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MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm Michael Dunne. The Trump administration and Congress have already transformed many parts of American life, and it's only been about six months. The loyal opposition, the Democrats, have been left largely on the sidelines. But that doesn't mean they aren't trying hard to counter the White House's agenda. Today, on the show, our somewhat regular check in with Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley to hear what he's seeing and doing in our state and in DC to advocate for Oregonians. Then in the second part of the show, we'll talk with the leader of travel Lane County to hear about their strategic plan to increase events and increase overall capacity for visitors to our region. And, things move fast right now in our nation's capital. That's evidenced by the fact that just hours after our talk with Senator Jeff Merkley, and despite his best efforts, the Senate passed the bill that will claw back funding for public media. Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, thanks once again for coming on and talking with us.
SENATOR MERKLEY: A pleasure to be with you.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Obviously interesting times in the nation's capital. I know you've been fighting against, you know, the Trump and the Republican led rescission efforts that would impact public media kind of give us an update on what's happening.
SENATOR MERKLEY: Absolutely. We're expecting to have amendments later today, and the challenge is that we're going to see a lot of damage done to rural radio, rural TV that often provides emergency notices, entertainment and certainly quality news for America. So, this is a real tragedy. We're going to be fighting against it. Hopefully we'll have some colleagues across the aisle join us and save public broadcasting.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I always hate to try and ask an elected official to sort of look into the future, but do you feel like some Republicans might look at this and ultimately vote no?
SENATOR MERKLEY: Well, I think some will vote no on the on the package, because we saw three of them vote no, leading to a 50-50, tie in the Senate on the motion to proceed to this package, and that required the Vice President to come and break the tie. But three doesn't change the outcome. You need a fourth. And what we're seeing is that Trump is posing each key vote as a loyalty test, and in that regard, we now have a subservient Congress, and this is how republics slide into being authoritarian, strong man states when Congress no longer carries the work that they're assigned under the Constitution and instead just becomes, if you will, a rubber stamp for a president. This is very, very dangerous for the vision of the government by and for the people.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Since we last spoke, the Trump budget bill passed and I kind of wanted to talk to you again about what are the impacts that concern you the most, specifically for Oregonians.
SENATOR MERKLEY: Big impacts for Oregon as it's implemented over several years in Medicaid. It's an estimated loss, and that's the Oregon Health Plan of some 150 to 200,000 people losing insurance. And also, it's going to be a huge impact on how we fund our part of the contribution, which is the estimated price tag in between 2027 to 2029 that two-year period is about $900 million so if they can't find some other way to come up with those funds, it means the entire program has to shrink. So, the impact might be even larger. Really concerned about the impact on our rural hospitals and our rural clinics, and people may say, Well, I don't, I don't have Oregon health plans. So why should I be worried? You should be worried if you're in a rural area, because that income disappears, there's a good chance that a clinic or hospital might shut down and everybody in the community loses access to nearby health care. That's a big deal. Really worried about the cuts to the nutrition program, the SNAP program, more than 100,000 Oregonians estimated to lose it, and the cost to Oregon of picking up their share under the new rules could be an additional roughly 425 million per year, so more than 800 for the two-year budgeting period for Oregon. So, these are huge additional costs that the money, where's the money going to come from? What other programs are going to be diminished in order to pick up these payments, and if we're not able to pick them up, the programs are going to shrink on nutrition and health care. And by the way, there's one other health care impact people aren't talking about, and that's those who buy their insurance through the Health Care exchange Obamacare, where they get credits to. Subsidize the cost of buying the insurance. The estimated increase in cost per person is more than $900 a year, 900 to $1,000 per year. So, these are, yeah, that can be the difference between whether people can afford health shares, health care, or not afford it.
MICHAEL DUNNE: We’re talking on a day where it's going to be in the 90s. And, you know, there's this nexus happening between, you know, a lot of layoffs at the federal level to fight wildfires, and, of course, getting into our heavy fire season. Now, I know you've introduced a bill. I think it's called the wildfire resilient communities act. Talk about what that's going to do?
