Freedom is coming to a neighborhood near you.

This week, in a joint meeting of the Idaho Senate Resources and Environment committee and the Idaho House Environment, Energy, and Technology committee, lawmakers heard a proposal to incorporate much of rural Oregon into Idaho.

Rural Oregonians have felt increasingly dominated by urban decision makers in the Oregon Legislature. Years of attacks on agriculture and natural resource businesses, and overreaching decisions dominated by legislators from Portland Metro, have pushed the rural urban divide to the breaking point. “There’s a longtime cultural divide as big as the Grand Canyon between northwest Oregon and rural Oregon, and it’s getting larger,” Mike McCarter, President of Move Oregon’s Border for a Greater Idaho, told Idaho lawmakers.

There once was a time that the Oregon Legislature was more balanced. During the 2001-2003 sessions, the Democrats controlled the Senate, and the Republicans controlled the House. The Speaker of the House at the time was Mark Simmons, a veteran legislator from Rural eastern Oregon. He was also the last Speaker of the house from a rural Oregon District. Simmons traveled to Idaho this week to speak about moving the border, describing how it would strengthen Idaho by adding the deep-water port at Coos Bay to Idaho, making it less dependent on Oregon’s decisions regarding ports and the federal government’s upcoming decisions to perhaps eliminate locks on the Snake river. “Values of faith, family, independence. That’s what we’re about. We don’t need the state breathing down our necks all the time, micromanaging our lives and trying to push us into a foreign way of living.”

The proposal made by the Move Oregon’s Border for a Great Idaho is simply a shift in borders that does not affect the balance of power in the US Senate. It does not create a new state or increase the number of states, and borders between states have been relocated many times throughout US history. If a deal were made that both the Oregon and Idaho Legislatures could support, a border change would almost certainly become a reality.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Idaho Representative Ben Adams (R-Nampa), said his interest was piqued but wondered why Oregon lawmakers would agree to the plan. “How is it being received right now by the state of Oregon?” Supporters of the border change let the Idaho lawmakers know that it is an ongoing conversation in Oregon and although there are currently no bills in the Oregon Legislature addressing the boundary changes, six counties (Baker, Grant, Harney, Lake, Malheur and Sherman) will be voting on the idea at the May Special District election. The outcome of that will be an indicator to the Oregon Legislature on the desire of rural communities to no longer be under urban Oregon lawmaker rule. “Before we can even begin to discuss the details, we have got to see a significant majority of counties in Oregon stepping up to support it”, Simmons shared.

The Democrats currently hold a supermajority in the Oregon House and a voting majority in the Oregon Senate, and they could potentially strengthen their position further by letting rural counties become part of Idaho. In addition, allowing rural counties to leave could be seen as an economic win for the remainder of the “new urban state”. Rural counties tend to be areas that generate less property tax revenue and have lower wage paying jobs. In addition, much of the proposed land that would be redirected to Idaho is Federally owned which is sometimes seen as a liability on the state rather than an asset.

The Chair of the Idaho House committee, Representative Barbara Ehardt (R–Idaho Falls) seemed to agree saying, “With everybody moving to Idaho, it isn’t lost on me the addition of landmass, water, resources, agriculture, timber; there are some appealing things to Idahoans, at least in my estimation, to even consider this.”


--Terese Humboldt

Post Date: 2021-04-15 10:28:12

Last Update: 2021-04-16 09:58:58