Spanning the State: "We don’t want to hear your war stories"

The first Oregon Rural Congress, a gathering of representatives from cities and state agencies, legislators, and individual citizens , met in Cascade Locks this week to workshop proposals and develop a unified voice on issues affecting rural Oregon. Its five-point agenda (pdf format): Natural resources, rural finance, economic development, telecommunications, and human services. The editors of the Oregonian (who, it should be noted, do not count many rural Oregonians among their number), sympathized with many of the problems rural Oregonians face: Truth be told, rural Oregonians have much to be mad about these days. Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s decision early this year to pull the plug on the Office of Rural Policy was a mistake. While shaving a pittance from the state budget, it seemed to send a signal from the highest level: Salem doesn’t care. Then came the failure by Oregon’s congressional delegation to salvage anything from ...