Third of a Century Speech

Delivered on April 19, 2006

This is the hardest speech I've never given, to the best audience I've ever faced.

Every fiber of my being screams "12 point plans,” but with the help of a written text and menacing looks directed at the guy on crutches, I'm going to resist the temptation.

This is NOT a City Club Speech. That's why I'm developing web-based capacity and will be taking my message out around Oregon for the rest of the spring and summer.

Thank you for joining my family, our team – the wonderful men and women that I get to work everyday, and those of you who have been advisors, partners, and co-conspirators on hundreds of campaigns and projects that have made the last third of a century such a rich mosaic of achievement.

It’s been a great run.

For months we've been collecting stories and ideas, looking at accomplishments, near misses, and continuing challenges – because if we don't know how we got here, then we’re not sure where we are headed.

That makes it hard to know where we're going, much less figure out how to get there.

We are better positioned than any community or state to deal with future challenges. The rest of the world knows this. That’s why people are moving here. That's why they're interested in visiting us to look, learn, and kick the tires, even if at times we, ourselves, have some doubts.

Frankly, we should be concerned. Despite our tools and accomplishments, our visions and our visionaries, we’ve hit a rough patch here.

Our system of governance has become seriously out of whack.

In too many of our political struggles, only one side is using the tools of our populist heritage, the special voter partnership that comes from the recall, the referendum, and the initiative. Most of us are reacting instead to negative initiatives. Frankly, we're at a disadvantage.

The standards of civility and bipartisan cooperation have so atrophied that the news story is not so much what Greg Walden and I have done about Mt. Hood than that we had done it at all.

Tom DeLay may have corrupted the operations of the U.S. House, but serious problems abound with the Oregon House of Representatives as we experience ideological and special interest domination.

People are punished because their Representatives exercise independent judgment on policy.

There are serious fiscal problems here in Oregon in part because of the boom or bust cycle of our revenue system. We have some questionable tax policies, some that are just silly.

While I'm all for tax reform, the fairest tax system won't compensate for a lack of money in the state.

But the biggest concern I have is the lack of a shared vision Oregon and the confidence that we can accomplish it.

Remember the 1980s? We had a much worse economy, with threats on a range of problems. Land use was under assault, and the state actually lost population in 33 of our 36 counties. Our shared vision and hard work got us through.

How do we regain that shared vision? Surprisingly, I do have a few ideas.

Let’s start with our economy.

We should concentrate on ways to create an economy for all of Oregon and for all Oregonians.

Many of us here spend lots of time on “livable communities.” Can't we find ways to help more Oregonians profit by it? From historic preservation to bikes and streetcars, we have experts who are building and exporting both ideas and products. They're creating value and a national reputation.

Can we make Oregon a center of excellence where we draw the best and the brightest, train and put them to work the same way that great wealth was generated in Silicon Valley with Stanford University and the technology companies?

What about a “Livability Valley” with Portland State and important roles at OSU, U of O, and OHSU – together with our builders, our planners, our architects, our engineers, our water quality experts, to say nothing of the best public broadcasting stations in America!

America will be profoundly changed over the next third of a century. We will see population shifts and demographic changes, to say nothing of the ripple effects of three-, four-, and even five-dollar-a-gallon gasoline. Think about what we could do if we harnessed our expertise, reputation, and Oregon’s natural environment to create a livability market.

We must not just talk about Portland or the Willamette Valley, but all of Oregon.

A golden opportunity is to be found on our farms, ranches, nurseries, and vineyards. American agriculture is poised for major reform. Oregon can both be a national leader and a beneficiary, and all of Oregon can benefit.

In the same way that Oregon was the poster child for the revolutionary 1991 ISTEA transportation legislation that enabled us to get more money and get more out of the money that we got, Oregon can win with a new agricultural policy for America.

We're a garden spot, with some 7,000 family-owned agricultural enterprises who honor the land. Many are already environmental leaders, and most take their land stewardship very seriously.

Let's open up direct markets for products by building farmers markets so we revitalize communities large and small and put more money into farmer’s pockets.

Some farmers and people in the wine and nursery businesses are already leading the way, showing how you can craft winning policies that are good for farmers, the land, the environment, energy, water, and wildlife, not to mention business and the consumer.

It’s a classic, traditional Oregon opportunity that unites rather than divides us.

There's another way to strengthen our economy. You don't have to be a Socialist to be appalled at the exploitation of well over a million hard-working, lower income Oregonians who occupy the lower third of the income distribution in Oregon. We are not talking about faceless categories of tax tables or sociological terms.

