Posts published in “Oregon”

Possibly no place in Oregon has a more rugged, individualistic, even anti-governmental attitude than Burns, a small city in the middle of the state’s southeast desert country.

This is an area of old-style ranchers and resource industries, or at least has been. It votes as conservative and Republican as it can, and political people who argue for smaller government and less by way of cooperative efforts are those who get the votes. It’s a cowboy ethic kind of place.

The recent big event in Burns might not demolish that world view. But there’s a fair chance it could generate some second thoughts.

An absence of government action, regulation and ownership and of a strong mutual cooperative effort among people locally -— in contrast to what one person called “kind of a group-hug scenario” — is why, in late March and early April, a lot of Burns was overrun by a flood.

Such a disaster might have been notable in other places, but it overwhelmed Burns. According to the American Red Cross, the flooding abated only after several weeks, affected 952 homes (some of those may have been on Burns Paiute Tribe lands), and the flood area ran through most of the downtown area. Burns is home to just 2,736 people as of 2023, and there are just 1,438 total homes.

The city reported “a complete sewer failure” from the Paiute Reservation to the Triangle Park, and other infrastructure was hit too. Evacuation orders affected almost half of the people in town.

This was not damage to only a small part of the community but, directly or indirectly, to all of it. And it happened in a place more than an hour’s drive from any other city as large, and two hours away from any that are larger. Help is not close by.

Beginning the task of making sure this doesn’t happen again starts with understanding why this flood hit so hard.

Its natural causes are clear and not unusual. Although the Burns area is arid, heavy rains occur periodically, and the right timing for snowpack melt in the region can cause the Silvies River, which flows from the mountains to the north, to run high.

The river borders a residential area on the northeast side of town, and high flows there are intended to be contained by an old and informally developed system of levies.

Actually, there is no system in a comprehensive sense. The 2.4 miles of levees — barriers against the water, to keep it channeled — stretching across the north and east side of town apparently were built not by a government or formal organization but by local residents, and the approach was not thoroughly organized. Even the history is foggy: There are no clear records of when the levees were built, or exactly by whom.

A 2019 report submitted to Harney County officials warned that the levees needed upgrading and repair, but that didn’t happen. One reason is that no one specific person or group had the specific obligation to respond: No federal, state or local agency or private entity, and none had the specific authority to enter the private property along the river to make improvements. Everyone could pass it off to someone else.

The do-it-yourself approach remains in place today. During the flooding, a public notice from the city asked residents to stop diverting water onto other properties.

“Do not erect barriers in the streets to divert the water,” the city’s notice said. “This can be a hazard as these are evacuation routes and you could be charged with disorderly conduct in the 2nd degree in addition to being liable for any damages to the neighboring property or properties by that diversion. We understand that these are very scary and unsure times and people are wanting to save their homes and property, but please do not put yourself or other people in danger or damage someone else’s property by trying to do so.”

This isn’t unique to Burns.

Colin Rowan, planning director for the Urban Flood Safety and Water Quality District in Portland, told Oregon Public Broadcasting that the kind of levee system Burns has had can be found in many places all across Oregon including the Willamette Valley, many built a century or more ago.

“There’s not clear responsibility,” Rowan told OPB. “There’s also sometimes unclear funding. How would you actually pay for it? Even if it was privately-owned land or publicly-owned land, they might not even know that repairs are needed.”

Sometimes organized and expert help is what’s needed. Even in communities like Harney County.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

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What do you do with legislation that cuts into the middle of how Oregonians live their lives, when most people want it but many are sharply opposed?

The short answer: Test it, when that’s possible. Launch a suggested solution, but keep specifics general enough that details emerge through trial and error. That can mean requiring local governments to act but encouraging them to become the laboratories where we learn what works well or not.

Today’s subject is cell phone use in schools, during school hours, for which Oregon House Bill 2251 passed the House on a mostly party-line 36-21 vote this week. It is aimed at banning cell phone use throughout the school day, and for the moment, it seems well positioned to become law.

A House committee already considered more than a half-dozen amendments and more are expected in the Senate, but the suggestion here is to simplify.

