Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has an ambitious agenda for her last year in office

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has begun a series of lasts: last State of the State address and last legislative session as governor. This session is especially momentous, given that Kate Brown has been in state government in one role or another since 1991.

Governor Brown joined Dave Miller on Think Out Loud recently. You can listen to the whole interview by pressing the play arrow above.

The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Dave Miller: You outlined three priorities for this short legislative session yesterday: workforce training, child care and affordable housing. You talked about other things as well. But those were your headlines. I want to take those one by one. What exactly do you want to see in terms of workforce development?

Kate Brown: Let me take it up a little bit broader. Just to start out, our state of Oregon is truly at a turning point and we have the incredible opportunity right now to make one-time investments, to keep our economy humming and frankly also to begin to close the economic gaps that we see in our historically underserved communities.

So a number of the resources that we have available are one-time dollars and I think it’s incredibly important that we invest in the tools and the resources essentially that our working families need across the state. So in terms of workforce development, we have been working with my racial justice council community business leaders and workers to develop a package that would make significant investments in three areas. Number one: invest in current successful programs such as local workforce boards and apprenticeships and career pathways. Number two: invest in new innovative and flexible education and training opportunities across the state – this would be through a competitive grant program. And the third bucket would invest in the tools and the resources needed to remove barriers for people to participate. So it may be funding for a computer or it may be the resources to pay for tuition. It maybe support services like child care or housing support and transportation.

I shared a story of a young woman from Astoria yesterday. Her name is Alpha and she was literally supporting her family. She was working at nights and trying to finish her high school diploma and she struggled. So she approached the community college and they had both the resources and support to get her what she needed. So she could complete her GED and continue in her career training program. She wants to build ships. She is working in a seamanship program, she’s very excited and this is an amazing opportunity for her.

Dave Miller: You have identified three specific sectors here for this workforce training: money, health care, tech, and manufacturing and construction. Why those particular sectors?

Kate Brown: Well, I think folks know that Oregon entered the decade with a workforce shortage. We were short several hundred thousand workers in a number of sectors. We chose these three sectors in partnership and collaboration with the racial justice council and with the business community as these were the sectors with the greatest need and the best opportunity to make a big impact with a significant investment. We are targeting these resources to serve our historically underserved communities, those who have been left behind either due to historic or current disparities: our communities of color, our low income communities and our rural communities.

Dave Miller: But why not be more industry agnostic and say: if people want to get some kind of job training that we will help you do that, you know, even if it’s in agriculture or education or you know, hospitality?

Kate Brown: Well, we are certainly open to ideas from stakeholders and legislators during the legislative process. But you know, Dave, this is a really short session bills need to move quickly. So we want to keep this package moving forward and it’s absolutely essential that we make these critical investments now.

Dave Miller: How are you going to know that this money is working? I mean, I’m wondering about follow-up to say, you know, we spent $200 million, and X number of people actually went into these jobs as a result.

Kate Brown: Well, that’s a good question. As I mentioned, one of the buckets is to go into programs that we know have proven results. I believe that’s $92 million dollars of the $200 million dollar package. We are discussing how we can make sure Oregonians know that these investments have been effective and I think there’s a number of ways. One is, for example, to do an audit. And I think it’s really important if you do that, that you start at the current level where we are right now and assess how we’re doing, and then in a year or so assess what a difference these investments have made.

Dave Miller: I want to turn to child care. You said yesterday that one of the things you want to do is lobby to get more federal money coming to Oregon to pay for childcare. But what do you want Oregon lawmakers to do with respect to childcare?

Kate Brown: Well, here’s the good news. We’re working very closely with legislators like Representative Karin Power and Representative Jack Zika on our child care investment. These changes have really been driven in partnership with the Legislature. We know that by investing in infrastructure, we can continue to drive the economy. But to working parents, investment in child care is infrastructure. It’s absolutely essential if we want to grow our economy. And I’ll just tell you, Dave, every single employer that I talked to, they are struggling to hire workers and one of the major barriers is child care. And so we want to make sure there is adequate capacity: that every family that needs child care can access it. We want to make sure that in order to create adequate capacity that we have the workforce. But we don’t want this to be just jobs. We want this to be careers for people. We want people to be able to access professional development and to be able to grow in their chosen profession. And we also want to make sure that these are good paying jobs, good paying careers for families across the state. Here’s the harsh reality: the folks that work in the child care sector are primarily female. They are primarily people of color, and these have been the lowest paid jobs, in our economy. I would say that’s true of all of the caring economy. And if we want to make sure that we have an economy that is thriving, that is humming, that is successful, we have to make critical investments in child care and that’s what we’re going to do this session.

