NEWS UPDATE FROM STATE REPRESENTATIVE DAVID GOMBERG: Back From a Long-Delayed Vacation

By Representative David Gomberg, House District 10

Dear Neighbors and Friends,

I don’t often use this weekly report to advocate for or against election issues. I’m making an exception this week to urge support in Lincoln County for Measure 21-224 to fund local training for local jobs.
This past legislative session, I brought home an $8 million grant for the Oregon Coast Community College (OCCC) to help pay for the construction of a new trades education facility.
I saw this as an improved opportunity to teach local residents skills for good-paying local jobs that we all rely on like construction, plumbing, electrical, and welding. I also saw it as an opportunity to give our kids and grandkids the option to pursue a wide range of careers without leaving the coast.
The state money is a matching grant. OCCC has referred a $33,165,000 bond measure to voters that, if passed, would provide funds to construct the new trades education building, and support safety updates and modernizing existing facilities. The College would not receive the state grant if the proposed bond measure doesn’t pass.
No one relishes new taxes. But I think it is important to understand that this proposal does not increase taxes. Instead, it continues a current tax that is expiring.

The College’s capital construction bond tax rate is estimated to remain at the current $0.21 per $1,000 of assessed property value if the proposed bond measure passes. That’s because existing debt is retiring in 2025. Property owners would continue to pay an estimated $42 per year, or $3.50 per month for a home assessed at $200,000 if the proposed measure passes.

If the proposed bond measure passes, funds would be used to:

Construct a new trades education facility on land the College already owns at its Campus in Newport.
Repair and update existing buildings, including roofs and HVAC systems and controls.
Increase safety and security and emergency preparedness capacity by replacing security cameras and systems with modern versions, updating common areas, replacing and updating backup generators and providing better secured entry points, and more.
Upgrade the learning environment by modernizing classrooms to support modern learning modalities.
Increase access to career training, with the expansion of the Aquarium Science Program with new aquaculture infrastructure.

You can learn more here.

Or check your Voter Pamphlet where you will see arguments in favor from Senator Anderson and myself, our County Commissioners and Mayors, our Chambers of Commerce, local school leadership, Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, our port, local hospitals, local labor unions, and the Oregon Coast Community College Board of Education.

Join Susan and me in voting “yes!” on Measure 21-224.

On hiatus since the pandemic, the Oregon Coast Economic Summit officially returns to Lincoln City this week.

On Wednesday, May 8, the Oregon Coast Economic Summit, organized by the Legislative Coastal Caucus, will be hosted at the Chinook Winds Casino Resort for a day of networking, learning, and collaboration. This in-person event will bring together business leaders, entrepreneurs, and policymakers to discuss the economic opportunities and challenges facing the Oregon Coast region.

Doors open at 7 am, with the event starting at 8 am.

Oregon Coast Economic Summit

Chinook Winds Casino Resort

Wednesday, May 8, 7am-7pm

This summit has been a staple of the Oregon Coast for many years. While disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic had put the summit on hold since 2020, we’re back now.

Admission to the Summit is free and will include panel conversations on key topics including the State of the Coast Economy, Infrastructure and Connectivity, Sustaining Coastal Fisheries, Affordable Housing, and more. View the full agenda here.

The event will include a hosted reception. Register for the free Summit online.

Anyone seriously thinking about hiking the length of Oregon knows about the Pacific Crest Trail. The 430-mile segment was first explored in the late 1930s and continues to attract thousands of dedicated backpackers each year.

Its coastal equivalent is the 400-mile-long Oregon Coast Trail, which just reached a milestone of its own with the publication of a state-sponsored plan aimed at closing existing gaps and helping trail users overcome obstacles such as where to camp, find water, and cross various rivers and bays.

The Trail is very hike-able right now. But the new Oregon Coast Trail action plan, commissioned by the Oregon Legislature, is aimed at, among other things, reducing any direct highway exposure even more.

A few areas of the route coincide with the Oregon Coast Bike Route, a 370-mile trek that sees upwards of 10,000 cyclists a year. In these sections, planners for both projects might be able to work together to secure needed funding that could benefit both hikers and bikers.

Also due out by next hiking season is the smart-phone mapping system of the Oregon Coast Trail. Real-time information would be available to hikers including reports from other trail users on exactly how high or low the tide has to be in certain locations to guarantee a safe stream crossing.

I have long been a legislative advocate for the Coast Trail and its European trail model of hiking from hotel to hotel and restaurant to restaurant rather than wilderness roughing it. You can even hike sections or complete the entire trek over several years. We get people to our magnificent beaches and they leave money here before they go home.

Read more in this YachatsNews story.

Work preparing for the 2025 session is already underway. Individual legislators are thinking about bringing back legislation that didn’t make it in the short session, considering requests from constituents and advocates, and researching additional areas of need. However, much of the advance work is happening in a more organized manner through task forces and work groups.

