La Grande Hosts 2023 Eastern Oregon Economic Summit
By Garrett Christensen on Wednesday, August 9th, 2023 in More Top Stories Northeastern Oregon News
LA GRANDE – Union County briefly transformed from a humble rural community to a hub of economic, environmental, and political discourse August 3 and 4. Legislators, representatives from private interests and plenty of others made the trek to La Grande as part of the 2023 Eastern Oregon Economic Summit.
Hosted by the Eastern Oregon Women’s Coalition with support from dozens of private and government partners, the summit acts as an opportunity for government leaders and industry experts to, as written by the Eastern Oregon Women’s Coalition on the event page, “provide updates on current legislation and economic trends and emphasize leveraging Eastern Oregon’s growing economy to develop stronger communities.”
The summit opened Thursday, August 3, with a series of tours meant to showcase various environmental and especially economic projects throughout Union County. These included the Economic Development and Workforce Tour which highlighted local businesses and main street revitalization, the Housing Tour which highlighted various local housing developments and associated housing projects, the Water Tour which highlighted everything from city water services and hydro electric projects to watershed conservation and irrigation, and, finally, the Forest Management Tour which focused on local forestry products and long-term forest management in region.
Closing out Thursday with a dinner reception, Friday marked the General Sessions and the bulk of the discussion. These sessions included A general Economic Update from State Treasurer Tobias Read, a presentation by National Park Service Director Chuck Sams, a brief video from State Governor Tina Kotek along with federal funding updates from Senator Ron Wyden. Union County Commissioner Paul Anderes gave his own description of the turnout:
“It was a Great turnout, a lot of state legislators. We had Tobias Read. We had a short video from Governor Kotek. Senator Merkley provided a short video. Congressman Bentz was in person. Actually, he was there Thursday Evening at the opening session as well. A lot of folks were able to visit with him. It was a good evening. On Friday morning he also gave remarks and hung around most of the day for the session. Senator Wyden came in just before he spoke and left right after he spoke. He (Wyden) talked about a number of different things. One that’s very crucial to counties is the Payment in Lieu of Taxes and Safety and Secure Rural Schools, SRS, and those payments just came out recently.”
For those unfamiliar, Payment in lieu of Taxes refers to a payment formula where the federal government provides compensation directly to counties for federal lands within those counties rather than paying land taxes to the counties. According to Anderes, this formula is less than what would be provided in taxes by a non-federal entity. Safe and Secure Rural Schools (SRS) is a similar funding process that provides additional funds directly to school districts. This is to compensate for funds that, historically, would have been provided by income generated from timber harvests but have since dried up. As Anderes explained:
“The way it’s set up, when timber is harvested, counties and schools get a portion of the proceeds, and this was to backfill because they no longer cut volumes that would provide that much money.”
Other sessions included a rural wildfire and disaster preparedness presentation by Alex Cheng, Deputy Administrator for Oregon’s Division of Financial Regulation, a presentation about the future of Oregon’s groundwater policies, information on rural housing plans, discussion on emergency and environmental resiliency, a major presentation on water quality concerns in the Lower Columbia River Basin, along with many other subjects related to business, government, agriculture and the environment. The state legislatures also hosted a question-and-answer session for those in attendance which, according to Anderes, was rather productive.
While most of the projects and changes discussed now face the challenge of getting put into practice, the sheer number of private and public representatives from across Oregon and the volume of discourse that occurred in just two days cannot be understated. As best put by Anderes:
“We had at least a dozen state legislators and all sorts of questions from all sorts of folks from city officials, county officials and even some trade organizations. It was a good two days.”
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