NORTHWEST
East Oregonian
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Friday, July 5, 2019
Timber Unity movement gets presidential invite
know what the event would
entail, or who else would be
there, but he’s looking for-
ward to the trip.
“We have an opportunity
to let the voice of rural Amer-
ica to be heard,” Stoffel said.
The Timber Unity Face-
book page created its first
post June 21, and already has
more than 47,000 members.
Those behind the group
were chief organizers of a
large rally at the Capitol on
June 27, protesting House
Bill 2020, which would have
capped the state’s green-
house gas emissions.
Bowers said she got
word from a political friend
during the rally that the
White House was watching
what was happening in Ore-
gon. She announced it to the
crowd, which erupted with
applause.
Bowers said the White
House reached out to Nick
Smith, executive direc-
tor for Healthy Forests,
Healthy Communities, a log-
ging-friendly nonprofit that
started in Roseburg, during
the rally. The White House
asked Smith who from Ore-
gon should attend the event,
and he said Timber Unity,
Bowers said.
Bowers was told of the
invitation after the rally, and
got the official invitation
Tuesday.
The cap-and-trade pro-
posal, which prompted Sen-
By AUBREY WIEBER
AND CLAIRE
WITHYCOMBE
Oregon Capital Bureau
SALEM — Two mem-
bers of a quickly rising polit-
ical activist community of
Oregon loggers have been
invited to the White House
to attend a speech on “Amer-
ica’s environmental leader-
ship” on Monday, July 8, by
President Donald Trump.
Timber Unity, a group
comprised mostly of log-
gers but also truckers, farm-
ers and other Oregonians
opposed to a carbon-regu-
lating program proposed by
Oregon lawmakers, posted
the invitation on their Face-
book page on Tuesday night.
As of Wednesday after-
noon, the post had been
shared more than 3,000 times
and received more than 1,000
comments.
A White House official
confirmed the invitation to
the Oregon Capital Bureau
on Wednesday.
Timber Unity organizers
Marie Bowers, a farmer from
Coburg, and Todd Stoffel, a
log truck driver from Wash-
ougal, Washington, will be
representing the group at
Monday’s event. Stoffel grew
up in Monroe, and half the
business of his company, GT
Stoffel Trucking, is in Ore-
gon, he said.
Stoffel said he didn’t
AP Photo/Sarah Zimmerman, File
A convoy of trucks and tractors circle the Oregon Capitol on
June 27, 2019, in Salem.
ate Republicans to avoid the
Senate for nine days in pro-
test late last month to prevent
a vote on it, died at the end of
the legislative session.
Stoffel said many have
been surprised at how Tim-
ber Unity took off, but he
said there are parallels to the
national uprising of rural,
working-class
Americans
who have become more vocal
since Trump took office.
“A couple guys had an
idea and they created a Face-
book page. It’s been word
of mouth from there,” Stof-
fel said. “This is a voice for
rural Oregon, rural Amer-
ica, that we’re tired of being
steamrolled, which is what a
lot of the policies seem to do
for us. The stuff that’s passed
is about the big cities, espe-
cially in Oregon. There are
Forecast for Pendleton Area
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SUNDAY
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Increasing
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Yesterday
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PRECIPITATION
Moses
Lake
71/52
Aberdeen
85/60
85/63
Tacoma
By CLAIRE
WITHYCOMBE AND
AUBREY WIEBER,
Oregon Capital Bureau
through 3 p.m. yest.
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Wenatchee
72/57
The bill was one of
the last to pass, and
gives politicians
pork to bring back
to districts
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Sunrise today
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NATIONAL WEATHER TODAY
by Donald Trump’s divisive-
ness, I worry this will take us
in the wrong direction.”
Stoffel said the issue is
rural versus urban, Republi-
can versus Democrat.
He said Democrats at the
Legislature “snubbed their
noses” at loggers and truck-
ers who wanted to under-
stand the bill. Republicans
embraced them, he said.
But it was Senate Presi-
dent Peter Courtney, D-Sa-
lem, who ended the walkout
and standoff over cap and
trade by announcing that his
own caucus didn’t have the
votes to pass the bill.
“The rural parts of this
country have been ignored
for years,” Stoffel said, add-
ing Trump’s election proves
that. “The majority of Ameri-
cans are tired of the same old,
same old.”
Stoffel said he under-
stands the majority of vot-
ers put Democrats who ran
on cap and trade in office,
but said that’s because rural
voters have routinely been
pushed down. They stay
home because they know
they will be “steamrolled”
by the Democratic agenda,
he said.
Democrats and environ-
mentalists pushing climate
legislation said House Bill
2020 was tailored to protect
rural Oregon, driving dollars
from the cities to projects in
rural communities.
Oregon’s ‘Christmas tree bill’ pumps
out more than a billion to local projects
ALMANAC
Shown is today’s weather. Temperatures are today’s highs and tonight’s lows.
Seattle
other parts of the state of Ore-
gon other than just Portland.”
The Timber Unity move-
ment casts itself as purely
grassroots, according to sev-
eral Republican lawmakers
and protesters.
However, they are in part
financed by Stimson Lum-
ber CEO Andrew Miller, a
frequent GOP donor who
is prominent on the Timber
Unity Facebook page and
has a letter explaining his
$5,000 seed donation on their
website.
