Sean C. Morgan
Sherrie Sprenger wants to continue representing the people of House District 17 to Salem.
“I’m not interested in representing Salem in my district,” she said. “I want to represent what’s important in my district in Salem.”
Sprenger, 47, a Republican from Scio, is the incumbent facing Democratic challenger Richard Harisay, who declined a request for an interview.
“I want to continue the work I’ve begun in the legislature, taking ideas that are important to the people in my district to Salem,” Sprenger said.
Education
For Sprenger, who chaired the Lebanon School Board before being appointed to the District 17 House seat in 2008, education is her main focus.
In the last session, she was co-chairwoman of the Ways and Means Education Subcommittee.
Her goal was to help improve education funding, she said, “and we definitely experienced a level of success.”
They moved funding from legislative liaisons with the Department of Education to classrooms, for example, Sprenger said. There are also a number of small boards and budgets, such as the Board of Cosmetology. Some of those kinds of budget requests would have increased their budgets by as much as 300 percent. Her committee was able to roll back some of the increases.
Sprenger plans to bring newly appointed state Deputy Supt. Rob Saxton to a town hall meeting from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Nov. 13 at the Lebanon School District office.
She met with him and told him he needed to talk to people, Sprenger said. “I want people in the trenches to help inform the discussion. I’m about results. You have some schools doing more with less, some doing less with more.”
PERS
Public Employees Retirement System liabilities are increasing costs to districts around the state.
It’s got to be paid, and the costs to district budgets are going up, Sprenger said. “We need to find some relief for school districts.”
There can’t be a conversation without talking about what’s driving the costs, said Sprenger, who is not part of PERS, and she’s not interested in taking anything back from retirees.
Still, a task force appointed by former Gov. Ted Kulongoski determined that PERS was unsustainable, Sprenger said. “Let’s pull out the pieces of the conversation that says it’s ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ You cannot do it the way it’s set up now. How long can we afford to do it? I refuse to believe that nothing can be changed.”
The state needs to reform the system that people are entering, Sprenger said. It needs to look at the 6 percent school districts are picking up for employees.
“When you sign up, you don’t need to sign up with all the bells and whistles,” Sprenger said. Rather than looking so much at the funding, she is more concerned with the cost drivers.
At home, people figure out how much money they have and what they can afford with it, Sprenger said. When they can’t afford something, they cut it off. That’s not the way people in government look at it.
State Budget and Economy
On the revenue side, an improving economy could help.
“Let’s create more taxpayers and not more taxes from the taxpayers we have,” Sprenger said. “We need more people working.”
The problem is global and national, she said, but it’s an Oregon problem too.
She talked to the vice president of an area company that employs 250, Sprenger said. “He said, ‘Oregon is not very friendly to business. We’re trying to stay here but you make harder.’”
She said that there are two reasons: Taxes and regulation.
Every single requirement that someone brings up in the legislature comes with a comment that “this is just” 1 percent or $12.50, for example.
She stood up and told the legislature those “justs” are adding up, she said. In context of the cliché about Wall Street and Main Street, she is convinced that the legislature has lost sight of what Main Street is. She named off small businesses on the Main Streets of towns throughout her district.
“When we’re passing regulations and making things harder, it’s adding up to these folks,” Sprenger said. “I truly believe it’s state regulations making it so difficult for businesses.”
She plans to continue fighting against regulations, she said, although she admits to voting for one regulation, requiring schools to have a defibrillator.
She has not voted yes on a single tax increase, she said.
One of the things she worked on last session was drawing water from the Columbia River at peak flows to help agricultural businesses that need access to the water. Better production improves the vibrancy of the economy across the state.
Cougars
Sprenger already has her cougar bill ready to go for the next session. Last session she had 15 House Democrats supporting it. Only a single Republican opposed it. It died in the Senate.
It was a pilot project with a sunset that would have allowed certain counties to choose to allow the hunting of cougars with dogs, she said. Counties that don’t want to, would not have to participate.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife would permit the hunters based on its cougar management plan, Sprenger said. It wouldn’t change target numbers or quotas.
It’s already happening, Sprenger said. The state is already paying $100,000 per year to pay trappers to hunt cougars with dogs.
“We need to get off our high horses about hunting with hounds,” she said. “We’re doing it.”
Railroad Issues
Sprenger said she is looking into the railroad access issue along Highway 20. Albany and Eastern Railroad has billed residents $720 to keep their access open to Highway 20 across the rail, which is under an improvement project right now.
The rail line is using a lottery-funded Connect Oregon grant from the Oregon Department of Transportation.
“I don’t know what a legislator’s role is yet,” Sprenger said, but if the line is using a grant and then squeezing people, “I don’t like that.”
If it’s granted with no provisions covering the fees, it’s something the legislature might have to look at next time, she said. “The piece that relates to me is the Connect Oregon money.”
Sen. Fred Girod may have a bill, she said, but “good neighbor relations will solve all of this.”
Personal
Sprenger is a former deputy sheriff. She is married to Kyle. They have one son, Austin, 15.