Public Input Matters. Sometimes It Even Works.

For a lot of people right now, hope is in short supply. Whether it’s inflation and the price of eggs, the cuts to federal budgets — and in turn, the looming ones to state budgets, the threats to Medicaid or Social Security or the Veteran’s Administration or the perceived abandonment of the rule of law, there’s plenty for the average American to be worried about. Those who seek to take action to counter all the hopelessness and helplessness might be urged to write to their congressperson or show up at a rally.

Those things do matter. However, for those who are represented by Democratic members of Congress, as most of us here in Bend are, that might feel a bit futile. With Republican majorities in both chambers of the U.S. Congress, do our words still matter?

The Northern spotted owl. As the National Park Service describes, “Northern spotted owls are considered to be an indicator species that helps gauge the ecological health of forest habitat.” Credit: Adobe Stock

(For those represented by Rep. Cliff Bentz in Oregon’s 2nd Congressional District, here’s his contact form: https://bentz.house.gov/contact)

Yet almost nothing is more American than a can-do attitude. If you want to take action in these times — to exercise your First Amendment right to petition your government for redress — then there are more ways to do that than the above-mentioned ones.

This week, we saw an example of that in Prineville, where residents effectively shut down a City of Prineville effort to get a biomass facility planned and eventually built in town. City councilors last week voted 4-2 against an Urban Growth Boundary expansion that would have made room for the biomass facility, after residents there showed up en masse to a City Council meeting and expressed concerns about the proposed location and lack of prior community input. Some people there said they had learned of the proposal just weeks before the initial vote was to take place. City councilors eventually delayed that vote, and then ended up voting against it.

A plan for the facility is not totally off the table, but for now, the Prineville City Council is re-evaluating the project, and plans to do a better job to engage the community going forward, should it try again.

In a time of so much uncertainty and executive orders that seem to run counter to American values of majority rule and co-equal branches of government, it’s encouraging to see local governments still listening to constituents.

Let’s hope for the same at the federal level, as it pertains to a rule change for an Act that has had a major impact on the economic development of places like Bend.

This past month, people in the U.S. have also had the opportunity to speak up about a proposed rule change for the Endangered Species Act, which would change the regulatory definition of “harm” for species listed as protected under the Act. Essentially, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under this administration wants us to believe that the only way to kill wildlife is to literally kill them – or in the verbiage of the Endangered Species Act, to “take” them. By rescinding the definition of “harm,” it would be easier for people to destroy habitats that allow ESA-protected species to thrive.

The protections for the Oregon spotted frog and the Northern spotted owl that have been put into place in recent decades are linked to Bend and Central Oregon’s rise as a center of recreation rather than resource extraction. Weakening those protections will not be good for people nor the species under protection.

Protecting species can also protect landscapes as a whole. As the National Park Service describes, “Northern spotted owls are considered to be an indicator species that helps gauge the ecological health of forest habitat.” The public comment period for the proposed change ended Monday. Overwhelmingly, the close to 200,000 public comments posted in the Federal Register oppose the change. We can only hope that in this case, like the public comments that shut down an unpopular plan in Prineville, the people’s voices will also be heeded.

In these highly unusual political times, some battles will be won; some lost. But public input still matters.

This article appears in Source Weekly May 22, 2025.