Stoffel said he didn’t know
what their current funding
level is. Its political action
committee shows $31,457,
according to state campaign
finance records.
A GoFundMe campaign
that popped up when the
group was getting organized
received money from several
sympathetic business part-
ners, though the group has
moved to a direct funding
channel on their website.
Stoffel said Timber Unity
shut down the GoFundMe as
organizers learned it didn’t
comply with state require-
ments to report political
spending and contributions.
Timber Unity’s website
shows its organizers as three
truckers: Jeff Leavy, Adam
Lardy and Scott Hileman.
The White House invi-
tation is the apparent cul-
mination of several weeks
of national attention on the
Republican walkout, which
was picked up by outlets
from the New York Times to
Vice to Fox News.
At least one environmen-
tal advocate worried it could
“deepen” divides between
parties on the issue of how to
tackle climate change.
“Growing up here, there
was not this strong, partisan
us-versus-them divide,” said
Meredith Connolly, Oregon
director for Climate Solu-
tions, which was a strong
supporter of cap and trade.
“And I think adopting this
mantle of Trump’s White
House and his agenda, I fear,
will deepen those divides
here in Oregon, and I want
us to be moving forward
toward solutions that work
for all of Oregon. And I think
the more this is influenced
SALEM — Christ-
mas has come to Oregon’s
legislators.
In one of the final steps
of the 2019 Legislature,
lawmakers
overwhelm-
ingly passed a massive bill
to deliver about $1.32 bil-
lion to projects across the
state, from Clackamas to
Harney counties.
One of the least con-
troversial bills to pass this
session, it was released less
than a week before law-
makers went home for the
year.
“It’s Christmas in July,”
said Rep. Cedric Hayden,
R-Roseburg.
Hayden was referring to
the bill’s colloquial term:
the Christmas Tree bill.
It’s a biennial tradition.
The bill, line by line,
appropriates money for
projects in nearly every
legislative district in the
state — a catalog of polit-
ical favors. It gives money
to nearly 100 projects that
will help local districts,
plus bolsters many more
statewide initiatives.
A new jail, the remodel
of a historic theater, sus-
tainability funds for a fed-
eral fish hatchery — it’s all
in House Bill 5050.
Some lawmakers rail
against it, while others
relish the opportunity to
bring pork back home to
constituents.
“Sometimes what you
receive for Christmas is
a great thing, and some-
times you are disappointed
in what you did or did not
get,” Hayden said.
Hayden expressed some
concern with the bill, but it
also included $1.4 million
he had been asking for to
keep the Leaburg Hatchery
east of Eugene in operation.
Hayden said the Christ-
mas Tree bill acknowledges
problems in rural parts of
the state that go ignored.
“Often these cities feel
as if their voices aren’t
heard,” he said.
While the bill received a
unanimous vote in the Sen-
ate, there were four dis-
senters in the House: Rep.
Ken Helm, D-Beaverton,
Rep. Mike Nearman, R-In-
dependence, Rep. Bill Post,
R-Keizer, and Rep. E. Wer-
ner Reschke, R-Klamath
Falls.
Reschke, who could
not be reached for com-
ment Tuesday, tweeted that
he voted “no” on the most
bills of any state repre-
sentative this session: 277
times. Nearman and Post
are former winners of the
self-awarded honor.
Post didn’t return a
request for comment, but
bashed the bill on Twitter,
referring to it as the “pork
roll bill” that only works for
those who play the game.
The bill funds projects
of all kinds:
• $200,000 to buy 160
acres of forest alongside
the Willamette National
Forest Opal Creek Scenic
Recreation Area.
• $1 million to the city of
Salem for the Gerry Frank/
Salem Rotary Ampitheatre.
• $1 million to the
develop a former seafood
packing plant, $2 million
for a new jail and $1 mil-
lion to improve a local the-
ater, all in Astoria.
The legislation also
funds statewide projects,
such as $200,000 to the
Oregon Department of Fish
and Wildlife for predator
control, $275,000 for jail
data analysis and $78,242
to process reports of police
profiling.
The bill also includes
money for internal auditors
at the Oregon Liquor Con-
trol Commission and the
Oregon Business Devel-
opment Department — a
problem lawmakers high-
lighted before the legisla-
tive session.
Rep. Dan Rayfield,
D-Corvallis, led the budget
writing committee, along
with Sen. Betsy Johnson,
D-Scappoose, and Sen.
Elizabeth Steiner Hay-
ward, D-Portland.
The three ran a tight
ship: Rayfield said budget
writers left a larger than
usual balance at the end —
but some wanted to use that
money for more projects.
“Every single day, peo-
ple wanted you to dip into
that ending fund balance,”
Rayfield said. “You really
were, like, slapping hands
away from the cookie jar.
For the last two weeks, I
felt that’s all I was doing.”
Throughout the ses-
sion, budget writers get
keen attention from advo-
cates, lawmakers, and state
agencies asking for cer-
tain investments in their
communities.
“Everybody comes call-
ing,” Rayfield said. “Cit-
ies and counties are the
number one, I would say,
folks that hop on the list,
where their pocketbooks
are somewhat constrained
by what they can do. Some-
times they’re constrained
by voters, but there are
essential functions in that
county that need to occur,”
such as building or renovat-
ing jails and courthouses.
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