Oregon's 'Culture of Yes'
The self-congratulations from Salem are winding down -- now comes reality
Do you feel like a winner?
According to state Sen. Kate Lieber, (D-Beaverton/SW Portland), “Oregonians are the winners of this legislative session.”
So why are North Plains residents suing to halt House Bill 4026 that will double the size of their 700-acre, 3,400 population community and take away their right to vote on the matter?
If you don’t live in North Plains, maybe you don’t think it concerns you. If you know who William U’ren is and the history of Oregon’s citizen initiative and referendum process, you might want to study the fine print of HB 4026. The bill was inspired by a particular land-use issue, but it could later reach into many other issues.
Last year, North Plains residents feared having their community transformed by data centers, Amazon warehouses and Portland’s urban sprawl that they gathered enough signatures on a petition to refer the issue to voters on the local ballot in May.
That put them at odds with the North Plains City Council, state legislators and Gov. Tina Kotek (D). The city council wants more tax revenue, which development would bring. Kotek and the legislature want to grow the state’s chip industry, and the state needs more places to build housing.
North Plains’ fertile land currently is home to grass seed farmers. It’s also a 15-minute drive to Hillsboro and Intel’s campus, making it an affluent, bedroom community for some of the company’s 22,000 employees. Hillsboro is Intel’s largest site.
Gov. Kotek signed HB 4026 on Wednesday, and the opponents quickly filed a lawsuit. A couple of days later, President Joe Biden and Intel’s CEO announced a plan for the U.S. government to give the company $8.5 billion to fund semiconductor manufacturing and technology advancements.
It was the kind of news the North Plains City Council was planning for last year when it approved an 855-acre expansion of the city’s Urban Growth Boundary to make way for major changes. Opponents then started gathering signatures and secured a spot on the May ballot to put the issue before the voters.
When the Oregon legislative session began in February, among the proposed bills was House Bill 4026, bearing this title: “Relating to elections; declaring an emergency.”
The body of HB 4026 states in detailed legalese that a certain “local government determination” is not subject to being referred to voters by referendum petition and that certain amendments to the Oregon constitution “apply to all local government determinations described in ORS 197.626 (1) made on or after January 1, 2023.”
Translation: A local government’s plan to expand its Urban Growth Boundary is an “administrative act,” not a legislative act and, therefore, opponents cannot refer the issue to the ballot. It’s retroactive so it would apply to the North Plains situation.
And, since HB 4026 has an “emergency clause,” voters can’t refer it to the ballot, either.
When a public hearing was held before the Senate Rules Committee just a few days before the end of the session — the spirit of William U’ren was present. Some speakers even mentioned his name.
“We didn’t have a dog in this fight, but now we have a dog that wants to bark and wants to bark loud,” said Mickey Killingsworth of the Jefferson County Farm Bureau, which is two counties southeast of North Plains.
The original intent of HB 4026 was to look at Oregon’s elections, she said, not to stifle citizen input and take away the tools that the initiative petition and referendum process provides to every citizen at the local level.
“You are opening a Pandora’s box if you take this right away from the Oregon citizens,” Killingsworth warned.
As she and other speakers pointed out, HB 4026 reaches far beyond North Plains. This legislation could allow other local governments that make unpopular decisions to declare their actions were “administrative” not “legislative” and, thus, not subject to citizen referral on the ballot.
“Ultimately … you can vote those elected officers out. That is the ultimate tool,” advised Sen. Lieber, chair of the Senate Rules Committee.
That is also the ultimate deception, and Lieber knows it.
As a Democratic incumbent she knows the power of incumbency in Oregon’s one-party state. She herself has no challenger in the May primary. Although district boundaries have changed in the past decade, her District 14 has been held by a Democrat since 1998.
Even more telling is that Lieber was chair of the Joint Committee on Addiction and Community Safety Response, which handled the hottest issue before the Oregon Legislature’s recent session: What to do about Measure 110, passed by voters in 2020 legalizing personal possession of hard drugs.
Lieber’s committee on Measure 110 took a lot of testimony in public hearings and drafted legislation. As a result, the legislature passed House Bills 4002 and 5204, in hopes of reducing drug overdoses and crime. But the only reason legislators dealt swiftly with such a controversial issue was that citizen groups were waiting in the wings with their own proposed ballot measure if the legislature failed to act.
The North Plains Urban Growth Boundary expansion didn’t attract the same level of publicity. However, there was plenty of opposition before the Senate Rules Committee, with about 54 testifying against and 18 in support of HB 4026.
Where were these opponents when the North Plains City Council was going through the lengthy process for what would be the state’s largest Urban Growth Boundary expansion?
Opponents said they tried to be heard. Supporters said they waited too long.
Dave Honeycutt of Oregon Property Owners Association, which supports the boundary expansion, said efforts started in 2015 and finished in 2023.
“We need to rely on planning principles. … That goes out the window when at the very last step of the process the referendum is in (play),” he said, adding that a referendum reduces a complicated process to a thumb’s up or thumb’s down.
He reminded opponents that they can still take their concerns to the Land Conservation and Development Commission.
Greg Brown, who doesn’t live in North Plains, embraced good arguments on both sides. He made a career working in municipal governments and said it’s true that people often don’t get involved in the process early on.
