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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (May 21, 1974)
-Candidates for governor Harvey: a governor should be touchable Bill Harvey, gubernatorial candidate, says the biggest problem in Oregon today is apathy. His primary objective, if he is elected governor, would be to rid Oregon of that problem. "I would like to see more people get involved,'' Harvey, 32, said. "We've got to get the people to rally around a common goal." Right now most people in Oregon aren't involved in the governmental process, he ex plained. They have become disenchanted with politics and basis. He would like to have the representatives work more within their districts than they have in the past. Even he, as governor, would be out on the streets talking with his constituents. "This governor is going to be touchable," Harvey commented. "I am going to be in the streets more than I'm going to be in Salem. I want people to be able to tap me on the shoulder and tell me what they're thinking, what they want the government to do." McCall hasn't been touchable. Bill Harvey leave the initiating of action up to the professional politicians who work in Salem. But government, he said, is supposed to be the force which unites the people and the processes, not the force which has the sole power to conceive, begin and complete a project. The people must have more to say about the processes. Harvey wants to see government get back to the people on a local he added. Most Oregonians never see him, even if he's in their town. They would have to go to Salem if they wanted to see the governor. Harvey says that it is as much the governor's obligation to travel around the state to meet people as it is to do the work in Salem. Harvey calls himself a public servant rather than a politician. The difference between the two, as he sees it, is that the politican's job is to work out the leglislation, while the public servant's job is to act solely on the wishes of the people. The governor should “run interference" between the public and the legislators, Harvey said, and he should see that adequate compromises, acceptable to both sides, are reached when necessary. Harvey said he already has a good idea of what the people want. For the past 11 years he has been working for the General Accounting Office of the U.S. Congress evaluating government funded programs. From that job, he said, he got a good idea of which government programs most people are interested in and what they want out of them. Since he began his campaign for governor at the beginning of March, Harvey said he has found that most people are concerned with what they call the big issues. But they don't realize that what they recognize as issues aren't really issues at all —they are just symptoms of bigger problems. The government of Oregon has been preoccupied with working on the symptoms and Harvey said it is time to get to the real problems at the roots of the issues. An example of dealing just with the symptoms is the lower speed limit as a solution to the gas shortage. Harvey supports the limit, but he said that what the state really needs is a new mass transit system. He wants to see busses and trains become more convenient for the people to use. The bottle bill is another solution dealing mainly with symptoms. The problem in that case is waste disposal and Harvey would like to see more programs which establish the recycling of most waste materials instead of just soft drink containers. "I don't think the bottle bill has gone far enough. Wine bottles should be included,” he added. Harvey said he wants to see more money go into higher education. Funding should be determined by the individual programs offered at state in stitutions and the government should examine those programs before allocating funds, he said. He supports the use of DDT on the tussock moth in Eastern Oregon. He said he visited that part of the state recently and saw what the moths could do to the land. Harvey said that had DDT been used when the problem first appeared, the damage caused by the insecticide would probably have been less than the damage caused by the moths. Sandi McDonough Straub: for active leadership Bob Straub stresses his ad ministrative skills and his career in local government as his most important qualifications for governor. "I have a long record of active and uncompromising leadership," he says. He ieft the office of state treasurer two years ago, after two four-year terms. Straub likes to cite the many issues he was involved in during that time: the Willamette Greenway project, the purchase of the beaches and the effort to save French Pete from logging. He is stressing environmental issues in his campaign. He wants to see uncontrolled urban ex pansion onto farm-lands stopped. He proposes taxing valuable farm land on the basis of how much it can produce, thus making it too expensive not to farm the land. He would like to strengthen the Forest Service and make it responsible for both public and private lands. He would like to see the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management help timber producers—especially small operators—to harvest more trees. He said the state should hire out trained forestry supervisors. "We're doing a terrible job in timber resource management," he says. He feels Oregon is not getting enough timber from the areas it is already harvesting. He would boost tax incentives in order to raise the productivity of forest lands. Not everything that is faced can be changed But nothing con be changed until it is faced JAMES BALDWIN we believe in the future Although he favors geothermal energy (tapping reservoirs of heat under the earth's surface) he does not favor a moratorium on nuclear power plants. him or her to the proper program whether it be welfare, food stamps, health service, unem ployment insurance or any other service. Robert Straub He says Oregonians should reduce consumption in order to reduce the amount of energy they use But if that doesn't work, he would support a nuclear power plant with adequate safety precautions. And he says he would accept an extension on the field burning ban, if farmers were not allowed to bum straw which he said was a major source of the pollution. The state housing subsidy Straub proposes calls for includes more people and less affluent families. Presently, families making less than $8,700 are eligible for housing loans, he said. He would lower that limit to $5,400 a year. As governor he would like to set up something called a "prime resource counselor staff." The staff would direct the state's social service programs. They would assess an in dividual's needs, and then direct Straub said this consolidation of services would cost less and involve fewer but better trained people. He also explained that better trained counselors could spot a person's true problem and deal with that instead of just dealing with the "symptoms" of his or her problems. Straub opposes Ballot Measures One and Three which affect the way public schools are financed. He says Measure One is costly to homeowners and renters, and Measure Three is misleading. However, he is in favor of in creased state support of schools. He backed the McCall tax plan which shifted almost all financing responsibility to the state. And although he is in favor of fluoridation of drinking water, he is not pleased with the way the State Health Commission ordered the fluoridation. He would like to see public hearings on the directive. Mike Dolan
