March, 2019

MARCH 2019

Roseburg Saves Its Library

In This Issue: * Met One Instruments

* Blind Spots, Heuristics and Anchors * Broadband USA * Lean Manufacturing Isn’t Magic * Merit-based Immigration?

A Few Words I thought I would look at my archive of old e-mails going back several months. They were placed in a file in the order received. Seemed like an orderly way to store things. Well, not so much. There are over 8,000 of them.

In this world of data we live in, knowing how to store and retrieve things is as important as anything we do.

Failing that bit of knowledge is like having books of the national Library of Congress shelved in random order in dozens of rooms on several floors of buildings scattered around the city. Good luck.

Books are filled with information. Knowing what is in the books is knowledge. Having the information catalogued so we can find it is critical.

We’re in an era of data storage delirium. Whether we are at the forefront of technical skills or just entering the arena, the existence of data will have an impact on what we do in our daily lives even if it is something we oppose. If we watch an active five-year old for a few days we will have an idea of how she will respond to her environment in different situations. If we watch 1-miilion five-year olds for a few days our ideas about their responses will be much, much more certain. Multiple data validates early assumptions.

As the world changes the effort to keep up with those changes has to become an habitual mindset alteration or we will find ourselves sliding farther and farther behind. By comparison, the speed of gained knowledge of thirty or forty years ago was nothing compared to what is faced today.

Much of what childhood experiences, if left alone, becomes comfortable. Don’t become comfortable, because your dated childhood will soon be obsolete.

Like the buggy whip maker who didn’t listen when someone told him the automobile would replace horsedrawn carriages, unemployment comes quickly even if the warning signs have been strolling up his sidewalk for years.

If you can read but don’t, you’re no better off than the one who cannot read at all. Read.

Greg

The Southern Oregon Business Journal extends sincere thanks to the following companies for their continued presence as important cogs in the wheels of industry in southern Oregon.

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A JOURNAL FOR THE ECONOMICALLY CURIOUS, PROFESSIONALLY INSPIRED AND ACUTELY MOTIVATED

Contents Inside This Issue 6. Export Strategy Success 9. Stories from Aviation

FEATURED 4. Met One Instruments 12. Blind Spots, Heuristics and

10. Springfield Chamber Banquet

Anchors 14. Broadband USA

15. Port of Coos Bay Scholarship

18. Lean Manufacturing Isn’t Magic

16. Oregon Manufacturer’s Summit

20. Merit-Based Immigration?

23. HB 2020 Cap and Trade

24. Springfield Chamber on HB 2020 26. The State of Blue Collar America 28. E c o n o m i c I n d e x e s 30. BOOST Jordan Cove 31. Hemp Production Program 32. Most Pavement Per Person 36. Roseburg Library Hires Kris Wiley

39. Caving At the Lava Beds COVER PHOTO Library

703 Divot Loop Sutherlin, Oregon 97479 www.southernoregonbusiness.com 541-315-6127

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https://www.pexels.com/photo-license/ Pexels free stock Photos

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Met One Instruments Exemplifies Export Strategy Success

Grants Pass air monitoring equipment manufacturer Met One Instruments is poised for a growth spurt in 2012 thanks in part to the export assistance it has received over the last several years from Business Oregon.

Since 2010, Business Oregon's Global Strategies team has partnered with Met One at a series of overseas trade shows and trade missions to help the innovative company find new customers.

Through both the Oregon Trade Promotion Program (OTPP) and the State Trade and Export Promotion (STEP) Program, Business Oregon has provided Met One a series of export assistance grants to help defray the costs associated with its appearances at trade shows in Canada, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Met One's global success is a great example of the incredible return on a rather small investment by the state—in this company's case less than $8,000 total in three different export assistance grants over a three-year period. The company, which employs 100 workers in Grants Pass, is now emerging as a major global player in this highly technical sector.

As Governor Kitzhaber noted after his September 2011 appearance with company officials at an Southern Oregon Business Journal

event at the Shanghai (China) Academy of Environmental Sciences, where the company presented the research institute with a free, stateof-the-art piece of monitoring equipment: "I agree our Oregon workforce can truly stand up to any, and its companies like yours—growing, traded-sector advanced manufacturers, that play a key role in the successful growth of Oregon's economy."

Most recently, on March 7, 2012, Met One held a technical seminar attended by more than 120 people at the IE Expo 2012 in Shanghai, the largest environmental technology exhibition held in China.

Met One's success in competing in China means the company is now on the brink of even more growth.

That's because the recent passage of new air quality regulations in China for particulate air pollution (PM 2.5) means Met One is one of only a handful of companies in a position to supply the air monitoring equipment now required in such cities as Beijing.

A March 2012 story in the official Chinese government press reported that Beijing plans to invest at least 40 million yuan (6.35 million U.S. dollars) in 2012 in buying PM2.5 monitoring instruments.

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The article continued: "Domestic enterprises are capable of producing PM2.5 monitors, but unlike American companies, their analytical methods and monitors do not qualify for approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and are not accepted by the World Health Organization, said the official from the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau who declined to be named.

World leading PM2.5 monitor producers include Thermo Fisher Scientific, Met One Instruments and Automated Precision Inc., all from the U.S, and Australian Monitor and Echotech from Australia. Products from foreign companies have grabbed more than 70% of the Chinese market, said Wang Yuesi, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Institute of Atmospheric Physics."

The company's recent growth builds upon its past partnership with Business Oregon and the Governor's office. In November 2010, Business Oregon officials led a trade mission of nine Oregon companies, including Met One, to exhibit at Eco Expo Asia in Hong Kong. The trip focused on building on the successful groundwork laid by then Gov. Ted Kulongoski's May 2010 Asia trade mission.

Eco Expo Asia was an ideal platform for Oregon's green manufacturers, services and suppliers wanting to establish a foothold in expanding Asian eco markets.

