Oregon’s Economic Revitalization Team:  
A Comparative Case Study of  
Two Development Projects  
Within the Willamette Valley Region 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
By  
 
MATTHEW FISHER 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
TERMINAL PROJECT 
 
Presented to the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management  
of the University of Oregon  
in partial fulfillment of the requirements  
for the degree of  
Master of Public Administration 
 
March 2009
ii 
 
UNIVERSITY OF OREGON 
 
ABSTRACT 
 
OREGON’S ECONOMIC REVITALIZATION TEAM:  
A COMPARATIVE CASE STUDY OF TWO DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS  
WITHIN THE WILLAMETTE VALLEY REGION 
 
By Matthew Fisher 
 
Chairperson of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Jean Stockard 
Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management 
 
 
In order to prepare for incoming industry and economic growth opportunities, local 
government and private interests alike must receive guidance from a host of state 
agencies regarding land use, water resources, building codes, and the like. The Economic 
Revitalization Team (ERT), consisting of ten state agencies, was created in 2003 by 
House Bill 2011 to streamline state and local efforts and coordinate state resources for 
economic development projects around the state of Oregon. The purpose of this study is 
to look into how the ERT’s efforts at streamlining and coordination contribute to its goal 
of better serving local and regional government through a comparative case study of two 
Willamette Valley ERT projects, one in Newport, Oregon, and one in Junction City, 
Oregon. While customer satisfaction surveys serve as one assessment of the ERT’s 
efforts, this study compares and collates the perceptions of both service recipients 
(customers) from the public and private sector as well as representatives from the ERT 
member agencies. The results include an analysis of the primary themes that comprise the 
ERT’s streamlining and coordinating efforts as well as recommendations for enhancing 
these efforts going forward.  
 
 
 
 
iii 
 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
 
 
I would first like to express my sincere appreciation to Professor Jean Stockard for her 
patience and attention to detail while serving as my advisor on this project and Professor 
Carl Hosticka for serving on my committee and, particularly, for offering his unique 
perspective as both faculty member and public official. 
 
I would also like to acknowledge the leadership of the Economic Revitalization Team in 
the Willamette Valley/Central Oregon region and the participants in the two projects 
upon which this study is based. Without their willingness to share their views and their 
time, this project could not have been completed. 
 
Last but not least, I would like to thank Kassy Fisher, my partner, for her editing skills 
and unending support and encouragement. 
 
 
 
iv 
 
Table of Contents 
 
INTRODUCTION 1 
PREVIOUS LITERATURE 3 
METHODS 4 
     Participants 4 
     Interview and Research Design 5 
     Data Gathering 5 
      Data Analysis Phase I 6 
      Data Analysis Phase II  6 
CASE STUDY ONE: SOUTH BEACH PROJECT (NEWPORT, OREGON) 7 
      Results 8 
CASE STUDY TWO: JUNCTION CITY PROJECT (JUNCTION CITY, 
OREGON) 
18 
      Results 20 
DISCUSSION 28 
       Streamlining 29 
      Coordination 30 
      Alternative Perspective 31 
      Limitations and Recommendations 32 
CONCLUSION 33 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 34 
APPENDICES  
       Appendix A: In-Depth Interview Guide and Questions 36 
       Appendix B: Recruitment Scripts (Telephone) 40 
v 
 
       Appendix C: Recruitment Scripts (E-mail) 41 
       Appendix D: Aggregated Table of Cases One and Two        42 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
Economic and community development researchers have noticed that throughout the 
United States, states are moving away from so-called “industry attraction efforts, or 
“smokestack chasing” strategies and economic policies that place a huge emphasis on job 
creation (Bradshaw, 1999, 230). Previously, if a state or local government needed to 
revitalize their receding economy, it was commonplace for them to offer tax incentives 
and creative subsidies to attract specific businesses from all over the country to their 
location. In today’s global market, economic development at the state level has shifted 
away from focusing on single corporations toward the development of marketplace 
establishments. The advantage of this economic development strategy is summed up by 
Ted Bradshaw and Edward Blakely (1999): 
 
“With the complexity of the global market, a region must be coordinated to 
compete and…the advantages of one state over another lie in how resources are 
networked and mobilized to ensure growth of a whole economic cluster” (p. 
243). 
 
Oregon’s current economic development system was brought into existence by executive 
order in 1997 to develop a collaborative approach to community building efforts in the 
state (FHWA, 2006, 1997). The ultimate focus of this program was livability, which 
complemented the state’s popular land use and environmental protection policies.  
However, in 2003 the 72nd Oregon Legislative Assembly, via House Bill 2011 (HB 
2011), declared a state of emergency and required immediate action for economic 
revitalization throughout the state. As stated in HB 2011 (2003), “half of Oregon’s 
counties were currently listed as economically distressed” and it had “the highest 
unemployment rate of any state” in the country (p. 1). Around the time that Governor Ted 
Kulongoski was sworn into office in January 2003, economists suggested that Oregon 
was facing one of its “largest budget deficits since the Great Depression” (Governor 
Kulongoski’s Biography, 2008).  
  One way that Governor Kulongoski responded to this emergency was to make a 
priority of “improving state agency service delivery on community and economic 
development” (GERT, 2003, p. 1). Thus the Community Solutions Team was 
restructured, becoming what is now the Economic Revitalization Team (ERT). This new 
program shifted the focus from community livability toward increasing industrial 
development. According to HB 2011 (2003), one of the reasons to focus on industry was 
that Oregon was predominantly a small business environment in which the average 
number of employees per business was twenty-five (p. 1). Coupled with an eroding 
infrastructure, this created a great need for change in economic development policy.  
 In an attempt to rebuild the economy and respond to the demands of this new 
direction of economic development, Governor Kulongoski, by way of an executive order 
in 2003, placed emphasis on the important role that industrial land plays in today’s global 
economy. Within this order, he made numerous references to the relationship between 
Oregon’s distressed economy and its shortage of industrial lands.  
 As Governor Kulongoski states on the ERT’s website, the ERT’s role is “to be a 
connection between my office and local government and to work with state agencies to 
coordinate, leverage and streamline state agency actions, investments and permits on 
2 
 
local economic and community development projects” (http://www.oregon.gov/ 
gov/ERT/message.shtml). One of the core principals of this initiative is to encourage 
agencies to work across “boundaries and in partnership with local government and 
businesses to create and sustain healthy, vibrant and economically resilient places to live 
while maintaining the integrity of Oregon’s natural systems by restoring and protecting 
for present and future generations.” With regard to land use policies, building clearance, 
road alteration and the like, several state agencies need to interact with each other and 
provide efficient guidance to local agencies and businesses in order to identify and 
prepare sites for incoming industry, in effect streamlining the regulatory system.  
 The ERT is comprised of ten different state agencies. These agencies, are the 
Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), Department of Land Conservation and 
Development (DLCD), Department of State Lands (DSL), Oregon Economic and 
Community Development Department (OECDD), Department of Consumer Business 
Services (DCBS), Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ),  Oregon Department of 
Agriculture (ODA), Oregon Department of Energy (ODOE), Oregon Water Resources 
Department (OWRD), and Oregon Housing and Community Services (OHCS). The ERT 
is charged with coordinating funding and providing technical assistance in local 
development projects. The ERT itself has five dedicated staff members based in the 
Governor’s Office, each assigned to two of the ten ERT regions. In addition to the 
Regional Coordinator (the ERT-dedicated staff person), each ERT region has designated 
contact people from within the various ERT member agencies, one of whom serves as a 
chairperson for the regional team (this position rotates periodically).  
 In 2006 the Oregon Progress board conducted a survey to determine how satisfied 
“customers” were with the services of six agencies that participate in the ERT. The 
overall focus of the study (2006) was to: 
 
Gain an “understanding [of] the value customers place on a variety of customer 
service characteristics…participating agencies are able to quantify, through 
actionable data, the level of satisfaction customers have with the services they 
provide. The participating agencies may utilize results to track progress toward 
customer service standard goals, set new measurement benchmarks, and enhance 
planning and decision-making processes” (p. 7).  
 
The customer satisfaction survey found that the ERT’s strength was in the area of 
knowledge and expertise. However, the ERT rated poorly in the area of availability of 
information. The 2006 survey had a response rate of 53% for the 196 subjects surveyed. 
 Although it is important to measure the satisfaction of those to whom services are 
provided, it seems equally important to understand the impressions of those providing the 
services and to view the perceptions of both providers and receivers together within the 
context of a given project. Thus, the objective of this study is to add a more 
comprehensive view of the services provided by the ERT by examining the perceptions 
of a range of people involved in a particular ERT project. This study is not an attempt to 
supplement the customer satisfaction survey but, rather, to put into context, through a 
comparative case study, how the ERT serves its clients in regional and local level 
governments.  
 Using the case study approach as a research strategy is appropriate, given the 
nature of this study. As Robert Yin explains, “‘how’ and ‘why’ questions are more 
3 
 
explanatory and likely to lead to the use of case studies…this is because such questions 
deal with operational links needing to be traced over time, rather than mere frequencies 
or incidence.” (Yin, 6). Gathering perceptions from all of those involved (both service 
providers and recipients) in a particular ERT-assisted project and pinpointing those 
“operational links” is one of the overarching goals of this study. Therefore, this study will 
compare and contrast the perceptions of the ERT of two groups, those receiving services 
at the local level and those providing services from the state level, in two distinct ERT 
projects.  
 To help narrow the scope of this study, I will focus on two aspects of the ERT’s 
process, the foundation of which are coordinating and streamlining, by attempting to 
answer the following question:  
 
How do Oregon’s Economic Revitalization Team’s (ERT) streamlining and 
coordination efforts contribute to its ultimate goal of better serving local and 
regional governments? 
 
As a way to consolidate the array of service elements involved in the ERT 
process, the words streamlining and coordination will represent the larger, 
overarching topics under which varying themes discovered within this study will 
be organized. For the purpose of this study, streamlining is defined as making a 
system or organization more effective and efficient by employing faster or 
simpler working methods and coordination is bringing the different elements of a 
complex activity or organization into a relationship that will ensure efficiency or 
harmony (Oxford American Dictionaries, n.d.). 
 
 
PREVIOUS LITERATURE 
 
Economic development programs at all levels of government have been a relatively 
popular topic in policy literature. Some of the popular themes found within this literature, 
relative to the focus of this study, include: The evolution of state and local approaches to 
development, different reasons for development strategy adoption, and third-wave 
development efforts.  
 With the evolution of state and local approaches to development, Enid Beaumont 
and Harold Hovey (1985) describe the wavering contention between the autonomy of 
state and local development strategies and their dependence on federally funded 
programs, which often come with rigid regulations. In their view, state and local 
governments are tied to the federal tax system in a way that disadvantages both sides. 
Overall, they appear to favor a system in which national-level funding would be funneled 
directly to smaller communities and the “priority-setting, resource allocation, and 
administration would be performed by state and local, not federal, employees” (p. 332). 
With regard to the different reasons for development strategy adoption, Martin Saiz 
(2001) uses three “conceptual frameworks,” competitive federalism, fiscal comfort, and 
state ideology to explain why various governments choose different development 
strategies to arrive at the same projected outcomes. His findings suggest that at the local 
(state and municipality) level of government, “interjurisdictional competition not only 
seems to produce policies of questionable efficiency, but hampers innovation.” As for 
4 
 
third-wave development efforts, Ted Bradshaw and Edward Blakely (1999) suggest that 
states are moving away from development incentives focusing on retention and 
expansion of a state’s existing firms and toward local industrial development efforts by 
“creating the context for economic growth though public-private partnerships, networks 
that leverage capital and human resources to increase the global competitiveness of a 
group of strategically linked firms” (p. 230) They claim that “the key to [such] programs 
is a supportive economic development marketplace rather than payments to firms” (p. 
230). In Oregon, the ERT addresses some of these themes, particularly the notions of 
partnering to strategically allocate and leverage resources and relieving competition 
between jurisdictions by enacting planned collaboration across state agencies and 
vertically between state and local government. Again, it is the ERT’s responsibilities of 
helping to streamline and coordinate these efforts and strategies that is the focus of this 
study. 
 
 
METHODS 
 
In an effort to gain a more in-depth view of the ERT process, two elements of its 
service—its collaborative tools and its streamlining methods—will be assessed using a 
multiple case study approach. The perceptions of both ERT services providers and 
recipients will be examined. Gathering the perceptions of stakeholders providing services 
at the state level as well as those of current recipients of the services can complement the 
satisfaction surveys that have been conducted and provide an additional perspective.  
 
