Posts published in “Oregon”

What Oregon voters are thinking right now can sometimes be derived from the top-level election results.

But those opinions are often subject to misinterpretation, another way of saying: Don’t be too quick to draw conclusions. Results from lower-level sections of the ballotts can be as useful. Dozens of local ballot issues were on the May primary election ballot (the secretary of state’s office has a convenient rundown of them on its website), in which voters got to speak directly on a range of subjects.

As an expression of attitude, the massive statewide turndown of the state transportation funding plan — for example — isn’t all Oregon voters had to say on the subjects of taxes, public services and attitudes toward government.

Consider the high-profile indicator question cutting across a bunch of issues and ideologies: Whether people (or how many of them) in Oregon would like to break off and join more conservative and Republican Idaho instead.

Over the last decade or so, a long string of eastern Oregon counties passed ballot issues in favor of Greater Idaho. These ballot issues tended variously either to discuss the split or actually try to push the local jurisdiction to leave Oregon and join the state of Idaho, which politically was closer to their preferences.

For many reasons, this never has been within the range of the realistic, but it does serve as a measure of dissatisfaction. Douglas and Josephine counties voters, who live a very long distance from Boise, have flatly rejected the idea, but most eastern Oregon counties have approved it.

Wallowa County, which borders Idaho, in 2020 turned thumbs down by a margin of 41 votes, but then in 2023 by seven votes approved it.  This year it was back on the ballot in the form of a measure aimed at eliminating the requirement that county commissioners engage in Greater Idaho discussions. This time the result was not close at all: 60.7% of the voters favored calling off the whole idea.

Is the greater Idaho bubble leaking air? There’s now some concrete reason to think so.

Another recent political trend, in many places nationally at least, has been diminished support for educational and cultural funding, but Portland voters seem to run in the other direction. Multnomah County’s Measure 26-261, which sought to renew a 2021 levy backing the Oregon Historical Society (based in downtown Portland), passed overwhelmingly, with 62.6% of the vote. Eugene voters acted similarly on a library ballot measure.

Okay, that’s Portland and Eugene (and Veneta and Scappoose). But over in Baker County, library district patrons opted with a 70.3% vote, to renew a five-year local option tax to benefit the library.

A bigger deal happened in Grant County, where 58.6% of the voters chose (Measure 12-97) to create a new Grant County library district, along with taxing authority for it. The library had been run out of county government, and county officials had talked about zeroing-out the library budget due to a budget deficit. The Oregon Arts Watch group noted, “With the tax district generating stable, dedicated funding for the library, advocates hope the library will be able to be open more hours and that programs cut in the past will be reinstated, including youth programs, community outreach, and a bookmobile.”

Funding for law enforcement, too, got some help in places where that hasn’t always been a given.

True, Clackamas County voters decisively (with more than 60% in opposition) rejected Measure 3-633, a proposed five-year local option levy to provide funding for the sheriff’s office. The sheriff’s office released a statement saying, “Without this dedicated funding source, the level of Sheriff’s Office services our community has come to rely on will change significantly. Patrol staffing, jail operations, investigations, and other critical public safety services will all be impacted. And Sutherlin city voters did opt to repeal a public safety fee.

But beyond that, law enforcement did well around the state. North Bend voters by 49 votes favored (in Measure 6-228) a police safety property tax increase. At Port Orford, 58.7% of voters decide to establish a clear five-year property tax levy to replace a more complicated system involving a monthly “public safety fee.” Voters turned down a five-year fire safety levy in Vernonia but passed one in Warrenton (61.0% favorable).

The message is, don’t judge the intent of voters in a whole state by a single vote. There’s actually more sophistication than such an approach would suggest.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

A couple of decades ago, the comedian Chris Rock led a TV series called “Everybody Hates Chris,” its name a spin on “Everybody Loves Raymond”.

Not to pile on too much, but did Oregon just see the “Everybody Hates ODOT” election?