The Hong Kong show focused on business solutions to climate change. It will feature companies specializing in air quality, energy efficiency, green buildings, waste and recycling and eco-friendly products.

"That was a great opportunity for existing Oregon companies to seize upon the tremendous potential clean tech related opportunities growing in Asia," Business Oregon Director Tim McCabe said. "Oregon companies are well positioned to tap into these fastgrowing markets to create jobs for Oregonians."

It certainly appears that Met One has seized on their opportunity.

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Flying Lessons: How stories from Aviation can make us better Managers

Boeing 737-9 Airliner

In this six part series, we introduce five activities critical to business success and examine each through the lens of lessons learned from the field of aviation. These activities are Observe, Communicate, Organize, Deliver and Improve.

Each one plays a vital role in allowing a business to be successful in serving their customers.

In just over one hundred years, the aviation industry has moved flight from being a novelty for the adventuresome to an integral component of our modern world. What stories from aviation can assist us as managers to improve our businesses and support our customers better? How can we leverage insights from over a century of trial and error, analysis and lessons learned to help our team become more productive? In what follows we will engage in a journey by picking examples of excellence in each of the critical activities and find out how we can to apply them to our business.

The picture above is of one of Boeing’s iconic 737 airliners representing a culmination of aviation lessons for business managers. The 737 started out as a project to support a Lufthansa airlines requirement in mid-1960’s. Almost 60 years later, over 9000 737s have been delivered. It is estimated that around the world at any one time 1000 737s are in flight and that a 737 either takes off or lands four times every minute. In microcosm, the 737 represents the result of five activities all organizations must do to be viable.

Boeing observed their environment and communicated, organized and delivered a product that it has improved over time. The ability to Observe, Communicate, Organize, Deliver and Improve are critical to business success. Moreover, the business Southern Oregon Business Journal

that does these five activities well is on its way beyond viability and towards achieving enterprise excellence.

Observation is important for a business because it provides basic data about internal and external environments. In the context of the business, this data becomes valuable in the form of information when it is organized and applied towards the accomplishment of purposeful tasks, activities and Almost 60 years later, over 9000 737s have

been delivered. It is estimated that around the world at any one time 1000 737s are in flight and that a 737 either takes off or lands four times every minute. In microcosm, the 737 represents the result of five activities all organizations must do to be viable. goals. We all know that there is a difference between observing and observing accurately. We can also agree in general that the more accurate the observation the more likely that actions taken as a result will provide the intended outcome. To put it simply, accurate observations yield higher quality information and as a result, improved outcomes.

Our lesson begins with Abraham Wald who was a mathematician and professor in Vienna in the 1930’s. As a refuge, he fled from Austria to the United States before WWII, after the National Socialists annexed Austria into the Third Reich.

While on the faculty of Columbia University, Wald worked for the US Navy’s Statistical Research Group applying statistical analysis to solve problems 9

associated with America’s war effort. Wald’s lesson in observation for us begins in the dark days of WWII, when the outcome of the war was still up in the air, so to speak.

The US Army Air Forces in Europe had been collecting information on aircraft battle damage.

The bombers in question flew dangerous missions, some with a staggering 41% loss rate. Battle damage data was a count of both the type of damage, typically from anti-aircraft artillery and fighter aircraft attacks, and its location on the aircraft. The idea was to use the data to make decisions about aircraft modifications. Aircraft are weight sensitive machines, and for every pound added here is a corresponding decrease in either fuel capacity (which decreased operational range) or ordnance load (which decreased mission effectiveness). The intent was to increase the survivability of both crew and aircraft by deciding where to add improvements, like armor.

When doing statistical analysis, the typical approach is to identify and gather data about a population.

In this case, the data reflected bombers returning from missions over Europe. Initial observations based upon the data indicated that additional protection of wings and fuselage would improve survivability (see B-17 Bomber: Aircraft top view and with battle damage plot).

When Wald scrutinized the data, he discovered that the ‘population’ in the data was limited to only those bombers that returned from missions. The accumulated data related to areas of damage on aircraft that returned from missions.

His observations and questioning of the intent of the research lead him to question what damage had occurred to aircraft that had not returned. In effect, the population should have included all bombers that departed for missions, not just those that returned. This expanded analysis brought up additional questions. The primary question being: What do we know, or what can we understand, about those aircraft that did not return based upon those that did?

Wald’s observations and insights called into question earlier ideas about intended improvements. The assumption can be made that the distribution of battle damage is even across all aircraft. That being said, a statement can be made

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that aircraft that did not return most likely had damage in those areas that are not represented explicitly in the data. Look again at the diagram.

By careful observation and the application of analysis, Wald was able to show that the real areas of concern are those areas on the aircraft that the data showed without battle damage, because aircraft that sustained damage in those areas did not make it back.

The “damage free” areas in the diagram are the cockpit/nose, engines and tail areas. These are areas susceptible to critical battle damage, to the extent that hits dramatically decrease aircraft survivability. The initial suggestion of reinforcing those areas based upon the data collected as opposed to the entire population of aircraft reflects is what is now called “Survivorship Bias”. This is where sample data does not match the actual population in question.

When making decisions based upon observations, strive for accuracy, not only in terms of the data,

but also in terms of the subject under scrutiny.

The Lesson for Managers: The intended outcome from observation is accuracy. Accuracy is the degree to which actions result in the intended outcome. In this case, making improvements to areas besides the cockpit/nose, engines and tail would have been a poor decision and most likely would not have dramatically increased survivability.

An awareness of Survivorship Bias can help you look beyond the obvious to ask, “What are my intended outcomes?” Taking a seemingly obvious course and drawing inaccurate conclusions results in poor decisions. When we broaden our observational view, and expand our understanding of intended results, we increase the potential to accumulate accurate information about both what we want to do and what the data is telling us. As managers we have a responsibility to use due diligence in making accurate observations which helps us develop more accurate information and as a result, improve the quality of our decisions.

