Posts published in “Oregon column”

On March 19, the Yamhill County Board of Commissioners voted to remove from county transportation plans a rail-to-trail corridor stretching 17 miles near Highway 47 from McMinnville to Gaston.

What comes next could be worthy of note.

But the backdrop of this decision also makes a telling story about the how and why of a political battle. This local conflict over creating a pedestrian and biking trail, a central flashpoint in local county elections this year, may have emerged from an entirely different kind of decision: To grow hazelnuts.

Rail travel from the St. Joe area on the northeast side of McMinnville north to the Forest Grove area dates from 1872, when tracks were laid and Westside system trains began running. Cities including Carlton and Gaston were founded as farm service stops along the way and named for people associated with those stops. After a brief go at passenger trolley service, the line was taken over by Union Pacific Railroad, which decades later, now decades ago, abandoned it. The tracks are long gone, the land mostly weed infested and barely passable if at all.

In 2017, Yamhill County bought the portion of the rail right of way from Union Pacific, the plan being to clear it and turn it into a rail-to-trail project similar to the Banks-Vernonia State Trail a few miles north. The idea had broad support in the area, and the county commission, dominated then as now by a two to one conservative majority, enthusiastically moved the project along.

Public support for it has persisted. A 2021 survey, taken after political pushback began, still found 64% of area respondents in favor of the trail, the number rising to 70% after more information was provided to those surveyed.

Yamhill County at one point received $1.7 million from the Oregon Department of Transportation toward trail development. (That money now has to be repaid to the state.)

In this decade, the project has sunk into quagmire. Opposition developed primarily among farmers operating near the trail, some of whom were closely allied with the commission majority. They challenged the county’s move for trail development to the Land Use Board of Appeals, from where it was returned to the county for action. The commission’s new majority turned sharply against trail development, and currently the property sits mostly neglected as the new commission struggles with dueling use suggestions.

Pieces of the old rail right of way may be sold mainly to adjacent landowners. Once that happens, prospects for a public walking or biking trail in the area probably will vanish forever.

Why the change in official attitude?

No one answer probably accounts for everything, but the key seems to be hazelnuts.

Tristin Shell Spurling, a longtime resident of the Cove Orchard area near the old rail line and a trail advocate, observed changes in farming activity near the rail line that matched with changes from support toward opposition to it. He wrote local government officials last fall with a detailed report.

Spurling noted that until about 2015, many of the farmers and conservative members of the county commission were either neutral or supportive of the trail proposal. At that time, most farmers in the adjacent areas were growing grass seed, a low-impact crop with low costs.

Hazelnut development, a higher cost (and higher risk and reward) crop became a larger factor in the area around 2016 and 2017, which is when opposition to the trail began to materialize, though commissioners remained at first largely supportive.

In the years since, the hazelnut developments expanded and some of the earlier planted orchards began to mature. As those became a larger component of the farm picture, the trail opposition began to coalesce along with it, taking legal action and pressing politically at the commission level to reject the plan altogether.

“The hazelnut conversion boom is well documented in Yamhill County during these years. This aligns with the sudden shift in hostility toward the trail,” Spurling wrote. “It often starts with one or two high-value agricultural conversions that change the perceived risk environment.”

Spurling’s wife and fellow trail supporter, Neyssa Hays, is this year a candidate for the Yamhill County Commission, for one of the seats now held by a trail opponent. (The lone commissioner who supported the public trail in the 2-1 vote is not up for election this year.)

Little of this was mentioned by the commission. Commissioner Mary Starrett said, “The county tried for many years to get this project done. The Land Use Board of Appeals said it’s not passing muster and it just kept costing us more and more money and more and more people filling these rooms and being angry and blaming commissioners.”

The battle may continue. A group called Trails PAC has filed petitions seeking a public vote before disposal of trail land. A referendum petition seeking to overturn the commission decision also is possible.

Politics grows out of many things. Sometimes political battles come out of unexpected places, like that hazelnut orchard you drive past on your next trip into the wine country.