The context is that practically everyone in the state seemed to expect the transportation tax and fee law passed last year by the legislature to be given the boot by the voters; the only question was how strong that vote would be.

It turned out to be overwhelming: as of mid-evening on Tuesday, 83.1% of Oregon voters opted to throw out the taxes and fees (which already were on hold pending the election).

And it was as across-the-board a decision as you could imagine. No county voted for the package, and none even came close. You could note that the three counties with the highest pro-transportation tax votes were all Democratic places: Benton, Hood River and Multnomah. But look at the percentages in favor even there: 29.3%. 28.1%, and 25% respectively.

In Harney, Lake, Morrow and Sherman counties, the tax plan couldn’t even crack 4% favorable, and most of eastern Oregon, and many other counties, didn’t generate a lot more support.

The package was passed originally as a cobbled-together effort to save basic services provided by the Oregon Department of Transportation. You have to imagine this kind of a mass repudiation making a big impact around its state offices in the weeks to come. Or at least it should.

There’s another side effect almost as worthy of note, though: The part of this political equation that didn’t translate into everybody loving someone else, at least not as much as some people might have thought.

The candidate in question is Ed Diehl, a state legislator from Stayton running for the Republican nomination for governor. Last fall, before he got into the gubernatorial race, he led an effort to put a referendum about the newly-passed transportation revenue plan on the statewide ballot. That effort not only worked but succeeded spectacularly: Within just a few weeks a quarter-million petition signatures were delivered, and the momentum to kill the transportation plan was massive and building.

That kind of success apparently got Diehl looking toward statewide horizons, and he filed for governor. His connection to the referendum was front and center, and his signs made sure to identify him as Ed “No Tax” Diehl. That labeling may have given him a slightly more focused identity than any of the other Republican candidates had, though most if not all of them were on his side in the issue.

To be fair, Diehl did a fair job campaigning and spoke with some depth about other subjects as well. But his identification with the referendum was so strong that it’s hard to imagine he would have been running were it not on the ballot.

So the question was, could it be enough to lift him to the Republican nomination?

You probably can’t say it didn’t help.

As of mid-Tuesday evening, Diehl was at 32.2% of the vote in a 14-candidate field, well behind expected front-runner Christine Drazan (the party’s 2022 nominee for the job) with 42.8% and well ahead of Chris Dudley, who had 15.6% (he was the nominee in 2010). No one else cracked  5%.

Drazan’s win was widespread, taking all but the seven counties Diehl won (Polk, Marion, Linn, Crook, Grant, Harney and Wallowa). Marion and Linn were home turf for Diehl, and the referendum had especially lopsided results in the others.

Put another way, Diehl likely did benefit a little from the association with the referendum, but probably not all that much.

Let’s shift the focus a little now toward November. The big transportation plan pushed by Democratic Governor Tina Kotek now has been dramatically rejected; apparently in anticipation of that, she already has started a process toward planning what to do next.

Will the rejected transportation plan be front and center in the Kotek-Drazan rematch?

Likely, it will be a factor, but its ability to carry its impact into other races may be limited. The governor’s race no doubt will feature talk about transportation funding, and Drazan will quite reasonably talk about the politics and policy of Measure 120. But Kotek likely will come back with other options, and by November the issue may be reframed.

Fury doesn’t seem to be all that transferable. Especially once it’s been given expression and, possibly, has blown itself out.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

Does anyone in Oregon think Measure 120, sustaining last year’s legislation on transportation taxes and fees, will pass? Anyone?

Anyone who does seems to be well hidden, just like any supporters of the measure, the substance of which passed just last year with majority support in the legislature and signature by the governor.

The state’s Democratic political leadership appears to have abandoned it completely. And the Oregon Department of Transportation, where most of the money raised is intended to go, likely isn’t one of the most popular in state government.

The only electoral curiosity left seems to be how few voters will opt to uphold the transportation funding package.

This month’s election will not end the story, of course. It already is beginning anew.