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Battle Damage Diagram:

Further Reading:

B-17 Bomber: Aircraft top view and with battle damage plot.

1. Center for Naval Analyses: Wald, A Method of Estimating Plane Vulnerability Based on Damage of Survivors ADA091073 (at https:// apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a091073.pdf) 2. The Legend of Abraham Wald (at http://www.ams.org/samplings/feature-column/fc2016-06) Š 2017 Praxis Analytics, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Attribution:

Jim Myers is the principal and founder

Total aircraft on mission (total population)

of Praxis Analytics, Incorporated. Jim serves as a trusted advisor to business leaders in their quest to operate efficiently, improve continuously and prosper. His background includes two decades working in manufacturing, supply chain, customer service and maintenance management roles within markets that range from capital equipment to aerospace and defense. Jim balanced his practical operations experience with theory and served as the Associate Dean of the Atkinson Graduate School of Management (AGSM) at Willamette University where he led projects to improve school operations and taught graduate courses in Operations and Information Management, Strategy Alignment and Project Management.

Returned aircraft (Survivorship Bias:

analysis of this group)

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Jim can be reached at jim@praxisanalyticsinc.com Praxis Analytics web site: https:praxisanalyticsinc.com/

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Blind Spots, Heuristics and Anchors … Oh My!

By Bill Swift, M. Ed., Leadership Facilitator Cascade Employers Association bswift@cascadeemployers.com

Please Allow Me To Explain Resolve this year to improve the quality and effectiveness of your workplace conversations by challenging everything. Well, don’t challenge everything. That would take too long. But it may really pay off to work with your supervisory team to improve critical thinking.

When we move into leadership positions, even though our job description may not say it specifically, there is an expectation that we will see the world of work through a more critical eye and help make good, well-informed decisions. Most of us do okay with this, but few of us are formally trained in decision making. And all sorts of workplace activities are influenced by biases we can’t see. Successful leaders create teams that make fewer personnel mistakes in hiring, in employee coaching, and in performance management by confronting attribution bias.

Attribution bias or fundamental attribution error is a catch-all phrase that social psychologists use to explain how our thought processes can lead to misperceptions, mistakes and interpersonal barriers. It breaks down like this: Most humans have a tendency to explain behavior by attributing internal drivers and ignoring situational drivers.

We do this even in the face of clear evidence that situational factors are influencing our employees.

The term cognitive misers is used to label this thought short-hand. (The psychologists did not come out and call us lazy thinkers, but this is implied. Apparently we all have too much stuff to process and think about and, so, we take short cuts). Basically, most of us have the tendency to attribute behavior to whatever most easily grabs our attention.

This concept of bias also hangs over so many

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supervisor coaching moments. I have wanted to write about it for some time, but have hesitated because it’s, well, sort of hard to explain. So, stick with me for a minute here. You just might change the way you see things, the way you approach your employees, and the success you have in understanding them.

Have you heard the term heuristic? It essentially describes the process of approaching problemsolving and decision-making by what gets us there quickly and easily, but often not incorporating logic, analysis and practicality (things that take longer).

Studies continue to show that most human beings are lazy thinkers.

In The Undoing Project, a 2017 book, Michael Lewis (the Moneyball guy) gives a great breakdown of the evolving science of behavioral economics – i.e. how we see stuff and how we all make a lot of fundamental mistakes. Numerous examples of heuristics and biases hammer home the point that we often misinterpret what is really going on. The psychologists who put this all together ended up winning the Nobel Prize, so I was willing to pay attention.

If I flip a coin 5 times and it comes up heads all 5, what are the chances on the next flip that it will come up heads? That one is easy for most of us.

It’s still a 50/50 proposition. Seems, however, that our blind spots go much deeper than this fairly simple anchor.

One company found that their best sales people had three things going on: 1. they had good objection-answering skills, 2. they had good grooming habits, 3. they dressed conservatively (black shoes).

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This really looks like causation, i.e. one thing leading to another. Turns out, upon further inspection, the same three traits were true of their weakest performers. We tend to jump on what is available to explain behavior.

Ever feel like a professional sports scout? “Tell us if you think this candidate will perform well in your department.” Well it turns out the professional scouts make the same attribution errors that we all make when it comes to identifying talent and fit in our organizations. Left to our own devices, we will fall in love with our ideas and push on even in the face of better, sometimes contrary evidence.

So what does this have to do with your leadership team? Well, higher functioning organizations show patterns of interacting in ways that combat these biases. Inviting an “outsider” to your meetings, for instance. (See Ted Talk: Tribal Leadership).

Perhaps teaching Performance Review skills that includes a review of common bias patterns.

Progressive workplaces are also adding more objective Analytics to their hiring and review processes, such as ©The Predictive Index.

This fall, we had lots and lots of supervisor development sessions where the discussion

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continued to turn to these assumptions we make about what motivates certain behaviors. Is it a

“Generation Thing”? Is it a “Cultural Thing”? Why are my employees behaving this way?

Apparently there are many workplaces that are being challenged with employees who don’t share the same work ethic with their supervisor. Some involved in the discussions were new to supervision, many were the more seasoned leaders. Some of the best “Aha” moments in these trainings are when we begin to break down our blind spots, our guesses, our assumptions and our biases. All of us, new or seasoned, are influenced by an often unseen dynamic that drives miscommunication and misunderstanding. Improvement comes when we build in better processes.

Resolve this year to build in some cross-checking and critical reviews of your hiring, your performance management and decision making. Resolve this year to have Assumption Check on your weekly meeting agenda. Resolve this year to invite some fresh eyes to look with you at old processes.

We would love to hear your examples of workplace bias and especially how you are confronting it.

