A different kind of Congress?

Griping about how the Willamette Valley bullies the rest of Oregon is a popular pastime among residents in the state’s rural regions.

Which is most of them — regions, that is.

When we first heard about the inaugural Oregon Rural Congress, which took place last week, we figured the event organizers had merely put a new name on an event with the same tired old purpose: to complain.

But then we read a couple of quotes that Colleen MacLeod, a Union County commissioner and co-chairman of the Eastern Oregon Rural Alliance, gave to The (La Grande) Observer, our corporate sister paper.

“This is not a complaining session,” MacLeod said.

And: “We don’t want to hear your war stories.”

That’s good, because we’ve heard enough of those.

The truth is that much of what annoys rural Oregonians about the valley’s influence results from factors beyond anyone’s control.

More than half of Oregon’s registered voters are spread among three of the state’s 36 counties: Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington.

Which means that if a lot of voters in those counties agree on something — that hunters shouldn’t be allowed to use dogs to tree cougars or bears, for instance — then they’ll probably prevail at the ballot box even if voters elsewhere think hunting with hounds is perfectly acceptable.

That’s unfortunate if you belong to the minority, but it’s not unfair. It’s democracy.

This is not to say that events such as Oregon Rural Congress are irrelevant.

In fact such gatherings have the potential to truly matter so long as the participants concentrate on the things they can change.

Laws, for instance.

As MacLeod pointed out, although Oregon’s borders encompass an amazing diversity of topography and climate, the state’s laws don’t always reflect those differences.

“We are firm believers in ‘one size doesn’t fit all’ ” MacLeod said.

Neither are we.

But if rural Oregonians really want to persuade legislators, then they need to be able to explain, in the simplest terms, why certain laws that fit, say, Beaverton, aren’t appropriate for Baker City.

That’s precisely the purpose of Oregon Rural Congress, MacLeod said.

We’ll watch with curiosity to see whether the report that the Congress compiled will lead to real results.