The real question now is whether Oregon leaders will try their same policy development process yet again, or approach transportation funding in a different way that might generate more public support.

Actually, passage of Measure 120 wouldn’t end the story either. During the 2025 session, this complicated round of transportation funding started with this base point (from Democrats at least): $14.6 billion over 10 years is what was needed to meet the state’s transportation needs. The eventual passed legislation (now in the form of Measure 120), provided less than a third of that, $4.3 billion over 10 years. That scale down doesn’t seem to be a result of revised estimates of need, but only of what number could clear the legislature (as that one did only barely). So Measure 120, even if passed, would be far from a panacea.

The question remains what should be done now, without even the recent funding bandaid in place.

The essential problem underlying all this is not hard to understand. Inflation has hit road construction, maintenance and repair hard, and that has combined with a squeeze on the top source of revenue for the work: gas taxes, which are under downward pressure from higher-mileage  and new electric vehicles and (especially recently) overall higher gas prices.

On April 30, a group called by Gov. Tina Kotek met to start considering what to do next. The committee is expected to meet monthly until around the end of the year.

At its first session, it heard reports from a variety of transportation professionals. An ODOT speaker warned that soon, without more funding, the agency may be reduced to paving interstate routes and not much else. An Association of Oregon Counties speaker said that, “Without new revenue over about the next five years, more than 4,500 miles of county roads will go without critical maintenance work and then will quickly deteriorate beyond repair.”

Presumably, the group will come up with a new set of numbers — some new collection of taxes and fees — for delivery to the 2027 legislative session. Its mission appears to include finding a new funding model for Oregon transportation, which means shifting but also increasing the state’s taxes, fees or other money sources.

At that point, once such a recommendation surfaces, the legislature presumably will try to do what it did in the last (special) session. After that, some groups of people in Oregon — especially those who might wind up paying more, as someone would have to — will mobilize against it.

That easily could result in another referendum in two years leading to another dead transportation package. And Oregon’s transportation system will continue to deteriorate.

The best route to an answer – and the working group could help lead this – could be to first clearly and specifically, in detail, describe the problem and what will happen without more funding, and initially holding off on the solution.

It’s counterintuitive: The usual and often the best approach for governments — and for columnists too, for that matter — is to link the problem and the solution, lest the problem seem unsolvable.

The deterioration of Oregon’s roads may be an exception, because all of the funding solutions in view seem vulnerable to the same criticisms likely to doom Measure 120.

What if the transportation group were to focus exclusively, at the beginning, on defining the nature of the problem, and at first putting stabs at a solution on a back burner?

And then suppose they took that discussion around the state, from region to region, bringing the receipts: Here is what is likely to happen locally, over the next five or ten years, to roadways in this area if funding isn’t somehow increased significantly. Central to making this work would be conducting these efforts as high-profile and broadly inclusive, as possible, with local voices heard at length. The quarter-million petition signers who put Measure 120 on the ballot should be specifically invited.

Then — and only then — the group should pose the question: Given this situation, what do you want to do? Is it your choice to drive on deteriorating roads? If not, then how do you propose to fix them? Where should the money come from?

If the public (and Republicans) were more broadly and openly brought into this process, legislative candidates – during the upcoming campaign season – might be pressured to weigh in with answers as well. Out of all this, something approaching a solution with public buy-in just might emerge.

It’s worth a try. For now, well-meaning efforts developed from the top down and through committees all seem doomed to failure. Leadership of a different sort seems to be called for here.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

In 2022, after Oregon’s new map for congressional districts was set in place, the state emerged with a high number of competitive U.S. House districts: Three out of six were Democratic-leaning, but not by enough to lock out Republicans. Nationally, fewer than a fifth of districts usually meet that description.

The 2022 election gave Democrats two of those three seats. Then-Labor Commissioner Val Hoyle won the 4th District, which includes Eugene, Corvallis and much of Oregon’s coast, while then-state Rep. Andrea Salinas captured the 6th District in the Willamette Valley, though both contests were competitive.

