Wallowa County, Ore. Prepares for Greater Idaho vote

Voters in Wallowa County, Oregon, are preparing for a May referendum on whether to instruct its County Commissioners to discuss a possible compact to join the State of Idaho.

Wallow County divided

KREM-TV (Channel 2, CBS, Spokane, Wash.) reports that the referendum has divided residents of Wallowa County. Local residents succeeded in putting the question on the ballot in January. The Greater Idaho Movement backed the measure, and claims the support of 11 other Oregon counties east of the Cascades. Wallowa County has borders in common with Idaho and Washington State.

KREM interviewed two county residents for their opinion. One said simply the urban-dwelling officials in Salem, the capital, won’t listen to rural Oregonians’ concerns. These came to a head when, as he charged, Southern Californians moved into the State and changed its agricultural character for the worse.

Salem, the legislature, they didn’t really hear what we were hollering, you know, raising our hands and saying, “We have a problem here” and they wouldn’t hear it.

The problem has worsened. In 2004 then-Governor Ted Kulongoski (D-Ore.) signed an executive order creating an Office of Rural Policy. But, says the aggrieved resident, the State never fully funded the office. In 2008 the State defunded the office completely. So now he’s thrown in with Greater Idaho, comparing the relationship between Western and Eastern Oregon to a bad marriage with irreconcilable differences. He also takes heart in observing that the Idaho House of Representatives has already voted to open talks with the Oregon legislature about shifting the border. That bill has since gone to the Idaho Senate.

Go versus stay

But another resident scoffed at the notion, saying it was a way to get more Republican votes in Oregon. Other residents simply would rather not start putting “Idaho” instead of “Oregon” on a return address for a letter.

Idaho’s got their thing. We’ve got ours. Let’s keep it that way. We have a state from the coast, all the way through Central Oregon, through Eastern Oregon, to the deepest Gorge in North America at Snake River. So why take the wonder out Oregon?

The Greater Idaho Movement knows the kind of inertia they must fight.