor of Silverton, Oregon, a rural city of about 8,500 a city much smaller than Nampa. He is transgender - wears women’s clothes and on the same path as Robinson - and was elected with 52% in a field of three candidates, and was open about his personal transition. But there is also this: He has a long history in town, has run a local business for many years, was on the city council when he was elected last year, and in the 90s served two terms as mayor. Not everyone in town is happy with him, but the place overall doesn’t seem especially shaken up.

A dam on the Klamath River

When the sponsor of Senate Bill 76 stood up in the Oregon House today, an obvious question arose immediately. The sponsor was Representative Ben Cannon, a Portland Democrat. The bill has to do with removal of four dams on the Klamath River, about 300 miles south from Portland. So why Cannon and not someone more local?

After all, the bill was described as (this is from the official House Democratic description) “the product of a negotiated agreement between Oregon, Washington, California, the federal government and PacifiCorp. It is supported by over two dozen groups including agriculture interests, conservation groups, utility companies, Native American tribes and other affected participants who developed the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement.”

Sounds pretty sweeping. And Cannon was a capable floor sponsor. But the rest of the story emerged right after, as the representative from the Klamath Falls area (his district covers the river basin area in question) stood to speak against the bill. That was Bill Garrard, R-Klamath Falls, who offered an impassioned argument against the bill.

There’s a long history here, as anyone who’s followed the Klamath debate knows, ranging from water shutoffs to full flows, variously helping and hurting fish, farmers and other interests. There have been high-profile protests and much more.

The recent settlement, from last year, appeared to bring an end of much of this - at least put an end in sight, with proposed demolition (years from now, probably after 2020) of four dams and a string of concessions to various parties. On the surface, it looked like a deal (somewhat resembling in construct the Nez Perce/Snake River deal in Idaho a few years back). However. Continue Reading »

Mark Hass

On Wednesday, Oregon Senator Mark Hass, D-Beaverton, ground the budget/tax express to a screech halt with his vote aligning with Senate Republicans on the first of two major tax bills - a vote just enough to defeat the House-passed first bill (and by implication, the second) on the Senate floor.

This morning, reversal. “I believe it’s okay to say, ’stop the music,’” he said of his Wednesday vote - but today he opted to restart it, rejoining the other Senate Democrats on two key bills (3405 and 2649) which fill in the last of the budget pieces. Things had changed, he said, including some legislation proceeding in the House, including some changes in the rainy day fund and elsewhere. He made allusion, though, to intensive discussions with other legislators “over the last 12 hours,” and no doubt they were intensive. Would’ve been a great fly-on-the-wall situation.

The Republicans knew it was coming: Wednesday, there was little Republican debate on the bills, but today, there was plenty - most of the Senate Republicans (all in opposition to the bills) had their say on the floor. There were some unusually passionate debates, on both sides (Larry George and Brian Boquist standing out among the Republicans, and Vicki Walker among the Democrats). Hass spoke but relatively briefly.

The upshot this morning is that the Senate did pass both both bills, with just the 18 votes needed.

Just before the debate began, Majority Leader Richard Devlin made a passing reference to the speedy approach of sine die adjournment. After this morning’s action, it surely got a little closer than it seemed yesterday afternoon.

Well, so much for the remarkably smooth Oregon session of ‘09. Owing to a single flipped vote - that of Beaverton Democratic Senator Mark Hass - the Senate declined to pass a business tax package approved the day before by the Oregon House. Because of that, a second tax bill was table (alongside that first one). And because of that, the whole question of how to balance the state budget has been thrown wide open.

This wasn’t entirely a surprise (one reason, presumably, the vote was held until late afternoon). The debate wasn’t long (there was some but not a lot of Republican argument against), and during it, Senator Alan Bates, D-Ashland, warned that people were “teetering” and “I implore you, to vote for this bill tofay and the one following it. The state will go into chaos without these bills.”

Now, presumably, we start to find out what that entails.

It could mean, as senators got some indication, that the budgets are reopened and mass cuts ensure. Or maybe not. On Blue Oregon, a commenter remarked, “Hass just said he wants to send the corporate minimum back to senate revenue for a fix- they MAY not have the votes on the floor and might have to come back another day.”

Overall, the legislature may be here a few days longer than they had thought. But what direction this goes next looks up for grabs.

First big glitch in what had been a remarkably smooth-running machine.