This is one of the hottest subjects this year in the Oregon legislature. It goes right to the heart of how Oregon’s school children and their parents have been accustomed to organizing their days.

At the same time, many parents and children are accustomed to being able to communicate instantly, and many students would not like the idea of giving up their phones for so many of their waking hours. The first submitted testimony on the new Oregon bill, in opposition to it, declared it “a solution in search of a problem. Let the school districts govern themselves.”

But the large number of people saying the problem is real, and the limited action on it by local districts, suggest that isn’t enough. Gov. Tina Kotek and the state Department of Education have registered support for restrictions; the department last year issued proposed model policies, without specifically imposing any.

Pressure is strong for kicking the phones at least partly out of the classroom. A Pew Research Center survey from last October found that more than two-thirds of American adults favor banning the phones during class. Just over a third support the prohibition for the whole school day. That’s a tell: Most Americans favor some restrictions, but with nuance. School employees are more lopsided; almost two-thirds of American high school teachers said cell phones have become a major distraction and impediment to learning.

Oregon’s Legislature is hardly alone considering bans. As of the end of last year, 11 states regulated (not necessarily banned outright) cell phone use during school hours, and at least 27 other states had introduced legislation on the subject. Since then, Idaho has added to the numbers, in the last few weeks enacting a cell phone limitation bill. In still other states, governors or agencies have imposed orders on the subject. School cell restrictions are becoming standard around the country.

The districts around the state are a policy jumble. Some have prohibition policies of various kinds in place; others do not. Portland Public Schools on Jan. 7 approved a rule similar to the current bill. Some are studying options. The Reynolds School District put together a work group which concluded, “We recommend an all-day ban on personal device use for grades K-12.” The state does not track comprehensively what the local districts do about this.

HB 2251, which is intended to require districts to ban use of “personal electronic devices”  would be more specific. It requires school districts to adopt a cell phone policy, and sets requirements for elements that must be included, and a lengthy list of exemptions (mainly medical, emergency and educational) to phone bans.

How all those specifics will play out is unclear. What the Oregon legislature could do, possibly ratcheting down the heat, is something like what the Idaho Legislature just did.

The Idaho measure, Senate Bill 1032, was simply a broad mandate to create local rules on the use of cell phones. Its key section said, “The provisions of this section shall not be construed to require a local school board or public charter school to adopt a policy that prohibits all use of electronic communications devices by students. However, local school boards and public charter schools may adopt a policy prohibiting students from carrying electronic communications devices in school buildings and on school grounds or premises during school hours. A local school board or public charter school that adopts such policy shall be considered to have met the requirement to adopt a policy under this section.”

Presumably, that will generate a good deal of action and discussion in school districts statewide, and by the time of next year’s legislative session, educators and legislators will have a clearer sense of what’s working and where the glitches are.

Oregon may also find that simpler, for now, is better. A legislature that requires local districts to set up rules will get a much clearer answer by next year than they could get from evaluating reactions to a one-size-fits-all bill.

This column originally appeared on the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

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One of the first Oregon impacts of this year’s international trade wars came to our house in a pleasing way: in the form of a few bottles of good wine, gifts from friends who work in that industry. We live in the north Willamette wine country, where personal connections to the wine industry are not hard to find.

Those bottles were emblematic, though, of a bigger situation not nearly so benign.

Some weeks ago, as wineries in our region packed and sent crates of wine north to Canada as they long have done, they encountered a surprise. The border was as far as many of them got, and their wine had to be trucked back, unsold, to Oregon.

Canada had essentially stopped accepting alcohol from the U.S., including Oregon alcohol. The response and rules at the border have shifted, but sales are being heavily impacted by President Donald Trump’s recent tariff announcements.

Many Oregon winemakers are accumulating a wine surplus. Some, probably small but unknown numbers of cases, may be turning into giveaways, pleasant for the recipients but lousy for a wine producer’s bottom line.

