State working its way out of recession one job at a time

Guest Column

By Dave Hunt

, Mar 10, 2010, Updated Mar 10, 2010

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Inch by inch… job by job… Oregon is working its way out of this global recession. The work accomplished in the 25-day legislative session we just concluded will help our state’s recovery and continue our efforts to prepare Oregon for a robust economic resurgence in the coming years.

Our focus: create jobs and help struggling families. Here are some of the highlights of our work this February session:

• For small businesses looking to expand, we eased restrictions, streamlined the application process and allocated new resources to give them access to capital. Small business owners across Oregon have told me that the lack of access to credit is the single biggest factor preventing job creation.

• For 19,000 unemployed Oregonians, we extended unemployment benefits to help them pay the mortgage and feed their families.

• For 5,500 children, we extended Employment-Related Day Care, ensuring that 2,900 families will have assistance they need to keep working and over 1,500 day care workers will have jobs caring for those children.

• For thousands of college students, we protected Oregon Opportunity grants, ensuring that their award checks won’t be reduced this spring term.

For school children, we guaranteed funding of $6 billion for K-12 schools, ensuring that districts across the state will have the resources they need to protect a full school year, both in 2009-2010 and 2010-2011.

We also used this special session to pro-actively oversee and speed up implementation of the job-creating laws we passed in 2009 in transportation, health care, renewable energy, film and video, affordable housing and capital construction.

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