Participants 
Due to time and budgetary constraints the scope of this study comprises just two ERT 
projects taking place in the Willamette Valley/Central Oregon region of the ERT 
(WV/CO ERT). This region accounted for 105 of the 196 ERT service recipients sampled 
in the previous ERT study. Because information on ERT recipients is not publicly 
available, I first conducted informal discussions with both the ERT Coordinator and the 
Chair of the WV/CO ERT. The aim of these discussions was two-fold: To generate a list 
of past or current ERT projects in the region to target as possible cases and to identify the 
two projects that are most relevant to the purpose of this study.  The two projects 
identified were a project in the coastal City of Newport to develop its South Beach area 
and a project in Junction City, where the complex task of laying the groundwork for 
constructing a prison and a mental health hospital has encouraged the ERT’s 
participation.  
 After identifying an initial contact for each project, I telephoned them to express 
my interest in conducting an interview to discuss their outlook on the ERT’s handling of 
their project. From the beginning, I used the snowball approach to gain additional 
participants. After each interview, I asked the participants if they knew of any other ERT 
service providers or recipients who might be a good addition to my study.  This technique 
enabled me to conduct six 40-minute interviews for each case study (for a total of 
twelve). For both cases combined, the interview subjects included five ERT service 
providers who represent the project-related agencies that make up the ERT and one non-
5 
 
ERT state agency representative as well as service recipients, comprised of four local 
level government officials and two local business leaders. 
 
Interview and Research Design 
John Creswell (2003), in explaining the advantages of using interviews as a data 
collection method, said that interviews were “useful when participants cannot be 
observed directly, participants can provide historical information, [and it] allows 
researcher ‘control’ over the line of questioning” (p. 186). Recognizing the interview to 
be closely aligned to the needs of this study, I used it as the primary means of collecting 
data. I created a list of fourteen questions to be used in every interview. To help shape 
and maintain the appropriateness and integrity of each question, I used an in-depth 
interview guide (Boyce, 2006). (See Appendix A)   
 Following the first step of the guide, I identified my stakeholders and the type of 
information I needed from them. In this study my stakeholders are those directly involved 
in the ERT process in each of the two projects studied. My intention was to examine 
perceptions of the ERT process, particularly those perceptions related to the ERT’s 
coordinating and streamlining efforts.  As it was important to get input from stakeholders 
on both sides of the process, for the South Beach project in Newport, for example, I 
gathered the views of the ERT process from members of the ERT representing their 
respective agencies within the ERT, as well as the perceptions of City of Newport 
officials. The goal was to create a collective perspective that would provide a richer, 
broader view of the ERT’s activities. 
 The second step involved developing an interview design that included a protocol 
for how I would introduce, conduct, and conclude the interview, engage each   participant  
and record their responses, and what I would do following each interview. The third step 
focused on how to craft questions: creating only open-ended, factual as opposed to 
opinion-based questions, and probes to better guide and elicit the answers I was looking 
for.  
 In relationship to my research question, my main topics were the streamlining and 
coordinating efforts displayed by both the ERT service providers and service recipients. 
So last, I outlined the important themes associated with each topic that I wished to 
explore during the interview process. After completing the guide, I used it to help craft 
and shape the questions I would use during the in-depth interviewing process. (See 
Appendix A) 
 
Data Gathering 
I conducted each interview using a digital voice recorder and a telephone recording jack 
to record entire conversation. I served as the interviewer, asking each participant a series 
of questions closely related to the experiences they had while working within the ERT 
process—with the intent of eliciting responses that would help answer the overarching 
ideas fostered by my research question.  I initiated each interview by acquainting my 
participant with the salient features of the interview topic. Additionally, before each 
interview, I reiterated the rights that my interviewee had as a research subject according 
to the rules of conduct established by the Office for the Protection of Human Subjects at 
the University of Oregon. Each participant was reminded that their participation was 
voluntary, that their decision whether or not to participate would not affect their 
6 
 
relationship with the ERT and its affiliates, the University of Oregon, or me. To establish 
a rapport, the first question was treated more as a way to ease into the rest of the 
interview—providing comfort and building trust in order to elicit a rich response to each 
question.  
 It may be worth noting that, in the interest in confidentiality, the use of the plural 
pronoun “they” is used throughout this study when referring to individual participants. 
This is done to protect, insofar as gender is concerned, the identity of the participants. 
Also, all interviews are cited herein using “Interview Participant” and a number in an 
attempt to protect the anonymity of the interview subjects. 
 
Data Analysis Phase I 
After each interview, the data gathered was carefully and completely transcribed from the 
original digital voice recording into Microsoft Word format.  To help facilitate this 
arduous process, I used Macintosh-friendly transcription playback software called 
Express Scribe which replaces the transcription foot pedal with designated “hotkeys” on 
my computer’s keyboard. Transcripts of all twelve recordings resulted in over eighty 
pages of data.  
 For each ERT project, I then saved all six transcribed documents first in Rich 
Text format and then downloaded them into TAMS Analyzer software, a Macintosh-
enabled qualitative analysis program. Next, I inductively analyzed each transcript 
allowing various themes, concepts, and relationships to emerge out of the data (Tesch, 
1990, 87). Each topic and related theme was subsequently assigned a code within TAMS 
Analyzer and each code was assigned to various pieces of information within the 
transcript. When the coding process was completed, I had generated two primary 
categories, based on my overall topics, streamlining and coordination. As noted above, 
for the purpose of this study, streamlining is defined as making a system or organization 
more effective and efficient by employing faster or simpler working methods and 
coordination is bringing the different elements of a complex activity or organization into 
a relationship that will ensure efficiency or harmony (Oxford American Dictionaries, 
n.d.). I also generated sixteen subcategories based on related themes (e.g., 
communication, facilitation, engagement) within streamlining and coordination. 
 After coding the data, I printed a list of each code (which included a category 
(topic) and subcategory (theme)) with its relevant text. Next, to determine the data that 
would be used in the findings section of each case study, I identified the most pertinent 
pieces of information from within each list.  
 
Data Analysis Phase II 
In an attempt to uncover the “how” in how do the ERT’s streamlining and coordination 
efforts contribute to its ultimate goal of better serving local and regional level 
government and to help better inform the discussion section of this study, each of the case 
study’s findings were further analyzed. Because the discussion section is an interpretation 
of the findings and the responses that make up the findings were subjective, I decided to 
divide the responses into positive, negative, and neutral categories in an attempt to lessen, 
to some degree, the subjectivity inherent in this study.  By looking at all responses 
collectively, as opposed to case study by case study, this would also help to compare 
parallel themes in both cases.  
7 
 
To do this, I divided the coded information (participant responses) into three 
categories, those that reflected positive experiences or opinions, those that reflected 
negative experiences or opinions of the ERT’s streamlining and coordination efforts, and 
those that were neutral toward the ERT’s process or concerned activity outside the ERT, 
but integral to the project. This allowed me to provide a simplistic numeric representation 
of all the themes discovered during the first phase of data analysis and to pinpoint which 
were the primary themes that appeared to offer the greatest explanation of the 
contributions to streamlining and coordination.   
Next, I compiled the following information in a table (see Appendix D): the 
number of responses tallied for each theme, the percent of each theme’s responses in 
relation to the total for all responses, and the number of positive, negative, and neutral 
responses for each theme. From this list I determined three primary themes under each 
topic (streamlining and coordination) on which to focus. The primary themes were those 
that received the greatest percentage of responses in both cases within each topic. For 
instance, under streamlining, the themes of compromise, facilitation, and understanding 
have been identified as primary themes. The remaining themes were less often mentioned 
and thus are not addressed in the discussion section.  
 
  
CASE STUDY ONE: SOUTH BEACH PROJECT (Newport, Oregon) 
 
In recent years the City of Newport has witnessed an increase in population, which has 
consequently placed greater pressure on both the private and public sectors to encourage 
opportunities for economic growth. One way the City wishes to accommodate its growth 
is to increase the level of commercial and industrial land available within the City of 
Newport’s urban growth boundary (UGB). According to its 2005 Plan Amendment draft, 
the City suggests that “to address the commercial land need, the proposed strategy is to 
meet a third of the commercial land need in the South Beach area” (p. 9). To both 
accommodate the projected economic growth of Newport and maintain an adequate level 
of commercial land within its UGB system, as required by the DLCD’s statewide Land 
Use Goal 9, Newport officials have pushed to rezone and re-designate part of the South 
Beach area. This move has led to increased scrutiny from state agencies, particularly 
ODOT and DLCD. 
 Apart from the mitigation needed to accommodate wetlands impacted by the 
City’s proposed changes, most of the issues raised in relation to this activity have to do 
with impacts to the South Beach area’s transportation corridors. As one document 
illustrates, “the circumstances in Newport are similar to many other coastal communities. 
Highway 101 [Newport and the South Beach area’s main transportation corridor] is 
constrained by geography, topography, amenity-based transportation patterns, [and] 
natural resources (wetlands)” (Newport Transportation White Paper). This is further 
complicated by a more technical view of ODOT’s “mobility standard… [as] a volume to 
capacity ratio…” and the assumption that “capacity is measured at the thirtieth highest 
hour, kind of the peak travel times.” “And so Highway 101 actually has a pretty high 
mobility standard.” In other words, mobility standards are put in place to minimize 
congestion in areas where highways intersect with other roadways. But in Newport’s 
case, where the primary road is a state highway already close to full capacity, any further 
8 
 
development along this transportation corridor could push the area beyond its capacity 
limit. Furthermore, Newport’s peak travel times are on the weekends rather than during 
weekday commuter hours, as experienced by other Oregon cities. Because of these 
inherent complexities, one of the larger issues faced by the stakeholders in this project is 
how to reduce the impacts that the proposed development will have on the transportation 
corridor within the South Beach region of Newport. That is, how can they achieve  the 
needed industrial development while maintaining or lowering the current levels of traffic 
congestion experienced along the South Beach section of Highway 101? 
 The issues raised by ODOT and DLCD postponed Newport’s proposed land use 
changes and subsequent development. It was at this point that Newport officials turned to 
the ERT for help, with the expectation that the ERT would coordinate efforts from all 
sides, streamline the efforts of the various parties, and get the City back to where it 
needed to be in relation to permit approval and state level endorsement of their project.  
To a large extent, this expectation was met and continues to be met as ERT members, 
collectively and individually, find ways to mitigate and correct most of the issues 
surrounding the project. The transportation corridor issue, however, required more effort. 
As mentioned above, ODOT and the City of Newport, along with other ERT member 
agencies, realized that any development along Highway 101 could put it at or above 
capacity. As a result, ODOT devised an Alternative Mobility Standard, used only one 
other time, as a way to mitigate this issue. One ODOT representative argues: 
 
We kind of looked back into the agency and said, okay, there’s just no way we 
can meet the mobility standards on this section of highway because, gosh, we 
have this fabulous old bridge, this historic bridge in Newport and there’s no way 
we’re going to get rid of that bridge, so—and we don’t have the money and we 
don’t have the desire. So how are we going to leave that constraint in place and 
still help this to happen? And that’s where we work through these different 
scenarios of, well we can have alternative mobility standards, but what does that 
look like? So they came up with some options of it could look like this or it could 
look like that, or maybe we could do a combination of things. So that’s what 
we’ve done kind of behind the scenes as well as maybe identifying those phase 
one-type—here you can get started on your project, you can get your initial thing 
off the ground; you can have your highway connection at this location; this is 
what you have to do in the very immediate time frame to get started. (Interview 
Participant 6, personal communication, December 11, 2008) 
 
In the results section below I discuss the participants’ views of the process that the ERT 
used, and, especially, how the process met goals of coordination and streamlining these 
areas related to economic development. 
 
Results 
 
 The discussion below is organized around the two pivotal topics of streamlining 
and coordination and examining participants’ views of how the ERT’s service providing 
process involved these topics. Within each topic a number of specific themes emerged 
during data analysis. 
 
Streamlining 
9 
 
 
The interviews with participants in the South Beach ERT project revealed a number of 
themes related to producing a system that was streamlined. These included compromise, 
frankness and proactivity, flexibility, timeliness, understanding, and facilitiation. 
Streamlining, once again, is one of the two elements at the core of the ERT’s service-
providing process and is defined within this study as making a system (or organization) 
more effective through the use of faster or simpler methods. 
 
Compromise. Here, compromise is defined as a middle state between conflicting opinions 
or actions reached by mutual concession or modification to better the streamlining 
process. Numerous participants in the South Beach project described occurrences of 
compromise as one way in which activities were streamlined.  
As the nature of this project has placed significant stress on the transportation 
corridor that runs through the area, both the DLCD and ODOT are the primary agencies 
engaged in the City of Newport’s South Beach project. Most of those interviewed agreed 
that ODOT’s use of the Alternative Mobility Standards (AMS) as an affordable way to 
find that balance between the project and its effect on traffic was a testament to ODOT’s 
commitment to finding a solution. As some participants put it, ODOT is “open to 
considering changes to their policies…” and the “Alternative Mobility Standard is “new 
ground for them” but “they seem willing to explore that possibility.”  Another participant 
mentioned the interest ODOT had in “accommodating urban growth and a compact 
development pattern in the City of Newport.” They expressed their agency’s continued 
effort to forge a relationship with other ERT agencies and “discuss ways that they can 
meet their interest” while considering “changes to their [own] standards.”  
 Despite the willingness and the intent of ODOT to support the South Beach 
project, a few participants witnessed unnecessary roadblocks to the streamlining effort. 
One went on to explain the administrative rigidness of some of ODOT’s staff members 
and the challenge of finding a balance between ODOT and the larger community interest 
of the City of Newport. And another explained that they “feel like we don’t get very far, 
very fast with ODOT because they’re entrenched in one-size-fits-all for their policies.”  
 Because ODOT is the largest and, as many participants suggested, the most 
bureaucratized of the agencies serving on the ERT, it seems that they gained most of the 
attention when it came to the ERT’s level of willingness to compromise. However, the 
City of Newport received its fair share of criticism. Most of those interviewed agreed that 
the City’s willingness and enthusiasm helped push the early stages of the process along.  
Nonetheless, with regard to the flexibility needed to work through some of the policy 
differences between state and local level governments, one participant suggested that 
there is a general lack of agreement to “additional land-use controls on the intensity of 
development that occurs along the highway.” This particular issue pits the DLCD and 
ODOT’s policies and regulations against the needs of the South Beach project. As many 
pointed out, the need for facilitation by the ERT on this particular project hinged on what 
the City of Newport needed and also on what had taken place before the ERT services 
were solicited. According to the perceptions of a few ERT members, the streamlining 
taking place between the ERT and the City would have been drastically improved and 
expedited if the City would have heeded their warnings early in the process. It was 
acknowledged that compromise must come from both sides of the bargaining table and 
10 
 
one specific ERT interview participant warned the City of the possible repercussion of 
moving forward without first addressing crucial issues.  
  