Voters elected Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer in the more closely-matched 5th District, based around Clackamas County on the west side and Deschutes County on the east.

In 2024, even while Republicans did well nationally, Hoyle and Salinas seemed to solidify their positions, while Democrat Janelle Bynum ousted Chavez-DeRemer in another close race.

This year, while the 4th and 6th districts seem to be slipping out of easy reach for Republicans, you could make an argument that the 5th District, which flipped control twice after two very close races, ought to be a hot battleground once again.

But it doesn’t look that way.

Two years ago, the Cook Political Report regularly rated the Oregon 5th a “toss-up” race. This year, it calls it “likely Democratic,” and the national parties seem less interested in it than in the last two elections.

Two Republicans are competing in the upcoming primary election: Deschutes County Commissioner Patti Adair and law school student (and legal extern) and activist Jonathan Lockwood. Adair is the clear front-runner. She has reported raising substantial funds (about $272,000 by the end of March), while Lockwood didn’t report any (which legally means no more than $5,000).

Lockwood’s website reports no endorsements from fellow Republicans, while Adair’s endorsement page is packed with them, including two leading Republican gubernatorial contenders (Christine Drazan and Ed Diehl), numerous legislators and county officials and the Oregon Farm Bureau and Oregon Young Republicans. Adair has been organizing since at least last fall, and it shows.

Put it this way: An Adair loss in the primary would be a major upset.

The general election is another story.

Start with fundraising. Adair’s $272,000 is not bad for a congressional challenger at this point, but her treasury may be swamped by Bynum’s current $3 million.

Adair, of Sisters, has a political base in Deschutes County, where she has twice been elected commissioner; elections for commission are partisan in Deschutes. But that base seems far from overwhelming. She won with 50.5% in 2018 and 50.9% in 2022, results even closer than the last two contests in the 5th Congressional District.

The year may be critical too. Like the leading Republican contenders for governor, Adair has barely if at all mentioned the name of Donald Trump, though control of the U.S. House is a key factor in what the second half of this Trump term looks like — and is a central issue in congressional races nationally. The public pages of her website appear to lack specific references to the president, even in a press release criticizing a recent Bynum budget vote in which Trump was directly involved.

She has ties to Trump, however. In 2016 she was a delegate to the Republican National Convention bound to support Trump.

The Trump administration filtered into her commission activities. In February 2025, she was part of the 2-1 commission majority opting to end the county Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Access Committee, described as working on matters such as “pay disparities between male and female county employees, improving access for hearing and visually impaired residents and other accessibility initiatives.” The decision was locally controversial; it followed orders by Trump to end federal (though not state or local) DEI activities.

Adair said at that meeting, “We’re following the president from the top… the federal government is in charge of a lot of funding that comes to Deschutes County, and I would hate to lose it.”

All that will provide grist for Bynum, the extremely probable Democratic nominee. (She does have an opponent, Zeva Rosenbaum, a first-time candidate and a progressive activist who has reported no campaign receipts or spending.)

A sense of what may be coming from Bynum’s campaign might be drawn from the opening lines of her comments on February 24 after Trump’s state of the union address: ““Tonight, I watched President Trump spend the majority of his speech lying about the state of our economy, demonizing immigrants, attacking voting rights, and spewing more of the same divisive BS. I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s past time the President starts doing his job and putting the American people first.”

In 2026, arguments like that may make the 5th District Republican campaign a distinctly uphill journey.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

As happened four years ago, Oregon’s Republicans have a lot of choices in putting forward a nominee for governor. Those may be subtle and tactical choices.

The number of contenders is a little smaller this time but not by much: 14 Republicans are in the field. More practically, however, only four are really in the hunt. A consensus view would list Christine Drazan, a state legislator and 2022 Republican governor nominee; Ed Diehl, a state legislator and a leader of the anti-transportation tax referendum; Chris Dudley, a businessman, former Portland Trail Blazer and 2010 GOP gubernatorial nominee; and Danielle Bethell, a Marion County commissioner, as front-runners.

