The editors and reporters for EO Media Group sat down this week with Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek to ask her questions on a wide range of topics for about an hour.

You can view the video and stories here. The roundtable discussion was via a Zoom call, as EO Media’s 13 news outlets are spread across the state, including Medford, Bend, Astoria, Pendleton, Baker City and other locales.

It is part of Kotek’s desire to reach out to eastern, central and southern Oregon, this time with the media. In her first year in office, she traveled across the state seeking to make personal contact with her constituents. The meeting with editors was requested by Kotek’s staff and it is hoped to be a quarterly event.

Issues that came up during the EO Media forum included her plan to ease the rules on cities regarding Urban Growth Boundary to allow for new housing construction; help for the homeless; Oregon Department of Transportation’s surprising shortage of funding just before its winter road maintenance season kicks off; cap and trade legislation; and even fish ladders.

Just one of those topics would be difficult to address in a short five-minute answer, but Gov. Kotek provided detailed, thoughtful answers, and readily admitted she didn’t have solutions available for some of the problems.

The governor reaching out to the media shows respect for the rural areas that EO Media covers and the readers of those news outlets. As was pointed out by Wallowa Chieftain Editor Mike McInally, one of the reasons the Greater Idaho movement has gained a following is that people do not necessarily want to secede from Oregon, but there is a true feeling that they are not being heard by Salem.

Also in attendance was a group of high school journalism students from Bend. They are part of the Future Journalists of America program being run out of The Bulletin and funded by the Fund for Oregon Rural Journalism or FORJ.

The students asked how is it that Oregon schools are ranked in the lowest of the 50 states and what can be done about it.

Kotek admitted that reading numbers were “abysmal” and said a focus has been working with programs to bolster training for teachers in reading instruction. The governor said she is working to support early literacy, technical education and summer learning, in addition to pursuing better compensation for educators as a way to address the problem.

“I am committed to looking at the formula of how schools are funded, making sure we can modernize it and address the core functional needs of our districts, and that includes compensation for educators,” she said.

She also noted she is pushing for a “transparency office” in her administration that will post in a clear fashion what schools are spending taxpayer dollars on online.

As I noted, this roundtable covered a lot of ground. Please take a look. It is one more way we are trying to bring to our readers of our digital formats information they can use to make informed decisions.

It also points to the power of our small, but cohesive group of news outlets that bring you a wider range of perspectives across our state.

Thanks for reading. And please support our local journalism by subscribing.

Gerry O’Brien, editor