June 13, 2025

Show Us You’re Listening: Our Communities are Still Waiting

How to start saving money

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Why it is important to start saving

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How much money should I save?

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What percentege of my income should go to savings?

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“Moral leadership means using power responsibly for those who are most marginalized.” - Kali Thorne Ladd, Executive Director of Children’s Institute

If you’ve spent any time in Salem during this legislative session, you know everyone has been anticipating a tough budget year. Now with the recently downgraded state economic forecast, we are having to figure out how to protect our most vulnerable populations from devastating budget cuts.

While we recognize the economic reality facing our state, it seems like lawmakers in the majority party are not grasping the truth of who they are about to leave behind.

This isn’t about zeroing out numbers on each side of a balance sheet. What we’re talking about is potentially zeroing out the futures for Oregon’s most vulnerable populations.

Every session, APANO communities show up. We testify. We organize. We bring our elders, our children, our stories. We translate dense policy into lived experience. We do the emotional labor of making our priorities visible.

But we’re still waiting for state leaders to match our commitment with action.

And let’s be clear: action means funding.

If you're not funding it, you're not fighting for it.

This year, we’re demanding that the legislature deliver on what our communities have called for time and time again.

At APANO Action Fund, we believe that budgets are moral documents and that Oregon's finances should be a reflection of its values — and right now, it is failing to center the people most impacted.

What’s at Stake: APANO’s Four Pillars of Justice

Oregon’s Leaders are On the Clock

At APANO, we are focused on four policy pillars that our members have determined are critical to building safe, healthy, and resilient communities. We work in coalition with dozens of partner organizations across these policy pillars and have been advocating for many important policies that seem unlikely to succeed without some political courage from the majority party in these final weeks.

1. Child and Parent Care

Lawmakers are set to move forward with a $45 million cut to the Department of Early Learning and Care (DELC), meaning over 1,500 families will lose access to the preschool and child care they rely on today. Not in theory. Not next year. This fall.

These are working parents—many of them single moms, immigrants, and essential workers—who will be forced to leave jobs, delay school, or make impossible choices about their kids' safety and well-being. These are toddlers being pulled out of classrooms. These are early educators—often women of color—whose jobs will vanish.

Let’s be crystal clear: without full funding for DELC, every other child care bill this session becomes pretty meaningless. HB 2452 (Child Care Resource & Referral), HB 3560 (Inclusive Zoning for Child Care), HB 3201 (Child & Adult Care Food Program)—these policies depend on an operational system. If DELC can’t keep families enrolled or providers paid, there’s no infrastructure left to build on.

This isn’t belt-tightening—it’s backpedaling.

It threatens to reverse years of community-driven progress toward a child care system that is on its way to becoming culturally responsive, accessible, and equitable. Over 11,000 families are already on the ERDC waitlist, and now 1,500 more are about to be pushed off a cliff. And once care is lost, it is incredibly hard to rebuild.

If the state can’t prioritize keeping kids in care, then what exactly is it prioritizing?

We’re calling on legislators to fully fund DELC at current service levels at minimum, not just to prevent harm, but to uphold the promises made to families, providers, and communities who believed this agency would be different.

Choosing to let 1,500 children lose care is not just immoral—it’s unacceptable.

2. Income Equality ‍

Working families in Oregon are fighting to stay afloat under the crushing weight of rising costs—from rent and groceries to transportation and child care. Yet, in our current tax system, the burden falls disproportionately on those with the least. Meanwhile, Oregon leaves an estimated $100 million in unclaimed federal Earned Income Tax Credits (EITC) on the table every year due to barriers in tax filing access.

That’s why HB 2958 (Earned Income Tax Credit Increase) and HB 2991 (Tax Infrastructure Grant Expansion) matter. HB 2958 would have significantly expanded the Oregon EITC, a proven anti-poverty tool that lifts tens of thousands of families out of poverty each year. HB 2991 would have scaled up the Tax Infrastructure Grant Program, giving culturally specific and rural organizations the resources to help families file taxes and claim the credits they deserve.

Unfortunately, this year’s legislature did not find urgency with these bills that would have lifted our communities up and hope they are brought back next year until passage.

These aren’t handouts — they’re justice long overdue. The legislature must include these provisions in SB 120, the omnibus tax credit bill, to ensure Oregon’s tax code reflects equity, not entrenched privilege.

Lawmakers need to stop making working people wait while the wealthiest continue to benefit from tax breaks.

3. Mental Health

Oregon’s behavioral health system is crumbling and remains one of the worst in the nation. Waitlists stretch for months. Providers are burned out and underpaid. In rural counties, there are no culturally responsive providers at all. And too often, our community members end up in crisis, treated by police instead of care professionals.

The United We Heal legislative package—HB 2024 and HB 2203—offers a path forward. These bills provide targeted wage increases, workplace safety standards, and long-overdue career pathways for behavioral health workers.

Public safety is not just about enforcement—it’s about healing. These investments are essential to building a health care system that honors the dignity, safety, and lived experiences of AANHPI and BIPOC Oregonians.

Without proper funding for these initiatives, these solutions remain empty promises.

4. Environmental Justice

The communities hit first and worst by climate change are the ones with the least say in Oregon’s climate investments. Frontline communities—rural, low-income, immigrant, and communities of color—are demanding real climate resilience, not just lip service.

The transportation investments in LC 4777 (Transportation Package) must center clean, equitable access—not include backdoor giveaways to polluters or policies that penalize electric vehicle adoption.

We are incredibly disappointed by the Oregon State legislature in their decision to protect large profit utility companies in their lack of advocacy on SB 88 (Junk Out of Rates); a bill that would have prevented toxic fees being passed on to ratepayers. Your deference to toxic industry advocates will affect us all.

This is about the next generation. About whether our kids will breathe clean air and live in communities safe from floods, fire, and displacement. Oregon claims to lead on climate justice. It’s time to prove it by backing bold, equity-centered investments that prioritize health, safety, and economic resilience for all.

Oregon says it leads on climate. Prove it.

These Policies Asks Are Not Luxuries — They’re Lifelines.

And They’re Still Underfunded.

Where’s the Funding?

Governor Kotek — You’ve called child care and behavioral health top priorities. But priorities aren’t just declared — they’re funded. How can these programs be priorities if they’re still facing devastating cuts? You have the power to stop the harm. At the very least, publicly call on lawmakers to restore the Department of Early Learning and Care to current service levels.

Speaker Fahey & Senate President Wagner — Your caucus risks ending this session leaving too many Oregonian BIPOC voters and our priorities as an afterthought. What case are legislators in tough races supposed to make? Should BIPOC organizations be happy with the crumbs we’re being left with?

Ways and Means Co-Chairs Lieber and Sanchez — As the leaders of Ways & Means, you hold the pen. And the pen writes the future. Will you use it to protect the most vulnerable communities, or will you make Oregon’s kids take on “shared sacrifice”?

Lawmakers who ran on equity — You made promises. You ran on change. But when the votes are cast and the final deals are made, will our kids still have care? Will our families still have homes? Will our mental health system still be standing? Your values are not measured by your slogans — they’re measured by your budget votes.

What We Demand

Fully fund the 2025 legislative priorities led by communities most impacted.
No last-minute backroom cuts to racial and economic justice programs.
Fund child care, housing, mental health, and income equality at the scale of the crisis.
Stop subsidizing wealth and pollution. Invest in the people.
Create permanent funding streams for critical programs —not one-time crumbs.