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Broadband USA https://www2.ntia.doc.gov/ Department of Commerce Joins Government-Wide Initiative to Facilitate Broadband Deployment Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross joined with other Federal agencies to announce a cohesive, acrossgovernment, strategy to promote broadband deployment. A report released by the White House outlines the American Broadband Initiative (ABI), an effort that includes streamlining the Federal permitting process, The ABI, announced during a Commerce Department meeting with state broadband leaders, coincides with the Department’s work to update the national broadband map and make it easier to identify which parts of the country lack connectivity.

As part of the ABI’s vision for how the Federal government can increase broadband access: The Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration will create a one-stop shop for broadband permitting information on its BroadbandUSA website.

Map of Federal Infrastructure Assets That Can Support Rural Broadband

On January 8, 2018, and in association with the release of Executive Order (EO) 13821, Streamlining and Expediting Requests To Locate Broadband Facilities in Rural America, a Presidential Memorandum was issued to the Secretary of the Interior entitled, Supporting Broadband Tower Facilities in Rural America on Federal Properties Managed by the Department of the Interior.

In order to meet the goal of “identifying assets that can be used to support rural broadband deployment and adoption”, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has published a web-based mapping application that allows users to see locations of existing Federal broadband infrastructure, filter data, and add layers for analysis.

This streamlines the broadband permitting process by enabling customers to identify land management agencies and designations early, make informed choices, and ultimately improve the permitting process.

Interactive GIS Map of Broadband sites across the United States, screenshot by Joel Harrington, BLM.

Visit these links to see what else the Department of Interior agencies are doing to deploy Broadband in rural America: Bureau of Land Management | Fish and Wildlife Service | National Park Service | https://www2.ntia.doc.gov/

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Friday, March 15, 2019 8am – 4:30pm Exclusive Event for Oregon Manufacturers “This event is a great opportunity to learn more about continuous improvement, automation, structured OJT, and other ways to build and grow your manufacturing operations. I’ve learned invaluable lessons from the previous two summits I’ve attended, and would recommend this event a 10/10!” – 2018 Attendee

http://summit.omep.org/

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Moving Pacific Northwest Manufacturing Forward No matter where your manufacturing company is in its lifecycle, this conference is designed to help you move to your next milestone. Learn from industry veterans on how to increase your manufacturing profitability and respond to rising costs through innovation.

Meet new buyers and suppliers at our formalized business to business matchmaking session, and get practical knowledge in thoughtful breakout sessions. Discover how companies like yours are applying continuous improvement methods to all aspects of their business, creating effective sales programs, improving through-put and capacity, and enhancing workforce strategies. Whether you employ 5 or 5,000, you’ll take away practical insights you can apply directly to your company.

Exclusively for NW Manufacturing Companies To provide the most value for our attendees attendance is limited to manufacturing companies and select partner organizations. All ticket purchase requests will be reviewed. Thank you for understanding.

Join The Oregon Manufacturers' Summit: March 15 2019

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by Bob Cannon https://www.omep.org/the-lean-transformation-there-is-no-magic-wand/ Over much of the last 2 decades, I have had the opportunity to learn a great deal about this idea we refer to as “Lean Manufacturing.” When I reflect on all that I have learned, and the manner in which I learned it, I realize one overarching (and maybe very obvious) truth:

Leading a lean transformation is hard. Not hard in the way of extreme complexity or hard to come by Intellectual Property, but in a way that requires a high degree of discipline.

Some of the key areas of learning I have had include:

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The tools – kan ban, flow, 5S, Value Stream Mapping, Visual Controls, etc.

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Culture – This is a way of life, not just a tidy little tool box to be pulled from when time allows

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Valuing People – Engagement is critical to success

First Came the Tools Like many, I am sure, I first started learning about tools. There are countless resources available that describe the set of tools that have been observed in use at Toyota. This seemed to be an easy and very tangible way to learn about the secrets of the success of the Toyota Production System. I couldn’t get enough. It was so much fun learning these new keys that were going to unlock success. As it turned out, there were some spot examples of positive impact, but not as imagined. We moved from one area to the next to implement various improvements, and then started to see backsliding as time passed. Tools, as it turned out, were not self-sustaining. We needed more.

Culture is a Way of Life While a small subset of our leadership team had started to gain some mastery of teaching about and implementing tools, we had done little to change the way we, as leaders, behaved on a day to day basis. In hindsight, this was the next big lever. We then temporarily set aside our tools implementation crusade and focused on culture.

What is culture? In this context, we turned our focus to changing the way leaders behaved to a more intentional, disciplined style. The thinking was that if we behaved differently, our team members that we were supporting would experience different interactions, therefore starting to change the culture. This was much more difficult than learning about and implementing tools.

With an experienced, tenured leadership team, there were layers of habits and routines to undo and retrain. Through Leader Standard Work and Tiered Daily Meetings, we started to see progress,

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but not quickly or magically, it required discipline and hard work. As this cultural foundation started to strengthen, we could begin to resume implementing tactical change.

Managing Change by Valuing People Probably the most valuable lesson I have learned through my experiences is the impact of engaging ALL team members. The phrase, “Doing Lean WITH people instead of TO people” is bounced around and usually gets some chuckles. Kidding and clichés aside, this couldn’t be more accurate. There is a lot of talk (and plenty of books) about organizational change management. At the risk of oversimplifying, I have found that the easiest and fastest way to get people on board with change is to involve them. How do we involve (engage) them? We engage with them.

If it is engagement that you want, you must engage…that simple. As a result, we don’t need to “manage change” we just need to get people involved in the process of change. If we can use the collective horsepower and creativity of all of our people, tremendous things can happen.

And, as a very nice outcome, our people are more interested in and satisfied with their employment. As we all get more interested in our jobs, we are more likely to continue to increase our level of commitment. As commitment increases, our contribution increases and so the snowball rolls. Again, not overly complex or scientific.

