SUNRIVER, OR -- State Representative Gene Whisnant announced Friday he will run for re-election in District 53. The Sunriver Republican has served in Oregon’s House since his appointment in 2003. "I’ve been involved in transparency and accountability since I entered the building. In 2009, we actually passed a transparency website so that citizens can go online and see how the money comes in and where it’s being spent. And that’s the problem; we need more audits and better audits," Whisnant tells KBND News.
While Whisnant says he’s proud of what he’s done so far, there’s still more work to be done. "We really need to address that in our next full session in 2017, the state is going to come in with probably at least a $2-3 million deficit. And, that’s because we have to pay back the PERS money, we have the 10% we have to pick up on the 400,000 people we added to the Oregon Health Plan. The Federal government says they’ll pay 90%, we hope they do; but we have to start paying 10% of that."
He's also concerned about education funding. "A lot of people thought we underfunding K-12 this session and I agree with that. One of the main reasons I say we underfunded it is we added all-day kindergarten and we didn’t give them the money to do that, we just said ‘do it.’ Unfunded mandates are terrible and we continue to do it."
Whisnant was re-elected in 2010 with more than twice as many votes as his opponent, Democrat John Huddle. Prior to his political career, Representative Whisnant served 27 years in the U.S. Air Force.
