APRIL 2008: AROUND THE STATE
Office of Rural Policy felled by state budget axSALEM
With hope and fanfare, the Office of Rural Policy was created
in 2004 by executive order of Gov. Ted Kulongoski. It died last
month with no fanfare and dashed hopes after the Legislature
refused to fund it.
All of Oregon now faces another downturn and rural officials
and advocates feel this is exactly the wrong time to pull the
plug on supporting rural areas, which have higher unemployment,
lower incomes and higher poverty rates.
But Ways and Means Committee co-chair Rep. Mary Nolan,
D-Portland, says that in a year when a glum state revenue
forecast had the Legislature scrambling to fund the basics,
having an ombudsman wasn’t a priority over concrete
services such as more state troopers or rural health programs.
The office was killed without a hearing.
“I don’t know if we have met all the needs in rural
Oregon,” Nolan says, “but I don’t think
we’ve met all the needs in any pocket of the
state.”
“The needs and wants of rural Oregon are not high on the
list,” says Laura Pryor, a retired Gilliam County judge
who helped birth the rural office. “That is why the
Office of Rural Policy was such a breath of hope. If the
governor of this state meant what he said, he would have been
its champion.” She added in a Feb. 25 email to the
Eastern Oregon Rural Alliance: “This is a pitiful
conclusion to a wonderful opportunity.”
Ray Naff, a director with the governor’s economic
revitalization team, says he will work with OECDD and regional
members of his team to help pick up where the office left off.
“Our job is to take Jim’s work and move it
forward,” he says. |
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