Small Town Washington Or Oregon?

[Wyody]

Can anybody present any points for selecting a small town in Washington to live over choosing a small town in Oregon? What are the perks of being a 'Tonian instead of a 'Gonian?

[jabm67]

WA has no state income tax, while OR does. The sales tax is higher, and I think WA has higher vehicle license fees, though. Not sure about other taxes. WA has a stronger east-west political polarization.

EDIT: In the very short term, WA has a rather divisive gubernatorial race going on this fall ("Don't let Seattle steal the election again!" bulletin boards). I hate campaign season.

[Wyody]

Originally Posted by jabm67

WA has no state income tax, while OR does. The sales tax is higher, and I think WA has higher vehicle license fees, though. Not sure about other taxes. WA has a stronger east-west political polarization.

EDIT: In the very short term, WA has a rather divisive gubernatorial race going on this fall ("Don't let Seattle steal the election again!" bulletin boards). I hate campaign season.

JABM - thanks for your response. Good to hear from you again.
Let me respond and also make sure I understand - hope you can find time to answer.
1)That's great news on the income tax. I didn't know. Wyoming had no Income tax and I sure do like that.
2)Oregon has no sales-tax. The prices are higher by at least a third and more to make up for it. Still, I hear people come to Oregon to do their bulk shopping - even from the Bremerton area.
3) I have heard about the higher vehicle licensing fees. I already think Oregon is a little high but you do it for two years at a time. Is it similar in Washington?
4)I don't know what you mean by "east-west polarization". Are you talking as simple as Spokane/Seattle or do you mean something else?

Regarding the politics: I'm assuming that one of the problems is that Seattle is more liberal than the majority of the State? And also, that it probably sucks money from the tax-well, leaving some other counties higher and dryer.
Sometimes, I hate the political seasons too. It's like an exercise in gigantic futility - might as well go roll a dryer down the sidewalk.
Other times, I like it. It's the only time you can stick a fork in a friend and claim insanity.

[jabm67]

First, the East/West thing ... Most of WA, by area, is pretty conservative. There are pockets of liberal-preferring folks in the big Puget Sound cities (Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, Olympia) and around a couple of smaller urban and educational centers (Pullman, Bellingham, some of the Tri-Cities). By count of human beings, though, the liberals seem to be slightly more numerous by count of people when summed over the whole state. This division gets oversimplified into West vs East or Seattle vs. Spokane.

(This was aggravated by the 2004 gubernatorial election, where the final margin was small, a couple hundred votes. King County (where Seattle is) took longer than any of the others to get their ballots counted and totals certified, and since the inclusion of their totals turned Rossi's (the Republican) lead of a few thousand into a Gregoire win (the Democrat) by a couple hundred, that engendered the same kind of bad feelings and deep suspicions about a stolen election as were created by the "hanging chad" episode in the presidential election in Florida in 2000.)

In terms of tax dollars per person, I haven't seen a satisfactorily honest analysis of where the money comes from and where it goes to that is properly done over time. A small imbalance in terms of raw dollars can get distorted when cast into dollars per person by county, and I don't think I've ever seen an analysis that was broken down any finer than by county. Most of the presentations I've seen have come from sources which clearly were promoting an agenda. Pulling numbers from the 2000 Census (Census Bureau Home Page), for example, the aggregate all-households income in 1999 was, for King County, a little more than $50 billion (which is more than three times the number for the second-highest county, Piece) with its population of 1.7 million; compare (for example) Garfield County and its population of 2400 and its aggregate income of $40.4 million. My guess is that the reporting errors for King County are rather larger than all of Garfield County ... and it's easy to see that an honest comparison is going to be hard to do.

Vehicle registration in WA is annual. If you live an urban area, you have to get your vehicle emissions tested every other year.

I know of people who shop in Oregon (not so many here in Seattle; that's a long drive) or Idaho (lots of those when I lived in Pullman ... but Pullman has approx zero places to shop ). It's not worth it to me, but others' mileage varies. If I lived in Vancouver (WA, not BC) I could well have a different opinion.

