Restore Oregon’s 2023 Legislative Agenda
Restore Oregon’s Policy & Advocacy Committee is weighing in on and monitoring bills that may impact historic preservation and the arts/culture/heritage sector during this legislative session.
In addition to reacting to proposed bills, Restore Oregon has a proactive legislative agenda:
Advocate for critical funding to the Oregon cultural sector.
As an active member of the Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon (CACO), we support and will work proactively with CACO on our shared policy agenda. (See below.)
Champion the value and need for historic preservation financial incentives.
As a member of the House Revenue Historic Property Working Group, Restore Oregon is working in coalition with stakeholders under the leadership of Representatives Levy and Valderrama to shape future policies, bringing equitable and accessible funding to rural and urban needs.
Advocate for capital funding for Oregon's State Forester Headquarters.
Located in Salem, Oregon's State Forester Headquarters is a WPA-era National Register-listed cultural landscape of statewide significance. Because of our past work to study and educate Oregonians about the valuable resources from this time period, we will work to educate our elected officials about this particular historic resource and its need for capital investment as the emblem of so many resources from this era that needs to be preserved.
Support the reuse of existing structures as they can generate new AND preserve existing housing units while simultaneously helping address the housing crisis and carbon reduction goals.
Housing production will be a key theme this legislative session, and Restore Oregon aims to build on the revisions we successfully advocated for in the Oregon Housing Needs Analysis (OHNA) Legislative Recommendations Final Report from the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) and Oregon Housing and Community Services.
CACO’s 2023 Policy Agenda
Securing $50M in additional recovery funding for arts, culture, heritage, and humanities, distributed similarly to the CARES allocation of the last cycle.
CACO advocated for this in 2022 and was not successful, largely because previous ARPA funds had not yet been distributed to the field. Some of Oregon’s major venues are seeing ticket sales at 18 percent of what they were pre-pandemic. The need is great. Oregon has more in its general fund than it has in a while, so this is a top priority.
- Allocation of $11.9M in Cultural Resource Economic Funds for 17 projects across the state, ranging from $72,000 to $3 million. Large and small, urban and rural, for a variety of art forms, these funds will complete capital projects preserving cultural offerings across Oregon.
- Directing $200M to Oregon Cultural Trust, spinning off $10-20M per year for operations grants for 1,400 eligible Oregon nonprofits. CACO is asking lawmakers to make good on the original $200M commitment they made to fund the Oregon Cultural Trust by asking for revenue from lottery bonds and will work with county and tribal coalitions to distribute these funds, which will go into an account separately from current grant programs. This is a long-term vision for supporting the sector and will move Oregon into the top rankings for state funding.
- Increasing funding by $10M to grow grant funding at the Oregon Arts Commission.
- Replacing Oregon Cultural Trust administrative cap with a percentage of earnings.