The Register-Guard - Dudley Woos Business Leaders

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By Mark Baker

"Swing the pendulum."

That's one of Chris Dudley's main messages for Oregon as he makes his bid for governor this year against former two-term governor and Democratic nominee John Kitzhaber.

And where Dudley, the Republican nominee and former Portland Trail Blazer, wants to swing that metaphorical pendulum, is away from more taxes and toward private-sector job creation.

"Simply put, we don't need more taxes, we need more taxpayers," Dudley said Thursday during a roundtable discussion at the Valley River Inn with handpicked local business owners and leaders and economic policy experts.

It was the fourth and final roundtable discussion for Dudley, 45, this month, after previous stops in Portland, Medford and Bend. Dudley invited a dozen business folks and others to join him for the discussion, including Jack Roberts, executive director of the Lane Metro Partnership economic development agency; Gretchen Pierce, head of the Hult & Associates real estate investment and management firm; Tim Duy, University of Oregon economist; Ron Tyree, owner of Eugene's Tyree Oil; and PeaceHealth spokeswoman Jenny Ulum, who is also founder and former owner of the Eugene public relations firm the Ulum Group.

As he has been throughout his campaign so far, Dudley was short on specifics and long on sound bites and generalities.

Dudley's campaign slogan is "Join Oregon's Comeback." In his opening remarks Thursday, Dudley said he would be unveiling his "comeback plan" in the coming months that lead up to the November election. Part of that plan -- policies to jump-start immediate economic regeneration -- will come from the ideas he has heard in the roundtable discussions, he said.

"You are the people who create jobs," he told those seated on his left and his right. "And to me, the No. 1 issue facing Oregon and Oregonians right now is jobs."

Dudley went around the table Thursday, asking attendees to tell him what Oregon is doing well and not so well and what each of them would do if they "were king or queen for a day."

Linda McKay Korth, owner of Eugene's Oakway Center, said her greatest concerns were state government overspending and over-regulation. "And, a lot of times, it seems like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing," Korth said.

"And I think one of the things you can do as governor is improve the business climate," she added. "Businesses have to feel good."

Tax breaks for hiring, a stable and certain business environment, land-use deregulation, the recruitment of large businesses and a decrease of federal ownership of timberlands were some items on the wish list at the Republican-dominated roundtable.

"Without a change in policy, our industry will not come out of this recession," said Cameron Krauss of the Swanson Group, a forest products firm based in Douglas County. The industry cannot survive in Oregon on the timber produced by private lands only, Krauss said.

Krauss' concerns were echoed by John Murphy of Murphy Plywood in Eugene.

Half of Oregon's timberlands are federally owned and controlled by the government, Murphy said. And there has been no push from Gov. Ted Kulongoski to change that in the past eight years, or by Gov. Kitzhaber before him, he said.

Duy cautioned that there is no magic fix to what ails Oregon's economy. Much of Oregon's economic performance is tied to national factors such as the housing market bust of recent years, and that it could be a long time, or never, before Oregon returns to robust economic times, he said.

"It's going to be very difficult to create that kind of atmosphere in the future," Duy said.

A key element to consider is how to reinvent state government in this new-world order, he said. Plus, how do you develop environmental incentives that are friendly to business development, he asked.

"It's hard to move that monster quickly," Duy said. "Changing things overnight is very challenging."

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