The massive worldwide tariffs Trump promised — and then announced he would pause for 90 days — can be expected to further dampen the state’s wine trade. Wine is a smaller part of Oregon’s trade picture than some other commodities, but it offers a useful insight into how the tariffs are affecting the state. And it is a major industry in Oregon, with about 1,100 wineries statewide.

Last week, a friend who had worked in wine import and export described for me how the system worked.

When shipped internationally, the product changed ownership — from the producer or wholesaler to my friend’s own company — before it crossed the border, so that when the shipment cleared customs, his company paid the tariff or fees (where they existed).

That was the first impact of a tariff. Companies ordinarily factor tariffs into the retail price, and individual wine buyers ultimately pay most or all of that cost. That boosted purchase price is how most people experience tariffs.

The existence of a tariff doesn’t keep something from crossing national lines, and a small tariff may not matter much, but large ones can change the business incentives for all parties.

Oregon wine makers might in one way, at first, benefit from higher tariffs on the countries (such as Italy, Chile, Australia, Argentina and many more) that import wine into the U.S where they are imposed.

That might drive some domestic wine drinkers toward more American producers, which could help Oregon wine producers, though it usually has the effect of raising domestic prices as well.

Other aspects of higher border-crossing prices are likely to cut against the industry.

Some of those are smaller and might not be especially visible outside the industry, such as higher prices paid by the Oregon industry for imported barrels, steel for supplies and equipment, production equipment and more.

Oregon’s leading export targets overall are (in order) Mexico, China and Canada, and about 81,000 jobs are reliant on that export trade. The impact on trade may be easier to observe in the wine industry, because close to half of all Oregon wine exports go (or in recent years have gone) to Canada: In 2022, that was 73,323 cases of a total export of 162,939.

“We’re just watching it play out in real time, and it’s not pretty,” Alex Sokol Blosser, president of Sokol Blosser Winery in Dayton, Oregon, said in a recent KGW interview. “All that business we worked for, and the president lit a match to it.”

Anne Amie vineyards, near Carlton, has been moving from local tasting room sales toward an all-wholesale model, and one significant element of that has been a large prospective sale — thousands of cases — to a buyer in Quebec.

Negotiations had been active for months, but after recent Trump trade announcements, Canadians ended them. Other wineries have had comparable experiences.

There are ripple effects through many other industries as well.

The US Wine Trade Alliance argued on April 2 that “restaurants will suffer, domestic producers will face new obstacles in bringing their wines to market, and retailers, importers, and distributors across the country will be placed at serious risk. With their biggest profit center decimated, many restaurant investors will decide to take their money elsewhere.”

Last week, thousands of Oregonians showed at up the Hands Off anti-Trump rallies around the state, and plenty of signs criticized the new tariffs. I didn’t see any that complained specifically about administration impacts on the wine industry. But it wouldn’t be surprising if, in coming weeks, they start to appear.

This column first appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

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In this heated political/governmental time, though far still from the next major elections (in the Northwest anyway), you wouldn't ordinarily expect an unusual amount of activity putting elected officials in front of groups of constituents.

An unusual amount of it does seem to be happening, though. In Oregon, and among Democrats, notably.

Some of this has long been institutionalized, especially by the two U.S. senators, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, who have been working through their tours of all the counties, as they have for years.

But the U.S. representatives (including Republican Cliff Bentz) have been visiting counties more rigorously than usual this year, sometimes along with the senators.

For members of Congress or governors to do something like this isn't far outside the norm. But others have begun doing it too.

Secretary of State Tobias Read has been undertaking a tour of counties, and especially their election offices.

And new Attorney General Dan Rayfield has started to do some of the same thing.

On Tuesday, his office "announced plans for a town hall series to connect with Oregonians in communities across the state. The "Safeguarding Oregon: Federal Oversight Forums" will launch in April."

The first three, running in April and early May, are planned for Eugene, Portland, and Bend, with others expected in the months to come.

Ordinarily, such event from an attorney general might seems like a non-starters. This is a guy most people expect to be in court (or supervising those who are), not out developing policy with the general public. But in fact, in this time of already-large and prospectively larger conflict with the Trump Administration, such events make perfect sense. People have a lot of questions, and the answers to some of them involve legal analysis. And the solutions often may have to do with legal action.