Frankness and Proactivity. Frankness is defined as being forthcoming; that is, divulging 
information to help create a better environment for streamlining. Proactivity is the ERT’s 
ability to create or control a situation by causing something to happen rather than 
responding to an event after it has happened. Both elements appeared in participants’ 
discussions of Newport’s experience with ERT. 
 Most of those interviewed suggested that both the City of Newport and ERT 
member agencies were eager to help facilitate and offer the information needed to 
streamline the process. Some ERT members said the City had been “very forthcoming” in 
their efforts, that “city planners and the city managers were both forthcoming about the 
things the City could do to facilitate ODOT’s interest and research a solution.” Another, 
reflecting on the initial engagement of the process, said that “city planners and the city 
managers were both forthcoming about the things the City could do to facilitate ODOT’s 
interest and research a solution.” It is clear that most of the ERT members interviewed 
were happy with the information provided by the City and their complete willingness to 
offer this information.  
 As to the frankness between members of the ERT, one participant suggests that “it 
would be worthwhile for the state agencies to have a frank discussion between the 
agencies that are going to be involved, about what the regulations are…what the issues 
are” so as to “operate from a common level of understanding.” 
 Thinking and responding proactively was another area within streamlining that 
made a good impression on ERT members. For example, when asked about their 
impressions of working with City of Newport officials, one participant expressed that the 
City has been “perceptive about ODOT’s policy and the expectation of that policy…” 
Others acknowledged this proactive behavior, but insisted that the City had missed 
opportunities to take charge and make things happen at their end. One example suggests 
that a “point-person” be instituted to ensure that “things made it through our [the ERT’s] 
process”. From the City’s perspective “it would be more helpful if they [the ERT] had 
more authority to make decisions.” The same participant also acknowledges that the 
primary agencies within the ERT process are “limited by what level of administrative 
rules and permitting processes that already exist in a state statute or state regulation.” One 
way they could help mitigate this issue is to have ERT members “help direct staff time or 
put more emphasis on a particular project to get a quicker resolution.” 
 
Flexibility. Flexibility is defined as a particular agency's or service recipient's ability to 
adapt to the often-changing circumstances involved with streamlining. When it came to 
the ability of one agency to adapt to the needs of another agency within the ERT, one 
participant recognized that “there was some concern and some resistance to participate by 
a least one ERT agency early on.” One explanation for this sort of reaction may be that 
“there has to be a certain amount of comfort level attained to actually move forward and 
to develop trust and finding solutions.” One testament to the importance of comfort and 
trust-building suggests that the most helpful thing would have been for the City to 
“actually follow our advice. It would have been so much easier had, you know, we not 
had to file the appeal [against the City’s interpretation of ODOT’s transportation planning 
11 
 
rule] and get to this agreement on how to proceed because it just made the whole 
situation uncomfortable,” and “being more upfront and flexible at the beginning of the 
negotiation phase, well before the ERT was involved, would have been more helpful.” 
 Another ERT member suggests, reflecting on the transportation issue of road 
capacity on and around the location of the projected development in Newport, that “the 
City needs to…more fully understand that the [transportation] system is going to be 
operating over capacity” and as a result, the City should “consider how land use could be 
restricted.” In other words, the City will have to somehow adapt their plans to 
accommodate this need for balance within the transportation corridors of the project area. 
A City of Newport perspective on the same issue revealed that one ERT service provider 
was “considering some changes to some of the wetland permitting regulations to help 
better address…wetland permitting issues or impact issues associated with infrastructure 
or transportation facility development.” This particular participant felt that by “amending 
some of their administrative rules in certain areas,” ERT agencies can better serve the 
local government’s interest. 
 An example of the inherent difficulties that some agencies within the ERT face 
when trying to help numerous unique projects was revealed when one participant 
suggested that the Alternative Mobility Standard, the tool used to find different ways to 
accommodate the transportation side of a project, was “really a Highway Commission 
issue…it goes beyond what we’re able to fix on a local level.” And so the larger problem, 
as set out by this participant, is “how can we use the tools we have to solve this problem 
and make it fit within the framework that our transportation commission has set out for 
us?” That is, how can an agency become increasingly flexible within the larger ERT 
process?  
  
Timeliness. For the purpose of this study, streamlining efforts done efficiently or 
occurring at a favorable or useful interval address the theme of timeliness. When I asked 
one participant if they thought the point of streamlining was to “expedite the process—
push it through,” they suggested that if one were to look “at the outcome that would have 
taken place without this process, it’s a definite streamline.” But, “if you’re looking at, 
you know, how long this specific process took, it could be viewed as being a long one.” 
This sentiment was reiterated by another participant who suggested that both sides of the 
ERT should “cut through the early processes where we get to know one another and 
relationship building and trust and all of that because “we’ll be able to get right into the 
meat of the issues a little bit faster…” And although this individual didn’t “want to speak 
for” the City, they were still sympathetic to the level of frustration the City 
representatives must have been experiencing when trying to get things moving through 
each of the state agencies for the project. 
 There were a few who thought the ERT and the City were doing their best to not 
get hung up on trivialities and to push the process forward. When asked about the 
changes that were made within one participant’s ERT member agency that helped “make 
the process more helpful and efficient,” they explained that although their agency did not 
notice any significant change take place, they did witness that it was “quite easy” to 
“have a place at the table” and that they “were able to get the people who needed to be [at 
the discussion] there and in a timely way.” 
 
12 
 
Understanding. Being sympathetically or knowledgeably aware of the nature of another 
agency’s or ERT affiliate’s situation characterizes understanding. Because there may be 
rules on the permitting process within one agency that inadvertently have an effect on 
other agencies, an awareness of other stakeholders’ perspectives is important. 
However, as one ERT member mentioned, this is precisely one of the reasons that 
the streamlining process within the ERT is at times difficult. As a result, there is a push 
and pull that happens as agencies within the ERT try to better understand what policies 
have to be modified to accommodate the ultimate goal of the project, which should 
remain at the forefront of each of those involved in the permitting process. For example, 
responding to a question related to the City of Newport’s Transportation Plan, one ERT 
member suggested that by “having a plan, it doesn’t ensure that the process goes 
smoother.” Furthermore, when reflecting more on the role that the City of Newport 
played in crafting a transportation plan for this particular project, the same participant 
expressed a little frustration when City officials “triggered a land use change,” setting off 
a series of events that could have been avoided if the proper channels had been used in 
the first place. This change has made it difficult for ERT members to coordinate their 
efforts and streamline the needed permits to proceed with the City development plans.  
 Most of the participants acknowledged a general lack of awareness relating 
directly to how one agency’s policies could have affected the policies of another. One 
ERT member even reflected on their own unawareness, conceding,  “had I been a little 
bit more aware, I probably could have made…a more specific outreach to the City, and 
tried to get their elected officials to understand the consequences” of their decisions 
before they were made. As a way to both acknowledge the problem and offer a 
suggestion, another participant asserted “it would be worthwhile for the state agencies 
[associated with the ERT] to have a frank discussion between the agencies that are going 
to be involved, about what the regulations are…what the issues are… so that all the 
agencies are operating from a common level of understanding.” 
 
Facilitation. This is defined as helping to guide the streamlining process and make it 
easier for other ERT service providers and recipients. When asked about their impression 
of working with City of Newport officials on this project, one ERT member said, “Oh, it 
was great! I think that we…have felt like that we were partners with local government.” 
The mayor, city manager, city attorney, public works director, and especially the 
community development director, “have been really good to work with and have been 
trying to roll up their sleeves and help.”  
 The City’s view of the role that facilitation has played within the ERT process has 
been favorable, although different from that of the ERT participants’ view and not always 
constructive. One participant said that they “appreciate the ERT being able to at least 
listen and provide input in the process.” Another stated that the ERT “can’t change state 
statutes for state administrative rules. They can’t change state processes. All they can do 
is help facilitate the coordination among the agencies, which I think they’ve attempted to 
do.” Additionally, “whether it’s the ERT itself or individual members of the ERT,… I 
think having the ERT aware of the process and in support of the project of what we’re 
trying to accomplish has been able to help maybe facilitate resolution of some of those 
transportation planning issues, related to the access permit.” 
13 
 
 Even though it was understood that administrative rules and state statutes largely 
dictate what the ERT can do, one participant said that one way the ERT could improve its 
streamlining process would be  to encourage individual ERT members to  “help direct 
staff time” in order to put “more emphasis on a particular project “ and to “get a quicker 
resolution.” Another way agencies could better facilitate and serve local level 
governments is to have both creative and constructive alternatives to agency policies. 
Most agreed that ODOT’s Alternative Mobility Standard allows ODOT to start with the 
outcomes and find creative ways to shepherd the City’s efforts toward them.  
 
In summary, the themes found in the South Beach project that concerned streamlining 
were compromise, frankness and proactivity, flexibility, timeliness, understanding, and 
facilitation. Ultimately, these themes help explain and give insight to the level of 
efficiency and effectiveness performed by the ERT when providing services within this 
project. However, there are other themes, such as those found within the area of 
coordination, that are also integral to the efficacy of a collaboration-centered organization 
like the ERT. 
 
Coordination 
 
As one of the ERT’s primary functions, coordination results when the various elements of 
a complex activity or organization are brought together in a way that ensures efficiency 
or harmony. Participants from the South Beach project uncovered several themes related 
to coordination, namely, accommodation, compromise, facilitation, frankness, timeliness, 
and communication.  
It is worth noting that four of these themes (compromise, facilitation, timeliness, 
and frankness) were also identified in the streamlining section above. For the purposes of 
streamlining, these themes emerged in response to questions about expediting and 
simplifying processes whereas for coordination, the corresponding themes related to 
relationships and interactions between stakeholders. 
 
Accommodation. One agency or ERT member accommodates another agency or ERT 
member by fitting in with the needs of the other. Whether working with Newport city 
officials or members of the ERT, most participants were largely happy with the way one 
agency or city official accommodated another.  
There was a general exhibit of productive exchange. For example, when one 
participant was asked about coordinating efforts among various ERT members, they 
claimed that the agencies within the ERT have “sort of, cross-pollinated and know what 
other agencies are doing…” The ERT has been effective in being “able to have that 
framework in place that we can coordinate very well.” Another participant suggested that 
city officials have “come to the table and rolled up their sleeves and provided.” “A lot of 
people I’ve seen have said, ‘we just want out of this regulation,’ but I don’t believe the 
City of Newport has done that at all.” Instead, “people have been given assignments and 
come back to the next meeting and provided us good information.” “They’re invested and 
engaged.” 
 When asked whether the City of Newport was responsive to the ERT’s requests, 
one ERT member suggested that it was important to consider that the coordinating 
14 
 
process “involves an exception or a variation from the agency’s standard approach.” This 
participant felt that there are central questions that are important to address, such as, 
“what are the other things that a local government can do that substantially advance the 
state’s interest, what are the criteria or standard for treating a local government 
differently, or how does the agency adapt it practice and what is a reasonable set of things 
to expect from local government when there is some variation from the standard?” Trying 
to see things from a local government perspective, this participant suggested that if a 
particular agency is “uncertain about what its expectations are” that it inherently “creates 
problems for the local government.” 
 Reflecting on their agency’s accommodating nature, one participant argued that 
“when somebody comes with a specific project…this triggers a whole series of things… 
So what we have done is try to facilitate kind of behind the scenes…what is it that we can 
do? ...Let’s problem solve here so that we can offer them [City of Newport]… how we’d 
recommend going about that.” Another ERT member witnessed this accommodating 
attitude as they pointed to a key figure within the ERT that wasn’t necessarily appointed 
as its champion, but has assumed this position as a result of their tireless effort to pull the 
various agencies together so that there has been “more consistent agency response for the 
project.”  
 There were very few suggestions for improving the accommodation aspect of the 
ERT process. However, one participant advocated that “agencies…need to be buying off 
on the ERT process and getting comfortable with moving forward on the assistance.” 
Keeping the “end objective” of the project in perspective and not getting “hung-up on 
each of the particular administrative rules or barriers.” 
 
