Posts published in “Oregon column”

The Jan. 25 report on Oregon’s water shortage, released by the Secretary of State’s office, prominently included a cautionary quote from the legendary western explorer John Wesley Powell, delivered in 1893 as the regional approach to water management started to take form:

“I tell you gentlemen you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not enough water to supply the land.”

He spoke as though that were a bad thing. Experience across the West shows that it might point to a useful direction for Oregon.

The report, “State Leadership Must Take Action to Protect Water Security for All Oregonians,”  points out that despite the national myth that Oregon is water-drenched, most of the state is arid, and even many of the wetter areas – including much of the Willamette Valley – have seen below-average water supplies in recent years. Travelers near the Willamette can see many farms using irrigation more intensively than they once did.

The problems are accumulating: “Many communities are not fully integrated into water decisions and often not even aware there is a problem.” the report stated. “The Oregon Integrated Water Resources Strategy is not clearly connected to state and regional planning efforts and does not have clear implementation pathways. Oregon’s state leadership and agencies do not necessarily share water security priorities. Agencies have distinct areas of focus and limited resources and capacity that limit the ability to engage broadly with communities or work across agency lines. Oregon water data is disaggregated, sometimes incomplete, and not set up to support regional governance needs. … State water regulatory agencies have broad discretion but face external pressures that may hinder them from fully using this discretion to benefit the public.”

Oregon has worked on water planning for half a century, but its basic approach is top-down prescriptive: an attempt to set statewide or basinwide policies intended to address water needs.

The 11 recommendations in the new report, for example, call for “sustain(ing) legislative commitment” and “connect(ing) a regional planning system with an integrated state water plan” and setting up new planning and improving communications, in both government and with the public, on water issues.

An Oregon water framework would include statewide priorities, a statewide water plan, a coordination body, regional and local water plans, and additional regional and local “planning bodies” – a highly complex system that might have a hard time with effective coordination and with clarity.

However helpful these ideas are, they are incomplete. No other western state – and every state from the Great Plains west has significant water challenges – has succeeded in managing water this way. Nearly all emphasize another approach, one already built into Oregon’s water system: administration through the prior appropriations doctrine.

An example (possibly the most successful in the country) can be found next door in Idaho.

Idaho’s available water resources are, in most regions, weaker than Oregon’s, and it has sometimes struggled to deliver water as needed. For decades, the state tensely balanced water demands for its agricultural and hydropower systems (and in smaller amounts for other uses), an arrangement that blew up in 1982 with a state court decision giving primacy to water use by an electric utility. A series of negotiations followed, and the settlement that emerged included an adjudication of all of Idaho’s water in the Snake River system. That covered close to 90% of all the water in Idaho, and the court case that resulted was the largest of its type in the nation’s history.

It was also highly successful. The 28-year adjudication – done at what amounted to light speed in the world of water adjudications – took account of every person and organization seeking to use water in the system, and rationalized who was able to receive what. The court (and administratively, the state Department of Water Resources) bases case-by-case decisions on state law and court precedent, with some leeway to account for specific local conditions and needs. A state water resources board sets overall policy.

Oregon has in place the basis for taking a similar approach. Like other western states, Oregon allows users to obtain water rights under the “prior appropriation” system, in which senior users (“first in time, first in right”) have priority as long as they use the water beneficially. Policy decisions are made based in part on what is considered a beneficial use, and who can claim it, followed by negotiations among the people affected. In some places, fish and wildlife can obtain what amounts to water rights under a trust system, as can recreational and other users.

In limited ways, Oregon already does some of this. A major water adjudication is underway in the Klamath River basin, and much of the rest of the state has been adjudicated at various times. But the results have never been well integrated and have not been developed statewide, a key element to successful state water management.

Oregon can’t, through legislation or regulation, create more water. But it can more clearly articulate how its water should be used. The new advisory report, coupled with case studies from around the regional neighborhood, can show how.

This article originally was published in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

If Oregon legislators wind up their session this year without substantially addressing limits on campaign contributions, there will be no publicly acceptable excuses – not even that of their own self-interest.

