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On Friday, Gov. Kate Brown walked back her previously announced intention to veto a bill that would expand farmers' ability to clean out ditches on their properties. She also reversed her plan to cut funding for work on imperiled dams in Newport.
A Portland Democrat, Brown is largely in sync with the Democratic supermajorities in both chambers. The policies they pursued this session generally reflect the left leaning worldview of metro-area Democrats.
So when Brown said on Aug. 5 that she'd probably veto House Bill 2437, which expanded the amount of material farmers could remove without a permit, she was channeling the concerns of numerous environmental groups who said the bill would endanger Oregon's shrinking wetlands, which Brown had pledged to protect.
Brown also provided a seemingly defensible rationale for proposing to veto $4 million to begin work on the Newport dams: There are many, many shaky dams in the state and singling out that one for funding without funding systematically prioritizing the others is illogical.
So what happened?
Brown provided explanations for the about-face in the signing letters she sent to Secretary of State Bev Clarno on Aug. 9, which were first reported by The Oregonian and Oregon Public Broadcasting, saying she'd learned the current system for ditch cleaning suffers from a "virtually complete lack of workability" and that the state's $4 million would leverage far more than that in federal matching money for Newport's Big Creek Dams.
The Oregon Farm Bureau and its allies pushed back hard against the proposed veto of the ditch bill, echoing their earlier argument that the current regulatory approach to ditch cleaning is useless and the bill embodied the best thinking of a diverse bipartisan work group.
Then there are the politics of the proposed vetoes.
Brown's original decision to choose as the only bill she'd veto in its entirety a top priority for Oregon's agriculture industry probably lacked sufficient balance, especially after a term in which the Democratic supermajorities rammed through an aggressive progressive agenda on taxes, workplace protections, immigration, criminal justice and tried mightily to pass a carbon reduction bill conservatives and many moderates opposed.
If Brown had also identified a progressive bill for veto, she might have been able to justify killing the ditch bill more easily.
Her reversal, however, highlighted one of the realities of Democratic politics: There are rarely any consequences for disappointing the environmental community, which is so reliably Democratic that it can be taken for granted.
Brown's proposal to veto the Newport dam funding also suffered from a lack of balance. The governor had put in her own budget a request for $14 million for funding to begin work on a decrepit dam at Wallowa Lake in Eastern Oregon. Lawmakers approved her request.
To be sure, Wallowa Lake is the centerpiece of one of the most scenic regions in a state full of scenic regions. But allocating state money to fixing that dam was no more justifiable than sending money to Newport's dams.
Like everyone else, of course, governors are allowed to change their minds. Brown did so two years ago on other proposed vetoes after the 2017 session.
The people of Newport, who depend on the Big Creek dams for drinking water, are glad she did so again. So are farmers.
"Governor Brown has signaled that good faith cooperation and solution-oriented bipartisanship are the "Oregon Way" and will be honored," the Oregon Farm Bureau said in a statement. "Farmers and the environment both won today."