Compromise. This is defined as a middle state between conflicting opinions or actions 
reached by mutual concession or modification to better coordinate efforts between 
agencies or individuals. Reflecting on the level of compromise between this project’s two 
pivotal ERT agencies, the DLCD and ODOT, one participant stated, “I think DLCD, and 
the staff of DLCD and the Governor’s Office have [been]…very active and supportive in 
helping us coordinate with the different agencies as well; and, to support the overall 
concepts of a project…” Looking at the role ODOT played, this participant was 
sympathetic to the way in which ODOT assisted the City side of the South Beach project. 
Granted, “It [ODOT’s approach] may not be best…or smoothest process for 
accomplishing what they want to accomplish. But, that’s not necessarily staff 
responsibility, it’s more of how the administrative rules are...either applied or written—
the process they have to follow.”  
 Directing attention to the City of Newport’s numerous concessions in the name of 
better coordination between state and local level efforts, one participant states that the 
City may “not like some of the solutions, some of the things that people have asked of 
them, but they sort of…continue the process.” 
 There were a couple of participants that felt there was a general lack of 
compromise within the ERT process. When asked if they had any recommendations for 
future ERT service recipients, one participant suggested that the “agencies also need to be 
buying off on the ERT process and getting comfortable with moving forward on the 
assistance. And trying to have a cooperative attitude…” One question the ERT should 
collectively consider is “how do we address these issues and how can we reach the end 
15 
 
objective if they all agree that the end objective is worth reaching?” Another participant 
said, “It… was difficult to get beyond, you know, ‘this is the way we do things and so 
live with it.’” Others also felt there were times when some of the ERT members showed 
no signs of moving beyond the immediate needs of their respective agencies in order to 
cater to the larger needs of the entire project starting with the outcomes and figuring out 
ways to achieve those outcomes. 
 
 
Facilitation. In terms of coordination, efforts at facilitation related to relationships and 
collaborating with others and is concerned with helping to guide the coordinating 
process. 
 One area that created greater facilitation between City officials and members of 
the ERT were smaller group meetings. From the ERT service provider perspective, the 
question surfaced, “we need to solve this problem and how are we going to do it?” The 
answer, as one participant remembers it, was to suggest getting “a smaller group together 
and do that.” They reflected, “after that initial meeting, when the small group started to 
meet, that’s the point at which we became more able, you know you’re just more nimble 
with a smaller group, and more able to maybe focus on some solutions or potential 
solutions.” 
 Some participants recognized a need for improvement in how the ERT conducts 
itself as a facilitator of each agency’s permitting process and showing their respective 
service recipients how to arrive at their ultimate goals. When one ERT member was 
asked what could be done to improve coordinating efforts for future ERT service 
recipients, they explained, “You know, there’s probably something I could have done 
better to kind of bring them [City Officials] along.” They continued “I would like to 
maybe develop a work plan or action items…something more tangible so everybody’s 
working off the same sheet of music,” create a framework to “identify milestones…to get 
from point A to point B.” 
 
Frankness. This is defined as being forthcoming and up-front by divulging information in 
order to help build trust and spur coordination. Drawing attention to the importance of the 
stakeholders’ frankness when trying to coordinate efforts toward large-scale projects like 
this, one participant points out “the community [City of Newport] provides us with 
notices of land use actions that are proposed land use actions for any development that is 
happening in town” “And these measures are both excellent…for keeping the agency 
informed as to what sort of things could affect the highway operations and transportation 
within Newport and allows us…an opportunity to coordinate what our needs are with the 
City’s land use process.” When asked about the responsiveness of Newport City 
Officials, one ERT member said, “They’re very cooperative with regard to meeting 
location. They have provided information and suggestions, you know, how they can see 
moving forward with this. They’ve sketched-out what they believe is a problem 
statement.” 
 Some felt there were times during the process when the City officials were less 
forthcoming and therefore counterproductive. One participant suggested that City of 
Newport officials should have been more forthcoming when a subcommittee meeting got 
“together and an issue that really wasn’t planned for the agenda came up early, that 
16 
 
actually threatened the entire project, was whether or not we could actually do alternative 
mobility standards or not… And I hoped that that would have come up way earlier so we 
could have worked that out prior to that first meeting.” Another participant sheds light on 
this issue by raising the question of “whether or not the City’s going to be forthcoming on 
additional land use controls… “I can’t say the City hasn’t been helpful in doing that. It’s 
just that the conversation hasn’t gotten to that point, yet… I… think that’s…going to be 
the litmus of whether this works out.” 
 
Timeliness. Coordination efforts made at a favorable or useful interval address the theme 
of timeliness. Reflecting on whether or not the ERT was timely, one participant 
suggested that “the issue for the larger agencies is more difficult than smaller ones. It’s 
harder to get that authority chain kind of all worked out… But I think that [the] ERT has 
helped pull that all together. Basically, they’re a coordinator, but also, it sort of enables 
the state agency staff members to try to think that they need to work on getting all those 
authorities worked out ahead of [the] meeting.” A different participant had another 
suggestion about timeliness: “as a result of being better prepared for the discussion, the 
process about…how to move forward would be able to move more quickly…” This 
would happen because “everyone would already understand what is on the table and 
what’s not on the table.” 
 Most participants were less impressed with the timeliness of the ERT process. 
Regarding a clash of cultures between some of the bigger agencies that make up the ERT, 
one ERT member acknowledged that their agency has “a transportation group, too. And, 
you know, a lot of times, our folks feel the same as ODOT’s. We’re sister agencies. What 
I’ve seen in this process is that even our transportation people that are specialized come 
to the table thinking that there’s another solution to this from the status quo. And I think 
that ODOT has started to come around to that, but it’s been slower.” Another view of 
ODOT’s timeliness suggests that “in bigger agencies, sometimes you have to do extra 
work to go up and down the leadership chain to make sure you have authorization to 
move forward with collaborative solutions.”  
 
Communication. Communication is the flow of interaction or approach used by agencies 
and service recipients that either helped or hindered coordination efforts. 
 One ERT member describes their experience communicating with the City of 
Newport as a form of “collaborative communication. More of a face-to-face, more of a 
sit-around-the-table instead of across-the-table.” The communication was “not an agency 
letter at the last minute prior to a hearing to a city council or to a planning commission. 
It’s early—that’s very important.” Another participant shares this sentiment explaining 
that “informal communication with other [agency] staff members is always helpful in 
identifying what the issues are.” In addition to the open and relaxed approach to 
communication some other ERT members see the “internal communication…between 
and within state agencies...is… very transparent [and]… couched in more of a 
partnership.” 
 Some participants found that making the meetings and communication 
environments smaller was helpful.  An ERT member said that they “received a request to 
get together as state agencies to make sure we were all on the same page…” Out of this 
engagement they “identified a subcommittee group that would continue to work on these 
17 
 
issues.” An indication that this action was helpful came from another participant, who 
suggested that after an initial meeting with ODOT to help define the alternative mobility 
standard and how it may apply to the South Beach project, that they formed “a 
subcommittee and met several times and we communicated by email.” They suggested 
that “most of the work happens in our subcommittee meetings.” The smaller group 
seemed to make for less convoluted communication. 
 Another helpful communicative tool was the use of presentations to help 
contextualize the issues surrounding the project. One City official said they thought “it’s 
been helpful at the ERT meetings being able to do presentations that show kind of what 
we’re doing and show what issues are in making the agency folks involved in the ERT 
process more familiar with the project so that when the permitting stuff comes through 
that they have the understanding of what’s going on.” They continue, “Being able to have 
more familiarity with the overall concept of what the City is doing and attempting to do, I 
think it’s useful [that] the members of the ERT [are] able to do those types of 
presentations and have communication with the individual members and individual 
agencies…”  
 
Engagement. Engagement is establishing a meaningful contact or connection with 
another agency, an agency member, or a local level official. One way ERT agency 
members and City of Newport officials have engaged one another was to start early in the 
process. An ERT agency member said that the ERT has “helped because we’ve been able 
to use the ERT coordinators … the people out the Governor’s Office to sit down with us 
and meet with us internally and our agency and discuss some of these issues so we can 
get on the same page when we go out and meet with folks.” Another member felt that it 
was their agency that has “been one of the more motivated to coordinate with other 
agencies…” they have “…crossed-pollinated and know what other agencies are doing 
and we developed those relationships that we need to have those discussions.” “And it 
has been a tremendous amount of help when we get onto one of these projects…to be 
able to have that framework in place…” 
  Coupled with this early engagement process was an interest from some of the 
ERT members to meet “as state agencies before we came to the table with the City to 
make sure that we had our deck in-line and that we were kind of understanding…what 
the City’s perspective was...and how we would propose to help with that.” 
 Other factors that helped better engage and coordinate efforts between the ERT 
and the City, were the initiative, level of interest displayed, and how invested each player 
was in finding a solution. As one ERT member said about their experience with city 
officials, the City “was always in attendance, they came with ideas, [and] they were 
always very engaged in the dialogue. So they’re interested in solving the problem and not 
just making [the agency] solve the problem for them.”  They added, “I find that to be 
really the basis for any successful project…whoever you’re working with, they have to be 
just as interested and invested in a solution, and take responsibility for it.” Another 
member, having had a similar experience, said that the City of Newport “brought ideas, 
how they could modify their development codes and things like that. Again, they’ve been 
a willing participant and a collaborator versus just somebody who just sitting at the table 
saying… “How are you going to fix my problem?” 
18 
 
 Although most of those interviewed felt that both sides were well engaged, there 
were still a couple who thought otherwise. When asked if improvements can be made to 
the coordinating effort for future ERT service recipients, an ERT member responded “I 
think that we could do better at coming to the table, probably getting managers within 
state agencies fully engaged in [the] ERT would help.” When asked if there was “any 
isolated agency within the ERT system that you felt was unhelpful,” another member 
suggested that one particular agency could be more helpful, but largely understood the 
obstacles that the agency itself faced—“obviously they’re bound by the process.” To add 
greater detail to their explanation this member added that “if there’s an agency process 
that has been…frustrating or has been taking longer than would be anticipated…it’s 
probably going through the ODOT permitting process… Then again, part of that is not 
necessarily a function [of] ODOT’s unwillingness to help the city facilitate the project. 
Part of it probably [is] also a function of what ODOT administrative rules require, or how 
they’re implemented by the individual staff.” 
 
For coordination, the themes found in the South Beach project included accommodation, 
compromise, facilitation, frankness, timeliness, communication, and engagement, some 
of the keys to synchronizing the efforts of ODOT, DLCD, and the City of Newport. 
Ultimately, these themes have been identified to help explain how the ERT services come 
together in an effective and well-balanced way. A look at all the themes found within 
both streamlining and coordination reveal the ERT’s methods and relationships, which 
give insights to its effectiveness with regard to these two key areas. 
 While no two ERT projects are the same, the subject of the next case, the Junction 
City Project, shares some key ingredients with the South Beach project in Newport. Not 
only are both located in the Willamette Valley/Central Oregon ERT region and are lead, 
or facilitated, by the same ERT team, but in both the ERT’s involvement was initiated by 
a city government, the projects are still ongoing, and they include heavy involvement 
from two of the larger ERT member agencies, ODOT and the DLCD. In the South Beach 
project, however, these two agencies are the primary state agency stakeholders, but in 
Junction City, this is not the case. 
 