It’s not only the legislators who have pledged to move on the issue, but also the formerly most-influential legislator and now governor Tina Kotek. Last year she campaigned on finance reform, and while accepting large contributions, she added, “if I have any say this will be the last governor’s race where we have no limits.”

That last comment was a reference to a weird distinction in Oregon’s overall election climate: It is one of just four states (Virginia, Nebraska and Utah are the others) that places no limits on personal or organizational contributions to campaigns. (Yes, Idaho, Texas, Arizona and Mississippi among others have such limits while Oregon doesn’t.)

The consequences of that became chillingly clear last year, as in race after race massive dumps of money swamped the environment.

The biggest single chunk of funding came from cryptocurrency billionaire (mega-rich no longer since his business collapse) Sam Bankman-Fried, contributor of more than $10 million in support of the locally unknown Democrat Carrick Flynn, who proceeded to lose his primary election. Many other races were lost last year by heavily funded candidates, but one congressional seat may have been flipped by it – Oregon’s 5th, where funding in support of new Republican Representative Lori Chavez-Deremer was more than twice that of her Democratic opponent.

Those congressional races are mostly under the reach of federal, not state, law. But massive amounts of money hit in numerous Oregon state races, too. Famously, Nike co-founder Phil Knight poured millions in the gubernatorial campaigns of first, non-aligned Betsy Johnson, and then Republican Christine Drazan; His funding and that of a few other large contributors overwhelmed smaller donors.

That happened in a string of legislative races. The most striking example may have been that of Democratic Senator Jeff Golden of Ashland, who raised a more-than-respectable treasury last year – almost a quarter million dollars – but still was outspent more than four to one by Republican Randy Sparacino. The effective difference between the two was a little smaller, however, because Democratic support groups also spent on Golden’s behalf. A critic of that kind of financing, he said after the election that “I could not get, no matter what I did, the upstate folks to stop spending money on the race.” Golden won, narrowly.

For campaign finance reformers, Oregon has been an exercise in frustration for decades, ever since the Oregon Supreme Court in 1997 said the state constitution’s free speech provisions barred campaign contributions limits. (That ruling threw out a 1994 attempt at campaign funding limitation. But in 2020, the court upheld a Multnomah County attempt at finance regulation.

More critically, in 2020 voters massively backed (the yes vote was 78.3%) Measure 107 to amend the state constitution specifically allowing campaign finance regulation – but it still needed legislation to make the amendment active. Business and labor groups, both heavy backers of Oregon candidates, opposed the amendment and some fought it at the Legislature. Oregonians hoping for action in the last legislative term were disappointed with the failure of substantial movement at the statehouse.

In 2022, reform groups including the Honest Elections Oregon and the Oregon League of Women Voters proposed three initiatives aimed at limiting campaign contributions. They were frustrated when a decision by Secretary of State Shemia Fagan said the proposals ran afoul of legal requirements (dating from a 2004 court ruling) on the text that had to be included. When the Oregon Supreme Court upheld the decision, the measures were blocked from the ballot last year.

Since then, Fagan (as well as Kotek) has called for campaign finance reform as part of her legislative package.

Honest Elections spokesman Jason Kafoury said that “overwhelmingly, the citizens of this state want limits on big money dominating their politics, and as the governor’s race shows, six- and seven-figure checks are going to continue to overshadow everyday voices until we get real campaign finance reform in Oregon.”

The same forces that blocked finance legislation in the last legislative term may try again, but they’re losing key avenues of support.

There’s no constitutional bar, and clear legislation, with widespread support, has been drafted. And the idea – conceptually at least – has solid support from the state’s leadership.

Simply, legislators who return home having failed once again to pass will have little way of explaining why other than to helplessly say, “money talks.”

Lawmakers face 38 proposed changes to the state constitution this session.

Few will pass. Massive and drastic change is something to be wary of when it comes to altering the state’ core governing document, though the voters do approve changes from time to time.

But the proposals do carry messages, including of Republican frustrations in Oregon.

Constitutional amendments are introduced as joint resolutions (a form also used to create interim committees and take some other actions) which, unlike bills, require no action by the governor for passage.

