Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
With a short off-year legislative session under her belt, House District 17 Rep. Sherrie Sprenger knows she prefers being in her district with constituents than spending time in Salem.
Sprenger was appointed Feb. 1 by district Republicans to fill a vacancy created when Fred Girod was appointed to complete Sen. Roger Beyer’s term in Senate District 9 after Beyer resigned to work in the private sector. She is one of four Republican candidates running for the seat in the May 20 primary election. Ballots are scheduled to be mailed May 2. The winner of the primary election will face Dan Thackaberry of Lebanon, who is running unopposed as a Democrat, in November.
Sprenger said her emphases as a lawmaker include public safety, protecting small businesses, economic growth and education.
As she works in the Legislature, she likes to keep in mind the big picture, Sprenger said, adding that her position on the Consumer Protection Committee helped her see that bigger picture and support changes that made legislation more workable. She said she also realized the impact legislation can have on small business owners.
She voted against one bill dealing with recalled toys, she said, because of the way the regulation worked. In its original form, an attorney walking through a store could sue the store instantly with no need for damages or loss. Her problem with the bill was the timeline.
“The store would absorb the cost,” Sprenger said. Most stores in her district are small businesses and are unlikely to survive even one such lawsuit. She talked with the owners of a feed store in Scio that sells some toys about the effects of the bill.
“They can’t get things off the shelf as fast as Wal-Mart,” Sprenger said. The problem is that it sometimes takes a little longer for them to get notice of a recall. In the meantime, the original bill would hold them responsible for something about which they were unaware.
She supported a newer version of the bill that gives businesses 30 days to get recalled toys off the shelf.
Similarly, “any time we talk about a tax we need to be careful,” Sprenger said. “You can’t look at a tax in a vacuum, and you need to make sure the tax dollars you have are being used most efficiently.”
She said she finds it interesting that some lawmakers are talking about new taxes while some people are saying the economy might be in a downturn, she said.
She also has signed the Oregon Taxpayers United no new taxes pledge, she said.
More locally, based on concerns she has heard from constituents, she is scheduling a May town hall meeting to find ways to deal with the problem of metal thefts. More information will be released later.
One area farmer told her, “I just took a load of metal in, and I walked out with cash.”
He told Sprenger that the payment should have been a check sent by mail, she said. As a victim of metal thefts in the past, the experience showed him that selling metal is too easy for thieves.
The focus of next year’s legislative session will depend on who controls the Legislature, Democrats or Republicans, Sprenger said. “A huge part of the Republican push right now is (ensuring) public safety is a part of that.”
Public safety has been a recent focus, she said. In 2007, the Legislature added 100 state troopers to the road, and in the session this year, it added another 39 troopers.
Personally, in addition to public safety, she is most interested in economic growth and education, she said.
With economic development, Sprenger said, “I think we need to be inviting to businesses. The state plays a role for sure, but let’s not overlook the cities and counties. You can’t look over the local control.”
The key, Sprenger said, is to give as much latitude as possible to cities and counties to make themselves attractive to businesses; and the tax structure is part of that as well.
As chair of the Lebanon School Board, she is particularly interested in education, which comprises more than 50 percent of the state budget, Sprenger said. “That’s a lot of money. Are these hard-earned tax dollars being used efficiently?
“We just love, in this country, to build a new program.”
When those programs come up, legislators need to make sure it’s the right program and that the program has measurable outcomes, Sprenger said. School districts must take some ownership, but “local control at the school board (level) is a bit of a misnomer. There’s not as much local control as there used to be. It’s my intent to give as much control as possible to the school districts because they’re representing their community, which is different across the state. School districts are in touch with the needs of their community better than Salem.”
Local education is largely driven by federal and state requirements.
And sometimes, the requirements are set with no funding provided to pay for the requirement, she said. “I think unfunded mandates are a scary place to go.”
Sprenger believes that all-day kindergarten will be before the Legislature next year, for example. If the state mandates all-day kindergarten, she believes it should attach the funding to the requirement.
She can’t predict where that money will come from, she said. It will either come from existing education dollars or some other program, she said. “That’s the problem with mandating the all-day program. Just because it’s a good idea doesn’t mean it should be a law.
“What happens is you take away money and more local control.”
Without local choices available, “we have cookie-cutter schools,” Sprenger said. “I’m about parents having choices about their kids and their education. Nobody is better equipped to make choices for their kids’ education than their parents.”
Public, charter, home and private schools are all good, she said, and she supports the rights of parents to put their children into any of them.
Sprenger, a Lebanon-Scio area resident, was chairwoman of the New Hope Pregnancy Center Board of Directors and a former member of the Oregon School Boards Association Legislative Policy Committee. She is a Sunday School teacher at First Assembly of God in Albany
She graduated from Corban College in 2007 with a bachelor of science degree in management and communications. She is a 2005 graduate of Leadership Oregon.
She is married to Kyle. They have one son, Austin, 10.
Sprenger runs a radio communications business in Scio.