This column originally appeared in Oregon Capital Chronicle.

Last August, I wrote of the upcoming contest for the Republican nomination for governor that legislator Christine Drazan, the party’s 2022 nominee, started in the preeminent position and that “any discussion of major contenders for the 2026 Republican nomination for governor has to start with her.”

In the last couple of months the field has changed, to the point that another legislator who last summer wasn’t even on the radar appears to be claiming front-runner status.

As of the end of candidate filing, 15 Republicans have filed for governor. It’s an echo of the even larger crowd of 19 four years ago. When I wrote, “The race has no obvious frontrunner, only a few names familiar to people who follow Oregon politics, and no statewide election winners and or incumbent officeholders above the county level.”

This year, most have no statewide visibility or organization or financing, and almost certainly will generate few votes. But several of them do, which gives the race more structure at least.

And in one case, an unexpected — to put it one way — survey result.

Rep. Ed Diehl of Scio on March 15 released a poll (which he said was conducted independently, not by his campaign) that showed him with 66.4% of the vote among the 10 Republican candidates for governor. The poll is credited to Predict Oregon, and it was said to have surveyed 1,022 Oregon Republicans from March 3 to 8.

It’s not a traditional poll, by any means. While traditional pollsters call or text to gather a statistically representative sample of the electorate, Predict Oregon instead solicited responses online.

David Medina, a social media influencer from Tualatin who has never won office, was said to have come in a distant second (8.7%), with Drazan (7.7%) and 2010 GOP governor nominee Chris Dudley fourth (7.6%).

Diehl’s campaign statement said “Voters want bold action on the economy, public safety, homelessness, and affordability, and this poll shows I’m the clear choice to deliver it.”

Diehl does have one claim to some statewide fame, as an organizer (as head of the Oregon Freedom Coalition) behind the referendum measure which recently pulled 250,000 petition signatures toward overturning last year’s state law increasing transportation taxes and fees.

Initiative and referendum actions can bring statewide organizational support, but it’s no guarantee of ballot success. While he did lead the referendum effort, many of its supporters also plausibly could support one of the other Republican contenders who also have opposed the transportation finance plan.

Ask Bill Sizemore, a true veteran of the initiative process who lost a governor race in a landslide in 1998, and finished fourth in 2010 and eighth in the 2022 in those Republican gubernatorial primaries.

Apart from that, Diehl is a two-term state representative who until recently had little statewide visibility.

The two former governor Republican nominees currently in the race, Dudley and Drazan, hardly look like pushovers in the primary.

Dudley can point to at least two good data points. First, since the Democrats started their current string of gubernatorial races in 1986, no Republican has come closer to winning (in 2010) than Dudley, when he got within a percent and a half of Democrat John Kitzhaber. Second, he already has significant money, roughly matching the longer-running Drazan, and including a million dollars from Nike co-founder Phil Knight.

Still, Dudley hasn’t been very visible in Oregon since his last run for governor 16 years ago, his fame-making days with the Trail Blazers are far in the rear view mirror, and questions about how grounded in Oregon he is are likely to develop. In 2010 he declared his residence was in Camas, Wash., apparently to cut payment of Oregon taxes. After his close loss for governor in 2010, he moved to California (in 2012) and stayed there until 2020. He reports he now lives in Sisters.

Too, there’s always the possibility someone else in the pack could break out, as to some degree Drazan did in 2024. Marion County Commissioner Danielle Bethell is strongly rooted in the Keizer-Salem area, with a base to build from as strong as some other contenders.

Despite all that, the race at this point still looks most like Drazan’s to lose. She came close to winning against the same (nearly certainly) Democratic nominee just four years ago. She has remained politically active, is in office now (usually a plus) and her partisan network no doubt is alive and well. At most recent reports, she still had the largest treasury of any candidate. She also started her campaign relatively early, before most of the others, and that’s usually a significant advantage.

