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State legislators lauded at Allison

Transportation — Local bypass supporters thank legislators for work on funding bill

• By: David Sale  
• Published: 12/4/2009 1:27:22 PM
• Last Updated: 12/7/2009 9:26:23 AM

Photo By: Laurent BonczijkGiving thanks
House speaker Dave Hunt speaks before bypass supporters and other legislators Tuesday at the Allison Inn. Hunt and others were instrumental in passing a transportation bill that includes $192 million earmarked for the Newberg-Dundee bypass.

   The 2009 session of the Oregon Legislature ended in June and yet for several elected representatives Tuesday was the time to celebrate.
   House Speaker Dave Hunt (D-Clackamas), House and Senate transportation chairmen Terry Beyer (D-Springfield) and Rick Metzger (D-Mount Hood), state Rep. Vicki Berger (R-Salem) and Sens. Bruce Starr (R-Hillsboro) and Larry George (R-Sherwood) were the guests of honor at a reception Monday evening sponsored by the Chehalem Valley, McMinnville and Lincoln City Chambers of Commerce, and hosted at the Allison Inn.
   The legislators were honored for their efforts in crafting and working to pass House Bill 2001, also known as the “Jobs and Transportation Act,” a $300 million spending package which allocates $192 million toward the Newberg-Dundee bypass project.
   “H.B. 2001 is the signature achievement of the 2009 Legislature,” Hunt said. “I can’t help thinking back to the hours we spent on the details of the bill — it’s clear why it’s taken so long to develop a new state transportation plan. We were faced with folks on the left who don’t want to build roads and folks on the right who don’t want to fund them. It was a challenge to establish a consensus in the middle and I thank all of you for your efforts in support.”
   While the act was passed by the Legislature in May and signed into law in late July by Gov. Ted Kulongoski, supporters elected to hold off on the festivities until the session ended and the act withstood an initiative challenge in the September election. The referendum, sponsored by former state Sen. Gary George, failed to qualify for the ballot.
   “Also, we had to wait to reserve space at the Allison — they’ve had a lot of bookings,” said Leslie Lewis, who attended the event with fellow Yamhill County commissioners Kathy George and Mary Stern.
   Indeed, the event was a who’s who of local dignitaries, attended by Newberg Mayor Bob Andrews and councilors Bart Rierson, Wade Witherspoon, Stephen McKinney, Marc Shelton and Denise Bacon; Dundee Mayor Don Sundeen and councilors Ted Crawford and Ivon Miller; Marion County Commissioners Sam Brentano and Janet Carlson; members of the McMinnville and Lincoln City municipal governments, as well as city workers and businesspeople from Newberg, Dundee and McMinnville — including Allison owners Ken and Joan Austin.
   “The reason we had a successful package, without a referral, is thanks to your senator, Larry George, who played a really important role in crafting a bill that members of the Republican caucus could vote for, and I appreciate his support,” said Sen. Bruce Starr.
   While the act drew criticism both from the left and the right, George’s insistence that it contain spending earmarks for “projects of statewide importance” — including the bypass — helped secure votes in the Legislature as well as staving off a more forceful initiative challenge to the act’s six cents-per-gallon gas tax increase.
   “The next step is to keep the pressure on the executive branch,” Larry George said. “Just because the money is there doesn’t mean the the project is built.”
   In fact, bypass supporters had that morning received news that the environmental impact statement for the bypass would again have its release delayed, this time for an additional four to six months, at a Salem meeting with Oregon Department of Transportation officials.
   “Members of the Federal Highway Administration were there also,” said Dundee Mayor Don Sundeen. “They don’t need additional information, but felt there were inconsistencies in how the document was organized.”
   Tim Potter, ODOT Region 3 manager and supervisor of the bypass project, was also in attendance. “The (Federal Highway Administration) felt the draft of the EIS was not clear and consistent enough for them to grant their approval — they want something that’s not only legally defensible, but that the average man in the street can read and understand,” he said. “The draft, at about 1,000 pages assembled from several different versions, didn’t fit the bill. We thought it was ready, but they feel more work is needed.”
   Members of the Project Oversight Steering Team (POST), the local elected officials and stakeholders overseeing ODOT’s land use process, seem already to have taken George’s advice to heart.
   “Our message to them was that these delays are not acceptable,” Andrews said. “Publication of the EIS has been delayed (more than) a year already — they need to re-examine their resources.”

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