CASE STUDY TWO: JUNCTION CITY PROJECT (Junction City, Oregon) 
 
Upon learning that the construction of two new state facilities in Junction City had been 
proposed by the Oregon Departments of Corrections (DOC) and Human Services (DHS), 
the City of Junction City held a meeting with state and local officials to determine next 
steps. The WV/CO ERT was contacted and was instrumental in planning that initial 
meeting. Out of the meeting came a plan to request a “customized periodic review” of the 
city’s comprehensive plan. While a standard periodic review is an assessment that takes 
place at scheduled intervals to ensure that a local government's comprehensive plan, land 
use regulations, and provisions for housing, employment, transportation and facilities 
remain in compliance with the statewide planning goals and other rules identified in the 
related Oregon Revised Statutes (ORS), a customized periodic review is a process 
through which “the Economic Revitalization Team may work with a city to create a 
voluntary comprehensive plan review that focuses on the unique vision of the city, 
instead of conducting a standard periodic review” (Department of Land Conservation and 
19 
 
Development). The customized periodic review, completed in 2008, informs Junction 
City’s current comprehensive plan, which consists of a five-year work plan that includes 
such tasks as reviewing existing buildable commercial/industrial lands in Junction City 
and exploring UGB expansion options, completing a wetland inventory, and analyzing 
the potential for growing industry and employment in the City.  
 The customized periodic review allows cities to have a “more focused periodic 
review and it doesn’t open up [their] entire comprehensive plan or implementing 
ordinances to scrutiny by a whole bunch of state agencies…That really helps keep things 
focused on track and gets the work done in a much shorter time frame... [and] allows 
cities to be…more visionary” (Interview Participant 12, personal communication, 
January 21, 2009).  
 However, the completed customized periodic review itself has also led to some 
debate in this project and, consequently, some challenges to the ERT’s efforts. Because 
this type of review is a new, recently available option, several interview participants have 
noted that although the review was intended to tailor the city’s plans to its unique 
circumstances, some participants have described instances in which some state agencies 
have been reticent to adapt their interpretations of their own administrative rules 
accordingly. For example, “Originally the ERT recommendation, which would include 
funds so that Junction City could hire… [a] staff person that could take over the day-to-
day duties of the city planner so the… planning manager/planning director could work 
strictly on… the CPR [customized periodic review]… ran into a bit of a funding 
quagmire… when [one state agency]… decided they didn’t like it because they didn’t 
want to go along with that because they typically don’t pay for staff” (Interview 
Participant 12, personal communication, January 21, 2009).  
In addition to the newness of the customized periodic review, there are several 
other factors that point to the complicated nature of this project which, unlike the South 
Beach project, further challenges the ERT’s process. These include the construction of a 
new prison and a hospital as well as plans to expand the City’s UGB. Some of the city’s 
infrastructure, namely its water and sewer facilities, as several participants have pointed 
out, will need to be upgraded in order to accommodate the new state facilities. And, in 
addition to the DOC and DHS projects, the area may also accommodate a new site for 
Grain Millers, Inc., a private business looking to expand its operation. Wetland 
mitigation, another costly adjustment, will impact not only the state agencies planning 
construction and the city itself, but also any potential private industry planning to build. 
The most significant potential cause for challenges in the project—and another 
difference between this and the South Beach project—is the number of stakeholders. IN 
addition to the two key entities this study looks at, the ERT member agencies and the 
local governments they serve, other key players in this case include members of private 
industry as well as representatives of non-ERT member agencies, the DOC and DHS, to 
name just two. In essence, this latter group may also be considered service recipients, but 
it does appear to add a level of complexity in terms of the ERT’s process. 
 
20 
 
Results 
 
Again, some of the pivotal figures in this project were agencies that do not have a place 
within the ERT process. Nevertheless, the ERT is still a major facilitator and finds itself 
in a unique position, in this case, of trying to streamline and coordinate for a larger 
variety of stakeholders. The findings illustrate themes that emerged during data analysis 
that are related to both streamlining and coordination. 
 
Streamlining 
The nine themes that emerged regarding streamlining in the South Beach case also 
appeared in the Junction City case. 
 
Compromise. Here, compromise is defined as a middle state between conflicting opinions 
or actions reached by mutual concession or modification to better the streamlining 
process. Several participants in the Junction City project expressed a need for greater 
compromise. 
  From an ERT member’s point of view, those in decision-making positions within 
the ERT seemed less willing to compromise than others with whom they had been 
involved. Part of this, as one participant suggested, was an “internal” struggle. Many 
agency representatives within the ERT seemed to not fully grasp the difference in this 
project from others. Because of the size and the various state and local level agencies 
involved, it was agreed by both the DLCD and Junction City officials that customized 
periodic review (CPR) was the right facilitating tool to use. However, it was hard for this 
participant to have fellow ERT members put their respective agencies rules and 
regulations aside “and realized this [CPR] is different than any other kind of periodic 
review.”  
 The same participant pointed to an issue within their own agency as another 
example of need for greater compromise within the ERT streamlining process. Because, 
they said, Junction City is a relatively poor city and the staff at the City were overworked, 
the ERT originally recommended some funding go toward hiring “a full time staff person 
that could take over the day-to-day duties of the city planner” to allow Junction City’s 
planning director to “work strictly…[on] the CPR.” This led to an internal problem 
within one of the state agencies that “didn’t want to go allow with that because they 
typically don’t pay for staff.” For this participant, those agency decision makers did not 
fully understand the special needs of this particular project and the benefit this funding 
for staff would provide.  
 
Frankness. Frankness is defined as being forthcoming; that is, divulging information to 
help create a better environment for streamlining. Most of those interviewed mentioned 
little or nothing on the forthcoming nature of the ERT or its service recipients. However, 
one private sector participant working closer with Junction City than the ERT had 
favorable things to say about the ERT’s coordinator, Marguerite Nabeta. In Nabeta’s 
quest to organize and facilitate the ERT meetings, the participant suggested that her 
efforts have “helped us in getting to know the right people, putting names with 
faces…and letting us know what information is needed.” Furthermore, she has put 
together follow-up meetings with this participant, which again helped this individual 
21 
 
know what information was needed “to provide to Junction City which will meet the 
State’s requirements for their review process.”  
 Some participants described experiences that point to a lack of frankness on the 
part of the ERT; these perceptions had more to do with the lack of a cohesive timeline 
that both the ERT and local level officials agreed on and stuck to.  One participant was 
growing increasingly frustrated with the inconsistency of the projects timeline. First, 
certain stages of the project were to close at “the end of this year [2008], then it was 
thought to be January, February of ’09.” They continue, “Now, you know, that timeline is 
probably the middle of next year [2009] and I still don’t know for certain that it will not 
be pushed back again.”  
 Although DHS and DOC do not participate in the ERT, one Junction City official 
mentioned that it would be helpful to know more about “some of the decision-making 
internally.”  This participant felt the ERT could help by encouraging these agencies to 
better inform their service recipients.  
  
Proactivity. For the purpose of this study, proactivity is the ERT’s ability to create or 
control a situation by causing something to happen rather than responding to an event 
after the fact. This was a theme that .garnered a less than favorable reaction. When asked 
to describe their impression of working with Junction City and the ERT during the 
[ERT’s] streamlining effort, one participant, highlighting the ERT’s shortcomings, 
suggested that “Junction City is very open to problem-solving solutions,” unlike the ERT, 
which is entrenched in rules and regulations so much that it is difficult for the ERT to 
think “outside the box.”  Other participants had similar concerns. One participant alluded 
to the ERT’s “disorganized” nature and another pointed to its lack of after-meeting 
“follow-ups.” Many of those interviewed had concerns about the ERT’s ability to take 
charge of certain meetings and negotiating situations in order to help push the needs of 
Junction City forward.  
 Some participants suggested that the service recipients also need to work more 
proactively. Reflecting on the unique elements of this project, one participant said it 
would be a better help to the ERT if local governments already had certain infrastructure 
in place before calling on the ERT.  
 
Flexibility. Flexibility is defined as a particular agency's or service recipient's ability to 
adapt to the often-changing circumstances involved with streamlining. Because of the 
unique circumstance of the project and its impact on Junction City’s infrastructure and 
housing, the City was required to work with the ERT on the agreed elements within its 
customized periodic review (CPR). The CPR provided opportunities for flexibility on 
both sides of the project.  The CPR was a relatively new process at the time, an 
alternative to the standard approach that state agencies take with local level governments. 
As one participant explains “Junction City… [was] the first child to be birthed through 
the customized periodic review” process. As a result, this participant continues with the 
analogy, “you have certain labor pains…a big part of it is just kind of getting to the point 
where you understand this new process.” One of the issues that the City had to 
understand with the new process was its expense: some of the necessary changes outlined 
by the state agencies involved in the CPR process were going to be too costly for 
Junction City. So, the City and ERT member agencies worked together to spread the cost 
22 
 
“over two biennia, instead of one.” Overall, this participant believed that both the City 
and their agency “were doing a fairly good job of getting through these birthing pains 
under customize periodic review.” 
 Some elements of the CPR process showed less favorable signs of flexibility. For 
example, one participant explained the difficulty of working with the periodic review 
advisory team, a group charged within reviewing Junction City’s CPR. This team, as 
explained by this participant, “is like a representative from all the different agencies that 
[each] have administrative rules” and they all “want to jump in and say, ‘Oh, you got to 
deal with this, you got to deal with that’… And we’re [one of the ERT agencies] kind of 
going ‘No, the commission approved this customized periodic review’” and, because of 
the uniqueness of the project, the CPR outlined only particular actions.  
 
Timeliness. For the purpose of this study, streamlining efforts done efficiently or 
occurring at a favorable or useful interval address the theme of timeliness. Trying to 
describe what appears to be an often misunderstood process of the ERT, one ERT 
representative suggested that “the thing that probably is the most problematic [referring 
to the ERT process]” is whether the issues brought to the attention of the ERT are 
presented in a timely manner. This participant went on to say that a large number of the 
problems presented to the ERT originate outside of the ERT’s control. Because the ERT 
sometimes becomes the face of a particular issue, there are many on the outside (in the 
private sector or local level governments) who perceive the ERT as “not helping a whole 
lot because it just seems like more bureaucracy to them.” Thus, the timeliness issue 
appears to be a result of the ERT process. Although many on the receiving end of the 
ERT’s services may hold this view, this ERT representative believes that the ERT does 
provide a “platform for dialogue,” which in the long run helps better push the project 
along.  
 Participants representing Junction City and the private sector offered less than 
favorable responses regarding the ERT’s timeliness. Most of those working with the ERT 
suggest that timeliness is of grave concern to their projects. One participant explains that 
“it’s such a complex and major project and one in which timing is very critical in terms 
of making sure if they [ERT service recipient] are to succeed in anything, their opening 
dates, then decisions have to be made in a very timely way and that really doesn’t 
happen.” They continue, “And I don’t blame that on the people we’re dealing with [the 
ERT], but there are—there’s somewhere in the mass of bureaucracy an inability to react 
quickly and officially to necessary decision-making…And I don’t blame it on the ERT… 
[It] is there to cut through that morass…” 
 Some responses centered on the interactions between local government and 
private interests. One participant said that Junction City officials were “extremely 
accommodating and helpful,” but then suggested that they had a general “lack of 
knowledge” when it came to understanding what it was the ERT needed from them: The 
“State is having to really walk them through that process one step at a time.” 
Consequently this participant believed their own “timeline is limited by their [Junction 
City’s] timeline, so as they push back, we, of course, have to push our timelines back as 
well.” This participant claimed to not be making a judgment call on the City’s efforts or 
capabilities but, rather, was instead simply pointing out the assumption and honest 
23 
 
misunderstandings that some have about what is expected from them at the state level and 
the time it takes to right the course.  
 
Understanding. Being sympathetically or knowledgeably aware of the nature of another 
agency’s or ERT affiliate’s situation characterizes understanding. When it came to this 
theme, all interview participants had very few strong opinions (or judgments) about the 
character or level of contribution of those involved in this ERT project. One suggested 
that most were willing to work “with the ERT and saw [understood] the benefit,” while 
another felt the relationship they had with the ERT could have been more fruitful had it 
been more formal and offered more information outlining what it is the ERT does and 
how exactly it planned on facilitating this large, uniquely complex development project.  
 On the other hand, most participants did offer more neutral, suggestive 
information about streamlining efforts conducted outside of the ERT.   Notably, one 
private sector participant talked about Junction City’s knowledge of the repercussions 
associated with a UGB expansion project. Had they been “more knowledgeable about” 
this process, the participant said, they may have been able to give “us information as to 
what they needed from our company—that process could have been expedited 
significantly…”  
 
Facilitation. This is defined as helping to guide the streamlining process and make it 
easier for other ERT service providers and recipients. Some of the comments regarding 
this theme were clearly positive. One Junction City representative said, “The ERT has 
met with us on several occasions to stay on top of the project and [tried] to find out how 
they can be helpful collectively and individually in processing permits and applications 
and the like to make sure that the two institutions [the DOC’s projected prison and the 
DHS’s projected hospital] are introduced into the community as smoothly as possible and 
that the community is prepared for their construction and opening.” Another said it “has 
been great to work with” the ERT and the leadership and those in champion-type 
positions in the ERT did a “great job of getting people together when we needed them 
and helping us to facilitate the project as best they can at their level.”  
 Regarding the usefulness of the ERT quarterly meetings, a Junction City 
representative claimed (on four separate occasions during their interview) they “don’t 
know how effective they really are” largely because “there’s no follow-up afterward.” 
This participant placed great emphasis on the need for the ERT to follow-up after 
meetings and other engagements during the life of the project. Another suggestion was to 
have a person within the ERT that would provide a “consistent contact person,” better 
coordination between associated ERT member agencies, and someone to better channel 
the collective ideas to those on the ERT service recipient side of the table—in essence, a 
champion. A private sector interview participant also shared the importance of having a 
champion.  
 From the perspective of the Junction City officials, talk of facilitation centered on 
the need, as one participant put it, for “regular meetings…so that there’s really an 
expectation that they will just happen all the time.” This would force all those 
participating in the ERT’s process to consistently revisit the timeline and work plan and 
evaluate where the project is in relation to these facilitating tools. Additionally, another 
suggested that all those involved in the process generate an agreement listing what “the 
24 
 
goal and objectives of the project are” and, more importantly, “what everybody is 
expecting from each of the individual players as part of making that project successful.” 
An ERT representative also recommended a more goal-oriented approach to facilitating 
the project: “I think having an agreement on what success looks like at the beginning is 
really critical.”   
 
