League of Women Voters of Rogue Valley

LWV Rogue Valley supports the Oregon Ballot Initiative Petition 17 requiring permits and background checks to buy guns. 

https://www.lifteveryvoiceoregon.com/ip-17-summary

 

JOSEPHINE COUNTY CHARTER UPDATE

By Dorothy Yetter

The Commission was created on 28 April 2021 by the Board of County Commissioners with Order No. 2021-018. Nine members were appointed and our first meeting was held 9 September 2021. We set ourselves up for business, electing officers and hammering out bylaws, by 1 December 2021.

After a few attempts to wrap our arms around the enormity of the task, we settled on a read- through and ‘mark-up’ of the existing document. Even as we do that, we have discovered that we need to invite experts to provide us with their observations in their areas of expertise such as finance (for instance, what is the actual budget process in use?) or administration (for instance, what recourse do exempt personnel have to political reprisal?)

While that is the meeting-to-meeting activity, we have a few over-arching questions considering if the current structure of county government is adequate to the task. That currently manifests as:

• How many commissioners? Some advocate our county is small enough and homogeneous enough to be governed by the current 3, elected at large. Others think the county is more diverse and needs more commissioners actually from those diverse communities – either resident in that community or elected specifically by that community.

• Does the county need a County Executive? It would separate powers, split the administrative (executive) functions from legislative, but is it more overhead than we need?

• Is our product to be a report of recommendations or as a complete re-write of the charter? If a re-write, what form would that take?

We know that those questions exist but before we tackle them, we do need to nail down the products of county government. County Counsel will be providing us with the statutory requirements but beyond that, there are the things some would like our county government to do. After deciding on those, then we have to determine what government structure will give us the tools to effect those objects.

Right now, the Commission is going through the current charter, finding little things that should be cleaned up. We have not addressed the BIG question of “balance” but that question is wrapped up in the points above (number of commissioners and county executive).

 

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LWV Rogue Valley Meetings are on Zoom. Members will receive invitations.

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The League of Women Voters of Rogue Valley is now a 501 (c)(3) – a non-profit organization. Your membership and other contributions are deductible to the extent allowed by the IRS.

LWVRV   P.O. Box  8555    Medford OR 97501.

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