The Democratic side of the governor primary is almost as crowded as the Republican, but it’s a different story; only incumbent governor Kotek has a statewide profile, organization or financing to credibly run a governor’s race. The only real question seems to be exactly how large a percentage of the vote she gets.

In what looks like a Democratic year in a Democratic-leaning state, the Republican nominee will have a serious challenge come November. But the last couple of months have made clear that the Republican nomination will not be casually gotten either.

This column first appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

Another legislative session is over and new laws are about to go into effect that will change things, some things, in Oregon. Right?

What people around government know and everyone else should, is that passing a law is one thing and getting it to work as intended is a whole different matter.

Consider legislation from nine years ago and working only in part: the red flag law.

A decade ago, many Second Amendment advocates argued that the problem with persistent shooting deaths was not so much the broad availability of guns as the ability of specific dangerous people to get hold of them. A response to that emerged around the country in the form of red flag laws, which provide for removal of weapons (mostly but not exclusively firearms) from people who seemed at high risk of harming themselves or others.

Oregon’s track record on shootings tends to follow national rates, by population. It does have a below-average number of shootings of one person by another, but also has an especially high rate of suicide by firearm.

So far, 22 states including Oregon have enacted red flag-type laws. (Those without are mainly Republican-led states, and one, Oklahoma, has a law generally barring them.) Some of these laws refer to Extreme Risk Protection Orders (that’s the proper name in Oregon), and others refer to Risk Warrants, Gun Violence Restraining Orders or Extreme Risk Firearm Protection orders. The operating idea is similar.

The process for using it starts with someone either in law enforcement or in the family or household of the person thought to be a hazard applying to a court for an order. If the order is approved, notice is served on the person. Any readily available firearms must be turned over either to law enforcement or a third party, who could be a friend or relative.

A judge considering an order has to consider risk factors specified in state law, including reports of threats of suicide or violence (or past history of those things), lawbreaking involving violence or drug abuse or other indicators.

In August 2023, the Secretary of State’s Office reviewed the results so far of the 2017 Oregon red flag law, which took effect in 2018. The resulting report sounded ambiguous: The red flag concept had potential which was so far unfulfilled, the report suggested.

“In the first 4 and a half years that Oregon’s ERPO [Extreme Risk Protection Orders] law was in effect a total of 564 petitions were filed, with the vast majority requested by local law enforcement,” the report said. “Respondents only requested a hearing to challenge an order in about a third of these cases, with the orders being upheld about half of the time. ERPO use has varied widely among counties, with seven counties not having any since the law was implemented.”

As national use has varied — states such as Indiana and Florida use it more than Oregon — so do Oregon’s 36 counties vary not only widely but unexpectedly. You might guess heavier use of it in Multnomah County than elsewhere, but the numbers of red flag orders issued was higher in raw totals (and much higher per capita) in Washington and Deschutes counties and much higher per capita.

The highest number of orders in any county in Oregon per capita was — brace yourself — in Lake County (with 99 orders per 100,000 people). The second-highest per capita rate was in another haven for the Second Amendment, Josephine County.

Why the disparity? When Portland City Councilor Steve Novick recently reviewed the state red flag report, he was puzzled by the low Portland rate.

In a March 3 email, Novick said “After doing some reconnoitering, I concluded that a major likely reason for that is that the Portland Police Bureau never prioritized training officers on the existence and use of the law, which was passed in Oregon in 2017. The PPB Behavioral Health Unit is trained in the law, and actually files the paperwork to initiate what are called “Extreme Risk Protective Orders,” or ERPOs — but they are largely dependent on patrol officers to identify and inform them of situations where ERPOs might be appropriate.”

Novick convened a group to review this, and invited a police officer from Bend who talked about how the red flag law was used more there. Since, Novick said he received a note from Sergeant Josh Silverman of the Behavioral Health Unit, who said, “BHU officers and I are starting next month to teach a one-hour, in-person ERPO class at in-service to every sworn member of the bureau. It will take until December to get everyone trained up, as we’re running about one session a week for groups of 20–40 officers.”

