This November, the race for the open seat on the Deschutes County Commission will be a battle between two Phils: incumbent Phil Henderson, a Republican, and Phil Chang, a Democrat.

Here is what they have to say about issues like growth, COVID-19 and marijuana regulation.

Phil Chang

Chang, 50, is a Bend resident and a natural resource and renewable energy specialist.

The top challenges that face the county are containing the spread of COVID-19, adapting to rapid population growth and mental health, said Chang.

“I lay a lot of (the) weak COVID response at the feet of this County Commission,” Chang said.

If elected, Chang said he would work to have the county expand and coordinate widespread testing in Deschutes County. He offered Benton County, which he said has coordinated testing of homeless people, as an example. He said it would be worth considering travel restrictions and doing more to crack down on businesses that are not taking regulations seriously.

“The way we get ahead of COVID is through widespread testing,” Chang said.

With more people reportedly moving out of cities and into more rural areas, Chang said it would be his priority to encourage denser development in land that is still available in the county’s cities.

Chang said it is not just about building more housing but being intentional about where it goes and how it is built. It’s very difficult to build a house on a 2-acre lot and make it affordable, he said.

One way to help make housing more affordable is by having the county donate parcels it owns to cities for development, Chang said. It’s a practice the county has done in the past.

As for mental health, Chang said if elected, he would work to create a system where mental health professionals respond to suicide and distress calls instead of police.

“Send the right person to the right call and save money,” he said.

Marijuana regulation will be back center stage this November with a ballot measure that asks voters whether they want to permit new marijuana production or processing facilities in the rural part of the county.

Chang said as a commissioner he would respect the will of the voters, but personally would prefer the county continue to permit new marijuana facilities.

“I believe people own (farming) lands that they have the property rights to decide whether to grow a legal crop or not,” he said.

Chang said he does not believe marijuana growers have had fair regulations from this county commission, and his opponent wastes county resources by continuing to appeal marijuana-related legal cases where the Land Use Board of Appeals has either remanded or reversed the county’s rulings.

“In my mind, it’s kind of like frivolous litigation,” Chang said.

Phil Henderson

Henderson, 65, is a homebuilder and a lawyer. He was elected to the commission in 2016.

Henderson said the biggest challenge facing the county will be figuring out how to economically recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. He rejects Chang’s claim that the county did not do enough or moved too slowly to address COVID-19. He cited examples of how the commission disincentivized travel to the county near the beginning of the pandemic and allocated more money to the environmental health department to help businesses safely reopen.

“We took it very seriously,” he said.

He said he did not regret using the term “China virus” when referring to COVID-19 in a July 4 Facebook post.

“This virus came from China. … I had people accuse me of being racist or whatever. China is not a race, it’s a government, it’s a country, and there’s nothing about that that’s race related to me,” Henderson said Tuesday.

(Chang said in an email Friday that as a candidate he would prefer to focus on issues like growth and COVID-19 containment instead of Henderson’s “divisive Facebook comments,” but was concerned how comments like that can foster anti-Asian sentiment. “The phrase ‘China virus’ doesn’t just lead people to blame a nation — the People’s Republic of China — for COVID-19. Language like this leads people to blame people of Chinese descent for COVID-19,” said Chang, who is Asian American, in the email.)

As for handling growth, Henderson said he supports donating county land to cities to help lower the cost of development, which the commission has done for Redmond and La Pine in the past.

The county is in the process of doing an inventory of vacant land. Henderson said one way the county can help with housing is by looking at areas outside of urban growth boundaries, which only border cities, to see where future development could make sense, while making sure not to encroach on wildlife.

With regard to the issue of whether new marijuana production should be allowed in Deschutes County, Henderson said he will follow the will of the voters. Henderson was one of three commissioners who voted to put the issue on the ballot.

If voters choose to keep new marijuana growing, Henderson said he still feels there is a need for regulation. If elected, his goal would be to take another look at how marijuana businesses are regulated to make the rules clearer for future applications.

“It’s different than growing most crops, so to speak,” he said.