December 1, 2023 – Rep. Bobby Levy: DEQ Seeks Comment on Punishing Air Quality Fee Increases
Senator Bill Hansell Honored By Umatilla Tribe
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality is requesting comment on a 43% increase on emissions fees. This fee increase is a lifeboat for an agency that purposefully sank its own ship. After not raising fees since 2018, DEQ has made the preposterous request for an 43% fee increase. This is a devastating blow to the 105 companies that currently fund their own air quality regulation. The greatest threat in House District 58 is to local mills, where hundreds of jobs will be put at risk to make up for this unconscionable increase.
When I spoke to DEQ staff at hearings on this appropriation, I was told that businesses will need to simply budget for this increase, a myopically urban view of Oregon’s economy that fails to realize its diversity. The Willamette Valley’s economy is very different than that of northeast Oregon. In the Valley, a larger firm may be able to absorb a larger fee merely at the cost of a smaller profit margin. A worker in the Valley who is laid off because of the fee increase may find a new job in an increasingly competitive job market. In rural Oregon, displaced workers do not simply move on and find new jobs – they stay put and are forced to rely on government assistance while bringing in meager wages from entry-level positions. The Boise Cascade Mill in Elgin, which will be harshly targeted by the fee increase, employs hundreds of workers who will be threatened by layoffs necessary to keep their peers employed, the mill in operation, and the community in existence.
As a committee member reviewing the proposal earlier this year, I was asked to extend grace to DEQ when it will not be giving that same grace to affected workers. Businesses that are affected by this rate increase say that they were not involved in enough conversations about this change. It was requested that a workgroup be established to phase in a fee increase more equitably to ensure that businesses and workers were not harmed, and these businesses were simply told, “No.” The message is clear – DEQ believes it knows what is best for workers in rural communities who have nowhere else to go to seek family-wage jobs, and what is best for them is that they spend the rest of their working years seeking out survival on government assistance.
DEQ’s method for increasing air quality permit fees is intolerable. After declining to request necessary increases over the last 5 years, DEQ’s decision to implement an immediate, mammoth increase was done without any appropriate consultations. Affected agencies are now in a position where they will be forced to choose which employees need to be let go so that others may keep their jobs. I urge DEQ to begin governing in recognition of the impact of its decisions on rural Oregon. This practice of adopting policies solely reflective of economic conditions in the Willamette Valley cannot be tolerated any longer. You can provide these same comments to DEQ today at this link: https://www.oregon.gov/deq/rulemaking/pages/tvfees2023.aspx
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