Representative David Gomberg Newsletter

Roadshow on the Horizon

3/17/2025

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

I often remind readers that a legislative session is about considering new laws and also about crafting a two-year budget. A third of the bills we pass will fund state agencies. A third more will cost money and also become part of the final budget.

In May we receive the final forecast of revenue which details how much we have to spend. In Oregon, we cannot spend more than we have. Our Constitution requires a balanced budget.

We begin with a review of what we currently spend money on. We look at how to reduce the “current service level” of agency budgets. We then consider options proposed by the Governor and agencies for new programs called “policy option packages” or POPs. Finally, we add in legislative proposals for projects and policies.

On Wednesday this week, the committee co-chairs will be releasing their budget framework. This will serve as the legislative starting point for directing billions of dollars in investments.

Each agency budget and legislative proposal has hearings in Salem. But we also take time each biennium to tour Oregon and listen to concerns and suggestions from Oregonians closer to where they live.

This year, I expect those public gatherings will be larger than usual. Town halls held by Oregon’s congressional delegation have been packed in the weeks since President Donald Trump took office. I expect many people, given the chance to testify to a group of 20 legislators, will show up with more than budgets on their minds. And of course, a third of our state budget depends on federal revenue sharing.

Mayors Cross, Wahlke, and Sawyer address the Ways and Means Committee in Newport during the 2023 Roadshow.

Earlier this month, the co-chairs of the Joint Committee on Ways and Means announced the dates and six locations for the Legislature’s 2025 community budget hearings. This is a great opportunity to speak directly with lawmakers crafting the state’s budget about what we should prioritize for the upcoming 2025-2027 biennium.

The “coastal” hearing this year will be in Astoria on March 28. Members of the public can register to testify here. There will also be a Salem virtual hearing on April 16. Members of the public can register to testify here.

As is the case every budget cycle, the state does not have enough money to support every worthy project or program. With significant needs across the state and a great amount of uncertainty nationally due to actions by the federal administration, it’s all the more important for you to make your voices heard about your priorities.

Continuing my work engaging with all four corners of Oregon, I will be attending five of the hearings in person. I’m looking forward to listening to all the testimony and meeting with as many of you as I can.

Here are the times, dates, and locations of each stop on the budget tour:

I’m engrossed in an awkward fight in Salem pitting traditional newspapers against online news services.

The question is how and where local government provides required notices to the public. Current law says that those notices will be published in printed newspapers and web pages with “E-Editions” formatted like traditional newspapers – essentially PDF reproductions. Current law also requires a subscriber model in order for an online news service to be considered a legitimate source for local governments to use for their notices.

I’m proposing to also allow notices on news websites that meet certain criteria to ensure legitimacy, but I disagree that the presence of an “E-Edition” or a traditional subscription model determines whether a news service ought to be considered “legitimate” in the eyes of the law.

My goal in HB 3431 is to get notices to where people get their news. If you are in Yachats, do you peruse the Yachats News online each day or the weekly Lincoln County Leader? In Philomath, do you read the Philomath News or the Gazette Times from Corvallis?

I believe the discussion should be about access and visibility. But predictably, the discussion is also about money. State and local governments now spend upward of $50 million a year on notices. The printed papers want to keep that income. Online news services that are increasingly filling the void in news deserts want some of it too. And for the public, papers or their sites usually require a subscription. Online sites like Philomath News and Yachats News do not.

Philomath Mayor Christopher McMorran, Yachats News publisher Quinton Smith and I testified on HB 3431 before the House Committee On Commerce and Consumer Protection.

The news media provides a critical watchdog oversight of government and we are all concerned with the quality, consolidation, or closure of our once-familiar local papers. Critics argue that my bill is one more nail in the printed paper coffin. I reply that the media is evolving and we can’t change that. An independent media should not rely on government funding. But if it does, we should support those new news sources that are increasingly supplanting the old ones.

The friction is exacerbated by the fact that many local news web pages are operated by people who once worked in nearby print journalism.

A recent OPB report detailed the evolving state of news coverage in local communities.

