Officials advocate for federal funding with less red tape

Published 1:30 am Thursday, August 13, 2026

PORT ANGELES — North Olympic Peninsula leaders told a national bi-partisan commission on rural revitalization that they seek steady, flexible federal money delivered with fewer bureaucratic layers, and they warned that hospitals, roads and water systems could falter even as the region rebuilds its economy.

Jefferson County Commissioner Heidi Eisenhour, Clallam County Commissioner Mark Ozias and state Rep. Steve Tharinger, D-Port Townsend, made their case Tuesday night to the Brookings-AEI Commission on U.S. Rural Prosperity, which is spending three days on the North Olympic Peninsula this week.

The commission, which includes former U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., is co-chaired by former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., and former Gov. Chris Sununu, R-N.H. It is meeting with local officials, tribal leaders and residents to hear the challenges and opportunities that face the area.

The stop is the commission’s fifth site visit, after trips to Casselton, N.D., White Earth, Minn., the Mississippi Delta and Eastern Kentucky. Next, the commission plans to visit two remote communities in Alaska.

Its goal is to produce a national rural strategy in 2027 with recommendations to inform legislation, public debate and community investment.

Tony Pipa, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, moderated the discussion.

Eisenhour said after timber jobs fell away in the 1980s and ’90s, Jefferson Healthcare became the county’s largest employer. Port Townsend Paper Company, one of the last paper mills in the western United States, is now the second largest employer, followed by the marine trades sector.

She singled out the Composite Recycling Technology Center in Port Angeles that produces thermally modified wood and Jefferson Timber Cooperative that ships certified, sustainably harvested whole-house packages to the Midwest and East Coast as the kind of pivots the forestry industry has made.

“We’re kind of rising from the ashes,” she said.

At the same time, she added that limited basic infrastructure is a barrier to growth and robust economic development.

“We need more sewage capacity on the Olympic Peninsula,” she said, describing water and sewer projects as beyond the reach of small jurisdictions on their own.

Ozias said the area’s remoteness had bred both self-reliance and collaboration among counties, ports, tribes and other local partners.

“If we are to achieve anything significant, it will only come from working together,” he said.

Declining federal and state support, he said, results in squeezing every local government.

Ozias said his single biggest federal ask would be Medicaid reform, warning that Olympic Medical Center is at risk because a high share of its patients is on Medicaid and reimbursement falls short of the cost of their care.

“If we don’t maintain that hospital, then everything else starts to fall apart,” he said.

Tharinger, whose 24th Legislative District covers Clallam, Jefferson and part of Grays Harbor counties, said while his constituents have so much in common, no single strategy fits the whole area.

“There’s not one effort that’s going to lift my whole district,” he said, describing his job as trying to “match the hatch” to what each community needs.

Steady, predictable money matters more than large sums, Tharinger said.

“It doesn’t have to be a big number,” he said.

The three also pointed to red tape and poor communication between agencies that slow local projects, and they recalled the 2025 scramble to repair the Upper Hoh Road after it washed out — a fix delayed, they said, when the state Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration couldn’t coordinate even as the tourist season approached.

Frances Charles, a former chairwoman of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, described similar pressures, saying health care and housing are her chief worries. The tribe leans on limited federal pass-through dollars and partnerships with state and federal agencies to stretch what it has, she said — the same funding and administrative hurdles the other officials described.

Twelve members of the commission were to visit the West End on Wednesday for sessions on challenges for small businesses, the forest and timber economy, energy and power resilience, outdoor recreation and tourism, plus a roundtable with leaders from the Quileute, Jamestown S’Klallam and Lower Elwha Klallam Tribes.

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Reporter Paula Hunt can be reached by email at paula.hunt@peninsuladailynews.com.