Alan R.P. Journet Ph.D
Cofacilitator
Southern Oregon Climate Action Now
February 12th, 2026

SOCAN Comments opposing HB 4073.

Chair Bowman and members of the House Committee on Rules:

I write as cofacilitator of Southern Oregon Climate Action Now (SOCAN), the oldest grassroots climate organization in the Rogue Valley now representing some 2,000 Southern Oregonians. We are concerned about the climate crisis and seek federal, state and local action to address it. We are rural and coastal Southern Oregonians who live on the frontlines of the warming, reducing snowpack, heatwaves, drought, rising sea level and the increasing wildfire risk that these trends conspire to impose on us. Because of our concern, we pay close attention to efforts nationally, statewide, and locally that impact our collective efforts to address the climate crisis. As our logo above indicates, the focus of SOCAN is to promote action through science while encouraging that this be undertaken through a social justice lens.

Occasionally bills are introduced that are transparently designed to block progress and return Oregon to the dark ages when environmental protection and social justice were of less concern. HB 4073 is just such a bill.

Over many years, SOCAN has been engaged with agencies as they develop rules consistent with legislation that has been signed into law, particularly, of course, agencies developing rules to address the climate crisis or establish environmental protection regulations. Inevitably, these have often involved the Department of Environmental Quality. We have frequently been disappointed by the population of Rulemaking Advisory Committees since they are, too often, overloaded with representatives of the very entities that the rules are designed to regulate. Meanwhile, entities or organizations representing the public at large, the environment, social justice and/or future generations are short-changed. Time and again, these RACs are populated by an overdose of foxes charged with developing rules to guard the henhouse who constantly throw specious arguments into the debate and stand as obstacles to the development of reasonable regulations. As a result, those of us concerned about protecting our climate, our environment or guaranteeing future generations have a livable planet find ourselves required to attend RAC meetings and submit comments pushing back against the contributions of representatives from the regulated entities.

Rather than redress the imbalance in RAC membership whereby potentially regulated entities enjoy more than their fair share of representation, while expertise and organizations representing climate, conservation, environmental, and social justice are under-represented, HB4073 makes the imbalance worse by demanding over-representation from the target entities.

We also note that introducing the concepts of ‘arbitrary’ and ‘capricious’ into the judicial review process consists of a step not previously undertaken in Oregon and one that will likely increase the frequency of litigation and the cost to the state of bringing to fruition regulations resulting from democratically approved legislation.

For these reasons, SOCAN strongly opposes HB4073 and urges its defeat.

Respectfully Submitted

Alan Journet Ph.D.
7113 Griffin Lane
Jacksonville
OR 97530-4392
alan@socan.eco
541-500-2331
541-301-4107