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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (June 2, 2022)
news The 2022 Congressional Chicken Chat SEN. RON WYDEN TALKS POLITICS, POLICY AND FRED MEYER WHILE SHARING A ROTISSERIE CHICKEN WITH EUGENE WEEKLY By Henry Houston A lonesome bagged rotisserie chicken sits under a heat lamp in the north Eugene Fred Meyer. Sen. Ron Wyden, who had traveled from a Memorial Day event in Medford, exclaims that he’s happy to have grabbed the store’s last roast chicken on a spit. Since his election to the U.S. Senate in 1996, Wyden says he’s been driven to hold meetings throughout the state and surpassed 1,000 town hall meetings by late 2021. But Fred Meyer, he tells Eugene Weekly, is where he can meet people and grab a rotisserie chicken, a dinner favorite. So EW and Wyden shared a lighthearted chicken and also talked about weighty national issues, including gun control, student loan forgiveness and abortion protec- tions — as well as the role Fred Meyer stores have played in Wyden’s career. After the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting, where 19 children and two teachers were murdered and 17 others wounded, Wyden says he’s heard from young people in Oregon who have grown up with gun violence and feeling fed up with active shooter drills. “There should be a right to a childhood,” Wyden says. Gun reform in Congress, Wyden says, is different this time compared to previous school shootings. “We’re going to have these next few weeks,” he says, adding that senators are ideally at home meeting with constituents. Although President Joe Biden told Ulvade mourners May 30 that there would be gun control reform coming, he has also said that it’s Congress’ job. Wyden says there are a number of reform bills that Congress is working on. “We’ve now got a group of Democrats and Republicans working to come up with something bipartisan,” he says. One is a background bill, HR 8, which narrowly passed the House of Representatives in 2021, but it hasn’t been introduced in the Senate, likely due to the Democrats’ lacking the necessary support to avoid a filibuster. The bill would prohibit a transfer of firearms between private parties unless a licensed gun dealer, manufacturer or importer has possession of the firearm and conducts a background check, according to a summary of the bill. Wyden says he and Rep. Earl Blumenthal introduced a bill that would close a loophole that allows those who have been found guilty of domestic abuse to obtain firearms. It would end situations ”where domestic violence abus- ers can keep their gun even when they have restraining orders” against them, he says. If the bill passes, he says he thinks it could lead to other piecemeal background check legislation. To Build or To Buy? AFTER COMPLETING THE FARMER’S MARKET PAVILION AND PLAZA, THE CITY ONCE AGAIN TURNS ITS ATTENTION TO CITY HALL By Clayton Franke W hen Sarah Medary started work- ing for the city of Eugene in 1996 as a parks maintenance worker, one of her tasks was to tend to the landscaping around the old City Hall on Pearl Street. Now, she’s the city manager, and she has a different task: find a new home for Eugene’s City Hall. The Eugene City Council hasn’t conducted city busi- ness in a permanent City Hall in 10 years. Now, after completing the $9.3 million Farmer’s Market Pavilion and Plaza downtown, the city is turning its attention to the E U G E N E W E E K LY . C O M absence of a City Hall. While a new City Hall is included as a part of the city’s “town square concept plan,” as of right now, its future is unclear, and instead of building a City Hall, the council is considering buying one, a deci- sion causing some tension as the city looks at its current Lane Community College location. So, why doesn’t Eugene have a City Hall? In short, it’s because the council chose to tear it down. From 1964 to 2014, Eugene’s old City Hall was on Pearl Street, two blocks east of the site of the new Farmers Market pavilion. In 2004, the city started work on a City Hall master plan, and over the next several years, the As chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Wyden says he’ll likely use the power of the committee to investigate whether firearm companies and banking institutions that help buyers finance purchases are following the tax law. With 44 million Americans dealing with student loans, the Biden administration is reportedly considering an executive order that would forgive $10,000 of federal student loan debt held. “There’s also going to be an effort to dramatically expand public service opportunities that can drive down the debt,” Wyden says. “I’m interested in that.” And with the pending U.S. Supreme Court ruling that could overturn Roe v. Wade, Wyden says he’s going to work toward protecting women’s data. According to a May 17 letter signed by Wyden and other senators, he criticized companies that use cellphone location data to target anti abortion ads to women who visit abortion clinics. After covering some of the nation’s biggest prob- lems, Wyden sat in the plastic chairs and the tan-walled dining area at Fred Meyer and reflected on the place that stores have had in his career. Among them is meeting the namesake owner in the 1970s when Wyden was the director for the Oregon chapter of the Gray Panthers, a senior citizens-oriented group modeled after the social justice-oriented Black Panthers. Speaking with Meyer about why Meyer should pay a reduced rate for bus fare, Wyden recalls walking him through the economics of it. “Finally I had to say, ‘Mr. Meyer, if you felt like it, you could probably just buy the bus company,’” he laughs. Visiting Fred Meyer stores became a tradition as he spent more time on the road traveling to and from those 1,000 or so town hall meetings. And he’s found it to be a way to keep up appearances with constituents. “It’s always really convenient to say hello to a lot of people,” Wyden says. “And if you have a little extra time, you buy your toothpaste and socks.” ■ council considered several potential upgrades for City Hall, including building a new one at the existing City Hall site, building at the site of the “Butterfly” parking lot, and potentially buying the EWEB administration building to use as City Hall. Ultimately, the council chose to tear down City Hall and build a new one at the existing site. The project budget was $15 million. The last of the old City Hall came down in 2015 while the city conducted its business at the Lane County Public Service Building. Medary says that when the old build- ing came down, the city had a design in place, had hired a contractor, and construction was set to break ground. But after the teardown, the city learned price esti- mates for the building had soared to $25 million, and planning stalled. Then, in 2018, the city swapped the old City Hall site for the “Butterfly” parking lot site with Lane County. According to Medary, part of the reason for the swap was the city’s vision of the greater Park Blocks area as a home for City Hall and the Farmer’s Market Pavilion, as well as the county’s need for a new courthouse space. The CONTINUED ON P. 8 J U N E 2 , 2 0 2 2 7
