The Drazan Plan

For too many Oregon families, the basics of everyday life have become harder to afford. Groceries cost more. Utility bills keep climbing. Housing remains out of reach for too many families. Small businesses face higher costs that are ultimately passed on to consumers. While Oregonians have tightened their budgets, state government has continued to grow, layering on new regulations, fees and mandates that make nearly everything more expensive.

As Governor, Christine Drazan will put affordability at the center of every decision her administration makes.

The Drazan Plan Will Put Affordability First:

• Issue a Day One Affordability Executive Order directing every executive branch agency to identify rules, regulations, fees and procedures that materially increase the cost of housing, energy, food, transportation, childcare, healthcare or operating a business.
• Review unnecessary regulations by suspending or revising discretionary rules that exceed state or federal requirements.
• Implement an affordability review before adopting new rules by calculating the cost to consumers of every major proposed regulation and publishing review findings.
• Repeal Tina Kotek’s costly Climate Protection Program executive order that has imposed heavy financial burdens on working families, driven up utility and gas prices and threatened jobs.
• Veto new tax and fee increases.
• Reform the Corporate Activity Tax (CAT) to reduce the hidden costs it places on Oregon consumers.
• Give Oregonians their state parks back by providing free day-use access for vehicles with Oregon license plates and restoring the Disabled Veteran Camping Benefit.
• Cut taxes by increasing Oregon's standard deduction to better reflect today's cost-of-living pressures.
• Reform the Estate Tax.
• Provide Property Tax relief by lowering property taxes for veterans, veterans with disabilities and seniors over the age of 65.
• Lower grocery costs by proposing legislation to protect Oregon families from costly regulations and repeal policies that uniquely increase the cost of food.
• Protect Oregon's Kicker by vetoing attempts by the Legislature to grow government by taking it from Oregonians.

Oregon was once known as a place where people could build a business, find a good-paying job and create opportunities for the next generation. Today, too many employers are choosing to invest elsewhere while small businesses struggle under the weight of rising costs, burdensome regulations and an unpredictable business climate.

As Governor, Christine Drazan will focus on creating an environment where businesses can invest with confidence, workers can thrive and communities across Oregon can benefit from sustained economic growth. She believes Oregon's economy can once again lead the nation but only if state government becomes a partner in opportunity instead of an obstacle to success.

The Drazan Plan Will Make Oregon Open for Business Again:

• Declare Oregon "Open for Business" by making economic growth, private investment and job creation top priorities across state government.
• Reduce unnecessary regulations by freezing new regulations, reviewing rules that exceed federal requirements and requiring economic impact analyses for major regulations.
• Work for business success by creating correction periods for minor violations and establishing a Small Business Bill of Rights.
• Invest in local infrastructure by establishing a dedicated and recurring site readiness and infrastructure fund of $200 million to support economic growth, strengthen communities and improve Oregon's long-term competitiveness.
• Prioritize affordable, reliable energy by protecting existing generation, expanding transmission capacity, supporting technology-neutral energy development and appointing utility commissioners focused on reliability and lowest-cost power.
• Revitalize Oregon's natural resource economy by improving forest management, working with federal partners to increase sustainable timber production and creating opportunities to utilize forest byproducts through combined heat and energy generation.
• Prioritize Oregon's traded-sector industries including semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, wood products, agriculture, food processing, aerospace, ports, logistics and natural resource industries.
• Reform the Corporate Activity Tax (CAT) to reduce the regulatory burden on small businesses and lower costs for consumers.
• Develop Oregon's workforce by expanding apprenticeships and CTE, aligning workforce development programs and our schools with employer needs, measuring success through job placement and wage growth and accelerating occupational license recognition.

The status quo has failed both the people living on our streets and the communities impacted by this crisis. Every Oregonian deserves to feel safe in their community and every person experiencing homelessness deserves a pathway to long-term stability and recovery. Yet across our state, too many people remain trapped in cycles of addiction, untreated mental illness and chronic homelessness while government spends billions of taxpayer dollars with little accountability for results.

As Governor, Christine Drazan will work to ensure that homelessness is rare and temporary, not chronic and permanent. She will focus state government on measurable outcomes by holding government accountable for achieving meaningful results. She will refocus Oregon's response on helping people recover, reconnect with their families and communities and rebuild their lives. Success will be measured not by how much government spends on drug paraphernalia and low-barrier shelter beds, but by how many people move from homelessness into recovery, treatment and permanent stability.

The Drazan Plan Will Break the Cycle of Homelessness:

• Fully audit homeless services and addiction spending to ensure accountability and deliver results.
• Prioritize addiction recovery, long-term sobriety and mental health treatment by focusing state resources on programs that help people achieve lasting stability.
• Reconnect people experiencing homelessness with their families and communities whenever possible, helping restore the support systems that can lead to long-term stability.
• Support law enforcement and restore public safety by fully funding state police and allowing local jurisdictions to clean up public spaces to help make Oregon's communities livable.
• Increase penalties for drug traffickers who are exploiting addiction.
• Reform rules and grant requirements to shift state investments to recovery-focused programs and homeless services.
• End taxpayer funding for programs that enable addiction and instead invest in approaches that promote recovery, accountability and lasting change.
• Declare a state of emergency on Oregon's addiction and mental health crises to bring greater urgency and coordination to the state's response.

