Mike McCarter
McCarter is president of Citizens for Greater Idaho, an organization based in La Pine that is spearheading the “Move Oregon’s Border” ballot initiatives. He lives in La Pine.
Americans are so accustomed to power struggles over control of government that we should slow down and notice that Oregon has a choice to make in which a decision to “live and let live” will be better for both sides.
I’m a third-generation Oregonian. I love my community in central Oregon, but in recent decades, I’ve observed that the aspirations of Portland-area and northwestern Oregon voters force the state government toward a direction that happens to be incompatible with the values and livelihoods of my town and many in eastern and southern Oregon.
Thousands of rural Oregonians are deciding to move to Idaho for this reason, but they are contributing to overwhelming pressure on the Idaho housing and farmland markets. Eastern and southern Oregon voting patterns are very conservative; it would be expensive and wasteful for the majority of the 873,000 of us to try to find someone to buy all our homes and farms so that we can build new homes in Idaho.
That’s why we started the Greater Idaho movement, which seeks to relocate the border between between Oregon and Idaho so that 18 counties of eastern and southern Oregon would be under the jurisdiction of Idaho.
Already, voters in seven rural Oregon counties – Malheur, Baker, Union, Grant, Lake Sherman and Jefferson – have voted in favor of exploring the possibility of joining Idaho. State borders have been relocated dozens of times in American history – as recently as 1999 –because it just takes an interstate compact approved by two state legislatures, with the consent of Congress. Idaho legislators announced their intent to introduce legislation next winter regarding this, but we need your help to ask Oregon legislators to respond in kind.
Let’s consider what Oregon would be like if eastern and southern Oregon became parts of Idaho.
Loss of jurisdiction over eastern and southern Oregon is not much of a loss in terms of land ownership. The state government holds very little land in these 18 counties. It’s mostly federally owned or privately owned. National forests and Bureau of Land Management land could continue to be administered by federal agents.
By our calculations, Oregon would lose 21% of its population, but would lose much less than 21% of its income tax receipts, because the average income of these counties is only as high as Idaho’s; it was $45,222 there in 2019, but it was $55,172 in the rest of Oregon. The sheer size of these counties is irrelevant to state revenues because the state government does not collect property taxes.
Without these counties, the new Oregon’s presidential voting patterns would suddenly be significantly more progressive than those of Washington state or New York, although not as progressive as Massachusetts. Without eastern and southern Oregon representatives in the Oregon Legislature, the majority party would no longer be subject to moves by the minority party to deny quorum or force bills to be read aloud.
Oregon would only lose one vote out of the 538 in the electoral college, and one congressional representative, based on current population figures. These counties are already represented by a Republican in the U.S. House anyway, and there would be no effect on the U.S. Senate.
Oregon voters’ penchant for regulation endangers the means of making a living for eastern and southern Oregon. Not all of us are interested in or suited for white-collar work. Some work the land as their forefathers have for five generations. Eastern and southern Oregon want to preserve their way of life – as a part of Idaho. They should be allowed to do so, not held captive. Just as the Declaration of Independence respects the right of a people to separate themselves from a distant monarch, Americans have respected the right of peoples around the world to self-determination: to decide for themselves by whom they will be governed.
Many conservatives in the Willamette Valley want the Oregon/Idaho border relocated because it allows them the chance to move to a red state and still live within driving distance of their friends and family. This kind of sorting can be the solution to the escalating civil strife we’ve seen in Oregon. Let each side get the kind of governance they want, without having to fight each other.
Let us part ways in peace, as friends, so that a new Oregon can pursue its vision for the future unencumbered by gridlock in its legislature and our drag on your budget. You’ll still be welcome to visit us and our landscape.
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July 11, 2021 at 08:09PM
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Opinion: Shifting Oregon-Idaho border can help us all live in peace - OregonLive
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