🏛️ March Gorge Commission Round-Up: Rules, Recovery, Climate Equity, and a New Push to Tell Their Own Story - 3/10 & 3/12/26

Two March Gorge Commission meetings showed an agency trying to modernize on several fronts at once: updating old rules, turning disaster-recovery policy into something residents can actually use, defending climate funding, broadening who gets heard in Gorge planning, and getting much more serious about public communication.

March 2026 Columbia River Gorge Commission Round-Up

Read together, the March 10 full Commission meeting and the March 12 Communications Committee meeting told a pretty coherent story.

The Commission is trying to become:

• more legally up to date
• more operationally useful
• more transparent to the public
• and more effective at explaining its own work before others define it for them.

🔥 Disaster Recovery Quietly Crossed a Major Threshold

The other big process update was on the disaster-recovery amendment the Commission adopted in January, aiming to smooth the application process, and offer more options for onsite lodging and storage for those rebuilding their homes after wildfires.

By March, staff said a key hurdle had already been cleared:

• the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture concurred on February 24, 2026
• counties may begin using the new guidelines immediately
• local governments still have to amend ordinances, but the policy is no longer just waiting in limbo.Gorge Commission Mar 2026 Omnib…

That is a significant shift from where things stood in January. It means the amendment is no longer just a voted-on promise. It can now start affecting how fire recovery actually works on the ground. Staff also moved related land use ordinance changes forward so the Commission’s own code matches the newly concurred amendment.

Key Provisions in the Amendment

As a reminder, the Disaster Recovery Amendment (specifically "Appendix A" in the report) includes several major changes to the Management Plan:

1. Extended Rebuild Timeline: Landowners now have 10 years to submit a complete land use application to rebuild structures destroyed by a disaster, a significant increase from the previous 2-year limit.
2. Temporary Housing: It expressly allows for the placement of Recreational Vehicles (RVs) and temporary storage structures on the property during the recovery/rebuild phase.
3. Expedited Review: It clarifies and simplifies the "in-kind" replacement standards to ensure that rebuilding a home of similar size and location qualifies for an expedited permitting process.
4. Immediate Implementation: The Commission directed counties to apply these guidelines directly as soon as the Secretary of Agriculture concurs, rather than waiting for the lengthy local ordinance amendment process to finish.

The Secretary of Agriculture has 90 days from the January adoption date to provide final concurrence, which would make these rules fully effective around mid-April 2026.

✅ A Major Rules Overhaul Moved Forward

One of the clearest formal actions on March 10 was the vote to begin rulemaking on a large package of updated administrative rules, along with related land use ordinance changes tied to the disaster-recovery amendment.

What staff said this rules package covers

• public records
• open meetings
• administrative procedures
• conflicts of interest
• updates needed to reconcile Oregon and Washington law.

Why this took so long

Commission counsel Jeff Litwak said:

• the project really began in 2024
• the Rules Committee spent much of 2025 reviewing it
• the hard part was not just choosing whichever state law looked stricter
• in many areas, Oregon and Washington law are simply different, not neatly more or less restrictive.

What comes next

Litwak said the package appears ready to start formal rulemaking, with a public hearing likely in:

• July 2026, or
• September 2026 if timing slips.

That may sound procedural, but it matters. This is part of the machinery that determines how clear, durable, and transparent the Commission’s decisions are going to be.

🌿 Climate Equity Was One of the Most Important Conversations of the Month

The most substantial presentation on March 10 came from staff and members of the Commission’s PEAR Team on climate-equity recommendations tied to the Climate Change Action Plan.

The basic frame

The materials and speakers stressed that climate change does not hit everyone equally. In the Gorge, the people most affected often include:

• tribal communities
• lower-income residents
• rural residents
• immigrant and Latino communities
• people tied to natural-resource economies
• communities historically excluded from land-use decision-making.

What stood out most

1. Tribal priorities were front and center

• Staff and PEAR materials said Commission climate priorities overlap strongly with treaty-tribe climate plans.
• But the report also warned that Commission land-use authority can create unintentional barriers around First Foods access, cultural-resource protection, and housing.

2. This was tied to real projects, not just theory

• The 2025 climate report highlights First Foods workshops, tribal partnership work, and climate-equity recommendations focused on First Foods, tribal and low-income housing, and fire risk.

3. Language access came through strongly

• Ubaldo Hernández of local organization Comunidades emphasized the need to get climate and wildfire information to immigrant and Latino communities in forms they can actually use, including Spanish-language outreach.

Why this mattered

This did not feel like a side presentation. It felt more like the Commission being pushed to confront a harder question:

• Who benefits from Gorge policy?
• Who gets left out?
• And can “good” environmental policy still deepen inequity if it ignores housing, language access, and daily community realities?

💸 The Budget Story Changed Fast Between the Two Meetings

One of the most revealing March storylines was how quickly the budget picture shifted.

On March 10, the mood was still anxious

Staff said:

• both states appeared to be moving forward with $75,000 each for license fees tied to the Commission’s enterprise permitting and licensing system
• but Washington House budget writers had removed Climate Commitment Act funding
• that threatened work tied to climate staffing, Climate Stewards, and part of the Vital Signs effort
• the amount at issue was about $69,000, small in state-budget terms but meaningful for a small agency.

