Predicting the outcomes of the upcoming Oregon Legislative Session is always a great parlor game, but it is beginning to look like a typical long legislative session for bills of interest to counties.  

AOC Policy Director Gil Riddell carried two large boxes from the Capitol to the AOC office last week packed to the brim with pre-session filed House and Senate Bills. Fortunately it was not raining at the time. Gil found a way to ease his ugly mood caused by this task by assigning bills of county interest to his fellow AOC policy managers (PMs), including himself. Bills are assigned according to topics in the policy managers' portfolios. If a bill crosses subject matters it is assigned to an AOC policy manager ad hoc team, which could be as small as a duo or as large as five, to manage the action on the bill. Several bills are managed by teams, each team having a leader. Your excellent corps of 8.5 PMs (the one-half designates Mike McArthur, who as Executive Director has plenty of other tasks always at hand to overwhelm him) is busy getting ready for the legislative kick-off February 2. Another large batch of printed bills will surface, be boxed, and be carried to the office on that opening day.

Pre-session filed bills amount to 1,450, of which 1,190 are of county interest. That means that 82 percent of all pre-session filed bills will be managed by your AOC crew. By the way, all these numbers are typical after the first batch of bills is issued. It is the price of being general governments with such a wide jurisdiction and long-term agreements with the state on shared services and revenues.

Which brings us to an important point: you may be contacted at some point in the session by a policy manager to make a call to or visit with a legislator or to give testimony. This is because county officials add power to policy managers' information - you are "hands on" and if elected you belong to the same fraternity/sorority as legislators (the secret handshake being all the toil of a successful election campaign). Your participation in the legislative process is critical and important. We look forward to working with you in 2015.  

AOC Policy Director Gil Riddell herds cats (policy managers)

On the final day of January's legislative days, Ways and Means Co-chairs Sen. Richard Devlin, D-Tualatin, and Rep. Peter Buckley, D-Ashland, released their initial budget framework. It is both less detailed and less ambitious than the Governor's Recommended Budget (GRB), with more detailed information promised after the March economic forecast.

One clear direction from the framework, however, was a desire to see investments in education. While the co-chairs have indicated a desire to put an additional $60 million into early learning services and to fund full-day kindergarten, final amounts and allocations by program area will "be determined during the Ways and Means process." Public safety received some key acknowledgements in their budget framework but counties will have a lot of work to do this session to keep priorities in tact.

While Gov. John Kitzhaber released his recommended budget with a $58.5 million justice reinvestment grant program, the co-chairs countered with $20 million. This comes while counties are continuing to make progress with reentry and recidivism reduction programs to avoid having the state build another prison. During the current biennium, counties received $15 million.

Another priority outlined by the co-chairs was fully funding county community corrections, which is an ongoing priority for AOC and the Oregon Association of Community Corrections Directors. 

The co-chairs also acknowledged that a promised salary increase from last session should be implemented this year. AOC will be pushing for an additional $10 million increase to cover district attorney salaries, witness fees, and funding for deputy district attorneys, which has fallen on counties over the past two decades.

Courthouse facility capital project and court security funding also made the priority list for the co-chairs. While amounts were not set, the encouraging news gives commissioners and other county public safety stakeholders hope in the upcoming session.

From the perspective of Energy, Environment and Land Use, the  co-chairs' budget had a few notes of interest:

• Protects Oregon's water quality with new General Fund investments;
• Ensures the Department of Forestry has adequate administrative capacity to support the department's various programs;
• Protects Oregon's air quality with continued investments in monitoring; and
• Provides the Department of Geology and Mineral Industries with a two year budget and additional support to backfill revenue shortfalls.

However, the co-chairs' budget goes on to add this statement "The co-chairs propose adding funds to the Natural Resources program area for targeted investments should revenue be available when the final budget is adopted." The narrative continues with "Additional issues to be resolved" and this includes "Sage Grouse conservation proposals" and "Additional investments in Regional Solutions Teams." Clearly there will be some important work with the Legislature on the funding of these important programs.

AOC Policy Managers Stacy Michaelson , Patrick Sieng and Mark Nystrom contributed to this report because they enjoy reading budgets 

The Transportation Growth Management (TGM) Advisory Committee recently met in Salem. A partnership between the Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) and the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), the TGM program supports community efforts to expand transportation choices for people. By linking land use and transportation planning, TGM works in partnership with local governments to create vibrant, livable places in which people can walk, bike, take transit or drive where they want to go.