That may have some practical effect. The lower use of red flag capabilities probably isn’t due either to an inability or unwillingness to use it, but to a failure to build it into a standing part of police procedure. Once it’s there, it may be used more often.

And a considerable number of lives may be saved, through a law put into effect as it was, so many years ago, originally intended.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

The Alex Pretti scenario ought to be under serious consideration by the Oregon Legislature. Time is running out.

Pretti, as most of us know, was the ICU nurse (and U.S. citizen) shot to death on a Minneapolis street by federal immigration authorities. The incident exploded a powerful national discussion about the agencies’ activities.

With that in mind, consider this scenario, which a couple of years ago might have been fetched far, but no longer:

A local or state Oregon law enforcement officer — state police, county sheriff’s deputy, city police officer — arrives at a scene in which a federal official is beating an Oregonian, and appears to be on the edge of killing that person or inflicting permanent injury, despite no plausible threat to the officer.

What should this state or local officer do? What is his or her responsibility, to the people of the community and state and also to law enforcement?

Should the officer intervene and stop the violence? Stand by and watch? Offer to help the federal agents? Call dispatch and ask for instructions?

Oregonians might ask at that point, who will protect us if not local and state law enforcement?

Attorneys and many law officers may reasonably reply that law enforcement officers, no matter the often-used slogan of “to serve and protect,” have little legal obligation to do that, for all that may be the public’s (and taxpayers) expectations.

One legal analysis website, for example, points out that while many people believe police and other keepers of the peace are required to shield people from harm, “under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, law enforcement agencies generally do not have a constitutional duty to protect individuals from the criminal acts of others.”

That’s not to say state and local officers and departments are unconcerned about safety. The Oregon City Police Department, for one example among many, declares itself “dedicated to the safety of our valued community.” Professional ethics as well as decency would push them toward protecting and serving.

But in the case of dealing with federal law agencies, it gets more complicated. The usual and normal relationship between local and federal enforcement agencies traditionally has been cooperative, which makes sense. But what happens if their interests collide — or if what the federal agents are doing specifically endangered the lives and safety of Oregonians?

The gap or even conflict between these ideas could create some real issues as the Department of Homeland Security expands, as it appears planning to do.

Today, this is a legal gray area. It hasn’t much emerged as a serious question until the last year, since up to then reports of federal officials inflicting that kind of questionable or extreme force, at least out in the open, have been relatively few. But such cases have appeared around the country, not least in Portland. More than a few people in Oregon law enforcement probably have nightmare thoughts about what might happen in their own communities.

The issue of how far Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol may go, how much violence is allowed (under the Trump Administration) and under what conditions, and apparently unlimited immunity to consequences, seems to create a completely open question.

Courts have begun to address it to a limited degree. On Feb. 3, U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon issued an order temporarily stopping ICE agents active at the agency’s Portland office from firing less-lethal munitions at nonviolent protesters, which included seniors and children.

State law is mostly silent in this area. The Oregon Legislature has only touched around the edges of some of the issues involved, mainly putting a little finer point on rules already in force.

A proposed constitutional amendment, Senate Joint Resolution 203 would require police officers to wear identification and not wear masks, but that’s already standard practice in Oregon anyway, and probably could not govern federal officers. A proposed law, House Bill 4138, would fill in some of those requirements.

Legislators are also at work on increasing the scope of Oregon’s “sanctuary laws” which limit state and local law agencies in their cooperation with ICE and related agencies. Rep. Kevin Mannix, R-Salem, is considering a change to sanctuary law which would open the door to more sharing of information with federal agencies in the cases of people convicted of serious misdemeanors and felonies.

None of that addresses how state law officers should react to apparent lawbreaking by federal officials. The job of answering that question would fall partly to local governments, but also to the Oregon Legislature. And it has little time left in this year’s short session to act before we all see what awaits in the rest of this year.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

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