Dave Miller: The third priority you mentioned yesterday is affordable housing and homelessness. You pointed out that your administration has put more money towards these related issues than any other in Oregon history, but at the same time in cities all over the state, homelessness is a bigger issue now than it has ever been. What’s not working?

Kate Brown: Well, everyone can see that we have a housing crisis in Oregon. Over the next 20 years, Oregon is going to need to build over 580,000 homes just to meet our housing needs today. This year, more than 140,000 new homes are needed to meet the need for people who live in Oregon. So we also need those homes to be affordable. As I mentioned yesterday, single family home prices have tripled. Rent in Portland has gone up 25% in the last five years alone. This is not just Portland’s issue. Statewide, nearly a third of all renters pay more than a third of their income to rent. And we know every single day there are 15,000 people in Oregon who don’t have a home and more than half of these are unsheltered. This crisis was decades in the making, but we know the solutions that work. These are literally resources on the ground: it is shelter, it is providing permanent supportive housing, it is investing in affordable housing, it is investing in rental assistance, working with our local community action agencies and Oregon Housing Community Services. Over the last year, we got over $400 million dollars in rental assistance out the door. But it is still a challenge and I think it’s an all-hands-on-deck situation. And the good news is, we’re working collaboratively with our local partners to do as much as we can. But right now this February, we have an opportunity with the resources that we have available at the state level to make a $400 million dollar investment in affordable housing and homelessness prevention. This should be a top priority for the Legislature and for the state of Oregon.

Dave Miller: I want to turn to COVID. Hospitals right now are still in the middle of the omicron wave, but cases are going down, so hopefully hospitalizations will soon follow. What are you imagining post-omicron Oregon is going to look like?

Kate Brown: Well, my goal throughout the pandemic was to keep Oregonians safe, make sure that our hospitals had adequate staffing to meet the urgent needs of medical care and that students were staying in school full time with minimal disruptions. Obviously during omicron that’s been incredibly challenging. We have right now hundreds of national guards members and close to 2000 contract staff supporting our healthcare workers. So we are still focused on making sure we are meeting our healthcare staffing needs. What I have to tell you, Dave, is that Oregonians have stepped up. Oregonians across the state have worked incredibly hard to comply with our safety protocol and that’s been truly extraordinary and as a result, we have some of the best outcomes of any state in the country as we move forward as we transition to normal reality, whatever that looks like. I think we want to go forward to a place where we can hang out with friends and feel comfortable. We want to make sure that our small businesses are thriving and, speaking for myself, I want to be able to go to events. And we want to be able to do this safely. And the key to that is to continue our efforts around vaccinations and boosters. Oregon has done well. We are ranked in the top 10 in terms of getting boosters and vaccines in arms. But I think moving forward, our focus needs to be, and should be, on building a more just and equitable Oregon and that’s where I’m going to be focused.

Dave Miller: How low will case rates or hospitalization numbers need to be for you to rescind Oregon’s indoor mask mandate?

Kate Brown: Well, as you know, this is done through the Oregon Health Authority and they are working on a plan. And I anticipate that that will be released in the next week or so.

Dave Miller: In less than a year. You’re not going to be governor anymore. Do you feel the clock ticking?

Kate Brown: I felt that clock ticking throughout my tenure as governor. This has been an incredible honor and opportunity. I am so excited every single day, every single moment, to continue working to make life better for working families across the state. This session is truly going to be a bittersweet session for me, I’ve been fully engaged in the legislative process since 1991. I grew up in the capital, made lifelong friends there, am incredibly honored to make a difference - through the work we have done together, the passage of the Student Success Act, the efforts to tackle climate change and our budding work around racial justice. I created the racial justice council in spring 2020. This has been an incredibly interesting tool to look at how we center the voices of Black and brown Oregonians, not just in policy making, but in budget making, in our decision making processes. So I’m going to continue to stay engaged every day. Every moment is an opportunity to continue to work to make Oregon a better place for everyone.