Environmentalists' presence in alliance irks commissioners

The latest dustup started when a group of organizations pushing for more "living wage" jobs asked county commissioners to hold a public hearing on ways to raise wages. The commissioners balked, saying they have too much on their plates to tackle the issue.

But leaders of the Living Wage Jobs Project say the refusal has more to do with the inclusion of two environmental groups in their coalition than with the commissioners' busy agenda.

"If the timing is not right for them, we're willing to talk about timing and work around other things," says Rich Rohde of Oregon Action, the group spearheading the effort. "But we didn't hear that in their response."

What Rohde did hear when Commissioner Sue Kupillas called to let him know no hearing would be scheduled was questions raised about whether the 16-group coalition should include Headwaters and the Sierra Club.

Kupillas and fellow Commissioner Ric Holt say the primary reason behind the refusal was the number of issues facing the board, including how to fund a new juvenile center and library.

But they admit being taken aback at seeing the environmental groups among those calling for more high-wage jobs. They point out that those groups filed lawsuits that handcuffed the timber industry, costing Southern Oregon hundreds of well-paying jobs.

"It seemed hypocritical to us that a group would want to shut down family-wage jobs and then come to us asking for support on artificially raising wages," Kupillas says.

Oregon Action and other groups involved in the project have suggested a resolution requiring companies contracting with the county to pay higher wages and pressuring others to do the same.

Kupillas says the commissioners oppose such mandates and instead have focused their efforts on attracting companies that pay good wages and letting the market take care of the rest.

"This board has a tremendous interest in living wages," she says. "We just have a different approach."

Rohde says the group wasn't pushing any specific policy but isn't willing to accept the status quo. He says they just wanted a broad-based brainstorming session and thought the commissioners could help.

"They could have brought to the table groups that we by ourselves can't bring to the table," he says, referring to business leaders. "All we were asking for is a hearing to bring all people's ideas into the room to create the strategy."

The commissioners did hear a presentation Feb. 11 from the group on the Northwest Job Gap Study, which found that 47 percent of Oregon's job openings in 1996 failed to pay a living wage. The study defined a living wage as $10.06 an hour for a single adult.

Kupillas and Holt said all the commissioners declined to do was to preside over a larger public forum on the issue.

"They can have their forum anytime they want," Holt says. "We've already heard their pitch."

Despite the snub, the group says it will hold a community meeting May 25 to develop a strategy for bringing more living wage jobs here. The meeting starts at 7 p.m. at Oregon Action's office, 33 N. Central Ave. in Medford.

Rohde says any refusal from the commissioners would have left the group unhappy, but attacking the environmental groups' inclusion seemed counterproductive.

"Everyone has a legitimate right to be part of it," he says. "Their way of not including groups seems to push you into into the old polarized way."

Rick Gwynallen, executive director of Ashland-based Headwaters, says the conservation group got involved because it recognizes that ecology and economics have to be linked and that the living-wage issue is part of that larger "social vision."

He dismisses the idea that Headwaters' push for living-wage jobs is hypocritical.

"As far as hypocrisy goes, that comes down to a difference of opinion over what the economy should be," he says, adding the commissioners have failed to move beyond their singular focus on the timber industry.