Add the Columbia River Gorge Commission to the list of casualties as Washington and Oregon grapple with their respective state budget crises.
Funding cuts from the two states over the past two years have forced the bistate panel to reduce its staff from 10.5 full-time employees to the equivalent of six, and another cut of $40,000 — equal to half a year’s salary and benefits — is expected within weeks. Those remaining have taken cuts in pay and hours. For the first time, the commission has no full-time senior planner, and staff attorney Jeff Litwak took a voluntary four-month unpaid leave of absence to help the commission through tight times.
Jill Arens, the commission’s executive director, announced two weeks ago that the commission’s White Salmon office will close Fridays effective Dec. 10 to save money in the face of plummeting revenue.
“Our staff has steadily been reduced,” said Joyce Reinig of Hood River, Ore., who chairs the 13-member bistate panel. “We are trying to provide the services that people expect, but there are some things we won’t be able to do. I have to commend the staff for hanging in there.”
“We have so many part-timers now that they weren’t all at work at the same time,” said Harold Abbe of Camas, the commission’s vice chairman. The new schedule is expected to raise efficiency.
The commission was established by Congress in 1987 to oversee management of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. It gets all its operating revenue from the two states. Each state must contribute an identical amount, so a budget cut enacted by one legislature triggers an equal cut by the other.
Before the latest cuts in the current budget cycle, the commission was getting $750,000 annually in operating revenue — $375,000 from each state.
“Our budget is so small we don’t even show up as a percent” in state budgets, Reinig said. “If we get a $25,000 reduction, that’s $50,000. That’s someone’s job.”
At one time the commission received a combined $1 million annually from the two states, she said.
The commission is charged with developing and amending the management plan for the scenic area, which encompasses 292,500 acres and stretches 83 miles across parts of six counties in Washington and Oregon, including a small slice of Clark County east of Washougal.
To fulfill its charge of protecting scenic vistas, natural resources, recreation and cultural sites in the gorge, the commission and its staff review development decisions on rural private land within the scenic area boundaries and directly enforce restrictions on development in rural Klickitat County, which has never adopted its own scenic area ordinance.
The commission revised some portions of its 1992 management plan beginning in 2002. Among other things, it relaxed restrictions on establishment of bed-and-breakfast inns and wine-tasting rooms in rural parts of the gorge. But it put off other issues, including an update of its recreation plan and agricultural land designations, for lack of funding.
“It’s mandated every 10 years, but we aren’t going to be doing plan review over the next couple of years because we don’t have the staff,” Reinig said.
“The best thing we can do for the next few years is just show the flag, not take on any new projects at all,” Abbe agreed.
Reinig said one saving grace is that the recession has cooled economic activity and development proposals in the gorge.
“The critical issue will be when the economy starts to come back. People are going to come forward and they’re going to have applications.”
Reinig believes there’s a general misunderstanding of the commission’s role.
“People think, ‘You’ve got your management plan, there is no reason for a gorge commission anymore,’ ” she said. “But we are the ones who hear appeals and review policies. The scenic area is a living, breathing thing. It’s constantly changing.”
Although the commission is not a state agency, both states treat it as one, piling on paperwork and demanding things like performance audits and budgetary standards.
“It requires one person full-time to manage all the paperwork that is demanded from both states,” Reinig said.
Then there are irritants like the Washington executive order that bars out-of-state travel — for a staff that is required by law to hold meetings in both Washington and Oregon.
The commission’s top priority these days is its Vital Signs Indicator Project. It’s the first effort to measure the health of the scenic area, from the quality of vistas at scenic viewpoints to the effect of ambient light on the night sky, and from the fragmentation of wildlife habitat to water quality in gorge streams, using objective, science-based standards.
With so few resources, the commission is exploring other options to fund the project.
Gorge Commissioner Don Bonker, a former congressman from Washington’s 3rd District, arranged meetings for Arens and Reinig in Washington, D.C., last March with members of the Northwest congressional delegation. They pitched the possibility that the federal government could pick up funding for Vital Signs. The Forest Service already is a partner.
Vital Signs “has considerable value, not only for fulfilling the act’s purposes, but a much broader benefit for both states,” Bonker said. The data the project will collect “really becomes a base of knowledge that will bring value in a number of areas,” he said. “We’ve never really had that kind of information.”
Reinig said commissioners are interested in discussing with Congress a change in the law regarding how the commission is funded — once the economy improves.
Individual commissioners are working to better explain the commission’s role to state legislators. Abbe, a retired labor lobbyist who was appointed to the commission by Gov. Chris Gregoire, is working with the Washington Legislature. He has low expectations for the upcoming session. “Everybody has to share in the pain,” he said, “but we would hope that everyone would recognize that we get double cuts.”
Arens, Reinig and former Oregon Gov. Barbara Roberts, also a gorge commissioner, will be reaching out to the Oregon Legislature.
The commission narrowly escaped losing all funding during the 2010 Legislature. Southwest Washington legislators came to its rescue. Arens noted that because the commission was created by a bistate compact, one state could not just walk away.
“There is no termination clause in the compact,” she said at the time. “Without a commission, there really isn’t a way to implement the law in a consistent and coordinated way. To defund it would be a breach of contract between the two states.”