There are two bipartisan proposals. Senate Joint Resolution 10 would shift control of the legislative and congressional redistricting process from the Legislature to a new Citizens Redistricting Commission, along the lines of those in the states bordering Oregon. Early in the decade-long cycle before the next remapping effort would be the optimal time for passage. And the sponsors, Sens. Suzanne Weber, R-Tillamook; Jeff Golden, D-Ashland; Bill Hansell, R-Athena; and Reps. John Lively, D-Springfield; and Greg Smith, R-Heppner; are split between the parties.

Two alternative Republican proposals, SJR 9 from Republican Sen.  Daniel Bonham of The Dalles, and SJR 25 from Sen.  Fred Girod of Stayton, have a similar goal.

Another bipartisan proposal, House Joint Resolution 8, lists seven Republican sponsors and one Democrat (Sen. Lew Frederick of Portland), and is aimed at requiring citizenship for voting.

Democrats contributed three amendment proposals. Secretary of State Shemia Fagan asked to allow same-day voter registration (HJR 4). Sen. Chris Gorsek of Troutdale asked for expanded uses for motor vehicle tax revenues (SJR 2). Rep. David Gomberg of Otis proposed a simple word change (HJR 14), replacing “declaration of emergency” in referring to bills intended to be effective quickly, replacing that with “early implementation date.” Only Fagan’s measure seems likely to generate much discussion.

All the other ideas were  proposed by Republican legislators, and one of their biggest concerns is the Legislature itself. Some Republicans have not made peace with the relatively recent addition of regular, short legislative sessions in even-numbered years. Sens. Art Robinson of Cave Junction (SJR 4) and Fred Girod of Stayton (SJR 24) proposed amendments to eliminate them.

Other legislation-limiting proposals were suggested. Two (SJR 16 and SJR 20) would require two-thirds vote for passage of certain bills in even-numbered sessions.

Rep. Werner Reschke, R-Klamath Falls, urged in HJR 6 that the supermajority or three-fifths requirement on revenue-raising bills cover more subjects, and Sen. Lynn Findley, R-Vale, proposed SJR 1,  which would raise the 60% supermajority to two-thirds. Measures deemed an emergency would need a two-thirds vote under an amendment (HJR 11) from Reps. Kevin Mannix, R-Salem, and Lily Morgan, R-Grants Pass, and another (SJR 5) from Sen. Kim Thatcher, R-Keizer.

The executive branch, under Democratic control yet again, has come in for attention in ways large and small. Proposals would allow the Legislature to overturn administrative rules by resolution (SJR 18), skirting a gubernatorial veto, or go further in requiring legislative approval before any rule could take effect (SJR 21).

A budgeting proposal from Girod (SJR 22) would “limit increase in state governmental appropriations for general governmental purposes in biennium to least of percentage increase in projected personal income, percentage increase in projected population growth plus inflation or percentage increase in projected gross domestic product of Oregon for biennium.”

Some are more specific, requiring legislative approval for some specific spending decisions (SJR 15), road tolling (SJR 19) or even Senate signoff on gubernatorial pardons (HJR 10 and SJR 11).

The state’s pandemic experience led to a proposed amendment “to place durational and other limitations on declarations of emergency by governor” (SJR 14 and HJR 9), the latter drawing 10 Republican legislative sponsors, the most of any proposed amendment. Yet another is more specific (HJR 7), prohibiting Oregon’s executive branch from “requiring medical procedure or vaccine or type of vaccine to be administered to any individual or class of individuals, unless legislative assembly has enacted law that expressly identifies medical procedure, vaccine or type of vaccine and individuals or classes of individuals for which medical procedure or vaccine administration is required.”

Oregon is the only state that doesn’t provide for impeachment of elected officials, and Senate Republican leader Tim Knopp of Bend offered a corrective (SJR 13) to provide that “officials could have been impeached for malfeasance in office, corruption, neglect of duty or other high crimes or misdemeanors.”

Substance as well as process has turned up as some of the more intriguing ideas. Some are simply constitutional versions of normal Republican legislative ideas, such as carrying concealed firearms (SJR 3 by Robinson), enacting a Right to Work labor law (HJR 15), legal provisions concerning aggravated murder (HJR 3), and property tax help for owners who live in their residences (SJR 6, SJR 17, and SJR 8, the latter aimed at seniors).