Engagement. Engagement is establishing a meaningful contact or connection with 
another agency, an agency member, or a local level official. When one ERT 
representative was asked whether other key ERT representatives (those working closer 
than others with the Junction City project) helped or hindered the ERT process, they first 
acknowledged the difficulty of working on such a complex project, one involving 
numerous players from all sectors. Because of the complexities, as this participant 
explains, it is easy for individual ERT representatives to become “entrenched in their own 
particular niche” and their focus is on the parts of the project that only relate to their 
particular agency. However, they commended the ERT on creating “a forum in which 
various state agencies…are almost required to get together” and engage in a “dialogue.” 
A Junction City official had similar praise when claiming that there were key agencies 
represented within the ERT that made “sure [the] ERT was always involved.”   
 Some participants were less than enthusiastic about the ERT’s involvement as 
they pointed again to the ERT’s need for a champion. A Junction City official, 
commenting on the ERT’s quarterly meetings, said, “It’s no different from having an 
interdepartmental meeting where various departments come together on an issue, 
everyone goes away and sort of is still then not connected or coordinated.” When asked if 
there were any recommendations they had for improving ERT services, another 
participant did not see the ERT as being engaged in the project. They said, “The ERT 
flies in once every quarter and tells us all the good things we can do and then they fly 
away and we never hear from the again.” Because the ERT is not “engaged in the 
process” more frequently or regularly, this participant said that “it’s difficult for them to 
be of much assistance.” 
 
Communication. The communication flow or approach used by agencies and services 
recipients, within the ERT process, that either helped or hindered streamlining efforts.  
 Most agreed that communication is a vital and important component of a project 
this size and of this complexity. However, compared to the responses that related to other 
themes, not much was said about communication and what was said was largely negative. 
Nevertheless, one ERT representative did highlight the misperception that some have, on 
the service recipient side of the process, about the punctuality and timeliness of the ERT. 
This participant explains that there are times that issues have spent a considerable amount 
of time worsening outside the ERT’s sphere of influence before they are brought to the 
ERT’s attention. Most of those on the outside, frustrated by what they see as the ERT’s 
unnecessarily bureaucratic process, are unaware that the problem was just brought to the 
ERT’s attention—highlighting a break-down in communication.  
 Other participants said that some problems with communication were a little more 
visible. One Junction City representative thought the ERT could do a better job getting 
some of the information internal to the ERT, and its individual agencies, to the ERT’s 
service recipients. Another participant pointed out that it would be helpful “to know what 
25 
 
their [ERT representatives’] thoughts are” relating to the outcomes and goals the ERT has 
outlined. Some other communication issues noted include no “serious effort” made in 
“communication with our public” and the lack of resources, such as an official 
communication plan to bolster and improve relations and connections throughout the 
project.  
 
Again, like the South Beach project the themes found in the Junction City project that 
concerned streamlining were compromise, frankness, proactivity, flexibility, timeliness, 
understanding, and facilitation, engagement, and communication. Ultimately, these 
themes help explain and give insight to the level of efficiency and effectiveness 
performed by the ERT when providing services within this project. However, there are 
other themes, such as those found within the area of coordination, that are also integral to 
the efficacy of a collaboration-centered organization like the ERT. 
 
 
Coordination 
 
Similar to the South Beach project, coordination is one of the ERT’s primary functions 
within the Junction City project and results when the various elements of a complex 
activity or organization are brought together in a way that ensures efficiency or harmony. 
Participants from the Junction City project uncovered several themes related to 
coordination, namely, accommodation, compromise, facilitation, frankness, timeliness, 
communication, engagement, and understanding.  
Again, several themes (compromise, facilitation, timeliness, frankness, 
engagement, and communication) overlap with the streamlining section above. In terms 
of coordination, the corresponding themes relate to relationships and interactions between 
stakeholders. For streamlining, these themes emerged in response to questions about 
expediting and simplifying processes. 
 
Accommodation.  One agency or ERT member accommodates another agency or ERT 
member by fitting in with the needs of the other. Most participants had favorable things 
to say about the ERT’s accommodating nature. One participant talked about the difficulty 
“on any project to keep that energy going throughout the entire…two years...and they’re 
[the ERT’s] doing the best they can” to accommodate Junction City. Pertaining to the 
ERT’s availability, a Junction City representative said that they were “perfectly available 
and make it clear that they’re willing to help us out [with] whatever we need.” Another 
said that their relationship with the ERT is “cordial, professional…” and they felt like 
they “could pick-up the phone anytime and contact anybody…and be taken seriously and 
get a prompt response.” This participant later suggests that the ERT service has “been a 
big aid…to our community…having those inroads into the agency, agencies.” 
 Some of the less complimentary responses pointed to the ERT’s need to work 
more directly with private interests and not get hung-up on administrative rules, the need 
to approach some of the problems from varying perspectives, and to do a better job 
following-up their meetings to offer needed information. One ERT member, reflecting on 
Junction City’s accommodating nature, said that some of the problems that significantly 
slowed the project, could have been avoided if they would have heeded the ERT’s advice 
26 
 
and stayed on the project path. This participant suggested that sometimes you have to “go 
slow to go fast,” noting that although the ERT’s assistance was not the fastest means of 
the City moving forward on its project, the ERT’s was the right path to follow. In other 
words, this participant believed that had the City taken the path that the ERT laid out for 
them (and gone slow), they would at this time be further ahead (to go fast).  
 
Compromise. Again, this is defined as a middle state between conflicting opinions or 
actions reached by mutual concession or modification to better coordinate efforts 
between agencies or individuals. 
 Most interviewed had little or nothing positive to say about the ERT’s 
compromising nature. A Junction City official said the ERT approached its coordinating 
efforts with a “top-down mentality,” giving the impression of state agencies “telling the 
local jurisdiction what to do.” Reflecting on this same issue, an ERT representative said 
that those in some ERT member agencies could use a more creative approach to find 
solutions within their respective agencies. “The ERT person for each particular 
department should be a broker with their departments to try and make things work…”  
 A private sector interview participant who spoke about the State of Oregon’s 
interest in attracting businesses to the state had witnessed “six or seven ODOT guys” 
absolutely unwilling to find a solution for” their client. Comparing this attitude to the 
way the ERT conducts itself, this individual claimed that “we want to be this business-
friendly environment, but I don’t believe the State of Oregon, with all their rules, is able 
to be business-friendly.” 
 
Facilitation. In terms of coordination, efforts at facilitation related to relationships and 
collaborating with others and is concerned with helping to guide the coordinating 
process.  
 Regarding the development of a work program with Junction City, one ERT 
representative recalled bringing a particular specialist from their agency that could 
“bring…their knowledge set to the table to help craft the final language for the work 
program.”  Another way the ERT can help facilitate is to be that “calm voice” when 
trying to “temper” the anxiousness or frustration a local level official may feel due to an 
imposed state level administrative rule. And, as another participant declared, the ERT’s 
“ability to generate constructive and creative ideas” was very helpful to Junction City 
coordinating efforts.  
 There were negative responses related to the ERT’s level of facilitation. The ones 
that occurred most frequently were the need for follow-up and debriefing with those 
directly involved with the project as a courtesy to keep stakeholders properly informed. 
The lack of timeliness and not addressing some of the “outstanding issues” that were 
collectively identified by those involved in the project served only to provoke this issue.   
 
Frankness. This is defined as being forthcoming and up-front by divulging information in 
order to help build trust and spur coordination. The only participant that said anything 
positive about the ERT’s frankness, or forthcoming nature, was an ERT member. They 
spoke very highly of their frank and transparent manner when explaining who they were 
and where they planned on going with the project  
27 
 
 There were several negative comments on the ERT’s willingness to share 
information, mostly from the private sector perspective. The overriding theme among the 
responses related to building trust by way of mitigating the risk of sharing private 
information among public officials. One participant said that “there’s stuff that I would 
[not] tell the ERT for fear…” they would respond negatively. This individual also 
mentioned the “risk” involved with speaking at the ERT’s larger, less secure-feeling 
quarterly meetings. As they put it, “The more people you get in the room, the less you’re 
going to resolve because people are not willing to open up and find innovative solutions 
to the problem because there’s risk to them.” If ERT member agencies are interested in 
engaging private interests and encouraging a willing to share important information, this 
participant said, it would behoove them to create a more accommodating environment 
through the use of smaller, more personal meetings in which information-sharing is 
reciprocal.  
 
Timeliness. Most participants didn’t offer strong opinions about the ERT’s timeliness, or 
coordination efforts made at a favorable or useful interval. For those who did address this 
theme, the majority were from the private sector or non-ERT member agencies that had 
no use for the ERT’s platform.  
 One ERT representative did reflect on Junction City’s “haste to move forward,” 
noting that the City’s not heeding a particular ERT member agency’s advice ultimately 
led to a large amount of time wasted. A private sector participant criticized the ERT’s 
misleading advice, saying that it eventually cost them quite a bit of time and money.  
  
Communication. Communication is the flow of interaction or approach used by agencies 
and service recipients that either helped or hindered coordination efforts. With the 
exception of one participant’s comments the ERT’s ability to maintain “an ongoing 
communication,” all the responses about communication in the ERT’s coordination 
efforts were unfavorable. One ERT representative talked about the inappropriate 
(unofficial) communication channels that are sometimes used between the City and the 
ERT. Again, eagerness to get the project going led to either breakdowns in 
communication or to complete bypassing of a pre-established means of channeling 
information. In such situations, alternative routes to resolving a situation might be sought, 
but this participant suggested that it is always better to “think it through well and once 
you get it all put together [follow the proper path], things will flow a lot smoother and 
you’ll get to where you need to be when you need to be there.”  
 
Engagement. Engagement is establishing a meaningful contact or connection with 
another agency, an agency member, or a local level official.When asked about the ERT’s 
engaging attitude, one Junction City official said that they didn’t “want to somehow say 
that they’re never contacting us, because that’s not the case. I think they are perfectly 
available and make it clear that they’re willing to help us out…” Another participant felt 
that the ERT was engaged, noting, “They did follow through on some issues that we 
identified…”  
And, although this participant made it clear that they were not complaining, they 
said it would have be nice to keep that level of engagement going, “to keep that energy 
going throughout the entire [project].” A private sector participant echoed that sentiment 
28 
 
saying that aside from “some of the meetings we had with the groups, the positive 
feedback that we got immediately following our meeting…the calls of gratitude and best 
wishes for success, these types of things, there have only been a few follow-up calls to 
even see how our progress is going.” Although some ERT member agency 
representatives had called to see how things developed, most had not.  
 
Understanding. Being sympathetically or knowledgeably aware of the nature of another 
agency’s or ERT affiliate’s situation characterizes understanding.The general sentiment 
of those interviewed was that the ERT could have done a better job at trying to 
understand their service recipient’s point of view before offering them support. One 
private sector participant said that during a couple of ERT meetings that ERT 
representatives “took the tack of saying [telling]” them what their company needed in the 
form of a site. This participant felt that this was a backwards and unhelpful approach, 
concluding that they did not “think it’s up to the ERT to determine or define what their 
[the company’s] long term needs are.”  
 
For coordination, the themes found in the South Beach project included accommodation, 
compromise, facilitation, frankness, timeliness, communication, and engagement, some 
of the keys to synchronizing the efforts of ODOT, DLCD, and the City of Newport. 
Ultimately, these themes help explain how the ERT brings various elements of their 
services together in a way that ensures efficiency or harmony. And collectively, the 
themes found within the topics of streamlining and coordination also offer insight to the 
inner workings, social networks, and the effectiveness of the established services 
provided by the ERT. This assortment of themes offers a rich data set from which to 
investigate the question, how do the ERT’s streamlining and coordination efforts 
contribute to its ultimate goal of better serving local and regional governments? The data 
itself, or participants’ perceptions of these efforts, includes valuable input from not only 
service recipients in two distinct development projects, but also from representatives of 
the ERT member agencies as well, which clearly gives us detailed insight into answering 
this question. 
  
 
DISCUSSION 
 
The purpose of this study was to examine views of participants in ERT projects of 
coordinating and streamlining efforts. Coordination and streamlining are the pillars of the 
ERT’s service to local level governments and private sector interests. The study was not 
designed to evaluate the ERT’s services, but instead to gain a better understanding of 
how—“emphasizing the process…not merely judging the outcomes”—streamlining and 
coordinating occurs in the ERT’s efforts to provide these services (Tesch, 51).  
 This involved an analysis framework that captured the general direction of every 
interview participant’s perception. It is important to note that all responses in this study 
were carefully analyzed and weighed according to the contribution they would have to 
this discussion, as explained in the discussion of methods above. However, some themes 
revealed themselves to be more common than others. This chapter discusses these 
primary themes because they seem to have more relevance to those who have had direct 
29 
 
experience with the ERT and its work. For streamlining, the primary themes include 
facilitation, timeliness, and understanding. The primary themes for coordination were 
determined to be accommodation, engagement, and communication. 
 The remaining question is, “what do these primary themes say about how the ERT 
streamlines processes and coordinates the needs of its service recipients?” Most of the 
interview participants in both cases offered positive, encouraging information about their 
experiences working with the ERT on their respective projects. Throughout the 
interviews, most participants appeared to be making efforts to preserve their relationships 
with their colleagues in the public sector by being careful and deferential when 
responding to questions. Because of this, the findings that were most telling were those in 
which the participants felt strongly enough about a shortfall or a needed service within 
the ERT process to offer a critique of it. Therefore, in an effort to both continue focusing 
on the “process” of the ERT’s services and offer ERT representatives an opportunity to 
see the areas within their services that may need greater attention, I center the discussion 
below on the more telling (and often less favorable) participant perceptions related to 
these primary themes.  
 
