Back in our April 2 edition I wrote about how Oregonians need the Oregon Journalism Project – coverage by veteran journalists of the state’s big issues and its legislative activities that, in this era of depleted local newspaper staffs, hasn’t gotten to readers.
If you have been paying attention to the postings under the OJP button at sweethomenews.com, you will probably notice that a lot of the coverage pertains to exactly that: big issues that pertain particularly, in many instances, to the rural population.
I appreciate that, personally, because the coverage has been, in my opinion, generally pretty impartial and it’s on topics that, as an editor, for years I’ve chafed over the fact that it wasn’t getting done.
Up till now most of the postings have been straight news reports.
We’ve posted what I consider really important stories:
- About how state gas tax and transportation funds are not appropriately collected or allocated (rural truckers are paying more and urban car owners less than their share – postings on April 10 and previous).
- About the dispute over how the Santiam Canyon Fire got started and who’s responsible (see multiple posts in late March, April).
- About how well politicians’ stated intentions of housing the poor and creating “affordable housing” are playing out in the real world of greed (my word) and bureaucratic rules and red tape (May 14, April 2).
- About how ODOT made a $1 billion error in the budget it’s been working under for the past couple of years (Feb. 26).
- About how state officials seem to be finally waking up to the unrealities of their efforts to ban diesel trucks (May 15 and previous).
And those are just a few of the topics covered in the past four months, since we started posting OJP stories.
Any of those sound interesting? They are to me, especially when local loggers tell me how, seemingly every time they turn around, they’re faced with some new government requirement.
OK, so how about this one: “Vanishing Act: Exits of Oregon companies speak to bigger problem for state”?
That one is new because it’s actually a column written by Steve Duin, one of the most veteran journalists in the state, a guy who has been covering Oregon politics (and, before that, sports) for 40 years.
I’m not going to give away too much here, but Steve focuses in on the exits of some of Oregon’s largest corporations – Tektronix (to Raleigh, N.C.), Dutch Bros (Phoenix), Jeld-Wen (North Carolina), and others “on the ropes” as Duin puts it.
Oregon, he notes, is fifth in the nation in total tax burden and, according to a chart of demographically adjusted scores from the National Center for Education Statistics, we rank last – LAST – in fourth-grade reading and math scores.
I know, I know, test scores are not always a true representation of learning, but these numbers have to mean something.
I’ll let you read Duin’s column to find out what he (and the people he interviews) think about this. It’s at www.sweethomenews.com/vanishing-act-exits-of-oregon-companies-speak-to-bigger-problem-for-state.
By the way, in case you haven’t noticed, OJP stories are not under our paywall because we don’t have to pay people to cover them. OJP is trying to get this information out for citizens to read.
The fact is, our state is unhealthy.
One significant reason why it’s unhealthy is that we have a legislative super-majority who don’t have to listen to questioning voices from the other side of the aisle because its members know they can slam-dunk anything they want to.
Those with opposing views have little or no influence to sway the outcome. That’s unhealthy, and people from both sides of the political aisle have to admit that. Ideas that can’t stand up to criticism usually aren’t good ones.
Speaking from the rural perspective, we have a legislature that is not very focused on things that concern many of us rural folk, that keeps concocting “solutions” that aren’t working. And rural legislators have a very tough job.
And meanwhile, we have these outcomes that are nagging – to the people on the street.
All that mis- or unspent money the state has gouged out of corporations and taxpayers – what’s happened to that? Why do stated policies fail at the bureaucratic level? Why, though we pour increasing amounts of taxpayer dollars down the educational black hole, are we not seeing results?
The amount of legislation percolating in Salem is mind-numbing, and if a reporter is not in the capitol every day, it’s almost impossible to conceive how the legislature’s activities could be covered even cursorily, which has been part of the problem.
I considered printing out a list of the reportedly more than 3,400 bills introduced in this year’s Oregon legislative session, but it would have required 246 pages, so I dropped that idea.
Instead, I decided to try word searches in the list of bill summaries.
Here are some results: Health (492 uses of this word in bill summaries), School (313), Education (300), Tax (218 – some of these refer to actual taxation relaxation), Appropriate (199 – nearly all relating to devoting money or assets to a particular purpose), Housing (182), Water (177), Wildfire (51), Parent (47), Traffic (18 – about half of these pertain to trafficking of humans), Abortion (11), Gender (10), Greenhouse gas (8), Check-out bags – 2 (OK, I just happened to see this one. Look it up: SB 551).
These are some of the hot topics our legislators are focusing on.
Not only is the dominant party largely unrestrained, but the news media – called the “fourth branch of government” by people wiser than me – haven’t been able to do a very good job of keeping an eye on things.
I’m thankful we’re seeing a rise of efforts to do this – the Capital Chronicle, the Oregon Journalism Project, the States Newsroom (an umbrella organization to promote the kind of coverage OJP is producing), etc.
I might not see eye-to-eye with everyone working for one of these organizations, but their goal is good: getting “unbiased” information to citizens, informing the public about what our government in Salem is doing.
The lack of that is one reason why we are where we are.
Now, in case you’re wondering, I’m not naive enough (after 40 years in journalism) to presume that things are suddenly going to change in Salem once the light shines on some of the problems in our state government.
But the shining light of public attention does have an undeniable effect on politicians, and this news coverage may bear fruit.
If nothing else, I hope it motivates rural voters to get to the polls next time around if they don’t like what they see.