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Rural Oregon certainly deserves more attention and support. However, with that support should come with return support for the many challenges that the urban areas face. As a former urban legislator I was always struck at how much money and policy rural Oregon wanted but how little rural legislators were willing to do to help the urban parts of the state. In fact, rural legislators spent much of their time trying to poke the eye of urban Oregon, particularly Portland and Eugene, whenever those cities needed policy support. There are a litany of examples I could recall.

Sadly, not enough of an effort is made to figure out how to forge good compromises that help both rural and urban Oregon. For instance, in exchange for urban legislators supporting the rural timber payments issues, rural legislators in turn ought to support allowing local school districts to tax themselves more for "non-essential" education services such as foreign language, sports, arts, music. In exchange for supporting risky rural economic development projects (such as a gas pipeline to Coos Bay or buying a railroad in Wallowa County), rural legislators should have been willing to support allowing urban communities to enact a tax on real estate sales to support affordable housing. These are just two examples.

The sad thing is that these ideas are not even on the table. It's not because some rural and urban people haven't thought about them, but it is largely because the large interest groups that dominate the capitol are the ones that don't like these sorts of compromises. The anti-tax groups, the education associations, the property rights groups, restaurant association, realtors and others simply prevent creative discussions from occurring in Salem. Some legislators resort to demagoguery on issues in the name of supporting rural Oregon, but the unspoken reality is that those sorts of people are more beholden to the vested interests (anti-tax groups, for instance) than they are interested in sitting down and coming up with solutions to bridge the divide.

Rural Oregon certainly deserves a well-funded office of rural policy. It deserves well-funded schools, economic opportunities, good roads, and a tax structure that allows proper compensation that acknowledges the lack of a private tax base. Urban schools likewise deserve an opportunity to ask their voters to support foreign language immersion in their schools. And urban voters ought to be able to enact funding for affordable housing and ask that industries let the public know what sorts of pollutants are being emitted in their facilities.

Throwing down the marbles and walking out of the room is not constructive, but maybe it creates an opportunity for the serious adults to get in the room and collaborate in a meaningful way so that good urban/rural policy can be enacted or presented to the voters.

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
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