Lean Manufacturing Isn’t Magic In summary, I have learned from so many great people and through my own trial and error (emphasis on error), that this “Lean Manufacturing” thing is much more than originally perceived. It is much more than a set of tools. It is not overly complicated. It requires discipline. It can lead to tremendous results in operational performance AND employee morale and engagement.

Just remember, there is no magic wand.

Bob Cannon | Senior Consultant

Bob is an adept problem solver, experienced in leadership roles of manufacturing, engineering and maintenance organizations. He has worked in lean manufacturing implementation and leadership for 15 years, as well as 20 years with P&L responsibility, including budget development, execution, and analysis. As a Senior Consultant at OMEP, Bob delivers results by connecting manufacturing professionals to continuous improvement solutions. www.omep.org

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Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

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Economic Outlook: No, no, no!

Just give me your doctors, engineers, and PhDs! Commentary by Robert Whelan, ECONorthwest Three months ago, I gave a presentation to a business group. During the question and answer period a gentleman stood up. He asked me, “What do you think about merit-based immigration?”

That’s where a country chooses who can become a citizen based on their education and skills. I said, to everyone’s surprise, that it isn’t that great.

It makes sense to give some international grads at our colleges preference for gaining citizenship because they have adapted to American culture.

But for the most part, the economy is better off taking in lower-skilled immigrants who have suffered severe hardships in troubled countries.

Here’s why.

Let’s start with an important piece of American history. If you visit the Statue of Liberty, you will see a bronze plaque. On it is inscribed the sonnet The New Colossus. Written by poet Emma Lazarus for an auction to raise money for the statue’s pedestal, the last phrase is well-known:

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Tired, poor, huddled masses are not merit-based immigrants. They are oppressed people, mostly poorly educated, seeking opportunity and a new start in America. If we wanted merit-based immigrants, the sonnet would have said, “give me your doctors, engineers, and PhDs.” Perhaps we’ve forgotten what our country is about.

Today, many are espousing merit-based immigration. Proponents point to Canada, which has had that system for 52 years. But recent research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a 36 member-country research group, found that Canada’s merit system is not all it’s cracked up to be.1 Turns out, college educated immigrants were more Southern Oregon Business Journal

than twice as likely to be unemployed as nativeborn Canadians. But among high-school graduates, immigrants were no more likely to be unemployed than the native-born.2 Why? Well it is not for lack of thought. Collegeeducated merit immigrants are brought in to take advanced, high-paying jobs where there are shortages of Canadian workers.

The OECD finds that many foreign merit-based immigrants underperform because they are insufficiently familiar with Canadian languages and culture. So, their interpersonal skills (i.e., ability to communicate, work with others, and lead) are weak. That puts them at a competitive disadvantage in the job market.

Having trouble getting the good jobs in their chosen fields, they either take jobs where they are overqualified or don’t work.

Interpersonal skills are critical for many jobs.

ECONorthwest discovered this last year when we surveyed employers asking what skills they found hardest to find. For years we’ve heard complaints about not enough workers with critical thinking skills (i.e., analysis, math, machining, software).

The survey results blew a hole in that! Employers said hardest skills to find are interpersonal.

This is where merit-based immigrants have trouble.

Not having been brought up in Canada, many merit immigrants fall short on interpersonal skills.

Less educated immigrants, on the other hand, outperform. With little concern over career status, they are more apt to take whatever jobs will feed their families and pay their rent. Their egos are untethered to the expectations that come with college degrees. Thus, the less educated often take jobs where interpersonal skills are less important than a willingness to work hard for long hours.

Their goals are to move up the income ladder, save, and push their kids into higher education.

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Their children, naturally, grow up fully acculturated.

Their interpersonal skills are more attuned with Canada, which helps the economy grow and create even more jobs as the first-generation ages.

The United States immigration policies are less merit -based than Canada’s. Consider that shares of immigrants ages 25 - 64 lacking at least a high school education. In Canada, only 22 percent do. In the U.S., over 30 percent do.3 And one-in-six coming to the U.S. never made it to 9th grade.4 Yet their positive impacts are clear.

Ambition and personality are part of this. After all, you don’t move your family to a new country to sit back and not take chances. Instead, just by emigrating, especially from a war-torn or intensely poor country, you demonstrate the entrepreneurial characteristics of resilience and willingness to take risks.5 Those are less prevalent among native-born Americans and, for that matter, immigrant college graduates.

It shows up in the data. About 43 percent of the 500 largest companies in the United States were started either by immigrants or the children of immigrants.6 The National Bureau of Economic Research found that a quarter of all new businesses in the United States were started by immigrants.7 The Small Business Administration says that immigrants are 30 percent more likely to start new businesses than U.S. born citizens are.8 Another part of their success is their age distribution. The median age of U.S. immigrants is 44 and the largest share are those 35 to 39. About 10½ percent are between 40 and 49. That compares with only to 5½ percent of native-born Americans. Why does that matter?

For the most talented, being about 40 turns out to be the peak age of invention and of Nobel Prize works.9 But even for those in the tired masses, economic research consistently shows the highest productivity growth comes from people around 40 years of age and it is productivity that grows the economy, raises incomes, and leads to greater success over time.10 The average age for a U.S. merit-based system, which applies to H1-B visas not actual immigration, is “very young” with most being between 25 and 34.11 So for the economy’s sake and long-term growth in the U.S., please bring us the tired, poor, huddled masses, but let’s offer international students doing well in our universities a chance too.

Robert Whelan

Project Director Robert specializes in market research and forecasting.

Office: Portland, OR Phone: 503-200-5071 Email: whelan@econw.com Education: Post Graduate Courses, Economics, Columbia University M.S. Mineral Economics, Pennsylvania State University B.S. Earth Sciences, Adelphi University

1 “International Migration Outlook 2018.” OECD. June 20, 2018.

