 * “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”
—Helen Keller
Next week is “Leg [rhymes with ‘wedge’] Days,” which normally call us to Salem for committee meetings between regular sessions to start working on prospective legislation. Because we’re still in cautionary mode, we’ll be Zooming (Microsoft Teams, actually) instead of meeting in the Capitol. My Natural Resources Committee will meet this Monday, November 15 to hear about the hot-off-the-presses agreement between the timber industry and forest conservationists, early stages of the implementation of the omnibus wildfire bill, and a bill to expand market opportunities for the state’s organic farmers. You can watch online here starting at 2:30pm. There’s also a link to offer comments.
Normally this online COVID mode would save me a trip to Salem, but I’ll drive up Wednesday for a task that constitutionally requires our physical presence: Senate confirmation of the Governor’s nominations of dozens of Oregonians to a variety of Boards and Commissions. It’s a low-drama pro forma process for 95+% of the nominees, but there’s occasional push ‘n pull, usually over the boards governing the natural resource agencies. Some of that could unfold next week over two nominees to the Environmental Quality Commission (DEQ’s governing board) with clashing ideas on how seriously Oregon needs to take on climate change. These two names will probably be pulled out of the long total list of nominees, who will be approved on a single vote, and then approved separately on a more partisan vote. Spicy floor speeches are likely, but I don’t expect more drama than that.
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...say some Democrats, let’s have a quick special session to extend the moratorium on evicting tenants for non-payment of rent. If we don’t, they say, expect a flood of newly houseless Oregonians to hit the streets.
Others are dead-set against another extension. Republican leaders have hinted that their troops might stay away from the Capitol to prevent anything like that from coming to a vote. This hiatus from evictions, they point out, has lasted for a year and half, much longer than they were led to believe, thanks to one extension after another. The last of these was designed to make sure that slowly-moving federal relief dollars could reach us to head off evictions, and it was broadly understood that we wouldn’t ask for another one. But that slow money has turned out to be extremely slow money, with thousands of landlords and tenants still waiting for promised relief.
Why? Is this a by-product of federal or state snafus? Probably both. Along with the huge problems last year delivering unemployment compensation, this episode points to systemic problems we have to deal with before the next disruption, whatever that turns out to be, leaves a lot of Oregonians in need.
One thing that’s clear is that the state agency information systems weren’t supple or robust enough to manage floods of applications that have no precedent. We legislators bear some responsibility for that. State agencies routinely come to us in the budget process with multi-million dollar requests for IS improvements. They cause sticker shock for those of us with little high tech experience, and when agencies return with hefty requests each budget cycle we tend to get less generous with tax dollars. That’s likely one reason our systems struggled to cope with the outfall from COVID and the 2020 wildfires.
Whatever the reasons—and we owe it to taxpayers to figure this out in months to come—the plain fact remains that thousands of currently housed Oregonians are likely to be out on the streets if the moratorium isn’t extended. What percentage of them would be able to pay their own rent these days if it weren’t for COVID? I don’t think anyone knows.
This brings us to a hard conversation. Because rents have risen dramatically higher and faster than wages, millions of Americans and thousands of Oregonians were on the brink of eviction before we’d even heard of COVID. The ravages of the pandemic and the imperative to slow the spread convinced us we had to do whatever it took to prevent them from surging unsheltered onto the streets. But over time the problems people have scraping their rent together have less and less to do with COVID. At its core what we have here is a wealth and income gap that won’t stop growing.
So now what? Does the responsibility to help people who can’t afford a place to live, however hard they might work, fade away with the pandemic? And beyond the moral issue of increasing houselessness in the world’s richest country is the economic reality that houselessness generates a matrix of social problems so expensive that we can’t afford not to address it now.
So the big question is no longer how we get rent-burdened people through the pandemic. It’s whether we continue the newly-expanded government role in housing people on the economic margin, and how we move to an economy where more people can support themselves and their families...just tiny questions like that. Questions that a special session wouldn’t begin to address.
As I write there’s no clear path to convening a special session; it won’t happen next week, as some wanted, in conjunction with Wednesday’s Executive Appointments session. Tenant advocates will keep pushing for it, and my caucus will keep trying to find the best path forward.
Alongside and around the fully legal and regulated hemp and marijuana operations, a crime wave of massive illegal grows has flowed across the Rogue Valley. 2021 was a genuinely grim year for many of our rural neighbors.
It’s hard to exaggerate the toll that these grows, spread across thousands of hoop houses throughout Jackson and Josephine Counties, is taking on Southern Oregon. These are mostly well-established criminal enterprises based in other states and countries who’ve found a formula for making tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars here in a single year. They will defend those profits any way they need to; “Wild West” is a fair way to think about where we’ve arrived. We’ve seen massive water theft in the midst of drought (one topic for our November 18 water forum—see above), destruction of high-quality farmland, toxic waste piles, heavily armed threats to rural residents, violent coercion and abuse of workers, and the economic ruin of farmers who’ve carefully followed the permitting process intended to foster a responsible cannabis industry in Oregon...all pretty much with impunity.
