Scott Bruun: Time for a Spring Cleaning in Salem

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Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Scott Bruun, GoLocalPDX MINDSETTER™

Despite what they say, Ding Dongs would not survive a zombie apocalypse.

I know this because in a brief frenzy of post-holiday house cleaning, I discovered an unopened box of those Hostess gems hidden in the back of my food cupboard. I have no idea how long the box had been there.  Maybe five years, maybe more.  But hey, they’re Ding Dongs.  They’re like Twinkies, they last forever, right? So I tried one.

Bad idea.

Probably not necessary to elaborate too much on the taste and texture.  Let’s just say it was something akin to brittle Styrofoam covered in a stale, chalky Ovaltine-like powder. Or at least that’s what ran through my head as I ran to the sink to purge my experiment.

As a state, don’t we face our own stale cupboard challenge?  We have had one political party in control of Oregon’s executive branch of government for as long as most can remember.  One party in power controlling every bureau, every agency, every appointment, every employee and every administrative rule since before my high school-age daughter was born.  Long before.

Consider, the last time a Republican served as Oregon’s state treasurer or attorney general was 1992.  The last Republican to serve as Oregon governor, Vic Atiyeh, was done in 1986.  And the last Republican to serve as Oregon’s secretary of state?  The last non-Democrat to serve in the position wholly-responsible for oversight and auditing of state government?  Norma Paulus.  She finished her term in 1984.

I recently heard the word “calcified” in reference to Oregon’s state government. A description to which anyone who’s recently taken a number to wait… and wait... and wait at a DMV office can attest. But while bureaucratic inertia is certainly a problem in parts of Oregon’s government – in 2014 Oregon’s DMV was ranked “worst in the nation” for customer satisfaction - it is not the worst problem.

Worse than those long, slow lines are the aggressive, government-centric policies that have left Oregon with a tepid economy, over-priced housing and the nation’s worst high school graduation rates.  Over the decades, our elected state leaders – and the agencies they appoint and direct – have been very quick to implement progressive “solutions” to labor, environmental, and work-place issues. Solutions which have left too many middle-class families stuck in neutral.

For all intents and purposes, Oregon is now in its fourth decade of single-party rule.  Not only does this generate myopic policy, it creates opportunities for the types of scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours cronyism and corruption that have plagued other places long controlled by a single party. Places like Detroit and Chicago.

But extreme, over-the-top failures of government like Detroit are the exception.  Perhaps more pernicious are the simple, well-meaning failures of oversight that occur when everybody comes from the same camp.  We’re all friends, after all, we all trust each other.  We go to the same parties, we run in the same circles, we attend the same philanthropic events, and we were all appointed by Democrats.  We don’t like to ask each other hard questions because that might seem, well, rude. So we don’t ask.  And initiatives like Cover Oregon go sailing right along until they implode because no one on the inside wanted to broach an uncomfortable topic.

In that vein, one wonders what may have transpired differently had a friend, an insider or two, asked a few “tough love” questions of Kitzhaber over the last few years.  Where would Oregon be today had insiders and appointees been a tad more skeptical? A tad less politely complicit?  Had they done so, maybe today his friends would not be referring to John Kitzhaber as “ex-governor.” 

It’s a long-held misnomer that people serving in the U.S. military are compelled to blindly follow orders.  The fact is, our servicemen and women are taught to respectfully challenge orders that seem wrong-headed or unnecessarily dangerous.   Mission success takes priority over personal pride or ambition.

Those elected or appointed to higher-level jobs in Oregon’s government would be wise to adopt the military’s example.  Wise to put the “mission” of bettering the lives of Oregonians ahead of slavish, misplaced loyalty to high-level friends.  Otherwise, let’s hope and expect that those same Oregonians, the ones whose lives have not been bettered, will finally vote to clean-out the musty cupboard of state government.

Scott Bruun is a fifth-generation Oregonian and recovering politician. He lives with his family in the 'burbs, yet dutifully commutes every day to Portland, where he earns his living on the fifth floor of Big Pink.

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