Streamlining 
 
One of the most central themes related to streamlining ERT practices was facilitation. 
Concerns related to this area are largely centered around improvements on how the ERT 
conducts its meetings. The most sweeping criticisms were that there is a need to conduct 
meetings more frequently and a need to provide follow-up after every meeting. The 
findings for the Junction City project suggested that one of the greatest things missing 
(this sentiment was shared by most interview participants in the Junction City case) from 
the meetings, and the ERT process as a whole, was a position (during those key moments 
of streamlining and coordination) solely designated as a champion or, perhaps more 
aptly, a liaison. This opinion was echoed by participants in the South Beach project. 
Interview participants mentioned the importance of guiding the staff working behind the 
scenes within each agency and coordinating by looking at each ERT member agency’s 
administrative rules and the State’s various statues to discover areas of flexibility. Both of 
these procedures could be better achieved by channeling such activities through one 
individual, a liaison, who identifies links between the ERT member agencies.  
 The second primary theme related to streamlining was timeliness. As the 
definition of streamlining indicates, making an organization “more efficient and effective 
by employing faster or simpler working methods” certainly involves this all-important 
element. With that said, one interesting discovery in both cases was the way that 
participants described the organizational composition of their projects and how this 
inadvertently affected timeliness. The general sentiment of those on the South Beach 
project was that certain parts of the ERT process were unnecessary and time-consuming. 
In a project in which the issues were clearly outlined and involved just two of the seven 
ERT member agencies, timeliness should not have been a major problem. However, 
participants on the service recipient side of the project believed that the slower pace was 
due to the ERT’s bureaucratic nature. Although some found the Junction City project to 
be bureaucratic, most did not believe the ERT was at fault for the slow pace of the 
process. While several participants cited the need to move ahead independently of the 
30 
 
ERT process because of time constraints, others seemed to believe that these actions held 
the project back later because ERT procedures had not been followed closely enough.  
 Most of what was said about the theme of understanding, the third primary area 
related to streamlining, came from the South Beach project and was generally negative. 
However, the comments offer some insight into the connections between the three 
primary themes (facilitation, timeliness, and understanding) in relation to streamlining 
within the ERT. Newport interview participants felt that the better one understands the 
process in which they are involved (including the roles of some of the other project’s 
players), the more informed their decisions will be. Consequently, this understanding 
may lead to saving time and meeting deadlines as opposed to having to backtrack as a 
result of an ill-informed decision. Facilitation may also improve as the stakeholders are 
kept informed and up-to-speed on the details of a specific project, ideally by a champion 
or liaison who provides useful instruction and guidelines to those relying on them.  
  
Coordination  
 
When it comes to the ERT’s coordinating efforts, the findings revealed accommodation 
to be the most prominent theme. Comparing the findings of the two cases, the participants 
in both the South Beach and Junction City projects had largely positive responses to the 
ERT’s efforts at accommodation. In fact, interview participants from both projects (and 
both sides of each project) were generally pleased with the attempts that state agency 
representatives and city officials made to assist and try to meet the needs of one another. 
Nonetheless, the level and tone of positive responses differs in each case. For example, 
participants on the Junction City project generally believed that the ERT was “doing the 
best they could” when it came to trying to meet the needs of the City, conceding that they 
were aware of the unique complexity of the project and the unusual demand it likely 
placed on the ERT. Participants from the South Beach project, on the other hand, did not 
qualify their observations: they simply perceived the ERT as accommodating.  
 When it came to how engaged the ERT was, the findings revealed a parallel 
between the ERT’s accommodating nature and its level of engagement and, as there are 
only subtle differences between these two themes, I had relative difficulty distinguishing 
between them while labeling the response data as one or the other. Accommodating, as it 
is used in this study, is when one ERT representative, city official or private sector 
representative tries to fit in with the needs of another. Engagement refers to when an ERT 
representative, city official or private sector representative tries to establish a meaningful 
contact or connection with another. With this nuance established, it becomes easier to 
recognize why engagement became such a dominant and positive theme in the South 
Beach project. Interview participants in this case have cited examples in which the ERT 
coordinator proactively engaged both City of Newport officials as well as state-level 
agency representatives, internally and with each other. The ERT’s level of engagement, 
for Junction City interview participants, seemed high when dealing with issues that came 
up, but was maintained at a lower level at other times during which the ERT 
representatives were always available but not actively engaged. Some participants noted 
that maintaining a higher level of engagement would have been beneficial.    
 The relaxed, transparent, and frequent level of communication seen by the 
participants in the South Beach case lent itself to a constructive partnership between the 
31 
 
two ERT member agencies and City of Newport representatives. For instance, 
presentations were used to both update fellow stakeholders as well as provide background 
on various aspects of the project. In Junction City, perhaps because of the presumed 
bureaucracy of the ERT or because the scope of the project clearly slowed things down, 
service recipients’ eagerness to move forward (often cited in relationship to concerns 
about financial and other resources) had undesirable repercussions as state agencies’ 
procedures were circumvented and had to be addressed after the fact.   
 
Alternative Perspective 
It is hard to discuss the themes that may have a considerable effect on how the ERT 
streamlines and coordinates its services without also discussing some of the differences 
between the two projects, which is also one of the limitations discussed below. One 
difference between the two cases is the size of the each project. This may account for the 
stark contrast between how participants in each case view the ERT’s capacity to facilitate 
(see Appendix D). The South Beach project is the smaller of the two in scope and in 
relation to stakeholders. Primarily, it involved only two of the ERT’s eight participating 
agencies, ODOT and the DLCD. Because the ERT’s services were largely funneled 
through these two agencies, the frequency of positive responses relating to how the ERT 
facilitated the project could have something to do with the project’s smaller, less 
convoluted network, whereby communication channels were more easily established and 
the element of reciprocity more readily attained. On the other hand, the Junction City 
project concerned several state agencies, those within the ERT and outside of it, as well 
as private interests, and also had a number of large-scale plans converging within it. This 
leads to another clear difference between the projects that influenced these results: the 
degree to which actual ERT member agencies played a role in providing services 
necessary to the project. In the South Beach project, the City of Newport dealt with 
considerable direct involvement with the ERT because the two state agencies integral to 
the project’s goals are ERT member agencies. Conversely, in the Junction City project, 
the local government is mostly collaborating with non-ERT state agencies such as the 
DOC and the DHS because of their plans to build state facilities within the projected 
UGB expansion.  
Although there were no obvious parallels relating to timeliness between the two 
projects, a look at the findings did reveal a difference in where the responses, or 
perceptions, originated. In the smaller South Beach project, for example, most of the 
complaints came from those working within the ERT, whereas in the case of Junction 
City, the concerns came from local level government representatives. Although, there are 
numerous factors that could help explain this difference, including some of the other 
themes discovered in this study that were not seen frequently enough to be included in 
this discussion, the most plausible interpretation is, again, the difference in size of the 
two projects. As previously noted, the Junction City project is considerably larger and 
more complex than the South Beach Project. With this comes a greater demand on the 
internal and external networking system. For instance, one interview participant 
explained that “because the ERT sometimes becomes the face of the issues they adopt,” 
there are many on the outside (either in local level governments or the private sector) that 
perceive the ERT as “not helping a whole lot because it just seems like more bureaucracy 
to them” (Interview Participant 12, personal communication, January 21, 2009). It does 
32 
 
not take a familiarity with the ERT, its process, and these two projects to understand that 
as a project grows in size and scope, factors like facilitation, timeliness, and level of 
understanding need to be adjusted. There is a possibility that this adjustment never 
materialized within the Junction City project, and that some of the timeliness issues 
which to some extent hampered the ERT’s ability to streamline the South Beach project, 
were magnified in the Junction City case. 
 
Limitations and Recommendations 
The alternative explanation above highlights a crucial limitation of this study: the 
differences in the type, size, and scope of the two ERT projects used in this study added 
variables that could not be altogether accounted for. There was an immeasurable amount 
of differences found, as the study progressed, between the South Beach and Junction City 
projects. Everything about the Junction City project was bigger than the South Beach 
project: the number of stakeholders (state (ERT member versus non-member) agency 
representatives, local level government agents and private sector participants), the 
amount of issues surrounding the projects, the tangible objectives of each project, and the 
level of state agency involvement. This made it increasingly difficult to find 
commonalities shared between the two projects.  
 Another limitation to this study was that data collection did not reach a level of 
saturation. Pointing to Lincoln and Guba’s explanation of knowing when one has 
“collected enough data,” Merriam (1998) suggests considering these four criteria: 
exhaustion of sources, saturation of categories, emergence of regularities, and over-
extension (p. 164). The criterion of greatest relevance to this study’s research design is 
exhaustion of sources. The snowball approach I used to recruit subjects was effective and 
provided numerous interview subjects for this study. However, considering the incredibly 
busy schedule of each subject, most of those working high-level positions in government, 
I found myself spending more time and effort recruiting particular individuals and, at 
times, receiving less than expected in return. Because recruiting subjects presented far 
greater demand on my time and effort than anticipated, I decided after a certain amount 
of time that I had exhausted my sources (interview subjects) and ceased to collect 
additional data. It is also worth noting that, in each case, there was only a finite number 
of potential participants to utilize in the first place and that had I been able to interview 
all potential interviewees, data saturation may still have not been attained. It is thus, 
possible, of course, that what might appear to be a lack of “saturation” in fact reflects the 
diversity of views of the subjects. Given the broad range of participants in the projects 
one could, perhaps, expect that there would be a corresponding large variety in views and 
perceptions. 
A third significant limitation was the necessity of maintaining participant 
anonymity in the reporting of the findings. Yin best sums up this limitation,  
 
“…anonymity is not to be considered a desirable choice. Not only does it 
eliminate some important background information about the case, but it 
also make the mechanics of composing the case difficult. The case and its 
components must be systematically converted from their real identities to 
fictitious ones, and you must undergo considerable effort to keep track of 
33 
 
the conversions. The cost of undertaking such a procedure should not be 
underestimated.” (Yin, 158) 
 
The subjects in this study influenced the way I could use the data. I made a pledge to 
every interview subject, before each interview was conducted, that their name would not 
be used in association with either the data collected or quotations used in the report. This 
choice was made because both projects, at the time of the interviews, were still ongoing, 
and anonymity was key in eliciting the most honest responses from participants that 
anticipate continuing relationships with each other going forward. Yin’s explanation was 
right: crafting the findings section of the report under these conditions made the process 
difficult—a lot of background material (material that could have added greater meaning 
to my findings) could not be revealed for fear that a subject’s identity would be 
discovered, putting this individual’s relationship with others at risk.  
 In order to overcome some of these limitations in further study of the ERT’s 
processes, one might consider studying more than two cases. This could have several 
benefits such as reducing the challenges inherent in comparing two projects of such 
different scope and size and adding to the number of potential interview participants, 
which would allow a greater chance for data saturation and reduce the adverse 
consequences of anonymity. Another suggestion would be to increase the number of 
researchers as this would, funding permitted, allow more time for interviews with a larger 
number of participants and break the project into more manageable segments. 
 
 
CONCLUSION  
 
 Although the intent of this study was to examine how the ERT’s streamlining and 
coordination efforts contribute to its larger goal of serving local government, this study, 
in effect, resulted in a number of suggestions for improving on these two areas. 
Collectively, it’s difficult to say if the primary themes identified within streamlining and 
coordination really offer a better understanding of the process by which the ERT serves 
local level governments, that is, without over-interpreting the results or offering 
groundless speculation. One thing is for sure, the end result of this study’s analysis, those 
primary themes and the participants’ perceptions of them, does offer a closer assessment 
of areas within the ERT’s service process that may benefit from making changes or 
conducting further study. Whether it’s the designation of a liaison to really encourage 
action and interaction or providing more frequent meetings to its service recipients, what 
I learned about the ERT process surely illuminates areas for further study. 
 I believe that the information elicited by this study, particularly in the form of 
these tangible suggestions for the ERT from not just its service recipients but also its own 
member agency representatives, is worth more than simply knowing how the ERT’s 
streamlining and coordinating efforts impact the service it provides. And given that the 
ERT was introduced in 2003 to help expedite economic development at a time when, as 
stated in the introduction, economists believed Oregon was in the throes of one of the 
“largest budget deficits since the Great Depression,” (Governor Kulongoski’s Biography, 
2008) the results of this study may prove especially useful to the ERT as it seeks to fine 
tune its services, particularly as our nation wades through the current economic crisis.  
34 
 
 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
Beaumont, Enid F., & Hovey, Harold A. (1985) State, Local, Federal Economic 
Development Policies: new federal patterns, chaos, or what?. Public Administration 
Review, 45 (2), 327-332. 
  
Boyce, Carolyn, & Neale, Palena. (2006) Conducting In-depth Interviews: A Guide for 
Designing and Conducting In-Depth Interviews for Evaluation Input. Pathfinder 
International, 12 p. 
 
