Yes, We Did!

Some amazing news from the world of legislative politics over the past few days has me humbly and happily proven wrong about our assumptions. By “our” I mean me and all the people out there who do not work in an elected office at the state government level and who might believe that they have no real voice in the upper echelons of their state’s government.

I consider it a righteous duty to vote, but I have never protested in the streets, even when I’ve been angrily opposed to government decisions.  I’ve never even written my congressman or woman until recently.  These are occasions when the Audubon Society or Blue Voice (an organization devoted to protecting dolphins and whales) contacts me by email and they include a link to a form letter that I just have to sign my name to and click/send off into cyberspace where it then streams into the computer of an office of somebody in Washington.  Guilt is the operating force for these small actions, not faith that my little email is going to change anything, unless it’s part of a tsunami of other emails.

Then SB 621 came up here in Oregon, and it was really important to my continuing livelihood. I spoke about the particulars of this bill in last week’s blog, and I was afraid, very afraid. In fact, unless it passed in both the House and Senate, I was seriously going to consider a different career, like winning the lottery or making thousands of dollars a month by working from home (just kidding: do not fall for those work from home schemes—transferring money from Nigerian banks would be a better bet).

So I emailed my elected peeps up there in the state capitol, and just hoped for the best, figuring they’ll just do what they want anyway, despite my email or those of the people I work with.  Sometime during the campaign for the bill’s passage, I also helped make a small set that we took to the capitol for filmmaking’s industry day, too.  But I did that because I was between shows anyway, so why not.  Once again, no faith here in changing the world.

After a time, the bill died.  Almost.  While it was in its death throes the emails from our film office went out, again asking for our help in contacting our elected representatives.  So we sent in emails again.  And then… the bill revived and passed the House.  Then it died again.  Then we all wrote in again.  I wrote about it in my blog last week at this stage of the bill’s existence: suffering and near death, about to breathe its last and only one man had the power to revive it.

I mentioned in my blog that where the bill died this time had been in a Senate revenue committee, and I complained at the time that this was not a transparent part of government.  But guess what?  I was completely wrong! With the help of your computer, you or I can listen in to every word of these government committees, just like an intelligent, highly opinionated fly on the wall.

Yes!  Technology is so very useful in ways I had never considered. I’m so self-involved that I never knew this until it came down to being all about me (as usual).  So, I went to my Oregon state government website at the time of the next revenue committee discussion of the bill, simply clicked on a couple of links, and there I was, listening to the rebirth of the bill by unanimous vote after some pertinent arguments in its favor were made.

Now… it’s alive!! It has passed both Houses and will be operational within a few weeks.  Now we will have twelve months’ worth of incentive money instead of six, which means twelve months a year of film work for those of us in the Business instead of six. Which means that now I might make enough money to pay off my credit cards, freeing me from my ongoing personal bail-out (through their usurious interest rates) of several faceless, frighteningly monolithic credit institutions.

Also, now I can tell those Nigerian bankers to get lost.