These are real people working hard to support struggling families. They are shipping clerks and farm workers. They serve our meals, they take care of our children and the elderly. They clean our hotels, they work in gardens and in factories.

Not only do they get less money, but they also get less value for each dollar of the income they spend.

The payday loan issue is only the tip of the iceberg. Even if the Legislature is finally shamed into fixing this scandal tomorrow at the special session, we still have policies and practices that prey upon the distressed, the financially challenged, and the desperate.

Yesterday’s NY Times had an op ed on how we have made the earned income tax credit hopelessly complex and hard to use. How about the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are too poor to get the child tax credit?

And the examples go on…. Check cashing businesses taking over 2% of the paycheck. Noninsured working people pay more for an appendectomy than you do, even before your insurance kicks in.

People are steered to higher mortgage interest rates, and we now have a cruelly one-sided bankruptcy law that was tailored to allow credit card companies to exploit people on the financial edge. It’s a terrible commentary when life is more expensive for people with the least money.

This ought to be the year for direct action, economic education, and consumer protection that can raise the purchasing power of many of Oregon's hardest working citizens, without new government programs, subsidies, taxes, and welfare payments.

You know this will require reform of our political process. I’ll fight on the national level. We should start right here in Oregon as well.

In spite of potential questions, I'm ready to vote for an open primary to end the tyranny of the political fringe who too often control the nominating process, the fringe that produced the terrible Terri Schiavo family tragedy and made a Tom McCall or Mark Hatfield unelectable in today’s Republican Party.

It's time to have reasonable contribution limits here in Oregon to prevent a small handful from writing the checks that finance the legislature or one person from bankrolling a governor's race.

Of course, my favorite campaign contribution reform is for people like you and me never to contribute to anybody that we wouldn't hire, live next door to, or be trapped with in an elevator.

Most important, we need to recapture the spirit of the progressive movement of over a century ago where Oregon forged a unique partnership with our voters. We ought not to fight our heritage and values dealing with the referendum, the recall, and the initiative. Instead, we need to form a new compact with the voter, to allow us to do today what it was enacted to do in 1902 --- to bypass legislative corruption and special interest gridlock.

Let's begin this new partnership to help education, to make voters active partners, not use them as an audience.

We should start by transforming the corporate and personal income tax kicker into a rainy day fund controlled by the voters. That’s the key to acceptance. You couldn't take any money out unless it was specifically approved by the voters.

While we're at it, let's take a page out of our federal legislation, when Congress couldn't close a military base because of all of the political log rolling and horse trading. We created a commission and took it out of Congress’ hands. Let’s go to the voters with a commission to “right-size” Oregon education districts.

I like local control, but do we really need or can we afford 198 school districts and 20 more educational service districts on top of that?

Oregon has four times as many districts as Florida, which has five times our population.

Let’s have the commission propose “right size” district boundaries, then submit their proposal directly to the voters. I think Oregonians will respond.

If they do like this approach, then we can work with the voters to redesign how we distribute educational money to account for what we want the education dollars to buy.

This new partnership with voters provides an opportunity to focus the Legislature's attention on the one thing that only the Legislature can do: fulfill their constitutional requirement to fund education.

Nobody should take a key legislative position unless they're willing to do the work and be held accountable for results. And not wait two or four years for another election.

Let's take the key legislative positions of responsibility and hold them accountable. You can recall a legislator after six days in office, but I would give them six months to develop a plan for adequate and stable funding for our schools.

If they don't deliver, let's recall 'em.

3100 signatures, about $10,000 and three weeks’ work means that by Labor Day, a House Revenue and School Finance chair can enjoy an up or down vote on whether their legislature performance matched their campaign rhetoric.

Do that a couple times, people will notice and Salem will change.

Sorry! This is starting to sound like a City Club Speech.

But my points are pretty straight forward:

• Play to our strengths and build on our values.
• Rekindle a positive partnership with voters by using our tools to go directly to Oregonians for solutions to tough problems.
• Hold politicians accountable for results and fight the mindless partisanship and control by the extremes.

Sounds simple, because it is simple. Not easy; it’s hard work. But these are things that many of you in this room have done.

To get it started now, there is one last point: Leadership

At every table, I have a special package revealing my plans for that leadership.

Please open it now. Pass it around.

Ok, a little hokey.

But leadership is not just a picture in the voters’ pamphlet. It’s what we all see in the mirror every day.

As I try my best to fight the good fight in DC and around this great country, please join me in providing the leadership to recapture our shared sense of Oregon’s vision.

Thank you, and good night.