Editor’s note: Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5. Stay informed with OPB on the presidential race, key congressional battles and other local contests and ballot measures in Oregon and Southwest Washington at opb.org/elections.
Deschutes County offices in Bend, Ore., on May 19, 2020.
Emily Cureton / OPB
The Deschutes County Commission is made up of three commissioners. This November, voters will decide if they want to add two more people to the governing body.
Ballot measure 9-173 will ask voters, “Should Deschutes County Commission be expanded to include five members?”
Backers of the measure have argued it would give roughly 208,000 residents in Central Oregon more balanced representation, with better fiscal oversight over a nearly $730 million county budget. Opponents have said paying the salaries and benefits for two more, full-time commissioners would be costly and unnecessary, among other criticisms.
Related: What you need to know about voting in Oregon and Southwest Washington
The effort to get the initiative onto the ballot was led by Bend resident, business owner and political activist, John Heylin.
Heylin likens the moment when he took charge of the process to the scene in the movie “Animal House,” in which John Belushi’s character Bluto makes a rousing speech to motivate his friends to party.
“We just needed one person to just be like, ‘All right, I’m doing it!’” Heylin said.
It took him about seven months to get enough signatures to send the measure to local ballots, he said. About 8,000 people signed the petition.
“People from all walks of life are frustrated with the county and how it’s being operated,” he said.
Heylin’s frustrations include the fact that two commissioners can’t meet up to discuss county business ahead of meetings. Doing so would violate the state’s public meeting laws.
Related: Issues important to Oregon voters
A larger commission, he said, would let commissioners come to meetings more prepared because a commission of five would legally allow two people to discuss county business without requiring them to announce it as a public meeting.
Heylin said a decision to lower the county’s assessed property tax rates in 2018 highlighted the need for more voices in decision-making.
Current county commissioner Phil Chang called the rate reduction a “political stunt” that didn’t save homeowners very much money but did cause the county to miss out on about 10 million in revenue that was needed for a courthouse expansion.
When it came time for a new wing to be built onto the county courthouse, Chang said the county had to borrow more money for the project.
Chang, who supports the measure to increase the number of commissioners, said the courthouse expansion was an example of “very poor fiscal management by the board of commissioners” that will cost current and future Deschutes county taxpayers, “millions and millions of dollars.”
Related: Listen to 'OPB Politics Now'
County commissioner Tony DeBone does not support the measure to expand the number of commissioners because of the cost of paying two more salaries. He also takes issue with the fact that commissioners won’t be representing specific areas within the county.
But, DeBone said, the decision is “up to the voters.”
Heylin said he talked to the county clerk about adding language to the ballot measure to create representative districts, and he was told that he would have to start over and collect signatures for a second initiative.
“I can’t take that on,” Heylin said.
Chang said it’s within the board of commissioner’s powers to put a question on a ballot and ask voters if districts should be created.
“If they really wanted to give the voters a choice on that,” said Chang, “they could do that at any time.”
This isn’t the first time organizers in the county have tried to expand the size of the commission. A similar effort failed in 2006.