Dollars, Not Symbols

Oregon's Office of Rural Policy will close at the end of this month, four years after Gov. Ted Kulongoski created the office by signing an executive order.

We didn't wring our hands at the news.

We never could figure why predominantly rural Oregon needs an Office of Rural Policy.

In any case, during its four years the Office, which has only one full-time employee, failed to convince us that its existence afforded Baker County and the rest of rural Oregon benefits that weren't otherwise available.

We concede that the idea behind the Office of Rural Policy sounds attractive.

When Kulongoski signed that executive order on April 21, 2004, in John Day, he said: "Government must meet the needs of all communities, both urban and rural. The new Office of Rural Policy will assist the state in better understanding the unique needs and issues of rural Oregon."

Well, it's absolutely true that Baker City's and Halfway's needs are different from Bend's and Portland's.

But Kulongoski didn't need to hire anyone to figure that out.

People in Baker City know how to use the telephone and the computer. If we want to ask some state bureaucrat a question, or explain why the action of a state agency is wreaking havoc in the hinterlands, we can.

And every Oregonian, rural or urban, has two elected representatives in the Legislature whose job it is to make those pleas in our place.

The most enticing promise that Kulongoski made, albeit indirectly, in his speech on that April day four years ago is the very promise he can't keep, nor would we expect him to.

The implied promise is that the opinions of people in rural Oregon would suddenly matter in a way they had not before.

But in our democratic system, where on so many vital questions the majority supplies the answer, the hope Kulongoski offered is mathematically impossible.

Put simply, Multnomah County's 377,000 registered voters trump Baker County's 10,200 — no matter how effective the Office of Rural Policy is.

In the end, such an office ought not be necessary.

State officials shouldn't need an Office of Rural Policy to remind them that part of Oregon lies outside the Willamette Valley.

The biggest part, in fact.

And the people who live in rural Oregon, and the legislators who represent them, don't need an Office of Rural Policy to advocate for their parts of the state.

If Kulongoski truly wants to help rural Oregon — and we believe he does — then he should lobby the Legislature to rejuvenate the Regional Investment Program. Less than a decade ago that program delivered about half a million dollars per biennium to Baker County. In the 2007-09 period the county will share $122,000 with Morrow County.

We'd rather have the dollars than the symbolic value of the Office of Rural Policy.