Benchmarks to a better Oregon.

• Author: Proffer, Lanny
• Position: Fiscal policy planning

Unwilling to file away its ambitious plan for the state's future, Oregon has transformed it into specific goals for its agencies to meet and, even in its straitened fiscal condition, has added a little financial sweetener.

By 2010, the number of teen pregnancies per 1,000 should be reduced from 19.5 to 8.

By 2010, the percentage of Oregon high school students enrolled in technical education programs should increase from 9 perccent to 55 percent.

By 2000, every Oregonian should be able to afford basic health care.

When the people in Oregon talk about dealing with teen pregnancy, inadequate job skills and access to health care, they don't talk in generalities. These quantified goals and 155 others (30 critical ones), which became known as the Oregon Benchmarks, were hammered out over four years of meetings, public hearings, committees, coalitions of business, labor, education and government groups, negotiaion, compromise and finally agreement. It wasn't a one-woman or one-man show. Almost anyone who wanted a part could join the cast of thousands, and if everything goes as hoped, there won't be a final act. The legislature has created a nine-member commission and assigned it the task of conducting a continuing review of the goals and reporting its recommendations each biennium.

Two months ago the Oregon Progress Board sent more than 7,500 letters to citizens, groups, businesses, government agencies and community leader soliciing recommendations for changes to the benchmarks. As these recommendations flow in, they will be reviewed and incorporated in the Progress Board's report to the legislature in 1993.

"No one should have the impression that the path was easy or that we had the results all planned in advance," explains Representative Beverly Stein of Portland.

By 1987 Oregon was coming out of a prolonged recession, and Governor Neil Goldschmidt commissioned an evaluation of what was needed to ensure long-term growh and a strong economic based while preserving the quality of life. for which Oregon is renowned. "Oregon Shines," the report released in 1989, mapped a plan for educating a superior workforce, maintaining an attractive quality of life and adopting an "international frame of mind." The latter would allow the state to take economic and cultural advantage of its Pacific Rim location.

But perhaps the most important recommendation was to create a body, appointed and chaired by the governor, "to see that these initiatives are...