A6
STATE
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
10 Oregon lawmakers won’t seek reelection
By Claire Withycombe, Jake
Thomas and Sam Stites
Oregon Capital Bureau
Legislators who have
played key roles in Oregon
public policy in recent years
are heading for the exit.
Rep. Mitch Greenlick,
D-Portland, might author
another book.
Sen. Laurie Monnes Ander-
son, D-Gresham, is yearning
for some “alone time.”
Sen. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario,
is aiming for Capitol Hill.
And Sen. Arnie Roblan,
D-Coos Bay, has rolled out a
familiar political trope: leaving
office to spend more time with
his family. So far 10 lawmak-
ers have announced that they
won’t seek reelection in 2020,
and another six are seeking
new office or running for the
seat they were appointed to for
the first time. That means 16
seats will be up for grabs next
year. Several lawmakers cited
age as a reason.
“It’s my ninth session,
and I’ll be 85 in March,” said
Greenlick. “It’s time.”
Monnes Anderson, a retired
nurse, decided she wouldn’t
run again after her most recent
election to the Senate in 2016.
“You know, I’m in my 70s
and I put my heart and soul
in being a legislator and cam-
paigning,” Monnes Anderson
said. “And it was just getting
too much.”
Others cite the rancor and
partisan divisions they feel
have come to characterize the
Capitol.
“The saddest thing I’ve seen
happen over the 12 years I’ve
been at the statehouse is the
steady erosion of bipartisan-
ship,” said Bentz, “And it’s one
of the reasons I’m leaving.”
Yet Bentz, an Ontario law-
yer, is leaving the Capitol for
what is almost certainly the
most divisive building in the
country: the U.S. Capitol, where
he hopes to represent Oregon’s
massive Second Congressio-
nal District in the House. He is
one of several lawmakers who
have announced plans to leave
the colorfully carpeted cham-
bers of the Legislature to pursue
other offices.
Sen. Mark Hass, D-Beaver-
ton, and Rep. Jennifer William-
son, D-Portland, are not seeking
reelection to their seats in hopes
of being chosen as the Demo-
cratic party’s candidate for sec-
retary of state in the May 2020
primary.
And then there’s Rep. Sher-
rie Sprenger, R-Scio, who after
13 years in the Legislature,
is eager to work on the local
level once more. She’s seek-
ing election to the Linn County
Commission.
“The closer you are, the
greater your ability to impact
is,” Sprenger said.
“I’m 76,” said Rep. Jeff
Barker, D-Aloha. “I’ll be 77
next year. So it’s kind of time
to move on anyway. But my
caucus kind of moved on away
from me and it felt more like
D.C. than Oregon last year.”
Barker, the longtime chair of
the House Judiciary Committee
and former police lieutenant,
felt slighted when he was told
that Speaker Tina Kotek would
give the committee chairman-
ship to Williamson for the 2019
session.
“That made the decision a
little easier,” Barker said.
“I’d made the decision
before the real divisive session
last (time),” Monnes Ander-
son said. “But that’s certainly
something that I don’t like.
It’s not me. It’s not my per-
sonality. I like bringing people
together and trying to work out
a solution.”
The retirees
Alongside Monnes Ander-
son, Bentz, Sprenger, Roblan,
Greenlick and Barker, lawmak-
ers exiting the public arena in
2020 also include Rep. Carla
Piluso, D-Gresham; Rep. Caddy
McKeown, D-Coos Bay; for-
mer House Minority Leader Carl
Wilson, R-Grants Pass; and Rep.
Greg Barreto, R-La Grande.
Having recently returned
from a trip to Maryland to see
his grandchildren, Roblan, a
Coos Bay Democrat, said he
didn’t want to spend another
summer on what will likely be
an expensive campaign defend-
ing his seat, in a district where
he bested the Republican by just
349 votes in 2016.
Roblan, who will be 72
when his term expires next
year, said that he’s accom-
plished many of his goals
around education and coastal
issues during his nearly two
decades in the Legislature, and
it’s time to give someone else
a chance.
“I think there are times when
you look back and you think,
‘Okay, I came here to do certain
things and I’ve gotten a lot of
those accomplished,’” he said.
Among the departures are
lawmakers who have been
influential in shaping state pol-
icy: Roblan helped lead the
charge for a massive $2 bil-
lion business tax increase to
fund schools this year. Bentz
and Rep. Caddy McKeown,
D-Coos Bay, who is also not
running for reelection, were
instrumental in getting the
Legislature to pass a landmark
transportation bill in 2017 that
will fund projects for a decade.
Greenlick and Barker were
longtime committee chairs and
Monnes Anderson served as
the official stand-in, or Senate
president pro tempore, when
Senate President Peter Court-
ney couldn’t be at the dais.
While the impact of their
departure on policymaking
may be felt, some say the exo-
dus is nothing new.
“This doesn’t feel to me like
an unusual year at all,” Green-
lick said.