Both task forces and work groups are designed to research complex policy and resolve potential conflicts. They bring together legislators and advocates on different sides of an issue and try to work things out in advance of the session.

Task forces are created through legislation and are more formal in nature. Their meetings are basically the same as committee meetings and must be conducted in public, with agendas and recordings posted online. Their membership is specified in the legislation. They tend to come with a price tag, which ultimately causes many of them to fail. However, their passage does signify a degree of legislative approval.

Work groups, on the other hand, are more informal gatherings of legislators and advocates.

We currently have four task forces underway, all of which were created by legislation from the 2023 session:

They will soon be joined by six new taskforces as a result of legislation passed during the short session:

SB 1503 Community Safety and Firearm Suicide Prevention
SB 1579 County Child Abuse Multidisciplinary Teams
SB 1585 Additional Food Choices for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Recipients
HB 4001 Specialty Courts
HB 4002 Regional Behavioral Health Accountability
HB 4002 Behavioral Health Care Worker Safety.

Once these task forces get going, you’ll find links to their web pages under the “Committee” tab on OLIS.oregonlegislature.gov.

I remember when our small business had retail stores. We were planning a fourth location in a new town and were checking how to handle the accumulation of cash each day. Normally, a manager would make deposits at a branch of our bank. But when we checked the location on their web page, all we found was an ATM. That was a problem.

Now we are seeing a broader trend in the country’s banking industry. Experts say the number of bank branches has been falling nationwide since the Great Recession, but the trend accelerated after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. They say the closures impact small business owners, rural residents, and low- to moderate-income communities the most.

From 2013 through 2023, Oregonians have lost more than 350 branches statewide. The drop, from 1,100 to 747, represents a loss of nearly a third of the state’s banking locations, according to The Oregonian/OregonLive’s analysis of federal bank data.

Oregon was among the four states that lost the most bank branches between 2019 and mid-2023, according to a February report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

Bank closures have since slowed. Last year, Oregon saw 40 bank branches or credit unions close, a smaller number compared to when the state lost 95 in 2020 and 65 in 2021. Meanwhile, openings are a much rarer occurrence. Only eight commercial banks and credit unions opened new Oregon locations last year.

An excellent story in the Oregonian includes an interactive map where you can track bank closures by county. Lincoln lost 5 (20%). Lane lost 37 (nearly 40%). And Benton had no bank closures.

The rise of online banking, inflation, and interest rates have all contributed to the recent closures. As more customers shift to online banking and mobile apps to conduct routine banking business, banks might choose to cut costs by closing less profitable branches while still retaining customers through online services.

Despite the rising popularity of online banking platforms, many communities still rely on brick-and-mortar bank branches for services. What the research has shown is that customers tend to use digital or online banking not as a substitute, but as a complement to in-person branch bank service.

Many consumers in lower-income and rural areas, as well as older residents and people with disabilities, still prefer to bank with a teller, according to a 2021 survey by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. And interestingly, there is a resurgence of customers under the age of 40, who go into a branch to get some form of financial advice or guidance.

For communities that have a larger share of older adults, those bank branches are really critical in terms of them being able to access their financial accounts but also to reduce the likelihood that they are exposed to any sort of financial scam. Bank branches are important to small businesses not only for routine business transactions but also for applying for lines of credit and Small Business Administration loans. Research has shown that when bank branches close, you see a decline in small business lending in the area.

Bank closures in rural communities are a particular problem where there are fewer options and driving distances may be significant.

Regular readers may have noticed I have not been out at many local events these past two weeks. Susan and I slipped away for our first real vacation in nearly five years.

Before I left, I penned two weekly emails in advance to ensure the news flow was seamless. My column last week went into some detail on the state of our roads and highways and the challenge of how we pay for them going forward. I worried that it was dry stuff and a bit lengthy as well. But the email response was nearly double what I usually get!

(Yes – I take my computer and read your emails on vacation…)

Thank you all for reading and for your interest. I’m back – and suffering a bit of a head cold that kept me away from a rainy parade in Newport over the weekend. But I stifled a fading cough to thoroughly enjoy a fundraising dinner and concert for the Siletz Bay Music Festival Saturday evening.

There is a busy week of meetings and appearances ahead so you can expect to see me out and about.

Today (Monday) I have been invited to speak at the formal signing of the 2024 Housing Package that includes funding for water and sewer projects across our district and around the state.

Tuesday I’ll be at the National Treatment Court Month celebration in Newport to honor strength, motivation, and recovery. Wednesday is the Oregon Coast Economic Summit.

Thursday I’ll be part of the Governor’s Commission on Senior Services meeting, the Oversight and Accountability Workgroup. And then I’ll attend the inaugural HMSC Lavern Weber Prize dinner.

Friday we’ll be at a jazz concert at the Lincoln City Cultural Center. And we’ll wrap up the week by wishing everyone a wonderful – and hopefully sunny – Mother’s Day.