APRIL 2008: READER LETTERS
Leadership is lacking; rural Oregon is on its own
Regarding Laura
Pryor’s letter to the Eastern Oregon Rural Alliance
on the demise
of the Office of Rural Policy, I don’t blame the
legislators entirely and don’t thank the governor for his
lackluster effort.
Time and again he has talked the good talk and then ignored
rural Oregon. Lack of leadership in the governor’s office
has plagued rural Oregon for decades. Executive leadership in
the ’90s could have helped fend off the attacks on the
federal lands timber industry and multiple uses. What we got
was a state that accommodated environmental ignorance by
closing our federal forests to timber harvest, limiting
grazing, and choking our land with overgrown vegetation.
Our state leadership didn’t look ahead in 2000 to give
the private sector a chance to rebuild the timber industry as
was intended in the Secure Rural Schools and Communities Self
Determination Act. It is not game over. We need to get
private-public employee economic development collaboration. We
need people in Salem that will support rural areas as important
parts of Oregon and fight for the private sector’s right
and need to use our God-given commodities. I agree with Pryor
that we must do it ourselves.
Tim Smith
Harney County
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