Woodburn Independent Online

LeCompte throws hat into District 22 race

Brooks Tree Farm owner Kathy LeCompte will challenge House incumbent Betty Komp

• By: Jason Horton  
• Published: 11/17/2009 9:53:44 AM

Oregon Legislature
Kathy LeCompte

BROOKS — After feeling like the Oregon Legislature has been missing the needs of the citizens of Oregon, Kathy LeCompte has decided to do something about it.
 
The small business owner from Brooks has thrown her hat in the ring to challenge Betty Komp (D) in the November, 2010 House District 22 race.
 
LeCompte, a Republican, along with her husband, David, has owned Brooks Tree Farm for 30 years. They specialize in growing trees from seed for Christmas trees, ornamental trees, timber and wetland mitigation projects.
 
The small business owner is ready for the challenge of fighting against bigger government and the overtaxing in Salem.
 
“I, like many citizens, am concerned about the spending in Salem that doesn’t seem to meet our needs. We’re being forced to go to the citizens to pony up more dollars. It seems like there’s never enough,” she said.
 
“I believe we need to do some reprioritizing and not put our police, our schools and libraries out there and telling the people that those are the last things to be funded.
 
“The public is being told to pay more if you want those funded while everything else gets funded. With different prioritization of the spending, those could have been funded without raising the budget by 10 percent, which is what (the legislature) did last session.”
 
Running the tree farm for three decades, LeCompte said they could not have survived doing business like that.
 
“We don’t have the ability to go to our customers and tell them they have to give me 10 percent more than the year before so we can continue,” she said. “We have to cut costs and reprioritize all the time. I think that is exactly what legislators need to do, not automatically raise the budget.”
 
Near and dear to LeCompte’s heart is the agriculture industry and when the legislature slashed the Department of Agriculture’s budget by 30 percent, while increasing the budget of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) by 30 percent, she knew something had to change.
 
“We need a healthy Department of Agriculture to manage food safety and monitor Oregon’s food. … We need to have a Department of Agriculture that can monitor and deal with bugs and pests that are coming into the state. We can’t do that if they are so strapped they are hitting only the most urgent of needs,” she said. “I would have handled that differently. I don’t think increasing the DEQ did much good to the business community.”
 
While running the farm, LeCompte has been busy on several statewide committees. She is a past president of the Oregon Association of Nurseries (OAN) and she has chaired its government relations committee and chaired its political action committee. She has served on several other agriculture boards.
 
“As prior chair of the OAN, it was my responsibility to identify issues and programs that would be helpful to our membership, regardless of what party they belong to,” LeCompte said. “Our association is often criticized for working with Democrats and I think that is a wrong way to look at it. It should be how can we make government work better for its citizens and how we can do that at the best possible price, regardless of party.”
 
LeCompte, 54, feels she has a good pulse of what people in her district want. She is a lifelong Oregonian, born in Silverton, graduated from Silverton High School and went to Oregon State University before starting the nursery, which has been in Brooks for 30 years, where she and her husband reside. They have two grown children and two grandsons.
 
One of her grandchildren is involved in the Arthur Academy charter school in Woodburn and she feels that is a good model to follow, or at least take a deep look into.
 
“I am interested to look at why those are doing better than public schools. I think we can look at other models to improve the outcome in the K-12 education system,” she said.
 
“I’m not necessarily critical of public education, but there are always budget problems and the charter school in Woodburn is having success at much less the cost and  I suspect there are other models we could look at to see if we can do more with less. That’s exactly what we do in business.”
 
LeCompte and her opponent view things a little differently with regards to taxes, too, she said.
 
“I know Betty is very supportive of higher taxes for additional programs and I would like to see better prioritization,” she said. “And she missed a lot of meetings in the legislature last year. I know it’s hard to have an impact if you are not there.”
 
LeCompte added that many people in her party have often stayed home instead of getting involved in politics because they have businesses to run. That is beginning to change, she said.
 
“As a Republican, there is a lot of interest to step up to the plate, where in the past we have just stayed home and run our businesses,” she said.
 
“But there is an increasing concern about the way our state, and nation, are being run. People are just stepping up early all over the state.”

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