Bradshaw, Ted K., & Blakely, Edward J. (1999) What Are “Third-Wave” State 
Economic Development Efforts?: from incentives to industrial policy. Economic 
Development Quarterly, 13 (3), 229-244. 
 
Coordination. (n.d.) In Oxford American Dictionaries online. Retrieved September 19, 
2008 from http://www.oxfordamericandictionary.com 
 
City of Newport, Oregon. Proposed Amendment Plan (2005). Retrieved August 2, 2008 
from 
http://www.thecityofnewport.net/Planning_project/EmpLand/materials/Proposed_Econo
mic_Section_Comp_Plan_Amendment_draft_12-7-05.pdf. 
 
Creswell, John W. (2003). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and mixed 
Method Approaches (2nd ed.). 246 p. 
 
Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) (2007). Junction City 
Request to Enter Periodic Review: Agenda item 4.b., November 29-30, 2007 LCDC 
meeting.  
 
Economic Revitalization Team. A Message from the Governor (2008). Retrieved March 
3, 2009, from Oregon.Gov Economic Revitalization Team. Web site: 
http://www.oregon.gov/Gov/ERT/message.shtml 
 
Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Oregon Division (2006). Oregon (Statewide): 
Community Solutions Team: Oregon's Economic Revitalization Team. Retrieved July 30, 
2008 from http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/landuse. 
 
Governor’s Economic Revitalization Team (GERT): 2003 Annual Performance Report. 
Retrieved July 27, 2008 from http://governor.oregon.gov/Gov/ERT/index.shtml. 
 
Governor’s Economic Revitalization Team (GERT): 2006 Annual Performance Report. 
Retrieved July 27, 2008 from http://governor.oregon.gov/Gov/ERT/index.shtml. 
 
35 
 
Governor Kulongoski’s Bio (2008) Retrieved July 27, 2008 from 
http://www.oregon.gov/Gov/bio.shtml. 
 
House Bill 2011 (2003), Committee On Trade and Economic Development, 72nd Oregon 
Legislative Assembly (regular session). 
 
Merriam, Sharan B. (1998). Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in 
Education. 275 p. 
 
Newport Transportation White Paper (2008). City of Newport, ODOT and DLCD 
Transportation Facility Work Session. 4 p. 
 
Oregon Economic Revitalization Team Customer Satisfaction Study (2006). Boise, ID: 
Clearwater Research, Inc. 
 
Saiz, Martin (2001) Politics and Economic Development: why governments adopt 
different strategies to induce economic growth. Policy Studies Journal, 29 (2), 203-214. 
 
Saiz, Martin (2001) Using Program Attributes to Measure and Evaluate State Economic 
Development Strategies. Economic Development Quarterly, 15 (1), 45-57. 
 
Streamlining. (n.d.) In Oxford American Dictionaries online. Retrieved September 19, 
2008 from http://www.oxfordamericandictionary.com 
 
Tesch, Renata (1990). Qualitative Research: Analysis Types and Software Tools. 330 p. 
 
Yin, Robert K. (2003). Case Study Research: Design and Methods (3rd ed.). v. 5. 
 
 
36 
 
 
Appendix A: In-depth Interview Guide and Questions  
 
 
What is the Process for Conducting In-Depth Interviews? 
The process for conducting in-depth interviews follows the same general process as is 
followed for other research: plan, develop instruments, collect data, analyze data, and 
disseminate findings. More detailed steps are given below. 
 
1. Plan 
• Identify stakeholders who will be involved. 
• Both ERT service providers (primary service providers) and service recipients 
(local government officials, private interests, etc…) 
 
• Identify what information is needed and from whom. (See “What are Potential Sources 
of Information?”) 
• Information elicited about the streamlining and coordination efforts of the ERT 
process. 
• Info from both sides. 
 
• List stakeholders to be interviewed. Identify stakeholder groups from national, facility, 
and beneficiary levels and then identify individuals within those groups—additional 
interviewees may be identified during data collection. Determine sample if necessary. 
Kirk Jarvie, Chair WVERT.  
• Marguerite Nabeta, Coordinator WVERT 
 
 
2. Develop Instruments (interview design)  
• Develop an interview protocol—the rules that guide the administration and 
implementation of the interviews. Put simply, these are the instructions that are followed 
for each interview, to ensure consistency between interviews, and thus increase the 
reliability of the findings. The following instructions for the interviewer should be 
included in the protocol: 
 
• What to say to interviewees when setting up the interview; 
 
• What to say to interviewees when beginning the interview, including ensuring informed 
consent and confidentiality of the interviewee (see Appendix 1 for an example); 
 
• What to say to interviewees in concluding the interview; 
 
• What to do during the interview (Example: Take notes? Audiotape? Both?):  
• Ask question 
• Take notes on response observation  things that can’t be identified through 
audio recording. 
• Audio recording 
37 
 
              
• What to do following the interview (Example: Fill in notes? Check audiotape 
for clarity? Summarize key information for each? Submit written findings?). 
 
Interview Questions Tips 
 
I will craft questions by combing through white paper research on each case study (in this 
case, each study is a particular project conducted by the WVERT) provided by Kirk 
Jarvie, the Chair of the WV region of the ERT.  
 
I will also use the open-ended responses to the “2008 Oregon Joint Customer Satisfaction 
Survey” and the “2006 Oregon Economic Revitalization Team Customer Satisfaction 
Study”—these were responses from recipients of ERT’s services. 
 
• Questions should be open-ended rather than closed-ended. For example, instead of 
asking “Do you know about the clinic’s services?” ask “Please describe the clinic’s 
services.” 
 
• You should ask factual question before opinion questions. For example, ask, “What 
activities were conducted?” before asking, “What did you think of the activities?”  
 factual questioning  leading toward opinion questioning 
 
• Use probes as needed. These include: 
• Would you give me an example? 
• Can you elaborate on that idea? 
• Would you explain that further? 
• I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying. 
• Is there anything else? 
 
Interview Guide 
 
• Important topics to be explored in study: 
o Streamlining the permitting and organization process 
o Coordination between ERT service providers and recipients 
 
• Subtopics for each topic: 
o Streamlining  “making a system or organization more effective and 
efficient by employing faster or simpler working methods” 
 initiating the permitting process 
 engaging recipients in the permitting process 
 define streamlining 
 approach to recipients 
 make process faster speed of follow through 
 make more efficient 
 stakeholders involved 
 
38 
 
o Coordinating efforts  “bring the different elements of a complex activity 
or organization into a relationship that will ensure efficiency or harmony.  
 bring together ERT and local level participants 
 role of communication 
 engaging local governments or private companies 
 proactivity 
 helpful, unhelpful elements 
 responsiveness 
 
• Questions  for ERT service providers and recipients (Questions will be actively 
supplemented with the probing questions listed above) 
 
One of the pillars of the ERT initiative is to help streamline the permitting process 
for each unique project that you’re involved in. 
 
1. Could you explain some of the salient features of your agencies permitting 
process? 
 
2. Could you now tell me how it is you streamline (“employ faster or simpler 
working methods”) this process when working with ERT service recipients? 
 
3. Please explain what elements within your agency where changed to help make 
the process more helpful and efficient. 
 
4. What particular activities where used to expedite this permitting process? 
 
5. Please describe your impression of working with X during the streamlining 
effort. 
 
6. Could you describe some things X could have done to be more helpful to your 
end of the process? 
 
7. Do you have any recommendations that would improve this effort for future 
ERT service recipients? 
 
 
Another pillar of the ERT initiative is to better coordinate efforts between state 
and local level activities.  
 
8. Could you describe some of the activities within your agency that are used to 
better coordinate efforts with your service recipients? 
 
9. Please explain the role that communication may play in this effort. 
 
10.  Please describe your relationship with X during these coordinating efforts. 
 
39 
 
11.  Please describe any characteristics of working with X on project X that were 
unhelpful to your coordinating efforts. 
 
12.  Please describe any characteristics of working with X on project X that were 
helpful to your coordinating efforts. 
 
13.  Would you say that X was responsive to your coordinating efforts? Please 
explain. 
 
14.  Do you have any recommendations that would improve this effort for future 
ERT service recipients? 
 
 
40 
 
Appendix B: Recruitment Script (Telephone) 
Hello – 
My name is Matthew Fisher from the Planning, Public Policy and Management Graduate 
program at the University of Oregon. I'm calling to talk to you about participating in my 
graduate research study. This study will explore how the Oregon Economic 
Revitalization Team’s (ERT) streamlining and coordination efforts improve and expedite 
their economic development initiatives. The study will also ask if the ERT’s strategies 
have proven successful and if they have improved local access to state services and 
resources. 
You're eligible to be in this study because you were at some point associated with one of 
the ERT’s projects. I obtained your contact information from both the Chair and 
Coordinator of the Willamette Valley/Central Oregon region of the ERT. 
If you decide to participate in this study, you will be asked approximately 15 questions in 
an in-depth interviewing format. The interview will involve audio recording. This is to 
ensure that the transcription of our interview is as precise as possible.  
Following the interview, transcripts will then be created, labeled and stored in a file 
cabinet, secured by lock and key. Labeling the transcripts involves assigning each 
completed transcript a number and using this number as a way to reference the work 
within my final report. All of these steps will ensure the anonymity of your interview and 
protect your confidentiality. 
Remember, this is completely voluntary. You can choose to be in the study or not. If 
you'd like to participate, we can go ahead and schedule a time for me to meet with you to 
give you more information. If you need more time to decide if you would like to 
participate, you may also call or email me with your decision. 
Do you have any questions for me at this time? 
If you have any more questions about this process or if you need to contact me about 
participation, I may be reached by email at mfisher3@uoregon.edu or by phone at 941-
704-4301. 
Thank you so much. 
 
41 
 
Appendix C: Recruitment Script (E-mail) 
Dear [insert name], 
My name is Matthew Fisher from the Planning, Public Policy and Management Graduate 
program at the University of Oregon and I am writing to invite you to participate in my 
graduate research study. This study will explore how the Oregon Economic 
Revitalization Team’s (ERT) streamlining and coordination efforts improve and expedite 
their economic development initiatives. The study will also ask if the ERT’s strategies 
have proven successful and if they have improved local access to state services and 
resources. 
You're eligible to be in this study because you were at some point associated with one of 
the ERT’s projects. I obtained your contact information from both the Chair and 
Coordinator of the Willamette Valley/Central Oregon region of the ERT. 
If you decide to participate in this study, you will be asked approximately 15 questions in 
an in-depth interviewing format. The interview will involve audio recording. This is to 
ensure that the transcription of our interview is as precise as possible.  
Following the interview, transcripts will then be created, labeled and stored in a file 
cabinet, secured by lock and key. Labeling the transcripts involves assigning each 
completed transcript a number and using this number as a way to reference the work 
within my final report. All of these steps will ensure the anonymity of your interview and 
protect your confidentiality. 
Remember, this is completely voluntary. You can choose to be in the study or not. If you 
would like to participate, we can go ahead and schedule a time for me to meet with you to 
give you more information. If you need more time to decide if you would like to 
participate, you may also call or email me with your decision. You can reach at 
mfisher3@uoregon.edu or 941-704-4302. 
Thank you very much. 
Sincerely, 
 
Matthew Fisher 
Master of Public Administration Candidate  
University of Oregon 
 
42 
 
       Appendix D: Aggregated Table of Cases One and Two        
 
Topic/Themes Total Responses 
% of Total 
Responses 
# of 
Positive 
Responses 
# of 
Negative 
Responses 
# of Neutral 
Responses 
Case C1 C2 C1 C2 C1 C2 C1 C2 C1 C2 
Streamlining 53 78     22 17 16 38 15 25 
Compromise 9 6 17% 8% 4 0 5 3 1 3 
Expectations  2 0 4% - 0 - 2 - 0 - 
Facilitation 11 22 21% 28% 8 3 0 12 3 7 
Flexibility 8 5 15% 6% 3 2 3 2 2 1 
Frankness 6 4 12% 5% 3 2 0 2 3 0 
Proactivity 3 7 6% 9% 1 1 0 3 2 3 
Timeliness 5 11 10% 14% 2 3 1 4 2 5 
Understanding 8 7 15% 10% 1 2 5 1 2 5 
Engagement* - 10 - 13% - 3 - 6 - 1 
Communication* - 6 - 8% - 1 - 5 - 0 
Coordination 70 99     50 22 17 37 3 40 
Accommodation 16 22 23% 22% 15 9 1 7 0 6 
Communication 13 13 19% 13% 12 1 0 6 1 6 
Compromise 6 6 9% 6% 2 5 4 1 0 0 
Engagement 15 14 21% 14% 10 1 4 6 1 7 
Facilitation 7 21 10% 21% 6 3 1 5 0 13 
Frankness 6 8 9% 8% 3 2 2 5 1 1 
Timeliness 7 5 10% 5% 2 0 5 2 0 3 
Transparency 0 2 0% 2% 0 1 0 1 0 0 
Understanding 0 8 0% 8% 0 0 0 4 0 4 
*Appears only in Case Two