Political Desk

By DAVID BATES
Of the News-Register

Yamhill County Commissioner Leslie Lewis, a veteran of both local and state politics, filed re-election papers Monday, hoping to win a third and final term in the county’s highest public office.

Beyond a successful re-election campaign, her tenure with Yamhill County is already pre-determined by voter-approved term limits.

Reports had her mulling another run for a seat in the Oregon Legislature, where she served in the House in the 1990s. But Lewis said the only job she’s considered is the one she’s had since 2000, when she unseated former longtime commissioner Ted Lopuszynski.

“I’ve been planning to fill out the county commission for a long time,” she said. “There is no plan to run for the Legislature.”

In a two-page announcement, Lewis, 54, sounded the same themes on which she’s based her previous campaigns: improving the area’s livability and delivering better services with existing resources.

During the last two terms, she’s twice voted to put a tax levy on the ballot - one of which was successful, the 2002 emergency radio levy, and another that wasn’t, the 2006 “meth levy,” aimed at beefing up law enforcement, drug education and treatment. In both instances, she was instrumental in getting the levy amount reduced first.

The radio project, for which voters ponied up $1.4 million in 2002, has since turned into a debacle that county officials began salvaging two years ago by firing the Salem consultant who helped craft the original plan.

Lewis is among officials expressing frustration and regret about the years of delay, but also points to success in turning lemons into lemonade. The county has aggressively pursued federal funding from Homeland Security grants, and is using that money to build what its hopes will be a better, more reliable system than the one it originally envisioned.

She’s also been a tireless advocate for the Newberg-Dundee Bypass, which hit a pretty big bump in the road when state transportation officials cut ties with the Australian firm they were planning to hire to build the 11-mile project. Since then, officials have been looking for ways to scale the project down to a more manageable size.

“We obviously have an uphill battle with state government for getting funds for the project,” said Lewis, who estimates she spends roughly 40 percent of her time working on the bypass and related transportation issues.

She plans to push Oregon lawmakers during the 2009 session for funding for the first phase, from McDougall’s Corner to just past Dundee.

Eventually, though, it will take more than that, she said. “A lot of the traveling public thinks the driving problem is in Dundee, but we have to find a way to deal with Newberg as well,” she said.

Lewis pointed to successes on several other fronts.

In the last seven years, she said, county crews have resurfaced 54 percent of the county’s paved roads, or more than 200 miles. When first elected, she worked closely with the public works department to approach road repair work in a more methodical way.

She also cites improvements in public transit. The county has more than doubled its transit budget, she said, and the system provides commuter connections with all 10 county cities as well as connections with Grand Ronde, the Hillsboro MAX line, Sherwood and Salem.

“Ridership on our buses has doubled in the last two years,” she said. “This is a real success story.”

Lewis and her husband, Don, are co-owners of Uptime Technology Inc., an electronics manufacturing company. They make their home on a small tree farm near Carlton.

She is the only person to file for the nonpartisan seat to date.