Reviving the Oregon Way Requires Private-sector Leadership
While we are looking for new ways to engage with each other over political differences, we also need to be looking for a new generation of business leaders to step forward.
Longtime observer of Oregon and west coast politics. Political analyst for various media outlets, professor at Pacific University.
The death of Ed Whitelaw brought remembrances of his understanding of the ‘new economy,’ especially how valuable the quality-of-life elements can be to workers. His message fit with the Tom McCall ethos of ‘visit but don’t stay,’ a message aimed at those who wanted to turn Oregon into a version of the sprawl that was eating up orchards and fields in California from the 1950s on.
The Oregon of the post-war era had the power to make choices. The timber industry created economic opportunity that rivaled any in the country. Oregon’s forests built a large part of the post-war suburbias that sprang up across the country. Employment in the timber industry was a path to the middle class for thousands and thousands of Oregonians. And Oregon timber corporations became some of the biggest companies in the country. Portland was headquarters for several Fortune 500 companies.
It was against the background of this economic growth that McCall made his announcement. Economic growth would continue, in his mind, but it would be managed growth to protect what made Oregon special. Whitelaw nailed down what this concept meant to Oregon residents and immigrants both—a culture with easy access to the outdoors, a moderate climate, and multiple opportunities for life outside of work.
In the 1970s, Oregon’s legislature had the particularly delightful task of dealing with surpluses for several biennia in a row. Not only was Oregon’s economy doing well, but inflation contributed to more state income than the state knew what to do with. Finally, in the 1979 legislative session, the legislature returned about one-third of state revenues to taxpayers in a variety of forms. It was this era that gave us our unique Kicker Law to return excess state revenues to the taxpayers.
Oregon’s stint as a timber-based economic superpower was relatively short lived. About thirty years after the boom began, by 1978, many of those companies with headquarters in Portland were pulling out. The forests in Oregon were becoming less productive, and owners of the large corporations moved their bases to other parts of the country with more wood for the future. The recessions of the early 1980s, especially the 1982 recession, put an end to Oregon’s timber-centric economy. There was a brief return to prominence in the mid-1980s, but our forests were simply not as productive as those in different parts of the country. By the mid-1990s, Oregon’s timber industry was back to pre-World War II levels.
Oregon scrambled to replace the timber industry with the ‘new economy’ of high-tech manufacturing (led by Tektronix and Intel) and growth in the health care and tourism sectors. State government was in the middle of recruiting efforts to bring in new companies. It was as these industries were growing that Whitelaw’s theory about the quality of life made a lot of sense—Oregon’s wages were a bit lower, but the setting itself would make it worthwhile for workers to move to the state. The theory was realized. The ‘new economy’ thrived as entrepreneurial and highly-educated individuals congregated around the Portland area. A great study at Portland State University showed the amazing universe of companies that spun off from Tektronix over the decades. These were the seeds of the Silicon Forest in Washington County. And the leaders of those companies were deeply involved in conversations with political leaders across the state.
But Oregon still had, and has, a big economic issue to face. We are no longer the center of any industry. Yes, we lead the United States in computer chip manufacture, but the ownership and profits of that endeavor go to companies headquartered in California. Our biggest homegrown tech player, Tektronix, is still around, but it is no longer defining an industry. Our timber industry is still a major player within the state, but the main ownership interests are now in places like Atlanta.
We are on the periphery of the West Coast’s economy, and definitely on the periphery of the US and global economies. Oregon’s ports are a small fraction of the total trade on the West Coast (about 6% in the latest numbers). Our most visible companies, like Nike and Adidas, could be located anywhere in the world, and Nike has occasionally threatened to move if it did not get its way with issues like land use. The large chip manufacturers are an ever-decreasing portion of global chip production. Why are they here? Many of them are here because of a very Oregon natural resource—billions of gallons of very clean water.
All this provides a context for many of the political issues we wrestle with today. Can there ever be any replacement for the timber industry across much of the state, or are those formerly-timber-reliant towns and cities doomed to shrink to ghost town status (as has happened many times across the west in the past 170 years)? Has Oregon put too much of its current economic future into one industry—high tech manufacturing? Could we see a quick decline of that sector just as we did with timber from the 1970s to the 1990s? The story of Tektronix indicates that this can, and will, happen.
The Oregon Way as embodied by Tom McCall and those of his era was articulated in an era of seemingly permanent abundance. It has been over forty years since that era passed. The Oregon Way was not just a political understanding of the world, it had buy in from citizens, corporate titans, and popular culture. Where are those business leaders of today to help define what the future Oregon Way can look like? Those who can make a real difference no longer live here because their companies are headquartered somewhere else.
Oregon’s economy is not controlled from Oregon. We are a small player between a much larger Washington and a gargantuan California. It is companies from both of those states that play a huge role in Oregon’s economic life, but they leave a vacuum in terms of business engagement with Oregon’s political life.
While we are looking for new ways to engage with each other over political differences, we also need to be looking for a new generation of business leaders to step forward to help bridge the divides that split us. We need to be looking for powerful players in growing the Oregon Way 2.0.
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