“Given the nature of the cit-
izen legislature, we routinely
see about 25-30% turnover
every cycle,” House Speaker
Tina Kotek, D-Portland, said in
a statement.
For Republicans, who
mostly represent more rural
areas of the state and have to
travel farther to get to the Cap-
itol in Salem, that distance
can “have greater impact on
their personal and professional
lives,” Kotek said.
“Some of them, just really,
they’re done,” Courtney said.
“They’ve served on city coun-
cils and county commissions.
They don’t care to go on being
an elected official.”
From concord to discord
Roblan, a Democrat who
has represented his district on
Oregon’s south coast for nearly
two decades, recalled a rela-
tively recent time of bipartisan
harmony.
In 2011, the Oregon House
was evenly split 30-30 between
the two major parties. Roblan,
then a representative, shared
speaker duties with Republican
Bruce Hanna.
“Speaker Hanna and I got
along very well, and we fought
out a lot of things quietly real-
izing that you have to work
together,” he said.
Democrats then took back
control of the House and
the 2018 election gave the
party supermajorities in each
chamber.
Roblan, elected to the Sen-
ate in 2012, said that the Dem-
ocrats’ lopsided majorities
meant they no longer needed
the minority party to get things
done.
“The expectations from
your base become greater that
you will move more progres-
sive legislation,” he said.
Future of Elliott State Forest remains on hold as Land Board considers options
By Sam Stites
Oregon Capital Bureau
The advisory committee
tasked with looking at the fea-
sibility of turning the Elliott
State Forest into a research for-
est managed by Oregon State
University will take another
year to give the State Land
Board a recommendation.
But public testimony given
at the board’s meeting Dec.
10 shows lukewarm interest
in handing over the 82,000-
acre coastal forest between
Coos Bay and Reedsport to
OSU’s College of Forestry,
citing mismanagement of
the school’s own McDon-
ald-Dunn Forest as reason to
leave the forest as is.
The board comprising
Gov. Kate Brown, Secretary
of State Bev Clarno and Trea-
surer Tobias Read held session
for nearly four hours to hear
updates from members of the
Elliott State Research Advi-
sory Committee on progress
made in exploring a partner-
ship between the Department
Debbie Ausmus
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of State Lands to turn Ore-
gon’s oldest state forest into
a living laboratory and out-
door classroom for students,
researchers and managers to
learn about forest ecosystems
and management.
In 2017, the board decided
not to sell the Elliott State For-
est to create revenue for Ore-
gon’s Common School Fund,
which is fed by money from
harvests on state forests.
In December 2018, the
board directed the state lands
agency to work with OSU to
propose a new plan for the
Elliott that would develop a
habitat conservation plan and
create a new management sys-
tem led by the school. The
agency created a 17-member
advisory committee to oversee
the process.
One year and 10 meet-
ings later, the committee isn’t
any closer to making their
recommendation.
“While our conversations
have been productive, we’re
not finished discussing and
resolving these highly com-
plex issues,” said Keith Tym-
chuk, committee member
and former mayor of Reed-
sport. “Further conversation
will be critical in a successful
outcome, and the committee
remains resolute in continuing
our work as we recognize the
importance of this endeavor.”
Anthony Davis, interim
dean of OSU College of For-
estry, addressed the board,
giving an update on how those
conversations with both State
Lands officials and the com-
mittee are shaping up. Accord-
ing to Davis, the proposal
is now focusing on helping
solve the global climate and
sustainability crisis with new
research by OSU.
“Tremendous
opportu-
nity comes from being able to
focus on long-term research,”
Davis said.
According to Davis and
members of the advisory com-
mittee, the guiding principles
of how the forest would be
managed by OSU should man-
age the forest to recreational
access to the forest, maintain
educational partnerships, help
local and regional economies
and pursue conservation
The proposal wouldn’t be
at odds with the recent Ore-
gon Supreme Court decision
that found the 2014 sale of
nearly 800 acres of the forest
was illegal, the land board was
told.
Matt Devore, assistant
attorney general representing
the land board, said the case
doesn’t affect the proposal
because the state would still
own the forest.
Among those speaking
against the plan was Doug Pol-
lock, who brought attention to
OSU forestry researchers who
harvested nearly 16 acres of
old growth trees — including
one 420-year-old Douglas Fir
— within their Benton County
research forest earlier this year
sparking public outrage.
Pollock is the founder
of the Friends of OSU Old
Growth, a group of nearly 600
individuals concerned with
the protection of old forests
and trees managed by OSU.
He urged the board to be cau-
tious in allowing OSU’s Col-
lege of Forestry to manage the
Elliott State Forest.
“They have a long track
record, decades of misman-
agement of their forest. They
abandoned their own research
forest management plan 10
years ago and only recently
reinstated it,” Pollock said.
“This is a long history of what
we see as failed management,
and it comes from heavy tim-
ber industry financing of the
college.”
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