Don't hold your breath. Greater Idaho would require the approval of the legislatures of both Oregon and Idaho, as well as an Act of Congress. The facts noted in my piece will not change whether the problematic county is in a different state. It's just then some locals would be bitching about Boise rather than Portland/Salem.
You are probably right but I do not think liberals realize how deep the anger is at Portland and the one sided legislature. Not sure how it will look but I see it reaching an ugly point eventually.
Rural conservatives probably don't appreciate the anger amount urban liberals at walkouts in the Oregon Legislature. It will probably be resolved by voting to change the Oregon Constitution. I don't know from which county you hail from, but I used to live in Wallowa County, so I looked up the 2020 presidential vote. While Trump carried the county by a two-to-one margin, that means that one out of every three voters was a "liberal". My not piece for The Oregon Way will be on the rural-urban divide in Oregon.
You are wrong. Many conservatives could not stomach Trump and did not vote for him. But do a poll on attitudes towards Portland Metro liners and the same county would vote 95% plus the same way.
Provocative, to be sure. And I appreciated the table from that task force I staffed on federal forest payments. That table was developed in response to the question, How much does it cost to be a county? But the flip side of that question involves the tax base and the tax system (mostly property taxes) that can support a bare minimum of county services. With small tax bases outside of their federal forest lands and low tax rates frozen by Measure 50, many of the rural counties you mention cannot afford to be counties without subsidies from elsewhere in the the state, namely the larger and more affluent counties. Even growth, in the form of more in-migration and residential development, will not pay for itself at those tax rates -- instead, those dynamics create more demand for services on top of a tax-constrained system. So, yeah, there's a case to be made. But probably not a politically winnable one. The populations of those counties you've held up as possible candidates for mergers will fiercely defend their tax rates as well as their independence. In every case, a lower tax county will be joining a higher tax county, even if they are both have relatively low tax rates. Also, every one of their elected officials, county commissioners and DAs most particularly, will defend not only their jobs but the power they have in one-county-one-vote organizations, like the Association of Oregon Counties and the DAs association, in influencing statewide policy.
When much or Oregon splits off from Uber liberal kooks in Portland metro then your theory does not matter.
Don't hold your breath. Greater Idaho would require the approval of the legislatures of both Oregon and Idaho, as well as an Act of Congress. The facts noted in my piece will not change whether the problematic county is in a different state. It's just then some locals would be bitching about Boise rather than Portland/Salem.
You are probably right but I do not think liberals realize how deep the anger is at Portland and the one sided legislature. Not sure how it will look but I see it reaching an ugly point eventually.
Rural conservatives probably don't appreciate the anger amount urban liberals at walkouts in the Oregon Legislature. It will probably be resolved by voting to change the Oregon Constitution. I don't know from which county you hail from, but I used to live in Wallowa County, so I looked up the 2020 presidential vote. While Trump carried the county by a two-to-one margin, that means that one out of every three voters was a "liberal". My not piece for The Oregon Way will be on the rural-urban divide in Oregon.
You are wrong. Many conservatives could not stomach Trump and did not vote for him. But do a poll on attitudes towards Portland Metro liners and the same county would vote 95% plus the same way.
Provocative, to be sure. And I appreciated the table from that task force I staffed on federal forest payments. That table was developed in response to the question, How much does it cost to be a county? But the flip side of that question involves the tax base and the tax system (mostly property taxes) that can support a bare minimum of county services. With small tax bases outside of their federal forest lands and low tax rates frozen by Measure 50, many of the rural counties you mention cannot afford to be counties without subsidies from elsewhere in the the state, namely the larger and more affluent counties. Even growth, in the form of more in-migration and residential development, will not pay for itself at those tax rates -- instead, those dynamics create more demand for services on top of a tax-constrained system. So, yeah, there's a case to be made. But probably not a politically winnable one. The populations of those counties you've held up as possible candidates for mergers will fiercely defend their tax rates as well as their independence. In every case, a lower tax county will be joining a higher tax county, even if they are both have relatively low tax rates. Also, every one of their elected officials, county commissioners and DAs most particularly, will defend not only their jobs but the power they have in one-county-one-vote organizations, like the Association of Oregon Counties and the DAs association, in influencing statewide policy.
Good points Tim. I appreciate them. Measure 50 has gone from unreasoned at its enactment to absurd today wit the trend getting worse.