Candidates for the Oregon Legislature, including a former city councilor and mayor, stressed education, health care and the economy during a forum at a Jefferson Westside Neighbors meeting Tuesday night.
Each candidate received five minutes to speak and five minutes to answer questions from people in attendance.
Nancy Nathanson, Democrat candidate for the 13th District of the Oregon House of Representatives, said her three main issues are schools, health and public safety. If elected, Nathanson would replace Democrat Robert Ackerman, who is retiring from the seat in January 2007.
Nathanson, a former member of the Eugene City Council, said she is running for the open seat because she believes the government has gotten off track in dealing with the state’s problems.
Education is one of her main platform issues because it affects the state’s economy in the long-run, she said.
“We’re doing real harm to our state through disinvestment,” Nathanson said. “We’re paying for it now, but in the future we’re really going to pay for it.”
State Rep. Paul Holvey, D-Eugene, said he strongly supported access to affordable health care and that he would continue to advocate for access and to streamline the system to reduce costs.
Highlighting the environment and natural resources, Holvey said he worked on legislation to identify which pesticides are being used in Oregon and that work still needs to be done to strengthen the provisions that would allow for greater detail in identifying what pesticides are sprayed and where.
Holvey said he also planned to introduce legislation to eliminate field burning, which he said negatively affects air quality.
Republican candidates Monica Johnson, who is running against Nathanson, and Andrew Hill, who is running against Holvey, did not attend the meeting.
Republican candidate Jim Torrey and Ore. Sen. Vicki Walker, D-Eugene, both presented their platforms.
Torrey, a former Eugene mayor and city councilor, said his No. 1 priority has always been children of the community.
Torrey’s education priorities primarily stress kindergarten and elementary education by encouraging a full school day for kindergarten, making sure children can read at grade level by the 3rd grade and by making sure every child has an opportunity to participate in Head Start.
“I want to make sure our children are prepared for the future that they are going to be living in, and that future is different than the future of the vast majority of people in this room,” Torrey said.
Torrey said he also wanted to focus on the 70 percent of high school students who don’t attend college by encouraging trade skills.
In response to a criticism about the Oregon Republican party’s platform on education, Torrey said his aim was to represent all Oregonians.
Walker said that out of 139 bills she had worked on, 59 had become law. She said her work as chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Education and Workforce and on adding children to the Oregon Health Plan marked her work in the Legislature.
“There is still a whole lot to do,” Walker said.
Republican challenger Bill Eddie and State Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-South Lane and North Douglas, sparred over land-use policy.
Eddie, who described his political affiliation only as “American,” said the biggest issue he sees in Lane County is a poverty rate of about 6.5 percent.
He said the Legislature could modify land-use regulations and urban growth boundaries, allowing for “reasonable growth” for communities.
By expanding boundaries to create a 20-year supply of land for growth, which Eugene doesn’t have, cities would be allowed to grow without needlessly creating urban sprawl, he said.
Prozanski said that instead of expanding urban growth boundaries, the state needs to get the federal government, which owns 54 percent of Oregon land, to pay its fair share.
Prozanski said Oregon’s ranking as 31st in the nation for school funding from kindergarten to 12th grade is affecting the economy because it has made businesses decide not to invest in the state.
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