The amount of reporting produced in Oregon has been declining for decades — a fact that is likely unsurprising to Oregonians who have seen their newspapers thin and local coverage shrink. It’s a trend that has been playing out across the country as the business of producing journalism has faltered alongside the rise of the internet.

Employment in the newspaper industry has fallen nearly 80% since 2000.

Most Oregon counties have no more than one newspaper, website, radio or television station reporting their news. Some have none.

The result of years of consolidation and sales of local news outlets has meant that fewer companies operating out of the Pacific Northwest hold a stake in the stories produced here. Nearly half of news outlets in Oregon are now owned by companies based in other states.

HB 3431 has received one public hearing and possible amendments are now being negotiated. No further action is currently scheduled.

As Speaker Pro Tempore of the Oregon House, I frequently preside over floor sessions. But as some legislation has begun to inch out of committees and to the floor for a vote, we have renewed a tradition of inviting freshman members of the House to preside for a day. My job is to help guide, coach, and act as a safety net if something gets complicated.

Being at the front of the room is an honor but also helps new members better understand process and procedure. That makes them more effective during deliberation and debate.

That’s Representative April Dobson and I at the dais as a floor session begins.

Thursday was an interesting day in the House. Three measures were scheduled for a floor vote. And I was the floor carrier of each of them!

Two of my bills were resolutions honoring historic Oregon families who overcame slavery, prejudice and economic oppression to become valued contributors to our district communities of Waldport and Philomath. Please take a moment and listen to my floor speech on Louis Southworth here and Reuben Shipley here.

You can also hear my speech to ban greyhound race wagering in Oregon here.

Each week I try to highlight a hearing of interest to our district.

On Tuesday, the House Committee On Economic Development, Small Business, and Trade heard the -2 amendments to HB 2969. This measure would provide $840,000 to the Oregon Coast Visitors Association to encourage the development of industries to use more of our fish waste in new products.

I got funds for OCVA last session to get more Oregon seafood into Oregon restaurants. Currently only 10% of our fish served in Oregon comes from Oregon waters!

Now we’ve been studying how we can duplicate the success of the Iceland Ocean Cluster in utilizing fish for non-food product manufacturing. There they have found ways to increase the yield from a single cod fish from $12 to $4700 by adding cosmetic creams, medical enzymes, fish skin as a grafting material for burn victims, and even leathers and dog treats.

The mission of the 100% Fish Project at the Iceland Ocean Cluster is to inspire the seafood industry and seafood communities to utilize more of each fish, increase the value of each fish landed, support new business opportunities, increase employment and decrease waste.

Keeping waste out of our waters and creating new businesses strikes me as a win-win. You can learn more at the hearing here.

This story may please you, depress you, or simply amuse you.

More and more Oregonians are achieving the mystical status of millionaires. The state has nearly 6,500 tax filers who report annual income above $1 million.

That works out to approximately 1 in every 300 Oregon tax returns, according to the latest IRS data from 2022. The number of million-dollar tax returns (joint and single) has tripled since 2010.

Why so many more millions?

Well, for one thing a million dollars just isn’t what it used to be. If you were pulling in $1 million in 2022 (the most recent year for which the IRS has data), that’s the equivalent of $771,000 in 2010.

But inflation is only part of it. Income disparities are a big piece of the story, too.

In Oregon and elsewhere, wealth is accumulating at the top of the income spectrum. The share of million-dollar incomes in Oregon increased much faster between 2010 and 2022 than the share of incomes above $100,000.

That’s mostly because incomes spiked in 2021 as wealthy people cashed out their capital gains by selling stocks or other investments that were buoyed by the quick economic rebound from the pandemic and federal stimulus payments that boosted personal and corporate income.

Despite the rising numbers of wealthy Oregonians, the state remains on the low end nationally in terms of million-dollar incomes. Oregon doesn’t have many large companies based here, so the state has fewer wealthy corporate executives.

Oregon’s relatively high personal income tax, particularly for those in the top tax brackets, may play a role as well. Wealthy people looking to maximize their income might avoid Oregon for that reason.

As for the rest of us, Oregon has a higher median household income ($80,426) than the U.S. median.