TGM staff updated the committee on on-going grants and announced that pre-applications for the 2015 grants will be arriving at local planning and public works departments some time in February. For more information contact AOC Policy Manager Mark Nystrom.

AOC Executive Director Mike McArthur has been named co-chair of the Rural Economy Transition Team by Governor Kitzhaber. He will serve with Paul Barnum who is the Executive Director of the Oregon Forest Resources Institute. Vince Porter, the Governor's Jobs and Economy Policy Advisor will be the lead staff person for the team. The team has been charged with:

1. Review and refine Rural Economy budget items.
2. Coordinate between the various "rural economic development" strategies that are currently underway so that they are not confusing to the public and stakeholders and become greater than the sum of their parts ... that is, seen as a common strategy and not simply overlapping and duplicative efforts.
3. Coordinate implementation strategies among the existing groups in order to better support the Governor's rural economy investments.
4. Propose ideas for future partnership with US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
5. Review and develop success stories.
6. Develop a plan to share concept and success stories with legislators and communities.
7. Build a broader coalition of support.

The Governor's recommended budget puts a focus on rural economic development so that every part of the state participates in the economic recovery. The investments proposed in the budget for rural Oregon are intended to shape our economies to reflect today's economy and the one that awaits us in the future, not the one that we can see from the rear-view mirror. The Rural Oregon Business Plan sets specific goals consistent with the Oregon Business Plan goals but focused on Oregon's struggling rural areas.

There are several funding/investment mechanisms available to help rural areas. At the state level, these include the Governor's budget and the Regional Solutions Community Leverage Fund. Federal programs include USDA Rural Development Program and the Economic Development Administration.

STATE PROGRAMS

Governor's Budget

The Governor's recommended budget identifies investments to help achieve these goals in Rural Oregon:

($2 million per region so assume $12 million for Rural Regions)

This fund is designed to enable established community-based organizations to collaborate and do projects that can be done quickly and are focused on capacity building. This fund could leverage additional USDA, private, and non-profit money (see below for the "One Stop Program" description).

In addition to these investments, there are additional things we can do to lift up our rural communities. In some cases there is a need to better communicate the success stories already happening on the ground with the hope of building on those successes.

FEDERAL PROGRAMS

USDA/EDA

Oregon's partnership with the USDA and the Economic Development Administration (EDA) is a key ingredient for long term rural prosperity and there are many stories that exist already demonstrating the potential. In 2015 the USDA will focus on three regions in Oregon - Malheur County, Cave Junction, and Warm Springs. The objective of this effort is to address poverty issues in these specific areas. 

One Stop Program

The USDA Rural Development team has already put in place a process where multiple funders come together and offer up applicable programs that could provide funding for specific projects. With improved coordination, this program could expand to include state of Oregon partners and Oregon's foundations so there is improved frequency of leveraging programs for the maximum impact.

To facilitate the work of the Rural Oregon Business Plan, we have formed three sub-committees:

Rural Entrepreneurship/Workforce

Transportation

Business Oregon Rural Incentives

Please contact Mike McArthur or Mary Stern at AOC with any questions or ideas

The Oregon Office of Emergency Management (OEM) is pleased to announce the opening of registration for the Oregon Prepared 2015 - Oregon Emergency Management Workshop. The workshop will be held March 31 - April 2, 2015 in Sunriver, Oregon with an initial planning meeting for the Cascadia Rising 2016 exercise on Monday, March 30 and a training and exercise planning workshop (TEPW) for the entire state on Friday, April 3.

There is no fee to attend the workshop. The workshop will include breakfast and lunch all three days as well as dinner Wednesday evening. OEM will pay for four nights of lodging for three representatives from every county and tribal nation; GSA lodging rates are available for all of our other partners.

The 2015 workshop will offer four tracks with four sessions available in each track every day of the workshop. Attached you will find a schedule for your planning convenience. More details will be released regarding each session as well as the plenary speakers and topics during each meal.

Please follow this link to register. Registration will close February 10, 2015.

Please feel free to share this announcement with other partners.

Should you have any questions regarding the workshop, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sidra Metzger-Hines

Grants Coordinator

Oregon Office of Emergency Management

3225 State Street, Rm 115

Salem, OR 97301

503-378-2911 ext. 22251

[email protected]