Commissioners meet to discuss border move

Published 1:00 pm Friday, June 10, 2022

LA GRANDE — The Union County Board of Commissioners is being asked to work harder to get a dialogue started about the possibility of shifting the Idaho border to encompass most of Oregon and form the new state of Greater Idaho.

La Grande’s Curt Howell told the board of commissioners on Wednesday, June 8, that it should take steps to get more people talking about the proposal. Howell specifically wants the board to begin working to get legislators at the state and federal level to start talking about the proposal.

“I am here to urge you to simply write a letter to our state and federal representatives to investigate and consider the possibilities of changing where Oregon ends and Idaho begins,” Howell told the commissioners.

The June 8 meeting was one of three annual meetings focusing on Greater Idaho the commissioners are required to conduct following the passage of Measure 31-101 by Union County voters in 2020. The measure requires the commissioners to meet four times each year to discuss promoting Union County interests relating to the county becoming part of Idaho.

Howell supports the Greater Idaho movement because he said rural Oregon is being increasingly overlooked by the state government and this is hurting it economically.

“What we have witnessed in the past 40 years of power consolidation to the most populated counties or cities is that we citizens of rural Oregon have been mostly left out of any prosperity that seems to be occurring in populated areas,” Howell said.

Ken Parsons, of La Grande, also spoke at the meeting in support of the Greater Idaho movement. Parsons said the needs of rural Oregon and Washington are being overlooked and they are under-represented. Parsons said the vast majority of state representatives in Oregon and Washington live within 50 miles of the state capitals of Salem and Olympia, Washington.

Parsons, who grew up in Eastern Washington, said that years ago there was a sense of compatibility between urban and rural Oregon and Washington, but today there is only one of animosity.

Union County Commissioner Donna Beverage told Parsons that she understood how Parsons feels.

“We share your frustration about not always being heard,” she said.

Beverage added that the board of commissioners wants to help reduce the rural-urban divide that sparked the start of the Greater Idaho movement.

“We want to fix things which led to this,” she told Parsons.

Matt McCraw, of Powell Butte, another Greater Idaho supporter, addressed the commissioners by video and said the county needs start exploring what a border change could look like if it were to happen.

He stressed that for the Greater Idaho movement to get greater traction, legislators in Oregon and Idaho must begin conducting meetings on it.

“It has to happen at the state level,” he said.

Like Howell, McCraw encouraged the board of commissioners to write a letter to state representatives encouraging them to begin discussing the Greater Idaho issue.

Beverage said she is willing to consider asking the the board of commissioners to discuss writing a letter to legislators. However, Beverage said she first wants to get more input from Union County residents about how they feel about the issue. She would like people who support Greater Idaho to list reasons why they are for it and possible solutions to the problems they identify.