The Emerald editorial board, composed of Print Managing Editor McKenna Brown, Digital Managing Editor Josephine Woolington, and copy chiefs Ponta Abadi and myself, got the opportunity to have a short meeting Wednesday morning with Rep. Peter DeFazio, who represents the southwest region of Oregon.
Because he’s on the transportation committee in the House, I thought he’d have an interesting perspective on what’s been going on recently with the EmX — which this week got approved by a 5-1 vote in LTD’s board.
As it turns out, he did. He started out with an interesting note, that the most recent batch of congressional republicans had an initial draft budget that would have zeroed out increases in mass transit, which would have severely limited any direction the EmX would have wanted to take.
He added, interestingly, that while he agreed with Bus Rapid Transit expansion, West 11th Avenue wouldn’t have been his first direction to take.
Meanwhile, as they’ve been approved at the city and LTD levels, he said there’s a chance now while the expansion is still in concept, to talk with business owners and minimize some of the controversy.
Then we went to student debt. DeFazio said that while every dollar going into subsidized bank loans has a return of about 83 cents, direct loans have a chance of returning more than a dollar. He is very much in support of keeping interest rates low and continuing to offer direct loans.
Look for more of his ideas on student debt in Emerald reporter Dashiell Paulson’s Q-and-A with DeFazio that should be appearing in Monday’s Emerald.