Another would establish a right to hunt and fish (HJR 5), but does allow for legal restrictions, which raises the question of what its effect would actually be. Even more explanation might be useful for SJR 7 from Sen. Cedric Hayden of Roseburg, who proposed a “constitutional right to subsist,” which would include a “right to save and exchange seeds and grow, raise, harvest and consume food of one’s own choosing.” Depending on what this might mean on a concrete level, it might get either a lot of support at the Legislature, or very little.

Good thing the Legislature has about half a year to work: Lots of paperwork has piled up already.

This article first appeared in the Oregon Capitol Chronicle.

 

This makes for a simple and compelling storyline: Since Oregon has loosened its marijuana and other drug laws – through ballot measures in 2014 and 2020 – law enforcement agencies have been reporting massive seizures in the state of illegal pot and large-scale illegal operations in rural parts of the state. The implicit message is that drug abuse is exploding.

Some of the seizures are massive, amounting to more than 105 tons in the state so far this year, much more than just three years ago.

Beyond those headlines, however, the connections aren’t so simple, and some perspective is needed.

One way to approach this is through the organization that is the source of the 105-ton figure; it is especially useful because of the way the group is set up: a little counter-intuitively. This is the Oregon-Idaho High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force, a little odd as an integral unit both for geographic reasons and because Oregon and Idaho have such different drug regimes and issues. The contrast is also useful, because the differences between the two help shed a little light on the challenges each of the states face.

The task force focuses its efforts on 16 counties (a dozen in Oregon) and four Indian reservations (two in each state). Most of these house local-regional “initiatives.” Statewide, Oregon reported a drop in arrests over drug offenses from 10,684 in 2020 to 4,892 in 2021; the report suggested the passage of Measure 110, which decriminalized some personal possession of illegal drugs, may have been a reason. While not a strict comparison, Idaho reported that of more than 8,000 inmates in its correction system, the largest portion (34.7%) was behind bars for drug crimes, a contrasting picture.

Although the legal scene was very different, the task force’s Drug Threat Assessment sounded very much the same for both states when it came to specific problem areas.

“Fentanyl and methamphetamine were the most significant threats to Oregon and Idaho during 2021 based on drug seizures, drug related death data, initiative interviews, and surveys conducted in early 2022. The 18 Oregon-Idaho HIDTA enforcement initiatives based their survey responses on a criterion of drug availability, impact on caseload and community impact,” the report said.

That message coincides with recent reports from other regions showing shifts of trafficking in rural areas.

It went on: “One-third of HIDTA initiatives listed methamphetamine as their single greatest drug threat, while one third stated fentanyl alone as their greatest threat. However, three task forces stated that fentanyl and methamphetamine pose an equal threat in their jurisdictions. Sixteen initiatives identified methamphetamine as being the most available substance in their jurisdiction – either individually or in combination with other drugs.”

Those substances were reported by far as the largest problem area across both states, and both seem to be less affected by the law changes in Oregon than a number of substances illegal in one state but not, or less so, in the other. The report said that fentanyl trafficking into Oregon increased massively in 2021.

There was also this: “The Oregon State Police (OSP) forensic laboratory statistics for 2021 showed 50.7% of the samples submitted for analysis were methamphetamine. Heroin made up another 17.6% of submitted samples. Fentanyl accounted for 8.9% of samples. Cocaine and cannabis/THC each were roughly 3% of submitted samples. Another 2% of samples contained multiple drugs. Finally, all other drug types represented 13% of samples.” In Idaho, “methamphetamine represented 43% of samples analyzed in 2021, while marijuana was 23.5%. Heroin accounted for 8.8% of samples and fentanyl or fentanyl analogues were 5%.”

As for marijuana, law enforcement in both states this year continue to report significant amounts of illegal marijuana and cannabis extracts, though just a quarter of enforcement officers surveyed indicate “a rise in prevalence.” Prices for the illicit goods continue to fall, they said, especially in southern Oregon, where some of the largest illegal grow operations have been reported.

What to make of this?