You can get a sense of this by checking the online betting markets, like Polymarket. There (as of April 15), you could buy a bet for 46 cents that Drazan will get the nomination. Ed Diehl is close but trailing at 39 cents, while Chris Dudley is a more distant third at 18 cents. Chances for everyone else sell cheap for around a penny or less.

But how do, or might, Republicans think about their choices?

Before getting to that, you might consider the messages delivered by the four top contenders at their first debate this year, sponsored by the Oregon Republican Party on April 16 at Hillsboro.

As you would expect from Republican candidates, there was plenty of criticism of Democrat Tina Kotek, on the economy, housing and homelessness, tax limits or their reduction, public safety and other issues. Much of the criticism seemed to center, though, not on the subjects being addressed but on how well (or in their view poorly) the administration is handling them. In Dudley’s neat frame, “it seems like every time Governor Kotek makes something a priority, it gets worse.” Or Bethell’s even simpler, “They fail at everything.” But all four made similar points.

Specific remedies were less abundant. Everyone said the state over-regulates, and a few laws (the Corporate Activity Tax most prominently) were singled out for repeal. But the main affirmative action suggested by the candidates was stronger oversight.

The debate was no aberration from the candidates’ fuller message; their campaign websites conveyed similar thoughts.

In all, the candidates sounded more like Republicans from the Vic Atiyeh era than from 2026. Donald Trump, whose presence utterly dominates current political discussion (whether for or against), and not least at the state government level in dozens of ways, was MIA from the debate. These four candidates seem never to have heard of him. Their relative take on the Trump Administration was very nearly a blank; the name “Trump” was (so far as I could tell) totally unmentioned through the whole debate.

The closest they came were blink-and-you’ll-miss-it passing mentions by Drazan of deporting people in Oregon who aren’t in the country legally and of transgender issues, and Diehl supporting some new timber-related federal forest policies.

But many other top-of-mind subjects also went unmentioned, from AI to data centers to abortion to spiking power rates to the in-state activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to the spread of contagious diseases to possible changes in Oregon’s system of voting.

The candidates took largely the same approach on nearly everything they did discuss – no really sharp differences emerged between them — and anyone looking to make a choice based on policy stances would be left at a loss.

What remains are some of the distinctions more personal to each of the contenders.

Drazan was the nominee four years ago, retains the appeal she had then, came close to winning and was broadly thought to have run a good campaign. The counter would be that she didn’t, in fact, win, and Kotek’s incumbency (and the targets it affords) would be her main additional advantage now.

Dudley came closest among Republican nominees in recent years to winning, in 2010, and has a cutting argument that the problem with Salem can’t be solved by Salem people, but rather by an outsider (like him). But 2010 was a long time ago in political terms. He has spent most of the years since out of state (maybe he was too much of an outsider?), and his ties and connections do not seem especially strong now. And now as then, detailed policy assessments don’t seem to be his strong suit.

Ed Diehl has led a so-far successful referendum effort on transportation taxes (he has an identity on his signage as “Ed no tax Diehl”), and does have ideas on other subjects including the environment and public safety, but will that be enough to convince Republicans he can win in this blue state?

Bethell can and does point to significant personal experience at the Marion County local level in a range of subject areas, but attracting enough statewide support to come out on top seems like a reach.

So, Republicans have a choice on May 19. But the information behind it is likely to be limited.

This column first appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

Just how deep the antipathy — in Oregon at least — toward both major political parties actually is, may be tested seriously in this year’s elections.

The test may not involve outright wins and losses, but the percentages will be worth watching.

What’s new is the changed electoral strategy of the Independent Party of Oregon, the state’s third largest with 154,862 registrants. That’s not a huge portion of all Oregon voters, well behind the Democrats’ 981,358 and the Republicans’ 730,080. But considering that both major parties have been declining and trail the number of nonaffiliated voters — about 1.2 million — you have to wonder what the attraction of IPO candidates, on the part of disaffected Ds and Rs, might mean.

