Malheur County voters have a choice to get rid of an ordinance requiring meetings on Greater Idaho

Voters in Malheur County have a measure on their ballots that would get rid of a county ordinance that compels officials to meet and discuss shifting the Idaho border to include rural Oregon. The ordinance, approved by voters in 2021, requires the county judge and commissioners to meet three times a year to discuss how to promote the interests of the county in any negotiations to relocate the Idaho-Oregon border. We talk to David Armstrong, who helped get Measure 23-74 on the ballot. We also hear from Matt McCaw, Executive Director of Move Oregon’s Border/Greater Idaho, which initially pushed for the ordinance.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB,. I’m Dave Miller. Malheur County leaders have to get together three times every year to talk about how to promote the interests of the county in any negotiations to relocate the Idaho-Oregon border, that’s required under an ordinance that voters passed in 2021. It was part of the broader Greater Idaho movement, the push to have a big chunk of Oregon split off from Oregon and tacked onto Idaho. Now Malheur County voters will have an opportunity to backtrack. Measure 23-74 would remove the meeting requirement. It was put forward by people who say that these meetings have not really been working. In a few minutes we’ll talk to the executive director of the group that initially pushed for the ordinance. First, I’m joined by David Armstrong – he wants to scrap it. David Armstrong, welcome.

David Armstrong: Thank you.

Miller: Why did you bring this measure?

Armstrong: So, I’m one of three chief petitioners for Measure 23-74. And together the three of us, me, Blu Fortner, and Christine Hood, were having a discussion. And we thought that the border move was unrealistic. We wanted to focus our community and our energy on more productive ways to make change, and better represent the needs and concerns of our community.

Miller: Can you give us a sense for what these meetings have been like?

Armstrong: I’ve attended a number of them, and the other chief petitioners have also attended many of them. In the meetings that I’ve attended, we’ve had no real significant process or progress in the discussions about Greater Idaho. In fact, the last meeting was predominantly proponents of overturning the original measure to meet to promote relocating the Oregon-Idaho border. So in the vast majority of these meetings, they’ve just been very boring, almost nothing meetings.

Miller: And just to be clear, these are stand alone meetings. It’s not like you could just have an agenda item on an existing county court meeting?

Armstrong: Correct. These are three meetings that are separate from normal county business. And one of the things that we’ve looked at in the measure to repeal it is that this doesn’t stop our county from continuing any discussions during their normal business. This really just pulls it away from having a meeting where we all have to get together and kind of waste county resources.

Miller: What have you heard from county commissioners or the county judge, the actual elected leaders themselves?

Armstrong: They have not publicly said one way or the other. But overall, the sense that I’ve had in just some conversations I’ve had with those around the meetings is that it feels a bit like a waste of time. But again, I’m not speaking on behalf of them. They’ve been pretty quiet about their opinion on this issue.

Miller: Just to drill down, you touched on this briefly, but I do want to get you, again, on the record about this. Clearly, you don’t want the county court to have to talk about this. But what about the underlying idea here, the notion of Eastern Oregon, and actually a big chunk of Central Oregon, splitting off from Oregon and becoming a part of Idaho?

Armstrong: You know, I’ve thought a lot about this. In 2021, I was on the fence on this issue. I didn’t see harm in talking about it. But the longer I’ve thought and the more that I’ve had time to look at what the costs would be, I felt like for Malheur County this issue was going to be really poor, really a bad decision for Malheur County. There are other counties in Oregon where this decision might actually have positive economic results. But if you were to look at Greater Idaho’s own economic analysis that they’ve shared with the public, by Points Consulting, it really looks like Malheur County takes the brunt of a lot of negative consequences. So the longer I’ve thought about it, the more I felt like this was a bit like a divorce, without looking at how the assets were divided. And I wasn’t even certain who was representing my interests in the process.

Miller: Do you have a different suggestion for the other way to look at this, the other purpose of this, which is to put Eastern Oregon’s concerns more squarely on the radar of state leaders? If the actual divorce, as you say, is not what you’d support, what other ways do you see to accomplish something that’s at the root issue here?

Armstrong: From my perspective, I think there’s a couple of root issues, but predominantly there’s that rural/urban divide. When you’re in Malheur County, you often feel that Salem doesn’t listen to you.

Now, I say you feel that way. I’ve talked with our state representatives and senators, and I think we do get listened to at times. I think there’s just bigger issues that we have to go back to the state and say “these are still impacting us.” And we need to, as citizens of our communities, continue to engage in the process at the state level. I think that’s gonna be the area where that will make the most improvements, and really where we can have things that improve our communities and our counties.

Miller: Dave Armstrong, thanks so much. That is Dave Armstrong. He’s the chief petitioner of Measure 23-74. It would remove the requirement that county leaders in Malheur County meet three times a year to talk about moving Oregon’s border to join Idaho.

