Thu, 07/01/2021 - 10:21
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arran
Oregon’s legislature has become increasingly dramatic in recent years. The last several sessions have featured high-profile walkouts by the Republican super-minority, which has stalled consideration of important business like climate change legislation and, in the early 2020 short session, preparation for the COVID-19 pandemic. The drama in Salem reached its climax with violent protestors breaching the State Capitol in December of 2020 at the apparent invitation of Rep. Mike Nearman, who opened the door for them. This terrible event was a preview for the horrific attack on the US Capitol a few weeks later on January 6.
One of the victims of right-wing antics has been the passage of bills dealing with wildfire and community preparedness. Oregon’s default policy on fire and fire preparedness has long boiled down to “logging, logging, and more logging,” a status quo that was demonstrated to be wildly insufficient and wrongheaded when the 2020 Labor Day Fires spread. During that historic weather event, fire ignored the boundaries of where logging had or had not occurred and science suggests industrial logging makes fires burn more severely.