2 Bershidsky, L. “Merit-based immigrants aren’t the most successful citizens/” Bloomberg. October 30, 2018.

3 OECD. International Migration Outlook. 2007, p. 133.

4 U.S. Census Bureau. Characteristics of the U.S. population by generational status: 2013. November 2016.

5 Sampaco, S. Resilience and risk-taking: How the immigration experience shapes the path of foreign-born entrepreneurs.

GeekWire. June 29, 2018.

6 Center for American Entrepreneurship. http://startupsusa.org/fortune500/#introduction 7 Kerr, S. and Keer, W. Immigrant Entrepreneurship in America: Evidence from the Survey of Business Owners 2007 & 2012. NBER working paper 24494. April 2018.

8 Farlie, R. Estimating the contribution of immigrant business owners to the U.S. economy. U.S. Small Business Administration. Nov. 2008. P. 19.

9 https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/age-sex-pyramids-immigrant-and- native-born-population-overtime 10 National Research Council. Aging and the Macroeconomy: Long-Term Implications of an Older Population¨. 2012. P. 6-4.

11 https://cis.org/Huennekens/H1B-Program-10Year-Trends

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HB 2020 Oregon

Cap and Trade FactSheet The proposed HB 2020 legislation would have significant and lasting impacts on natural gas rate payers.

Customers from all rate classes would experience rapid and increasing costs for simply heating their homes and businesses. The chart below shows the weighted average rate impact for all residential and commercial customers in Oregon, as well as by each of the three LDCs .

The current HB 2020 proposal gives free credits to Oregon’s electric utilities in recognition of the prior legislatively mandated green initiatives. It treats the more than two million Oregon residents and businesses who rely on natural gas for warmth, comfort and productive energy differently, ignoring the strides that Oregon LDCs and their customers have made in reducing emissions through system maintenance, modernization and efficiency initiatives. Consider:

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Emissions from residential and commercial* use of natural gas make up about 6% of total statewide GHG emissions according the Oregon Greenhouse Gas Sector-Based Inventory

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Emissions from residential and commercial use of natural gas have increased only 2 percent since 2000.

Oregon has added more than 200,000 new natural gas homes (41% increase) and almost 20,000 new businesses (23% increase) over the same period.

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Each Oregon home heated by natural gas emits 29% less carbon than it did in the year 2000. Each commercial natural gas customer emits 19% less carbon than in 2000.

•

We burn more natural gas in Oregon to generate electricity than homes and commercial entities combined use directly to heat space and water.

These achievements are not the result of legislation, but that does not make them any less real, nor reduce the commitment required by families, businesses and LDCs to see them through.

Conclusions HB 2020 as currently composed is punitive to Oregon’s natural gas customers and unfair. The state is already seeing emissions reductions from the transition to and increasing reliance on natural gas as a cleaner, reliable fuel for generating electricity. The state is also seeing significant emissions-related benefits by virtue of the highly efficient direct use of natural gas for residential and commercial space and water heat. All natural gas utility customers should receive a fair share of allowances to mitigate rate impacts.

*The commercial sector includes businesses (e.g. restaurants, breweries, laundromats, etc.), buildings and institutions (e.g. schools, universities, hospitals, etc.) that use natural gas for space and water heat.

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Hemp Production Program The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (2018 Farm Bill, Section 10113) directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to issue regulations and guidance to implement a program for the commercial production of industrial hemp in the United States. USDA has begun the process to gather information for rulemaking. Once complete, this information will be used to formulate regulations that will include specific details for both federally regulated hemp production and a process for the submission of State, and Indian tribal plans to USDA. Regulations for States or Tribes who submit plans will include procedures and information collections regarding: land to be used for planting; testing; effective disposal of plants and products; compliance with law enforcement; annual inspections; submission of information to USDA; and certification that resources and personnel are available to carry out the practices and procedures described above. State or Indian tribal nations do not need to submit plans for approval until regulations are in place; however, should a state submit a plan, USDA will hold that submission until regulations have been promulgated.

As required by law, USDA is committed to completing its review of plans within 60 days once regulations are effective.

USDA is also required to establish a plan to monitor and regulate the production of hemp in those States or Indian tribes that do not have an approved State or Tribal plan. It is USDA’s intention to issue regulations in the Fall of 2019 to accommodate the 2020 planting season. The rulemaking will provide for the publishing of a proposed rule, comment period, and a final rule.

For the 2019 planting season, the 2018 Farm Bill provides that States, Tribes, and institutions of higher education can continue operating under authorities of the 2014 Farm Bill. USDA provided additional guidance to these programs in the August 2016 multi-agency Statement of Principles on Industrial Hemp (FR 53395). The 2018 Farm Bill extension of the 2014 authority expires 12 months after USDA has established the plan and regulations required under the 2018 Farm Bill.

A Farm Bill listening session on industrial hemp production will occur on March 13, 2019. The listening session will be held in the form of a webinar and will be open to the general public. More details regarding the webinar will be forthcoming.

For more information, visit the Marketing Program for the Commercial Production of Hemp page on the AMS website. Please send questions or request for information to farmbill.hemp@usda.gov.

USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer, and lender

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Which Countries Have the Most Pavement Per Person?

by Daniel Herriges One number can't begin to capture the complexity of the differences between urban places—what we build, how we build it, what it looks like, and what it's going to take to maintain it.

But sometimes, one number can cut through all the details and illuminate a fundamental truth about some aspect of our world. It's why we measure statistics like the GDP or life expectancy: they don't tell us everything we need to know, but they do tell us a part of the story.

For example, take the answer to this simple question: Which countries have the most

paved surface per capita?

Before I spoil it, think for a second about your gut reaction. What mental images do you associate with that question? Which do they look more like: A or B? Left or right?