“That is worth talking about … don’t wait to the last minute,” he said. “How many people show up at your town halls who aren’t having their particular ox being gored?”
But city council actions can appear preordained, Brown noted.
“There were dozens of people testifying at city council hearings. Every one of them was saying North Plains is going to grow, but do it smart … don’t do this huge expansion,” he said.
The legislative process in Salem can seem just as preordained.
During the Senate Rules Committee hearing, Sen. Lieber greeted speakers on HB 4026 warmly with a “Come on down!” when they seemed hesitant to approach the dais.
As the hearing was winding to a close, Brown stepped out of the audience again and suggested a compromise: Get rid of the retroactive clause.
“I 100-percent appreciate that,” Lieber said enthusiastically.
The next day her committee met for a “work session” on HB 4026. Except they did no work or discussion. The vice chair immediately moved to approve the bill as written, and the committee voted to send it to the floor of the Senate with a recommendation to pass.
Opponents had promised during the public hearing that if legislators passed HB 4026 and Gov. Tina Kotek signed it, they would sue. They kept their promise. Opponents also sought and received a temporary restraining order on Friday allowing the voter-initiated referendum to remain on the May ballot.
If they win at the ballot, the result could still be challenged in court as a violation of what is now state law, since there is that retroactive clause.
The truth is Oregon legislators have been getting around the state’s initiative and referendum process for the past couple of decades by simply tacking on these words to legislation that might arouse voters’ ire: “Declares an emergency, effective on passage.”
Consider the little-known Senate Bill 1557.
This bill passed on the last day of the legislative session, and since it was sponsored by state Sen. Sara Gelser Blouin (D-Corvallis) and was a priority for her, she celebrated with a press release. The headline: “Ensuring Access to Mental Health Care for Youth Under 21.”
So what does it do?
“Senate Bill 1557 referred to as The Culture of Yes, passed the Oregon Senate with bipartisan support. The legislation paves the way towards a robust package of services that will allow children and youth with significant mental illness to thrive in the community without needing to leave their parents’ care,” according to the press release.
Read all the way through the bill, and what you find is that the Oregon Health Authority will try to obtain federal funding so certain individuals under 21 years of age can live at home, no matter what their mental illness is or if they have entered the juvenile justice system. That could be a real assist to some families whose children are mentally ill but not violent.
What the bill doesn’t come out and say is that some kids and young adults with significant mental illness have committed violent offenses. They, too, will be allowed to remain in the care of their families.
SB 1557 also was touted on Sen. Leiber’s list of bills that are “bringing people together to solve our state’s most pressing problems.” She labeled it as a bill contributing to “safe, healthy communities.”
How does it make your neighborhood safer if someone under 21, who is violent and has broken the law, is encouraged to interact with your family? (Keep in mind that according to experts who have testified in Oregon legislative hearings over the past few years, “adolescence” appears to be extending to age 25.)
Sen. Gelser Blouin’s first-born child was disabled. She has never reconciled the way he was treated by some school officials and members of society. It is a special cause for her. This bill goes far beyond sympathy for disabled children.
Then there is the peculiar wording of the press release, referring to SB 1557 as “The Culture of Yes.” Google that phrase and see where it leads.
One popular definition: “It is a mindset and intention of looking for any way possible to say yes when you can. Saying yes involves actively looking for ways to make things work, instead of focusing on finding reasons why they won’t.”
For more than the past decade, the Oregon legislature has passed one bill after another saying yes to criminal behavior by making it easier to steal cars, support a drug habit by thievery, weakening criminal sentences, making it easier to hide criminal histories, removing juvenile killers from Measure 11 (which voters approved in 1994 to get tougher on violent crimes).
It’s not surprising that when the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York-based organization, was pushing to liberalize the country’s drug laws, they targeted Oregon in 2020. They provided generous financial support for Ballot Measure 110, legalizing personal possession of hard drugs. The voters did what they had been trained to do. They said yes.
A couple of years ago, the legislature referred a constitutional amendment to the ballot called Measure 112, which repealed language in the state constitution that allowed prison inmates to work for free. This was now deemed “slavery,” and the legislature wanted it repealed. A majority of Oregon voters said yes.
Yet the state increasingly expects members of the community to work for free as social workers to keep juvenile and adult offenders out of the criminal justice system.
It’s among the fascinating twists and turns in Oregon’s schizophrenic politics.
As of this writing, Gov. Kotek has not signed SB 1557. Should it become law with or without her signature, it carries that all important statement: “Declares an emergency, effective on passage.”
Regarding your paragraph on Sen Lieber, "Although district boundaries have changed in the past decade, her District 14 has been held by a Democrat since 1998." 1998, 1998, what happened in '98? I remember, vote by mail! The Oregon voter isn't stupid or brainwashed, but has been tricked into believing the state went from red to purple to blue. Many voters just gave up, thinking they were out of touch with their neighbors. No, their vote was stolen by ghost voters, the left majority in Salem since 1998 has accomplished its goal, disenfranchise and discourage the conservative voice then run roughshod over everybody through a corrupt voting system.
Granted, Multnomah County and the college towns through the valley have attracted the socialist types that love communism and rigged voting, but the right thinking conservative can regain it's voice when the vote by mail scam is disabled and voter rolls purged.
Housing subdivisions can pave over farmland just as effectively as data centers, microchip plants and Amazon warehouses.