By March 12, the tone had changed

At the Communications Committee meeting, staff said:

• the conference budget appeared to have restored the climate funding
• the license funding also appeared intact
• Oregon had come through on license funding as well
• staff felt the agency had at least partly escaped a much worse budget outcome.

That change shaped the whole communications conversation. Commissioners clearly took the budget fight as a lesson that the Commission needs stronger public messaging and faster legislative outreach the next time money is on the line.

🌲 Forest Service Updates Mixed Good News with Ongoing Closures

Acting Forest Supervisor Casey Gatz brought a mix of promising staffing news and continued trail disruption.

The positive updates

• the Forest Service helped move the disaster-recovery amendment through early concurrence
• a Student Conservation Association crew is being added
• the agency is also bringing on seasonal summer staff for recreation and trails
• that kind of seasonal support has not been possible for several years.

The less cheerful part

Storm damage from December is still affecting access:

• Eagle Creek remained closed, though staff hoped for a possible reopening later in spring
• Wahclella was also still closed
• the Dog Mountain shuttle was set to reopen for the season, with ticket sales beginning March 15 and service running April 11 through June 7
• Multnomah Falls infrastructure work is still underway.

A small but telling exchange came when Commissioner Rodger Nichols asked about putting archived videos on YouTube and Commissioner Amy Weissfeld said the Communications Committee would take it up. That same kind of “how do we make this more accessible?” thinking also showed up in questions about tourism, recreation, and local economic impacts.

🌐 The New Website Rolled Out - Then Immediately Triggered a Transparency Fight

March was also the real rollout month for the Commission’s new website and Vital Signs Data Hub. Staff and commissioners repeatedly praised the site as easier to use and easier to update than the old version. The climate materials also highlight the Vital Signs hub as a major 2026 milestone.

The early problem

At the March 10 meeting, staff explained that:

• the new site initially kept only three months of meeting videos online
• the old website had kept about one year
• the change was driven by storage and hosting costs
• older videos were still being preserved as public records, just not all kept live on the site.

That quickly drew pushback. It's worth noting that even for the purposes of this publication, links to documents we provided in past issues are now often broken, and the search function of the new website still catching up. We recommend going to Past Meetings to find what you might be looking for.

One immediate public-facing response

At the March 12 Communications Committee meeting, staff said:

• the budget picture had loosened enough to reconsider
• they were now aiming to restore a full year of videos
• they also wanted to explore YouTube further as a possible longer-term solution.

That was a small but meaningful example of the Commission reacting to transparency concerns in real time.

📣 The Communications Committee Wants the Commission Telling Its Own Story Faster

The March 12 Communications Committee meeting was nominally about the website, social media, and media inquiries. In practice, it felt like a strategy session about how the Commission can stop letting other people frame its work first.

What the committee focused on

• promoting the new website more aggressively
• using more press releases
• improving social media
• building better legislative outreach
• developing internal best practices for responding to media
• and thinking about how to handle donations and outside support.

One of the clearest takeaways: they wanted a real website launch push

Weissfeld argued that a website launch this significant should get a proper public rollout. Forest Service public affairs staff agreed that a major new website would normally justify a press release. Committee members also discussed bundling that announcement with the upcoming permitting portal.

They were also blunt about timing

Commissioners discussed how some press releases either had not gone out yet or had come too late to get the most public attention, including:

• the website launch
• and the disaster-recovery concurrence.

Alex H. Johnson offered to help draft releases quickly so staff would not have to do all the communications labor alone. That is one of the clearest signs that this committee sees messaging as part of the Commission’s actual survival toolkit now, not as fluff.

The broader strategy theme

At both meetings, the communications message was basically this:

• use the content the Commission already has
• turn presentations and milestones into public-facing explanations
• stop assuming good work will explain itself
• and make it easier for the public to find, understand, and share what the Commission is doing.

⏭️ What Comes Next

A few things to watch from here:

• a likely July public hearing on the rules package, with September as a fallback
• counties continuing to apply the disaster-recovery amendment while ordinance updates proceed
• follow-up on how climate-equity recommendations actually shape future policy
• a more public-facing push around the website, Vital Signs, and future Commission press releases
• and more debate over video access, YouTube, and long-term transparency infrastructure.

At the March 10 meeting, staff also said the next full Commission meeting would be in May, with no April full Commission meeting scheduled.

📅 Join the Next Gorge Commission Meeting

The next Columbia River Gorge Commission meeting is scheduled for:

🗓 Tuesday, May 12, 2026
⏰ 8:30 a.m. (Pacific Time)
📍 Zoom (remote meeting registration link)

Meeting agendas, Zoom links, and supporting materials are posted in advance on the Commission’s website. Schedules and formats may change.

🔗 Agenda & meeting access:
https://gorgecommission.org/home/meetings/

🗣 Public comment:
Written comments are generally due by 5:00 p.m. the business day before the meeting. Live public comment is typically available during the meeting as well.