One of the major problems we have these days in serving as active citizens governing ourselves through elected officials is the information conundrum: Too much bad or false info0rmation and not enough that's really useful. Town hall meetings between constituents and officials are one way to cut out sometimes counterproductive middlemen (said as someone who sometimes fills that role).

More town halls? Bring em on.

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On March 19 Oregon’s legislative budgeters released a framework for state spending for the next two years.

It brought to mind a famous response in the movie Jaws, to the appearance of the giant shark: You’re going to need a bigger frame.

By conventional standards the budget proposal, released by Joint Ways and Means Committee Co-Chairs Sen. Kate Lieber, D-Portland, and Rep. Tawna Sanchez, D-Portland, was, well, conventional, and their calling it “prudent” made sense. Along with some increases for education and human services, there were limitations and even cuts in safety, transportation and other areas.

It’s worth noting that the process is still in early stages. Budget work is likely to take two months or more, and much of the picture ordinarily does not settle until after the May revenue forecast.

But the real, big-storm impact that could come from federal cuts or policy adjustments could make a hash of many current assumptions. Legislators should be prepared for Oregonians looking to the state as a provider and protector of last resort if Trump Administration cuts and policy changes, some not yet in place or in uncertain status but strongly hinted at, come to fruition.

Almost a third of Oregon’s state budget, and large chunks of local government budgets, come from federal agencies. The Trump Administration appears intent on slashing large parts of that pass-through money. In some cases, that could mean putting off or abandoning planned-for projects.  In others, it can mean an inability to pay for what long have been considered basic services.

The federal developments did not escape notice in Salem, and budgeters already have been considering them - to a point. Lieber said "Oregon's budget is not designed to plug federal holes," Lieber said. "If the federal government cuts programs, they are inevitably going to hurt Oregonians."

There has nonetheless been reaction at the Statehouse already. One very visible piece of extra state activity has come in Attorney General Dan Rayfield’s office, which has initiated or participated in a long list of lawsuits against the Trump Administration. That extra activity, not really planned for a year or two ago, is not likely to slow.

On January 29, the White House Office of Management and Budget issued a statement that “Federal agencies must temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance.”

Oregon State Treasurer Elizabeth Stein responded, “Through the state’s responsible fiscal management, the state treasury has an adequate balance of funds to sustain vital federally funded programs in the short term. Oregonians depend on federal funds to ensure public safety, keep early learning programs and schools open, deliver health care, support farms and small businesses, maintain roads, care for seniors and other vulnerable people, fight wildfires and more. These funds support thousands of jobs in Oregon.”

All of that and more soon will be dumped in the lap of the legislature.

Small amounts - tiny in the context of the federal budget, but sometimes large and critical locally - are implicated for museums and libraries, and a long list of other organizations.

Cuts at the National Weather Service can affect the whole country, of course, but reported cuts among weather watchers on the Oregon coast can have drastic impacts locally.

Like many other states, Oregon state government spends much of its revenue on education. In the 2024 fiscal year, federal agencies gave the Oregon Department of Education $1.8 billion, and about 95% of it went to school districts. There’s no telling what that amount will look like now, especially with the projected demolition of the Department of Education.

Funding for the University of Oregon and Portland State University has been threatened.

The Trump Administration is likely to press for local law enforcement agencies to work on immigration issues. Oregon state law argues the other way. What happens to federal funding when the two conflict?

Local governments have been scrambling to find out if federal funds which had been expected for streets, water and sewer systems and more will actually materialize.

Many of these areas of federal fallout are well within the normal scope of state government activities.

The Trump Administration has proven so unpredictable that no one realistically can say what the federal funding picture will look like in three or four months. But if it resembles the administration’s impulses, there will be calls for Oregon’s government to do more to fill in gaps. Maybe much more.

This session is likely to get more difficult as it goes - and may become very difficult toward the end.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

The premise behind two constitutional amendments proposed by Republican lawmakers is that it’s too easy to place an initiative on the ballot in Oregon.

