Economic Development – Vote Ron Smith

I will strive to maintain a business friendly environment for job growth, remove unnecessary bottle necks to improve economic development activity, and support our largest job-making businesses such as agriculture, timber, building materials and our rich mineral industry.

Over regulation of local business must not be allowed at county level. The state and federal government already have more than enough business hindering regulations! I will work to streamline the permitting process for business start-ups and economic development wherever possible reducing unnecessary and needless rules and regulations. Work to promote the county’s industrial and commercially zoned land for economic development in the county, outside of Grants Pass.

History of the O & C Lands

The O & C Lands have a history unlike any other lands in the United States. The saga stretches back 150 years and encompasses the time of westward expansion and settlement, complete with railroad barons, a land grant of millions of acres, land fraud on a massive scale, and ultimately the reversal of the land grant. Peace and prosperity within the 18 O & C Counties has been periodically interrupted by economic strife and legal controversies at every level including more than one trip to the United States Supreme Court and multiple acts of Congress to solve problems traceable to the lands being returned to the federal government in 1916 after 40 years of private ownership.

More than fifty years of stability was achieved starting in 1937 with passage of the O & C Act, but that stability unraveled starting in the early 1990s. The courts and Congress have been unable to restore order to management of the O & C Lands over the last 25 years, but the legal issues are back in court and ripe for resolution as the O & C Lands enter the second half of their second century.