No doubt more effort is going to be needed to go after illegal marijuana operations. (Is there some temptation to grow in a state where, the theory may be, the illegal product can be hidden among the legal?) Still, the ability of law enforcement to focus on the big traffickers rather than individual users may account in part for their success in cracking some of the large operations.

The task force’s report may in effect be a call to think carefully about where the most serious problems are, and how we measure them – hopefully, in context.

This column first appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

(image/Getty)

The core support for Betsy Johnson, the unaffiliated candidate for governor in the election, was almost surely a lot different six months ago than it was when the ballots were cast.

Polling from last spring up into September put her in third place but not by much: She was pulling numbers just above and below 20%, which would be poor in a two-way race but respectable in a three-way, which is where she was. Since polling numbers easily can shift by 10 points or more in the last two or three months of a campaign, that theoretically put her not far from first place, a position which, in fact, would be bouncing between Democrat Tina Kotek (who ultimately won) and Republican Christine Drazan.

The talk grew loud several months ago that Johnson could become only the second person – the first being Julius Meier in 1930 – elected governor of Oregon outside of the two major parties.

We now know that it didn’t happen. We also know that by the time votes were cast, Johnson did not gain more support after the early stages of her campaign but rather lost most of it, finishing with a modest 8.6% of the vote.

What happened, and what can we learn about Oregon politics from the still-significant vote she did receive?

In most Oregon counties she received between 7% and 10% of the vote. She scored higher than that in 10 counties: Clatsop (22.9%), Columbia (20.8%), Gilliam (20.7%), Tillamook (17.8%), Jefferson (12.1%), Wheeler (11.6%), Wasco (10.9%), Deschutes (10.5%), Sherman (10.5%) and Lincoln (10,1%). All have something in common: She has had long-standing personal connections to those areas, or at least to their media and marketing communities. Clatsop and Columbia were the core of the legislative districts she represented for many years, and Tillamook and Lincoln counties were nearby. Johnson grew up in and has had long-standing ties to the Deschutes and Jefferson county areas, and the remaining counties are closely connected to that region.

All this is evidence of personal loyalty among the people who have known her best – but only to a point. That she could not obtain even a quarter of the vote in her home county (Columbia), where for many years she had been not just a popular and respected elected official but a beloved local icon, is striking, and suggests some counter-currents also were at play.

Politically, these counties relatively supporting Johnson are a mix, but with the partial exceptions of Lincoln, Clatsop and Deschutes are Republican-leaning.

What about the counties – five of them – where she performed relatively poorly? These are Malheur (5.1%), Lake (5.9%), Klamath (6.1%), Wallowa (6.4%) and Umatilla (6.7%), all places that run very strongly Republican. But that alone wasn’t decisive; she fared better in other very Republican counties.

A speculation: Early-day Johnson voters who leaned Republican left her cadre sooner and in larger numbers.

Here’s what the numbers seem to tell me, in a general way, about what happened:

The race probably was not far from a true three-way contest at one point, about the time of the May primary election, but then partisanship sank in. I suspect the first major response came among many Republicans, when they saw that their nominee, Drazan, was generating strong appeal and might have a better chance of reaching out into the middle of the electorate than their previous nominees had. That realization, and the prospect of winning a long-denied governorship, bled Johnson from the right, and pumped Drazan’s numbers.

Over time, that, in turn, generated a reaction, kicking in through September, among many of the Democratic-leaning Johnson supporters. These were people who were content to see Johnson rather than Kotek as governor, except that if the choice were effectively between Drazan and Kotek, they’d much rather see the Democrat than the Republican win.

That reaction may have been exacerbated (and reflected) by the switch in big-time funding from billionaire Phil Knight from Johnson to Drazan – presumably when he too saw the Republican had a much better chance of winning than did the non-aligned candidate.

Disproportionately, the voters Johnson retained were not those who were notably independent or dissatisfied with the two main parties, but were those who had some personal or regional connection to her. She probably affected the contest between Kotek and Drazan only to the extent of a percentage point or two. Most Oregon voters stuck with their party of preference, whichever it was.

Here’s one conclusion you can make from the 2022 governor’s race: It’s still as hard to elect an independent as governor of Oregon as it ever was.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.