[Wyody]

It has actually surprised me to find how conservative the Northwest really is.
I had suspected it in Washington from my trips to smaller towns in decades past as it's not all too much different from northern California with a mix of farmers and loggers and country music.
Oregon has surprised me ... until I'd read some of the principles upon which the state was founded.
Again though, I've been at the coast - where retirees settle and travel which means an older, more conservative crowd and now I'm near the capital city, surrounded by farmland which also draws an older, conservative crowd.
I think that by the time I do find the more liberal areas that I too will have grown old and more conservative.
Oh, I've found Portland ... but that's not liberal ... that's just another big, shiny town like Memphis or New Orleans or Vegas or Phoenix.
Once again, thank you for your response!

[jabm67]

WA was founded and populated at founding by people with a strong Populist bent. The initiative and referendum portions of the state constitution are strong indicators of that. Unfortunately, the initiative process has been all but hijacked by big-bucks strong-arm out of state groups trying to get chunks of their warped political agendas into law, end-running the more level-headed types that get elected to the Legislature. With a fast two-month propaganda blitz, they can make a run at getting something really awful adopted as law. Usually they overreach themselves and write issues that are too broad and/or outright unconstitutional, so if they do pass they get voided by the Supreme Court, but it is tiresome to have to deal with that every year.

[Wyody]

Actually, the scenario you present is still very common in the eastern-midwestern states although the largest group seems to be the "traditional Christian" lobby where they send out a few letters and e-mails asking everybody to write a congressman or senator and so ... "with God on their side" they inundate elected officials.
Corporate entities have always had such an impact - but I think the power-base keeps moving from industry to industry.
Again, thanks for the info.

[jabm67]

The neopuritanicals did that for a while, but it's been a few years since that crowd tried it. They got their noses bloodied at the polls, and I think they've decided to spend there money elsewhere.

Lately, the groups doing this have been land developers and building construction groups. There's been a couple of measures along the lines of trying to ban/overturn all zoning, land use regs, and environmental impact regs, so that they can build whatever they want wherever they can get cheap land.

[PDXnative]

Originally Posted by Wyody

It has actually surprised me to find how conservative the Northwest really is.
I had suspected it in Washington from my trips to smaller towns in decades past as it's not all too much different from northern California with a mix of farmers and loggers and country music.
Oregon has surprised me ... until I'd read some of the principles upon which the state was founded.
Again though, I've been at the coast - where retirees settle and travel which means an older, more conservative crowd and now I'm near the capital city, surrounded by farmland which also draws an older, conservative crowd.
I think that by the time I do find the more liberal areas that I too will have grown old and more conservative.
Oh, I've found Portland ... but that's not liberal ... that's just another big, shiny town like Memphis or New Orleans or Vegas or Phoenix.
Once again, thank you for your response!

If you are looking for the smaller "liberal" areas, you need to check out the Eugene area or even Bend, if you like high desert. Ashland is also another liberal area, but it has gotten really expensive. Outside Portland and Eugene, Oregon is very conservative and rural, which seems to go hand in hand. But close to Eugene you can have rural areas with liberals...... The Eugene area is the liberal person's Mecca.

And Salem is just scary!!!

[Wyody]

Thanks JABM. Surprises me, actually, how strong the "neo-puritanicals" as you put it - are in these parts. Before moving here, I expected Oregon to be like a giant college campus with free-thinking radicals (quarks?) walking all over smoking new-age in their pipes.
What I got was normal America with only a hint of SoCal.
But let me refine my original question about small-town comparisons between Warshington and Oragone:
The reason I ask is: I live in a beautiful town in a beautiful area. It is a farming area and I have seen foods come out of gardens that I have never before seen in my life! Having lived in tropical areas and lush, farming areas, this has really surprised me.
However, I am not a farmer and farmers are traditionally on the conservative side. Not that I'm against all conservatism - but it's a little too deep-seated in that same old-fashioned religion crowd for my tastes. I might as well be in small-town Ohio in that regard.
Also, this town, itself, is a money town. There's very little industry here with the last big one shutting down a couple of months ago leaving only a TV-Dinner-Meat prep-plant which seems to employ only the Latino sector. So, it's a bedroom-community of Salem with housing prices jacked way-over believability.
While I have made money in my life I have also sworn-off money at different times so, airs and teas are not my cup-o-joe.
Just enough reason to investigate other small towns in the region - cause I like the region but if I were to quit this current job, I'd have no place to live that I could afford and no job prospects without doing a daily commute ... so, I'm looking to find something a little more personally tailored for the future.
Thanks!