That means we’ll see more of the same and worse if we don’t forge a strong and smart response. I’ve convened local leaders and the state agency heads to make plans for the coming year—mostly a big infusion of dollars to get the right kind of boots on the ground quickly—and some statutory changes that could change a prevailing view that the Rogue Valley is easy pickings for enormous black-market profit.
Some see this mess as a consequence of legalizing recreational marijuana in Oregon and a few other states. I don’t think that’s right. Marijuana prohibition, like alcohol long before it, never worked and spawned all kinds of problems. But it is true that legalizing cannabis has provided a curtain of sorts for illegal operations that makes effective regulation much harder and fueled the current chaos. Most experts believe that there’s no good solution as long as marijuana cultivation is banned by the federal and allowed by some state governments, and that recriminalizing pot on the state level won’t work.
That said, our task now is to make organized crime rethink their notion that Southern Oregon is an easy mark. I’ll work with other legislators and state agencies to do just that.
That long mediation between the timber industry and forest conservation groups to find a middle ground on basic forest practices ended last week with better news than many expected. Here’s how the media reported it, and here’s a helpful plain-English summary from Bob Van Dyk, who led the conservation alliance in the talks. The Governor’s drafting a bill to embed their agreement in law, and asked my Natural Resource Committee to move it through as soon as the session begins.
Is this the big historic step towards ending the Timber Wars that many were hoping for? It’s too early to know. Not all the relevant stakeholders, and I know this will come as a shock, are happy about this accord. What I will say is that there are leaders on both sides, people who’d come to doubt that peace would ever be possible, who are excited and hopeful that this could be the long-awaited breakthrough. So I’m excited to bring this accord to my committee in January to see what kind of statute we can shape from it.
Like all even-numbered years, 2022 will see a short session in Salem, limited by the constitution to 35 days. It’s intended more for budget revisions and course corrections of bills passed in the long session than big new initiatives. My Natural Resource Committee can introduce up to three bills and, like every legislator, I’m allowed two personal bills (in the long, odd-year session we can submit as many as we want). We have to decide what they will be, at least in general terms, by the end of next week.
I’ll be asking my committee to introduce a bill to clarify language and tie up loose ends from SB 762, last year’s omnibus wildfire bill (most landmark measures are followed by a “clean-up” bill in the short session), and another to revive last session’s SB 404, which will boost the success of Oregon’s organic small farm sector in national and global markets. The third bill, depending on conversations with colleagues this week, will likely aim to crack down on water theft and misuse, a long-term problem amplified by the spread of lawless cannabis grows.
One of my personal bills will be a reintroduction of last session’s SB 336 to limit contributions to Oregon political campaigns. We haven’t been able to take action on this since Oregonians gave us the go-ahead by passing Measure 107 last November by a margin of almost 4-1. The conviction that pushed me to run for the Senate in the first place—that we won’t make serious progress on our big problems until we throttle back the influence of big money in Salem—has only increased since I’ve been in office.
Some say legislators just won’t seriously reform the campaign system on which they ran for and won office. Maybe that’s right, but I want to take one more shot at creating a framework that shifts power from lobbyists to citizens before giving up and waiting for a ballot initiative to do the job. If we can’t get it done inside the Capitol I’ll be ready to join activists on the outside who are leading the charge for people-powered politics.
As of this writing, I’m weighing several alternatives for my second 2022 bill.
 Ribbon cutting at the Gateway Project
A powerful collaboration--three levels of government, local businesses, community groups like Talent Maker City and a growing cohort of proud citizens-- has taken a big step towards recovery from the Alameda Fire. Take a look at the Gateway Project that just opened at Talent’s main traffic light on Highway 99.
The fire was devastating. Government’s not good at moving quickly. This project reached the ribbon-cutting stage because of the tenacity of folks that former Governor Tom McCall invoked when he defined “heroes:”
Heroes are not giant statues framed against a red sky. They are people who say ‘This is my community and it’s my responsibility to make it better.’
If you’re staying active and involved, thanks for your heroism.
 Senator Jeff Golden, Oregon Senate District 3
Housing resources:
Food resources
- If you are experiencing food insecurity, there is a network of food pantries across Jackson County with shelf stable and fresh food. Visit Access' page to locate a food pantry near you. Before visiting one of these pantries, call Access to verify the hours of operation: (541) 779-6691
- For more information about food assistance programs in Oregon, visit this page.
COVID resources
Need health coverage for 2022? Preview plans and savings available to you by visiting OregonHealthCare.gov or call 855-268-3767 (toll-free) to find free, local help.
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