(Photos: Wikimedia Commons)

It turns out we have data on that question. A widely cited study on impervious surface area per country was published in 2007 in the journal Sensors. The study defined impervious surface area (ISA) as including such things as “roads, parking lots, buildings, driveways, sidewalks and other manmade surfaces”—anything water will run off of instead of soaking in. The researchers devised a model that would estimate ISA by looking at the presence and brightness of nighttime lights in satellite imagery, along with population density.

They tested the model on high-res aerial photos for accuracy, and then applied it worldwide.

The study found China, unsurprisingly, had the greatest total amount of ISA in the world, as the world’s largest country—but on a per capita basis, it wasn’t even close. A few representative results from the table are shown in the table on the next page.

"https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53dd6676e4b0fedfbc26ea91/t/5c6d34bb53450a9d916f5ca3/1550660801183/ PavedUSvGermany.jpg" alt="PavedUSvGermany.jpg" />

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Surprised? It’s understandable if you are. North American neighborhoods have a lot of greenery, while European and Japanese ones are not famed for it. Here’s the key to the dramatic difference the study reveals.

The Reason: Auto Orientation There is a simple reason the US and Canada have so much pavement, and it has to do with why we have pavement in the first place. Impervious surfaces exist for three major reasons:

• • •

Which country had the most ISA per capita? The United Arab Emirates (home to Dubai and Abu Dhabi), followed by Canada, Finland*, and the United States.

Buildings Streets and Roads

Parking

Two of those three have everything to do with cars.

And on nearly every measure to do with car usage, well, America is number 1, baby.

Canada clocks in at 352.7 square meters per person of paved land. The US has 296.8 square meters.

So where was the photo on the right above taken? If you guessed Germany, you’d be correct. Germany’s ISA per capita is 103.1 square meters.

Germany has just over one-third of the paved surface per capita of the United States. We’re talking about two countries that are comparably wealthy, which are both famous for their freeways.

In fact, nearly all Western European countries have far less impervious surface per person than the United States, ranging from about 70% as much (Norway and Sweden) to well under half.

Even Japan, a wealthy country known for its dense “concrete jungle” cities, has only 114.5 square meters of paved surface per person, less than 40% of what the United States has. A typical suburban street in Japan looks like this:

New York, NY

Vehicle miles traveled per capita? Check. Number of cars owned per capita? Check. Low frequency of walking, biking, and public transit ridership? Check.

America’s post-WWII suburban experiment consisted of radically redesigning our cities around the automobile as not only a method of transportation, but the universal, all-but-obligatory method of transportation. Other countries around the world have adopted American-style suburban design to some extent, and have built freeways as well, but the US went all-in on this experiment like no other place. And Canada largely followed its lead.

We can be fooled by the fact that American-style suburbs are often visually verdant—plenty of trees, plenty of "green space." But in order to live in the development pattern our suburban experiment has

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produced, we are paving over far more of our land than Europeans in their compact, walkable cities are. (And, it should be noted, it’s not like Europeans don’t get to enjoy greenery at all in their cities: many have spectacular parks, such as Paris’s Bois de Boulogne.)

You can see the difference between urban and suburban areas within the United States as well.

The US EPA maintains an EnviroAtlas with interesting data in an interactive map for a sampling of major metropolitan areas. Check out the striking pattern when you plot impervious surface per capita for a few major cities.

Portland, OR

In every one of these cities, the lighter colors (less impervious surface) are in the traditional, pre-WWII neighborhoods, and the darkest colors are mostly in the suburbs (as well as some exceptions like industrial areas, or areas where very low population of any sort skews the numbers).

The paradox this data reveals is stark: New York City is dominated by brick and glass and concrete and steel. But NYC residents have just about the least amount of pavement to their name of any Americans.

Meanwhile, our greenest places are in one sense the least “green,” when you account for the parking lots and six-lane stroads that come with large grassy lawns.

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Why It Matters

Infrastructure is expensive. Most of the places we’ve built under the Suburban Experiment are choking on the costs of maintaining it, as we’ve documented again and again. And auto-oriented land uses are less financially productive, thus squeezing us at both ends.

Is the amount of paved surface per capita a perfect proxy for the dollar amount of infrastructure we’re committed to maintain? Not by a long shot—there are many complicating factors. But, faced with the fact that the U.S. has vastly more pavement than many of its wealthy peer countries, and the fact that all those roads and parking lots will one day need repaving, should we be asking some tough questions?

Absolutely.

Paving over land has environmental impacts. Flooding is a major concern in some of the most populous parts of the U.S., like the Eastern Seaboard (including New York), Florida and southeastern Texas. Environmental advocates in these places will often cite flood risk as a justification for mandatory "open space" policies that spread buildings farther apart from each other by requiring developers to leave a certain percentage of their property covered with vegetation which can absorb storm water. (In new suburban subdivisions, the required open space is often as high as 50%.)

In a particular area prone to flooding, of course, it's not paved surface per capita that really matters. It's the percent of all the land area that is paved— measured as impervious surface per square mile or per acre. That tells you how much of the rainwater that falls becomes runoff and needs to be accommodated somehow.

But is the solution to leave ample "green space" even in our walkable downtowns? Likely killing their financial productivity and their walkability in the process? Not at all.

Consider what Amsterdam looks like. The Netherlands has 123.2 square meters of impervious

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Rural Netherlands. Image: pxhere. Creative Commons license.

surface per capita, 40% of the U.S. total. The Netherlands is also largely near or even below sea level.

Rural areas of The Netherlands are perhaps less photographed, but their preservation is the flip side of the coin of the dense, walkable development pattern of Amsterdam, The Hague, etc. They’re quite green, and they can absorb a lot of water when it rains.

into the ground as possible.