Up to now in its nearly two decades of existence, the IPO has focused on cross-endorsing candidates, supporting either Democrats or Republicans who meet with the centrist group’s approval. In a March 26 statement, the IPO noted “In 2022 and 2024, the party sided heavily with Democratic legislators in the Oregon House and Senate, helping the Democrats to secure their current majorities through highly successful campaigns in legislative swing districts.” How large the IPO’s role in that actually was could be debated.

This year, though, the IPO changes strategy, running its own candidates under its own banner. Some cross endorsements might still be announced this summer, but the party described that prospect as: “if any.”

The party’s focus now is on five legislative races, with nominees — already named in the party’s caucus process – who have some local profile or even local political success. They’re not complete unknowns, as so many minor party contenders are.

The most prominent was the first of the group to be nominated, in January: Charlie Conrad, who as a Republican won the 12th House District seat (parts of Lane and Linn counties) in 2022, in a clearly Republican area. He broke with the caucus on transgender and abortion issues and lost the 2024 Republican primary with only 17.2% of the vote against Darin Harbick, who went on to win the general election and now is seeking a second term.

So what are Conrad’s chances as an Independent? The unknown element is the nature of local Republicans, who four years ago did vote for him. Do they stick fiercely with the party or do enough break off, together with non-GOP voters, to give him a chance? There is a Democratic candidate too, Amber Smith. How many votes will she get (past elections suggest not enough to win) and how many might break for Conrad if he looks like a serious competitor?

The other IPO contest among the five which features an incumbent targets Democratic Rep. Susan McLain of Forest Grove, most prominent in recent years on transportation issues. She is well established politically, having held her seat since her first election in 2014 (and was a Metro councilor before that), and was unopposed in 2024. This year she has a primary challenger, but no Republican opponent.

The IPO has nominated Brian Schimmel of Forest Grove, a city council member there and long active in area non-profit groups. Absent a Republican contender in the fall, and with the contentiousness of transportation finance this year, might he be able to pull enough support from the center to beat the veteran Democratic legislator? The answer again lies partly in the question of party loyalty.

Two of the open seats among the five now are held by Republican senators disqualified from running again because they participated in a lengthy walkout.

In the 6th Senate District, a heavily Republican area including part of Lane and Linn counties, Cedric Hayden’s departure drew three Republican candidates (current Rep. Jami Cate, R-Lebanon, and Nicole De Graff and Jack Tibbetts) and Democrat Sierrah Williams.

That seems to limit the opening for the IPO candidate, Patrick Starnes, who was an IPO candidate for governor in 2018 and has run as a Democrat as well. Still, his message centered on affordability and breaking down the party structures could have some resonance.

The other disqualified Republican senator in this group, Suzanne Weber of Tillamook, won her seat four years ago in a competitive district. The area is closely enough matched that when state Rep, Cyrus Javadi of Tillamook this term switched parties from Republican to Democrat, the electoral outcome this year is not clear. Regardless, it is likely to have ripple effects of some kind.

Both the Republican and Democratic primaries are competitive. But the IPO also has an entry: Melisa Finkle of Rockaway Beach, described as “a state employee and union leader focused on rural healthcare, transparency, and worker advocacy.” The large number of non-affiliated voters in the 6th Senate District may make her run significant.

Finally, the IPO has a candidate in the 40th House District in the Oregon City area, scene of many tight races. The seat now is held by Annessa Hartman, a Democrat who won two years ago with 55.8% of the vote. Hartman, who is battling cervical cancer, has temporarily stepped back from politics, and two Democrats and two Republicans have filed to replace her.

The IPO candidate here, Pat Hubbell, a pharmacist focused on medical-related issues, may have the least obvious path to a general election win among the five IPO contenders. But in this close-call district, with no incumbent and the outcome of the primaries uncertain, the impact of his presence on the ballot may be hard to predict.