For generations, homeownership has been the foundation of the American Dream and one of the best ways families build financial security. Today, that dream is slipping further out of reach for too many Oregonians. Home prices continue to rise, families are struggling to enter the market to buy their first home and Governor Kotek has failed to deliver on her promise of building 36,000 homes per year. Many of the policies she promoted have made Oregon’s housing shortage worse. While government cannot and should not control every market force, it can stop making housing more expensive and difficult to build.

Christine Drazan believes Oregon must make it faster, simpler and less expensive to build homes while maintaining clear safety and environmental standards and protecting Oregon's working farmland. As Governor, Christine will remove unnecessary barriers to housing production, streamline permitting and hold government accountable for delivering results–because increasing the supply of homes is the most effective way to bring down the cost of housing for Oregon families.

The Drazan Plan Will Result in More Housing and Lower Costs

• Reduce costly construction delays by pursuing reforms that establish a 120-day maximum decision period for qualifying housing projects, limit repetitive appeals intended to delay construction and expand the use of private plan reviewers and inspectors when government backlogs become excessive.
• Expand first time homebuyer programs, including tax credits for first time homebuyers and down payment assistance programs using existing funds to help transition families from renters to homeowners.
• Reduce unnecessary regulatory barriers by simplifying the conversion of commercial buildings into housing, reducing duplicative design review requirements and allowing projects that meet objective standards to move forward without delays.
• Create a Housing Permit Command Center to coordinate state agencies and local governments, allow concurrent agency reviews, streamline permitting, enforce permitting deadlines and help qualifying housing projects move from application to construction quickly.
• Make more land available for housing by ensuring buildable land is brought into production, accelerating opportunities to increase housing capacity, making unused state lands available for affordable housing and accurately identifying and protecting working farmland.
• Increase housing options across Oregon by incentivizing opportunities for infill and more efficient use of land within existing urban growth boundaries, expanding opportunities for buildable land swaps and supporting responsible growth and boundary management.
• Expand housing choices by allowing objective approval of code-compliant housing, creating a statewide library of pre-approved housing plans, standardizing the process for construction of accessory dwelling units, modular, manufactured and tiny homes.
• Pursue reasonable construction defect litigation reform to incentivize entry-level housing construction while maintaining high construction standards, proper safeguards and protecting homeowners.
• Measure success by results and actual units being built–not simply by the amount of money spent or projects announced.

Every child deserves a quality education that prepares them for success in life. Too many Oregon students are struggling to show proficiency in reading, writing and math while graduation standards have been removed and parents have been pushed further from the decisions affecting their children's education. Families expect schools to focus on academic excellence, safe classrooms and preparing students for the future.

As Governor, Christine Drazan will restore high expectations, empower teachers, expand educational opportunities and put students–not politics or bureaucracy–at the center of Oregon's public education system.

The Drazan Plan Will Prepare Every Student for Success:

• Restore high academic expectations by reinstating meaningful graduation requirements and ensuring Oregon students graduate prepared for work, college, the trades or military service.
• Prioritize early literacy and end social promotion by ensuring students can read proficiently by third grade before advancing to the next grade level.
• Opt Oregon into a Federal Scholarship Tax Credit program to help over 575,000 students pay for tutoring, after-school programs, special education services and other educational supports.
• Restore safe, focused classrooms by giving teachers the authority to remove persistently disruptive students from the classroom.
• Increase support for students with disabilities by strengthening funding for special education and helping schools better serve students with unique learning needs.
• Keep classrooms focused on education by reviewing and revising Department of Education rules that impact the classroom but aren’t focused on academic achievement.
• Reduce bureaucracy and support educators by cutting unnecessary administrative red tape so teachers can spend more time teaching and less time on paperwork.
• Increase classroom time by moving Oregon from an instructional hour-based system to a school day-based system with statewide standards for what constitutes a school day.
• Support school choice and educational opportunities so families can choose the learning environment that best meets their child's needs.
• Strengthen parental rights by ensuring curriculum transparency and protecting parents' ability to review instructional materials and opt their children out where appropriate.

Oregonians deserve a government that is transparent, accountable and focused on delivering results.

As Governor, Christine Drazan believes government exists to serve the people of Oregon, not the other way around. She will restore accountability, improve transparency, eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy and ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely. Her administration will focus on measurable results, open government and a culture that respects people and rewards efficiency and integrity with a commitment to customer service.

The Drazan Plan Will Restore Accountability to State Government:

• Establish a new Office of Government Accountability to audit how state services are delivered, improve efficiency and identify savings to ensure government serves its core mission.
• Increase Cost Transparency by publishing an annual Cost of Government Report to identify the true cost burden of agency fees, rulemaking costs, processing times and compliance burdens on Oregonians.
• Streamline permitting, licensing and agency decisions that impact Oregon families and employers.
• Streamline and reform boards and commissions to reduce the influence of unelected bureaucrats and hold agencies directly accountable to Oregonians.
• Rescind harmful executive orders that have expanded bureaucracy, increased costs for Oregon families or moved state government away from its core responsibilities.
• Eliminate wasteful spending by vetoing state-funded programs and pork projects that fail to deliver meaningful results and benefit special interests over the public good.
• Strengthen government transparency by bolstering the office of the Public Records Advocate to ensure timely response to public records requests.
• Hold government accountable for economic results by publishing a scorecard measuring private-sector job growth, business formation, permit timelines, industrial site readiness, exports, energy costs, housing production and labor force participation.