Buried inside that premise is that idea that some Oregonians’ clout in the initiative process should count more than for others.

Both House Joint Resolution 3 and HJR 11 aim to change the number of petition signatures needed for initiative backers to win a spot on the ballot.

Now, Oregonians who want to pass laws at the ballot need to gather valid signatures from 6% of the total number of votes cast for governor during the last gubernatorial election — just more than 88,000 signatures. The threshold for citizen-initiated constitutional amendments is higher at 8%, or nearly 118,000 signatures.

HJR 11 would raise the initiative requirement from 6% to 8% — increasing the requirement by a third — and require  the signatures be “divided equally” among Oregon’s six congressional districts. For citizen-proposed constitutional amendments, the requirement would rise from 8% to 10%.

HJR 3 would require initiative backers to collect signatures from 6% of voters in each of Oregon’s 36 counties — an even more difficult mark to reach in a politically polarized state.

A March 10 hearing on both measures showed widespread opposition and, at the Legislature at least, limited support. HJR 11 drew 104 testimony submissions, with just 24 in support (and two neutral). For HJR 3, 78 witnesses submitted testimony — all in opposition.

The level of criticism shouldn’t surprise, given Oregon’s historical background with ballot issues.

Oregon was one of the first states to adopt the idea of developing legislation or constitution changes directly to the public. Throughout the state’s history, voters have decided 881 ballot issues (almost a quarter of them related to taxes), but reaching the ballot has been no guarantor of passage. Fewer than half (411) of the measures won voter approval, which has evidently given no one a slam dunk at the polls.

The argument that it’s too easy to place an issue on the ballot might have some currency if the number of initiatives on the ballot has been exploding. But it hasn’t: In fact, the number continues to fall.

After a large number of initiatives presented shortly after the method was started, the number of initiatives slumped in the mid-20th century, then grew in its latter third, to 92 ballot issues in the 1970s, 73 in the 1980s and 105 in the 1990s. Then, in this century, the number has fallen steadily, from 86 in the 2000s, to 39 in the 2010s and just 13 so far in this decade.

Besides that, significant numbers of ballot issue campaigns fall short of the ballot qualification even under current rules.

The stronger support for these new resolutions — at least to judge from the amount of supportive testimony received — seems not to be for raising the overall petition signature level, but rather ensuring that every county provides significant support for it.

Sen. Todd Nash, R-Enterprise, argued for example: “This should be more representative from all of Oregon to gather those signatures. Right now, we’re not seeing that shape up that way. It’s coming from one concentrated area.”

Eastern Oregon rancher Katie Baltzor said many ballot initiatives, “are crafted by extreme groups that have a specific agenda that would be harmful to specific livelihoods, such as ours. Many conservative and moderate Eastern Oregonians feel they do not have a voice in the legislative or initiative process. It is too easy for these groups to gather all the signatures they need for a ballot initiative by going to a highly populated area.”

Some of this ties into the Greater Idaho protest, or the idea that eastern Oregonians aren’t being adequately heard in Salem — and there’s a good argument that they sometimes aren’t.

In Idaho, because of legislative action, rural votes do count more because of per-county signature requirements, which have reduced the number of initiatives that hit the ballot. That, of course, has come at the expense of urban and suburban dwellers.

The core problem the Oregon initiative limitation backers have is simply the large number of people in the more urban and suburban areas, mostly in the Willamette Valley: They’re outvoted. The only way around that is to weigh some votes (or petition signatures) more heavily than others.

Dan Meek of the Independent Party of Oregon offered an analogy: “If HJR 11 is a good idea, then let’s apply it to votes in the Oregon Legislature: In order to pass, a bill must be approved by members of the Legislature representing every CD. If the 10 state representatives and 5 state senators who represent districts within any of the 6 CDs do not provide majority votes in favor of a bill, then the bill fails. Thus, representatives and senators within each CD get to veto every bill. That is equivalent to the system proposed by HJR 11.”

People cast votes, and make other decisions in state politics. Land acreage doesn’t. Most likely, the Oregon Legislature will factor in those directions when it comes to these two resolutions.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.