The lesson you uncover when you actually look at who builds the most pavement, and why, is that what appears green can be deceiving.

Let cities be cities, and rural be rural.

In productive places that generate wealth—the New Yorks, Amsterdams, Tokyos of the world—we can afford to deal with stormwater through more sophisticated technological means: pipes, pumps, levees, as well as newer technologies like green roofs and permeable pavement.

Places that produce comparatively lower revenue warrant a different approach, a more natural and low-tech one. It's not that verdant suburbs are always bad: it's that we should deal with drainage in those places by keeping our paved footprint to a minimum and absorbing as much stormwater back Southern Oregon Business Journal

Daniel Herriges Daniel Herriges (Twitter: @DanielStrTowns) serves as Content Manager for Strong Towns, and has been a regular contributor since 2015. He is also a founding member of the organization.

Daniel has a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Minnesota. His obsession with maps began before he could read. His budding environmentalism can be traced back to age 4, when he yelled at his parents for stepping on weeds growing in sidewalk cracks. His love of great urban design and human-scaled, livable places has also been lifelong.

Daniel has a B.A. from Stanford University in Human Biology with a concentration in Conservation and Sustainable Development. After college, he worked as an environmental activist for several years, in support of indigenous people's rights and cons.

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The Library Survives!

The New Director of the Roseburg Public Library, Kris Wiley is from Littleport, Iowa. It’s in the northeast corner of the state and has a population of about 85. After the Volga River flood of May 16, 1999, much of the town was destroyed and most residents moved away. At the 2000 Census, there were 26 residents. Its unincorporated and has lost most of its population of farmers and old-timers. Kris was in New Ulm, Minnesota at the time of the flood.

Kris is as excited to be in Roseburg as she could be. Hired in July, last year, she has been on a fast -tack to discovering Oregon from the ocean to the mountain tops, places many Oregonians probably have on their bucket lists. She’s a great fit for the library needs of Roseburg and Douglas County.

NEW ULM — After nearly nine years with the New Ulm Public Library, Kris Wiley is resigning as director to start new adventure in Roseburg, Oregon.

Wiley’s last day as New Ulm’s library director is June 15. She first came to New Ulm in August 2009 and was named library director four years ago.

Wiley has worn many hats in her lifetime. She started out as a sports journalist in Iowa. She decided to change careers and worked as a nurse for a time. Eventually, she went back to school for her Masters in Library Science. Her first professional library job was in southern Georgia.

From there she moved to New Ulm. The Journal, New Ulm, Minn.

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Kris Wiley

Wiley likes to pick up a good book in her spare time. She describes herself as an “omnivorous reader.”

“I really enjoy books with great character development, and I also love a good mystery with a strong sense of place. I love to read about contemporary current affairs and history. I really run the gamut,” she said.

-News Review -

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Why do we need libraries?

Little eyes have a way of expressing delight and excitement in ways that adults rarely do.

The little boy was about five following his mother’s instruction to keep hold of his sister’s hand so she wouldn’t get lost among the rows of books in the small-town library.

Its an exciting place with more available than most people will ever know. Any place this quiet must be special. Respecting the institution has always been a given.

A few years ago it was reported that the New York City Libraries needed $1.5 billion over a ten year period to repair old buildings that were crowded and falling apart. And, perhaps, there is the problem; not enough money. But, is there something else?

Are libraries obsolete or have we run out of philanthropic entrepreneurs to fund the necessities? Who is responsible for paying to keep libraries open when the wealthy citizen is no longer able or willing to foot the bill?

The taxpayer or the user of services? Many voters are saying no. Certainly not in Roseburg.

Library Committee Chair and City Councilor, Brian Prawitz said that someone asked him, “What kind of community would close a library and expect to survive?” There were about 300 people present at the Grand Opening of the remodeled, and reinvigorated Roseburg Library who don’t want to find out.

Brian described the library as a sort of “Canary in a goldmine” that is an indicator of what’s going on in the community.

City Manager Lance Colley, in his announcements said the Roseburg City Library would be a flagship for all of Douglas County, not just Roseburg. The continuation of library services throughout the county is the goal.

City Manager, Lance Colley

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It’s possible that the financial challenges of funding a county library system was an anomaly, but indications are they are not.

Revenues are on the meeting agenda of every public body in America. Things change in the name of progress; in the name of politics, in the name of culture, in the name of education and taste.

The city of Roseburg and Douglas County had the determined enthusiasm of a group of citizens and local leaders to see through the difficult process of re-opening their beloved library. Now the real challenge of keeping it open for the next generations is before them.

Besides death and taxes, change is a certain thing.

Greg Henderson, Southern Oregon Business Journal greg@southernoregonbusiness.com

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County Commissioner Chris Boice and his family sign up for their Roseburg City Library card.

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Caving at the Lava Beds

Cave entrances can take many forms; from walk-in entrances like Valentine Cave, to entrances that are only accessible by ladders or ropes.

Kenneth Ingham

What You Need To Know Before You Go Caving 1. Before entering any cave you must be "screened" for white-nose syndrome. If you have boots or other gear used in caves or mines outside of Lava Beds since 2006, or in caves or mines outside of the United States ever, please leave these items at home. This is an effort to prevent the spread of white-nose syndrome, a deadly fungal bat disease.

2. Most information you need to know is contained in our caving brochure.

3. Learn what it means to cave safely and cave softly, and put these ethics into practice during your visit.

https://www.nps.gov/labe/planyourvisit/caving.htm

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Southern Oregon Business Journal 703 Divot Loop Sutherlin, OR 97479

Mar 10, 2019 - Daylight Saving Time Starts When local standard time is about to reach Sunday, March 10, 2019, 2:00:00 am clocks are turned forward 1 hour to Sunday, March 10, 2019, 3:00:00 am local daylight time instead. https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-clock-reading-at-2-12-1537268/