Welcome to my website!

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

Business-as-usual just isn’t good enough for government any more. We in Oregon can't speed up recovery from the global recession on our own, but acting together as the “government for the people” we can help each other weather the economic storm. Legislators in 2011 were challenged even more than usual, with an unprecedented budget gap and the first-ever 30-30 split between Democrats and Republicans in the House.  Despite these challenges and some setbacks, we succeeded collectively on several fronts:  completing the session on time; balancing the budget with increased funding for K-12 schools over the governor’s recommendation; improving government efficiency, and passing a plan for the first time since 1981 that re-draws the legislative boundaries for the 60 House and 30 Senate Districts.  Other successful legislation promoted career and technical education, created family wage jobs through retrofitting schools to be more energy efficient, supported the farm to school program, protected victims of sexual assault, and cracked down on child pornography and child sex trafficking. And a few other good ideas didn’t make it through such as banning BPA from children’s products, providing foreclosure protection for homeowners, and requiring the owner of a foreclosed property, such as a bank, to keep the property in good shape.

Here’s a list of the bills that I filed, and others that I co-sponsored.  I’m proud that nearly half of my bills, including a bill requiring the Health Authority to develop a strategic plan for recruiting primary care providers, and a bill to reduce administrative burdens, particularly duplicate audits, on human service program providers.  I will continue to work on several that didn’t make it this session and that I believe are very important.  These include the “Relief Nursery” bill to provide early intervention to prevent child abuse and neglect; dampening the market for stolen jewelry (“cash for gold”); and promoting high speed passenger rail and freight rail improvements.

I have always been concerned about overlapping bureaucracies that can get in the way of efficiency. For example, the state, every county, and many cities operate programs in policing, corrections, taxation, transportation, public health, and other areas. Sometimes a local nonprofit agency has multiple funding sources for a program, and must send reports and submit to audits for each one. We can find ways to reinvent these “shared services,” and in 2009, I achieved a significant breakthrough in establishing the Task Force on Efficient Government Services to do just that. Several of my government efficiency bills passed in 2011, and my colleagues were enthusiastic enough about our progress to approve a new task force to tackle the next set of opportunities for improvement during the interim.  I’ll be working with this one as well.During the 2011 session, I served on these committees: Vice-Co-Chair of Joint Ways & Means (budget), Joint Ways & Means subcommittees on General Government (co-chair) and Capital Construction, and House Transportation and Economic Development.  In the interim (at least until the 2012 session) I continue to serve on those committees, and the Emergency Board.

Please visit my legislative website for a summary of recent legislative work and links to news releases and newsletters, etc.: http://www.oregonlegislature.gov/nathanson

Get more information about my legislative work, committee assignments, and the community I represent (House District 13, North Eugene) by using the navigation bar at the side of this page.

I’ve got lots of energy for moving Oregon ever closer to the right track.

Sincerely,

Representative Nancy Nathanson