SENATOR MERKLEY: Yes. So, this really has four missions. The first is forest management. So, you thin the forest, you do prescribed burns. You try to reduce the risk of fire being fiercer, more met. You make it more manageable to fight the fire. The second is to help communities defend against wildfires, things such as reducing their shrubs around their house, sometimes changing the materials of the roofing, sometimes creating a wet zone around the house. Different things that you can do to reduce the risk of a fire, taking out the houses and spreading from house to house. And then there are two strategies we've had in Oregon that Oregon really has helped lead the nation on to do timber sales, and that is stewardship agreements and collaboratives. And the collaborators bring everybody together across from the environmental side to the timber companies, and say, let's work out a strategy that we can all agree on how to treat this forest. And the result is it stays out of the court. And the same with stewardship agreements, and so supporting both of those strategies is extremely important. And the last thing on the stewardship agreements is the bill would say, hey, look, unlike a timber sale right now, a county doesn't get a share of the proceeds, let's change that. Let's make sure the counties do get a share of the proceeds. This is something I've been fighting for a decade. I'd sure like to see it happen.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Okay, speaking of fires, it seems like there's this fire raging in the Republican Party right now. And I did want to get your take on this. It seems like there's and certainly that side of the aisle has been fanning the flames of conspiracy theories, and we're hearing about, you know, kind of this implosion, if you will, over the alleged Epstein files. I just wanted to get your read on what's happening with regard to the Trump administration and his supporters, and this idea that there may be or may not be some sort of a list.
SENATOR MERKLEY: Well, I can tell you, this is one of the situations where so many people were like, really, did we get all the information about Epstein? He had all these high-end friends? Were they participating in these horrific parties where young girls were offered up to rich men and people wanted the information released? Then there was certainly a suspicion put forward by Team Trump, that high ranking Democrats were involved. And so, people didn't believe it when, when Biden said there's no more information on this. And so now the Trump team is in there, and suddenly the Trump team is saying, No, we aren't going to release any more information. "There's no more information to be seen. Go look elsewhere. Go pay attention to something else. And so, it's really shifting the suspicion that maybe what Team Trump is doing is protecting high ranking Republicans. And the grassroots want to say, I want none of it. They want disclosure. And that's why I want to just release all the information. Let the chips land where they will.
MICHAEL DUNNE: You recently announced that you're running for reelection, and I'm just wondering, you know, what are some things that you want to continue, but also perhaps some things that you really want to look forward to in the next term?
SENATOR MERKLEY: You know, the rich and powerful, they have all kinds of help in making policy. They have lobbyists, they have lawyers, they have media campaigns, they have regular money, they have campaign money. They have dark money and super PACs. They have all of that. They have inside influence when it comes to big bills done out of sight in Congress. So, who needs help? It's the people who need help. So, fighting for ordinary people on the fundamentals for families to thrive, that's what I've just been the heart of what I've worked on, on health care, housing, education and creating good paying jobs, because those are the foundations for a family to thrive. I want to continue my work on climate because it is the biggest threat humanity is facing, and continue my work on equality of opportunity for LGBTQ community, because every American should be able to participate fully in our society without discrimination. So those are the continuations, but the effort, the new effort that I really feel is important, is at a moment where it's no longer just about policies. It's about protecting the checks and balances, the separation powers of our Constitution. We are sliding into a. Authoritarian state with a deferential court and a subservient Congress, and we've seen republics become authoritarian regimes in other nations. We never thought it could happen here, but we're in the middle of it right now. So, fighting to defend our core constitution so we can preserve government by and for the people is a huge mission.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Senator. I think I've asked you this before, but you know, to that point, I mean, what are things that you and your caucus can do? I know it's difficult, obviously, with the Republicans controlling all three branches of government, if you will. But you know, as we head towards the midterms, what are some things that you're looking to do and asking your voters, but also your colleagues about in terms of what are some of the things that you can do?
