APRIL 2008: FROM THE EDITOR
A harder road ahead for rural Oregon
IT ISN’T DEBATABLE anymore that the economy is in a heap.
Call it what you will, recession or not, but credit is drying
up, jobs are disappearing, banks are faltering and housing
prices are dropping. (Yes, Oregon is a holdout but, really, for
how much longer?) Throw in rising food and gas prices just for
good measure.
What also is not debatable is that rural Oregon will suffer
the most because bad times hit rural areas hardest; with their
already high unemployment, high poverty rates and low incomes,
there aren’t a lot of layers between them and the bitter
winds of a downturn.
In the decades since rural Oregon lost natural resources as an
economic base, its citizens and leaders have struggled to find
a replacement. No one I’ve met in rural Oregon thinks
they are going to get an answer handed to them.
Across the state, I’ve seen towns trying everything they
can think of to diversify their job base and help create
prosperity: wind farms, high-tech hideouts for city refugees,
tourism, natural beef, mining zeolite, staging Shakespearean
plays. You name it, it’s out there. The small towns are
rich in innovation, if not in number of jobs.
Some even thought that putting a correctional facility in
their town would help. As associate editor Ben Jacklet reports
in this issue (see Prisontown myth, page 30), prisons are not a
magic solution for a struggling community. Painfully for some
towns, they are worse off than before.
Now the Office of Rural Policy is shuttered just a few years
after the governor created it (see story, page 10). Retired
Gilliam County judge Laura Pryor told me last year when she was
in Salem fighting for the office that she didn’t believe
that people set out to “murder” rural Oregon, but
the law of unintended consequences might end up committing the
crime.
Ray Naff, with the governor’s economic revitalization
team, vows to keep the work of the office going, seeing success
in building a few jobs here and there, and not giving up.
“There is no single answer,” he says, “but if
you take your eye off the ball, you’re gone.”
Ways and Means Committee co-chair Rep. Mary Nolan, a Democrat
from Portland, says the office had effectively raised the
awareness of rural issues and wasn’t necessary anymore,
so her committee killed it. “It might have been different
in a different revenue picture,” she says.
In a different revenue picture, rural Oregon might not have
needed the office as much.
There will be many chances to test Nolan’s assertion and
Pryor’s fears as Oregon struggles with the downturn.
There are serious issues facing the state, with lots of special
interests clamoring for attention, and rural voices — few
and far between — are hard to hear. Will rural Oregon
find it has champions or unwitting executioners?
Like the man says, take your eye off the ball, and
you’re gone.
