Longview Hills @ Newport Oregon

Sent in by John Spangler

From the Desk of Pat Schwoch Executive Director
					Eighteen months of negotiations are finally coming to a close. Our proposed legislation is now in Legislative Counsel. This is where any proposed legislation goes to be drafted and receives an LC number. When it leaves there it will go to the House and Senate, for a reading after which it has a bill number and is ready to be heard in committee. We will post the bill on our OSTA web site as soon as we have it in hand. That site is http://www.mhoo-osta.com. Give us until about the 2nd or 3rd week in February to get the information on the site. Briefly this is what the bill offers: A Payment of $5,000, $7,000 or $9,000 for a single wide, double wide or triple wide from the park owner; no charge to resident for disposing of the old home; A $10,000 state tax credit that is universally refundable for all tenants displaced by the closure, regardless of income or whether you are able to move your home or not; The landlord who elects to sell to the residents will be able to avoid Oregon state capital gains taxes. When the election returns came in I began hearing from people that we should be able to "get everything we want" since the Democrats won! Yes, they did win but with a one-person majority in the house. Some of those democrats are more conservative than others, as are some Republicans more liberal. So we submit our legislation and ask for their support. Is our Coalition bill everything we want? NO! Am I getting flack from people who think we didn't get enough. YES! But by the same token MHCO is getting flack from their members that they were too generous. That is what compromise is about. There are several other bills being presented. Some of them deal with legislation to enable us to become involved in coop's, such as that in New Hampshire, where it has been used so successfully in helping residents to become involved in buying their parks. There are bills to help fund those issues. As bills that deal with our issues come into focus we will add those to the web site. As you know I have worked with the Coalition for the past 5 sessions (10 years). To those of you who are new to OSTA, let me explain why the legislation concerning manufactured landlord tenant law comes out of the coalition. When I first became active in the legislative efforts of Manufactured Home Owners some 14 years ago I didn't have a clue how the legislative procedure worked. The first session was kind of a daze. We didn't even get a hearing. At the beginning of the second session Frank Burelson, who was a resident of Greenway in Dallas, and I made it a point to go to every hearing that the landlords had and protest that we were being ignored. Finally, Senator Bill Kennemer, a past senator from Clackamas, heard our pleas and turned to the landlord group and said to them," Don't you ever come before the legislature with legislation that affects these people, without their having been involved and you have an agreement, because if you do we will not hear your legislation." From that date forward we have worked with the coalition and have gained many benefits that has made our lives much better. We were reminded of that legislation last session when Senator Ben Westlund praised John Brenneman and I for working for legislation that both parties could agree to. A run down on some of those rights can be found in the article entitled "MEMBERSHIP IS CRUCIAL" in the current issue of the "OSTA Review". Finally, there is a small group, some of whom are OSTA members, who think they can come up with legislation that is better than ours. That is a possibility, but getting it passed is another story. I have been accused of "being in the pocket of the owners," regarding our coalition bills. Anyone who knows me knows nothing could be further from the truth. The coalition members have worked hard to learn to trust each other and in this day and age that is a good feeling and a rare relationship. Now we wait and work with the legislators to get this legislation into law. We will be asking for your support. Again, watch the web site, http://www.mhoo-osta.com, for additional information. Thanks, Pat