SENATOR MERKLEY: Well, just this week, I have been taken to my colleagues on the spending committee. It's called the appropriation committee, and we need to work in a bipartisan way. Folks often consider themselves appropriators on that committee before they were Democrats or Republicans, because they're vested with that kind of sacred responsibility of how we spend our money in America, and that's where your values are. Your values can be seen by how you spend your money. And now we have the Trump administration saying here's what to do, and kind of telling the Republican caucus to do exactly what the President wants, rather than them representing their constituents in their home states. And this, that's very dangerous and I'm saying, Come on, folks, let's quit letting this degrade into a partisan fight. Let's work together. Last year, we passed 11 out of 12 spending bills unanimously or nearly unanimously out of the Senate. That's bipartisan work. Let's continue that, and let's not allow this current partisan movement to be called a rescission. It's repealing the work and doing a partisan repeal of bipartisan agreement. It's like, let's say I was selling you a car, and I'm selling it to you, and you're paying $5,000 to get the car, but then you say, Wait, I'm going to hold on to the $5,000 I want to break my side of the deal. That's what's happening right now in the Senate, and it's really going to destroy bipartisan cooperation and the significance of Congress assigned by the Constitution the power of the purse if we let that happen.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Senator Merkley, always great to talk to you. Thanks for taking some time with us.
SENATOR MERKLEY: You're very welcome. Take care now.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Let's talk now with travel Lane County and hear about their plans to attract even more visitors to the county. Samara Phelps, the CEO of travel Lane County, so great to see you again. Thanks for coming in.
SAMARA PHELPS: Thanks for having me.
MICHAEL DUNNE: You guys do a lot in this community, and I know a lot of it is the doing, but there's also a lot of planning. Talk about this, this, this sort of destination master plan, and what it is and what it will do.
SAMARA PHELPS: Yeah, thanks for that. We are, like you said. We're out in the community. We're doing a lot in the community, but a big part of our job is to be strategic leaders for what visitation visitors can do for our communities. So, one of the things that we are taking on this year is a destination plan with a 10 Year Vision for what visitors in the visitor economy can contribute to our communities, making them what we want it to be. Yeah. So, to do that, we are going to spend the next year doing some pretty deep community engagement and evaluating some data. And we've brought on a partner in an international firm that does this to look at our destination and how diverse it is and say, okay, here are some real actionable things to be ready for the future that we want to have in our communities.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Are there things that you sort of intuitively know? These are the things we do really well. But here are some things that we know are changes we need to improve?
SAMARA PHELPS: We definitely know that there's things that we need to improve. The history of destination organizations has been in promotion and marketing and communication, inspiration, storytelling, figuring out those stories, telling them to visitors, getting visitors to come, that's great, but when we take a long-term strategic look at what these visitation does in our communities, we know we need to make some plans that include investment in infrastructure for how people visit, why they visit. And so, we imagine that this plan will come out with some specific recommendations or action items around how we incorporate visitors into our communities in ways that we maybe haven't thought about or haven't fully leaned into, and then specifically around infrastructure development and things in infrastructure. When we talk about it, we're talking about reasons that people visit, the experiences that they have while they're here visiting, and those are also the experiences that we as residents in the community would have. So, we know in Florence that an expansion of the Florence Event Center is needed. That's a place for the community to gather, but it's also a place. Place where you can be able to bring in groups into the community. Here in Eugene Springfield, we've known for a long time that we're under built for winter indoor facilities, so multi use facility infrastructure is needed here in the metro area to drive some winter demand. Our communities out in Oak Ridge and up the McKenzie River are really interested in more accessible outdoor recreation. Obviously, outdoor recreation thrives out there, but access to it is a bit limited. So, we anticipate seeing those projects that reflect things that the communities already know about, and hopefully in surfacing them in these ways, we can figure out those alignments to how you get it done.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I was having this interesting conversation with a friend about the idea that, you know, Eugene and our county, you know, in some ways, has sports facilities that are world class. I mean, you could almost make the argument Eugene could literally host something like the Olympics, except that we probably don't have enough of that infrastructure that could house, not necessarily the athletes, it's all the visitors, and I'm thinking specifically about hotel rooms and that sort of a thing is that, is that an issue too?
