Contentious Issues

I try not to use my blog to promote political issues. It has been my goal to be as neutral as possible when sharing information about the natural resources of our area, the owning of farm animals, landowner rights and the political contentions that bombard us from our towns, states and federal policymakers. I wanted to share an issue that has become something very worrisome to many Oregonians. It revolves around a bill that is trying to be passed at the Capitol of our State.

Rather than describe my views in this forum, I would like to share a story from a local logger, land owner, businessman and History Channel celebrity, Mike Pihl. This story comes from Mike’s Facebook Page and I am reprinting his posted words. You can see his pictures and more information on his site.

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I’ll write my own story:

Dear Oregon,
I started out picking strawberries for our neighbors at 6 years old, and graduated to picking black caps at 10. From then, I moved to hauling hay and working on a dairy.
When I was 15, I paid cash for my first tractor. By the time I graduated from high school, I had all the implements to pull behind my tractor and a combine – all bought with cash!
After graduating, the logging bug got ahold of me. I worked for several local loggers, then went to a logging camp in Southeast Alaska. I saved my money and paid cash for my first logging machine at 22.
Today, 38 years later, I’m in the fight of my life.

When I first heard about House Bill 2020, the 2019 Cap and Trade bill, it caught my attention. I read a 2-page flyer about the bill and thought “this sounds great”! I wanted to know more than what the flyer provided, so I printed off all 98 pages of the bill and flipped to the last page. On the last page was an “emergency clause”. I found out that when the Oregon legislature uses an “emergency clause” in a bill, it means that Oregonians can’t refer the bill to the voters for approval. I didn’t like that, so I read the entire bill at least 10 times.
What I discovered when I read the bill was that it was so open-ended and vague, and had so many government agencies involved, that I was having a hard time making any sense of it. So I started asking around, and discovered most of the other business owners I talked to that were following the bill couldn’t understand it either. That bothered me.
You better believe it when I say we need to protect our home and planet. But taxing and regulating the timber operators out of business is no way to accomplish that task. Fortunately, there was a growing group of others in rural Oregon, many in the timber industry, who were very concerned about House Bill 2020 and its impact on their communities and their jobs. So “TIMBERUNITY” was formed.
We rallied twice in Salem during the 2019 legislative session to voice our concerns about the cap and trade bill. Fortunately, we were successful, in part because our rallies were done in a peaceful and orderly fashion. We didn’t wear masks, bring baseball bats, throw bottles, or act in a way that invited trouble. Our parents taught us better than that.
After the legislature went home and House Bill 2020 was defeated, I spent $450,000 on a clean-emission timber harvesting machine for my logging business, to replace the less efficient and “dirtier” machine I had been using. After hearing that the legislature was going to bring back a brand new cap and trade bill
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in 2020, I’m starting to wonder if I would have been better off just to keep my old machine with high hours and mechanical issues.
Most Oregonians don’t appreciate that we already have thousands of carbon eating machines in Oregon. They’re called fir trees, and they do their work all day, every day, unregulated by the State of Oregon. I’ve harvested thousands of those trees in my career, and replanted many more trees than I’ve harvested – it’s the law, and it works well.

Unfortunately, the Oregon legislature is back with Senate Bill 1530, a new cap and trade bill that is very similar to House Bill 2020. If this bill passes, Oregonians can expect their fuel costs to rise tremendously. Under House Bill 2020, the legislature’s fiscal office estimated that gas prices would rise from 19 to 72 cents in the first year alone, with prices climbing higher as each year passed.
Imagine that – paying an additional 72 cents a gallon for gas in the first year alone. For companies like mine, the increased gas costs would bankrupt us. Plus, our utility rates would rise by double digits as well.
The goal of the legislators sponsoring the cap and trade bill is to force Oregonians away from gas powered engines and into electric vehicles. I have no problem with electric vehicles, but they don’t make electric machines for most jobs in my industry, and most Oregonians can’t afford an electric car for their day-to-day activities. In rural Oregon, electric cars are difficult to use, due to the long distances that people travel each day. We just aren’t the same as people in big cities with short commutes.

If you add the costs of a new cap and trade bill to the corporate activity tax that the Oregon legislature approved last year, companies like mine won’t make it. I already missed paying myself many times last year after paying my employees and business expenses, because of the increased taxes and fees from the Oregon legislature. I don’t know how much more “anti-business” I can take from Salem. I don’t want a handout – I just don’t want to be run out of business because of new taxes and fees crafted by the legislature each year. Please, give small business a break.

Now that we’re in the short session and the same legislators are back with the new cap and trade bill, the very best family-wage jobs in rural Oregon are once again on the line. On February 6, TIMBERUNITY held another rally at the Capitol in Salem. This time, we had 1,100 trucks and 10,000 rural Oregonians in attendance – all concerned stewards of the land, and all petrified of losing the last of our high paying rural jobs. And we’ll keep coming back as long as we have to!

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We all care about the environment, but cap and trade is a bad idea. If the Oregon legislature is going to pass Senate Bill 1530, the least it can do is send the bill to the Oregon voters and let us make our case to all Oregon voters. Once they understand what the bill does to their rural neighbors, they’ll join us and demand a better solution.
TIMBERUNITY President
Mike Pihl

Thank you for allowing me to share this story with you, my readers. If you want to know my own views of this story, I would be happy to share them with you but would do that off-line and away from my blog posts.