The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department is in a serious budget crisis, which will escalate into full-blown inability to meet daily operational expenses in the 27-29 biennium if it is not addressed now. The initial gap between revenue and expenses was about $36 million in this 25-27 biennium, which Parks has been working to reduce down to $20 million or so — still far too large to close easily. How did this happen? Inflation and labor costs, partly; but also the trigger in the 2010 Lottery re-authorization that mandated a doubling in local government grants when dedicated lottery revenue grew 50% higher than its level in 2009-2011. This has simply meant that lottery funds that would go to state park operations, maintenance and acquisitions go instead to the grant program. But OPRD has no new revenue sources adequate to fill this gap, and the agency is teetering on the brink.

The current 25-27 Parks budget contains no new spending, in order to keep this revenue-expenditure gap as small as possible. Parks is also asking the Legislature to (a) refrain from adding any new unfunded programs (these increase expenditures); and (b) refrain adding new discount programs (these reduce revenue) to OPRD this biennium. These actions will assist the department in narrowing the gap, and avoid dipping too far into its emergency reserves. Parks is trying to find ways of increasing revenue in the 25-27 biennium with that goal in mind.

But this does not solve the looming crisis, which will get much worse in the next biennium, 27-29, if it is not addressed in this biennium. Simply speaking: OPRD needs a new, stable revenue source to provide it with adequate operational monies in the future, and maintain its emergency reserves. Because the Legislature has made Parks use the lottery revenues as their principal revenue source — combined with the mandated expansion of the local government grant program — the current funding is not enough. It is essential to have the unpopular conversation about new funding sources now, before the crisis hits. Simply raising park fees cannot be the solution, as it places parks out of reach of many potential visitors.

Concern about OPRD’s problems is spreading. The Audits Division of the Secretary of State’s office released its Audits Plan for 2025-26. The Parks Department is targeted for an audit looking at “OPRD governance and strategic objectives, goals…assessing the ability of OPRD to meet its mission considering its current funding…and identifying a funding model that might be suitable for Oregon.” ORCA hopes this audit will highlight Parks’ problems and lead the way towards finding a longterm, stable funding source that will keep our cherished parks system in good health for decades to come. One only wishes the agency had signaled their deep financial troubles earlier, so there would be less of a crisis, and more time to research alternatives.

Sen. Brock Smith of Curry County regularly files a large variety of bills affecting the environment, the coast and the south coast region. This year he has sponsored more than any other Senator. Two of these bills this session are both very problematic.

The Keiser golf course: SB 877, cosponsored with Rep. Boice, who also represents the same region, would bypass the land use laws on farmland protection to site the Keiser golf course at New River south of Bandon. Currently this golf course was approved by the Coos County Board of Commissioners, and ORCA has appealed the approval to the Land Use Board of Appeals. SB 877 has been referred to the Senate Committee on Energy and Environment, but has not been scheduled for a hearing. Special interest bills to ensure a developer’s pet project gets built are not only a nuisance: they create loopholes in the land use laws that make the laws increasingly unwieldy. They also limit the applicability of the laws to those who cannot afford to get special exemptions. This is a very bad policy precedent, as the land use system applies apply equally to everyone.

Bioengineering: SB 504 is a perennial bill that Sen. Smith introduces every year. It would require the Department of Land Conservation and Development to incorporate the use of “soil bioengineering systems" for shoreline stabilization in estuaries, coastal shorelands and the ocean shore. The rules the agency would make have to be separate from existing rules on shoreline protection and stabilization. Though the bill has some good aspects — such as the requirement that it fit in with the existing land use laws — it introduces a wholly new, alien term into the statutes, one that is undefined and has no legal relationship to all the other definitions on shoreline management. This bill has recently had an initial hearing before the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Wildfire.

There are four important agriculture-related bills that ORCA strongly supports, as they would help agriculture in the coastal region as well as elsewhere. These are:

• SB 73 Requires local governments to use the existing statutory planning process in ORS 215.788-794 to rezone designated agricultural and forest land for residential and industrial development. In other words: no spot zoning one-offs; decision-makers need to look at the total area under consideration.

• SB 78 limits the scale of replacement dwelling in ag and forest zones to be consistent with that of the dwelling being replaced, so that it is truly a replacement dwelling and not merely a new nonfarm dwelling. This will limit the large mansions one sees popping up on farmland — a problems poised to grow by leaps and bounds on the north coast, in forest-zoned lands on the flanks of the Coast Range facing the sea, among other areas.

• SB 79 prohibits new houses that have nothing to do with agriculture or forest management from being built in critical groundwater areas, priority wildlife habitat and migration corridors, and on high‐value farmland. This will help limit new buildings in areas already facing groundwater difficulties, such as in some cranberry-growing areas in Coos County.

• SB 77 restores the intent of Oregon’s home occupation statute to allow homeowners to run small inconspicuous businesses, such as bookkeeping or small-scale childcare services, as accessory uses in homes located in farm and forest zones. Unlike the agritourism provisions in ORS 215.283(4)(agritourism events), 215.283(1)(o)(farm stands), and 215.461 (guest ranches), state law does not require home occupations to be related to agriculture or to tourism. ORS 215.488. This bill makes the priority be the home “residence,” and not the home occupation, which must remain secondary.