SAMARA PHELPS: Absolutely, absolutely we are part of the timing of a destination. The Master Plan happening at this point in time is that as a community, we've realized we can host these amazing things. We can do really incredible things in the world. Obviously, we had the world here. We'd have the under 20s next year, Prefontaine just recently. So, we know we can host incredible events. We know we can host incredible arts festivals and things we have Bach Festival happening while we're talking right now, but we realize that there's a capacity threshold for that, and with that, we have the need to build more consistent revenue and demand for businesses to want to be able to invest in better infrastructure. So yes, more hotel rooms to be able to host World Class events is really needed. But with those hotel rooms, it's more than hotel rooms. It's year-round employment for the people who are employed in those and it is also year-round spending from visitors, people coming from outside our community, coming into it, to spend dollars with our local, local businesses. So, we definitely need to be able to consistently have visitation in our community, yeah, in a way that the community is prepared to host it. And if you're Oak Ridge, that looks different than if you're in Eugene, looks different than if you're in Florence. And that's why a destination plan where we can look at this diverse region and really go deep with community engagement, to talk to folks who are operating businesses, operating land management in these different communities. Can say this is what we envision for our community. How can visitation help that? And that's our job is to help be a strategic leader in having that conversation, and then hopefully other people will pick up those ideas and help implement them in their communities and support projects that are already underway.
MICHAEL DUNNE: You and I were actually talking off mics just about this plan, the, you know, the master plan. It's kind of like foundational and a lot of other sorts of community elements. Community organizations can utilize it. Talk about that sort of dexterity of the plan.
SAMARA PHELPS: Yeah, that's really important to me in investing as traveling County in this plan, that we're investing in, a plan that's a tool for communities and for community development, this place making the core of visitation is about what the experience is to be here, right? That's what we want as residents as well. So we're really working hard in developing a plan that is data driven, it is research based, that then has elements that, if you're an economic development organization like a chamber or a main street, you can pick it up and you can use it. If you're as big as the county or as small as an individual community, nonprofit or initiative trying to build out a new like pump track in your community, there are tools and information in here that help support bringing funding into our community, bringing those resources to life, so that we can have these amazing experiences in our community that support visitation and quality of life.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Here's kind of a philosophical question for you, but I am curious. You know, I'm thinking of two communities. I'm from Northern California originally, and there's a town south of San Jose called Gilroy, and it's famous for the Gilroy Garlic Festival. That's pretty much all it's known for. Then I think far north of here, Calgary is known for the Calgary Stampede, and that's great. Those are two communities of different sizes that are known for one thing. Is it better to be a community like a Gilroy or a Calgary where you're kind of known for one big thing and one thing, big thing only, or is it better when you're kind of known for a lot of different, perhaps smaller things?
SAMARA PHELPS: I appreciate that, that question, and specifically using events as an example, because events are a great hook, and we are definitely a destination here in lane, county events based. You'll see that with the Country Fair happening, right? That's signature for Vaneta. It helps define some of what Vaneta is year-round. But it's this unique moment in time for those three days that we have Country Fair in town, and that's great. But the beauty of the diversity of our region, of being Lane County and going from the coast to the Cascades, the way that we do is that it's what adds up. We want those distinguishing differences. We want to have those moments in time. We are events based, whether that's sports events or arts events, if it's community festivals, like tree planting in Oak Ridge or roadies in Florence. Those are great to be known for, but we want to be able to wrap those around that it's not one thing, it's this and that and the next, so that there is a reason to be here year-round.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Okay, my last question for you is, so what happens next with this plan?
SAMARA PHELPS: Yeah, we're really excited to have brought on JLL, who's an international firm that does this kind of work in destinations like ours, much bigger than ours, much smaller than ours, and they're going to come in and they're going to help us spend the next six months in really deep community engagement. We're going to have a steering committee of about 18 folks who help guide, guide this work, and we will be doing community engagements through focus groups, interviews with specific stakeholders. We're doing more than 30 interviews, 12 probably focus groups, that'll happen. So, in community engagement, there'll be some component of a resident survey that'll happen. So, the general public will have a chance to contribute and tell us what their knowledge of tourism is and their visions for tourism.
MICHAEL DUNNE: That sounds exciting, that sounds exciting. Samara Phelps, the CEO of Travel Lane County, thanks so much for coming in and talking with us.
SAMARA PHELPS: I appreciate it.
MICHAEL DUNNE: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon On The Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Monday on the show, you'll hear an update from the Eugene based Archeological Legacy Institute, which will soon set sail to try and find Amelia Earhart's lost plane. I'm Michael Dunne, and this has been Oregon On the Record from KLCC. Thanks for listening.