Matt McCaw joins us now. He is the executive director of Move Oregon’s Border/Greater Idaho, which initially pushed for that requirement. Matt, welcome to the show.

Matt McCaw: Thanks for having me.

Miller: Why did you push for this ordinance three years ago?

McCaw: Our organization was started by just a grassroots group of people sitting around a pizza parlor, trying to figure out long-term solutions to this long standing problem that we’ve had in the state of Oregon, which is this urban/rural divide. The west side of the state is a completely different geography, culture, politics, economy than the east side of the state. And so what people on the east side of the state tend to vote for and want is polar opposite of what people on the west side of the state, especially the northwest part of the state, tend to vote for. And so we’ve had this long standing kind of urban/rural divide in the state of Oregon. And we’re looking for solutions. People have been looking for solutions to that for a long time.

So our group, the Greater Idaho Movement/Move Oregon’s Border, said, what if we took that imaginary line that’s now along the Snake River and then south of that over on the eastern border of Oregon, and moved it to where the actual geographic and cultural divide in our state is, which is the Cascade mountain range? And we allow all these people in Eastern Oregon who overwhelmingly vote like people of Idaho, tend to make their living the way of Idahoans do, and have similar culture to the people of Idaho, let’s move that line and allow those people to get state government that they vote for consistently, which is the state government that Idaho has, and not the kind of state government that Oregon has.

So we had this idea. We thought it was a good idea. But what we really needed to know is what do the people of Oregon think about this, especially the people of Eastern Oregon? So we started going to every Eastern Oregon county, and asking commissioners to ask their voters, or starting petitions to get a question in front of voters asking them if they wanted their elected leaders to look at moving the border. That process started in 2019. The first counties in Oregon to vote on Greater Idaho were in 2020. Malheur County voted in 2021. There’s some language about what sorts of citizen led initiatives you can do in the state of Oregon. So we would have loved to go to the people of Malheur County and just say “Do you want Malheur County to be part of Idaho? Would you like your elected leaders to pursue making Malheur County part of Idaho?” But we cannot do that as a citizen-led initiative. So what we had to do is we had to approximate the closest question we could, which is, “Do you want to require your elected leaders to meet so many times a year, to promote Malheur County’s interests in a future border move?” That’s how these meetings came to be.

Malheur County commissioners and the public have been meeting now for three years. These meetings have kind of run their course, they’ve run their usefulness. We’re not opposing the removal of the meetings, our organization. There’s other counties who have decided to do away with the meetings. People can always bring up the Greater Idaho issue. We have good relationships with commissioners across Eastern Oregon, they would be willing to put us on any agenda whenever we would ask for it.

Miller: Let me ask you this. As you said, you’re not opposing this right now. What good do you think has come from these required meetings?

McCaw: Well, I think that there’s been a lot of good. And one of those things is that people have had a chance to actually talk to their elected representatives about this, and they’ve been able to be informed about what the process of this might look like. They’ve been able to bring up specific issues. Every county in Eastern Oregon has slightly different specific issues that matter to the people there. And these meetings have given us a forum to do that. These meetings have given us a forum for our commissioners, our elected leaders, our local elected leaders who aren’t clear about what the process has been for moving a border, to get familiar with that, and to understand how this could happen.

And for your listeners Dave, our local counties don’t have a say in whether a border moves or not. The only way to change a state border is between the two state legislatures. And any two state legislatures can come together and agree to move a border from point A to point B if it works for both states, if it benefits both states. That’s the process …

Miller: I thought that Congress also has to vote?

McCaw: Congress has to approve it. It’s called an interstate compact – two states draw up essentially a contract, and then that would go back to the U.S. Congress to be signed off on.

So that’s the process. Our local counties, their role is only as an advisory role. And these meetings have been good in that sense. We’ve been very informational for the public, very informative for our commissioners. But we also understand that after three years of meeting, and our state legislature hasn’t moved this forward at all, there’s not a lot further for county commissioners to go in some of these counties.

Miller: What’s next then, what do you plan to do to move this ball forward?

McCaw: Well, what‘s next is we have to get the Oregon Legislature to move forward. The state of Idaho, the state House, has already approved a memorial inviting the state of Oregon to begin border talks. The governor of Idaho came out a couple of weeks ago and publicly stated that he supported border talks. The people of Eastern Oregon are voting to start border talks. Our Oregon Legislature is not moving this forward, they are blocking voters’ wishes. And so our next step is, like we did in 2023, we’ll be at the Oregon Legislature with a memorial, asking the state of Oregon, asking the state of Idaho to begin border talks, and advocating for what people in Eastern Oregon are saying they want, which is an opportunity to pursue joining Idaho.

Miller: Matt McCaw, thanks very much.

McCaw: Thank you.

Miller: Matt McCaw is the executive director of Move Oregon’s Border/Greater Idaho.

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