Oregon has a kind of built-in, anti-Deschutes County bias. State government isn’t out to get Deschutes County. Still the bias has crept in at least two ways: minimum wage and payments for K-12 education.

Deschutes County has some of the highest housing costs in the state. Families pay a pretty penny for housing in Portland and other places, too. It’s just that one of the things that make Deschutes extra “special” is the extra cost of housing.

Oregon has three minimum wages. There’s one in Portland, $15.95 as of July 1.

There’s another in more “metro” counties such as Deschutes, now $14.70 an hour. And in Oregon’s more rural counties, it’s now $13.70.

But the fact is the minimum wage is lower in Deschutes County than it is in Portland and that doesn’t necessarily make a lot of sense, as The Oregonian pointed out recently. The rules for the state’s minimum wage were set up that way. Oregon’s standard minimum wage is calculated using the Consumer Price Index. Portland’s wage is $1.25 above the standard and the rural minimum wage is $1 less than the standard wage. Those adjustments don’t factor in the actual differences in cost of living between the areas. They are just $1.25 above and $1 below.

Of course, some people believe minimum wages are on the highway to bad economic policy. They argue they interfere in the market, they end up raising prices for consumers or make it more difficult for employers to hire the employees they need. But if Oregon is going to have one, shouldn’t the high cost of housing in Deschutes matter more in the calculations?

Next up is the way Oregon funds K-12 education. The school funding formula does not take into account the cost of living in various communities across the state. Districts are funded per student. There is some weighting for important factors, such as students with special needs. Cost of living is not a factor. Does that make sense? You can guess what we think. It’s one reason the Bend-La Pine Schools tried for a local option levy and the Sisters School District has one.

The problem with changing the funding formula to take into account cost of living would be that some districts would lose and some places would gain, making it more challenging for legislators to unite behind it – even if it is more fair. A state task force is looking at redoing how educator salaries are calculated. Consideration of cost of living has not been as much a focus of those discussions as other pay issues.

Marching into the next legislative session, ending anti-Deschutes biases will not be the rallying cry. The biases aren’t terrible enough or universal enough so that legislators focus on fixing them explicitly. Getting people to fix them will be how well the changes are submerged in other changes.