Five case studies. Maybe the non-major party registrants break the way they usually do. But this fall, when we parse the numbers, we’ll get our best chance in a couple of generations to find out.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

On March 26, Gov. Tina Kotek declared a drought emergency in Deschutes, Umatilla and Baker counties at the request of county governments. Call that the first drop of what may soon be a flood of drought-related actions.

This may be the most challenging large-scale drought year Oregon has seen in decades.

Kotek’s executive order hinted at that. It also said “forecasts suggest that below normal precipitation and streamflow conditions are likely to continue through summer in all counties following an extended period with precipitation and temperature conditions that contributed to well below normal snowpack.”

The deliberate language may understate the situation given what’s developed in recent months. And that’s without considering Wallowa and Jefferson counties, which didn’t make the emergency cut for Kotek’s recent order but may before long.

For all that Oregon has a reputation as water-soaked, most of it is arid. Even most of the western region is less moist than many people believe, and water supply has trended to the low side for some years. This year something close to a perfect non-storm hit: Light precipitation plus unseasonably warm weather (such as now, as this is written). Much of Oregon got little or no snow last winter, in places where at least some snowfall is or has been more the norm.

Unseasonal warmth probably has been the bigger factor. Across nearly all of Oregon, since the current “water year” (as marked by federal agencies) started Oct. 1, precipitation mainly as rainfall across nearly all the state has been between between 70% and 90% of normal, meaning compared to the measurements from 1991 to 2020. (Two areas, the Hood-Sandy-Lower Deschutes and the Umatilla-Walla Walla, are slightly higher.) You can see all of this mapped on a federal Oregon snow survey web page.

The federal website drought.gov reported a month ago “Stations in the Cascade Range in Oregon and Washington are reporting the greatest snowpack deficits in the West. Some states, such as California, are already experiencing an early melt out of snow.”

And it said, “Every major river basin in the West experienced its first or second warmest winter (December, January and February) on record. The Great Basin, Rio Grande, Arkansas-White-Red, and Upper and Lower Colorado River Basins experienced their warmest winter on record, while the Missouri and Columbia River Basins recorded their second warmest.”

If that were being stored in snowpack in the mountain ranges, which is what normally happens, that wouldn’t be a great problem.

But the “snow water equivalent” map from the National Resources Conservation Service shows Oregon’s basins (excepting the coast, which isn’t counted the same way) are in hot red coloring — extremely low snow water percentages. Those numbers run as low as 0% in the John Day and the Malheur areas, but are down to 9% even in the Willamette.

As Larry O’Neill, Oregon’s state climatologist, told the Oregon Capital Chronicle, “It’s a very worrying trend. Because it was so warm, our snowpack just really failed to build. Snowpack functionally acts as a reservoir for water. Basically, our largest reservoir of water is nearly empty at this point in time.”

Here’s a comparison: Go back to April 2025, and you’ll see Oregon basins almost all bathed in blue, with nearly all percentages well above 100%.

Oregon hasn’t looked nearly this dry, headed into spring and summer, since 2015, and even that wasn’t quite as bad as our current readings. (The maps suggest Oregon’s drought may be on a level — adjusted for normal precipitation — with Nevada and Arizona.) That year, more than two-thirds of Oregon’s counties had drought declarations.

In the years since then, only 2022 has come close for dryness.

Put another way, if you’re hearing that this looks like a drought year, think of conditions likely to affect you personally. If you’re a farmer depending on irrigation, of course, the situation is much more extreme. Wildfires become higher risk in drought times too.

So what can be done?

Drought declarations by the governor — and you can expect to see many more before the year is out — can help with access to some government programs and speeding reviews and funding, but they can do only so much. Conservation measures probably should get underway now.

Maybe the best thing we can do is use this year as an object lesson in what to prepare for, because the trend lines suggest we’re going to be seeing more of this, not less.

This column first appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.