Councilors thank local legislators, turn to ED physician crisis

Presenter: Eugene city councilors thank legislators for their work during the recent session, then quickly turn to the latest crisis. On March 9, Councilor Randy Groves:

Councilor Randy Groves: I am Council’s chair on the Intergovernmental Relations Committee, and I have a short report to read into the record.

The 2026 Oregon legislative short session ended on Friday, March 6. Some Eugene-specific highlights for the session include:

The Clear Lake Road industrial site readiness project was allocated an additional $5 million in lottery bond funding. I want to extend our thank-you and gratitude to Sen. James Manning for his request and leadership and advocating to his legislative colleagues for this important investment in the Southern Willamette Valley’s economic future.

Additionally, Speaker of the House Rep. Julie Fahey requested and secured a $1 million allocation to support the expansion of the Eugene Airport. Again, I want to extend our gratitude and appreciation to Speaker Fahey, as well as the entire Eugene-area legislative delegation, including Rep. Nancy Nathanson, Rep. Lisa Fragala, Rep. Darin Harbick, Sen. Floyd Prozanski, and Sen. Cedric Hayden for supporting Eugene’s funding requests.

Lastly, the Eugene priority bills that ended up passing include: allowing voluntary annexations of non-contiguous property within Eugene’s existing urban growth boundary; regulations related to automated license plate readers; revision to the use of transient lodging taxes by a local government; changes to public meetings laws; a ban on entertainment ticket speculative practices; a new producer responsibility bill for battery recycling; and clarity on electric bicycle definitions and laws.

The IGR Committee will be meeting in the first week of April and the annual United Front partners of Lane County delegation to Washington D.C. is scheduled for the week of April 20. 

IGR staff is scheduled to provide a more in-depth overview of the legislative session and the United Front trip to Council in late May.

Presenter: Councilor Matt Keating:

Councilor Matt Keating: Thank you to the entire IGR team and to Ethan Nelson, IGR director, in particular. It’s wild to absorb that report, Councilor, having lived it for the last five months.

And yet even though session ended on Friday, here I was late to our work session today, as if I was in Salem. But what a fast and furious session and thrilled that there were some big ticket items that benefit our community right here in Eugene.

Last Saturday, Councilor Groves, Sens. James Manning and Floyd Prozanski and I met with leaders of Eugene Emergency Physicians (EEP). 

As you may be aware, our emergency department docs at RiverBend and at Cottage Grove—41 members of our community—are being told essentially to reapply for their jobs. Why? Because a new out-of-state corporation is moving in. 

Eugene has already lost one hospital, University District, and now 41 of the most skilled, well-trained professional docs are potentially sidelined, for emergency room doctors or emergency department docs coming from out-of-state or certainly outside our community.

I, for one (and I expect that I am not alone) am appalled. And I recognize and thank our Eugene emergency physician doctors for their solidarity, for their commitment to community, and for their dogged determination.

I would request of Council leadership and/or the mayor—whether it’s in the form of a proclamation or a resolution—for an actionable item when we come back from council break. And I see Councilor Groves nodding his head, so I’ll happily volunteer you, Councilor, but I will happily contribute to some sort of actionable statement that we could stand behind our 41 emergency room physicians in this time of crisis in our community.

Presenter: Councilor Mike Clark:

Councilor Mike Clark: I just wanted to say real quickly that I join Councilor Keating and Councilor Groves, and what I suspect is most of my colleagues, in their support of Eugene Emergency Physicians who’ve been doing the job for quite a long time, and some of them many decades of caring for people in our community. I suspect that many of those docs are probably constituents of mine in North Eugene that don’t live too far from the new hospital. 

The only thing that I would say is that I would urge caution in our actions and words. I agree that we want to be in support and stand in support of emergency docs in our community, absolutely. 

It certainly has an effect on our fire department and the ambulance care that we provide amongst a number of other reasons why it’s important. But it’s my opinion that, I know Councilor Groves watched as an employee of the city and certainly before Councilor Zelenka and my time on this council, when we had more, we had at least a couple of hospitals in Eugene.

But it was the Council’s strong opinions—and it’s my opinion—that it was the Council’s strong opinions and strong words that led to the decision to build their new hospitals in a different community. 

So I just want to urge caution with the strength of the, and the tenor of the things that we produce to communicate with PeaceHealth.

Presenter: Once more, Councilor Randy Groves: 

Councilor Randy Groves: I just wanted to give Councilor Keating a chance to go first on the ED docs, and I appreciate the words you said. It’s something I’m greatly concerned with. 

I have had many years of service working with that physicians group, and they’re top-notch. I think most of the ones I worked with are long since retired, but it’s been a great group. It’s been a stable group and one of those doctors is Eugene Springfield Fire’s supervising physician, which is very important.

Our paramedics operate under the license of that doctor and it was very important to our continuous quality improvement program back when I was in Fire. So it’s something that I think we need to track very closely.

Since our meeting last Saturday, I set up a meeting between the doctors group and Lane Professional Firefighters, and I attended that meeting myself, and yesterday I met with one of the top representatives from the Oregon Nursing Association to find out what they’re doing and what they knew.

So part of this is just collecting information at this point, and I think it is important that any positions we take, that we do so with our eyes wide open.

But, again, I certainly support this physician group and I worry about the larger corporate medicine taking over our primary care. It’s something that we need to be plugged into and stay involved with and make sure we have the best information possible.

Presenter: Mayor Kaarin Knudson: 

Kaarin Knudson (Eugene, mayor): I will just add a additional note to this discussion that while there are some actions and certainly paying attention over time is important, that this issue is an incredibly urgent one and a time-dependent circumstance. 

I of course share the observations from other councilors. PeaceHealth is a very important partner in our community. And equally important is us as a community having local, invested, high-quality emergency room doctors serving our community and as a part of this community. 

And that has been the circumstance with Eugene’s EEP group for a number of years, and my hope is that we are able to find a solution that keeps that access to those local doctors here and working in our community and serving our community in a reliable way, and with health care outcomes for community members as the primary motivation. 

It’s certainly a challenging circumstance, but it is one that I am very engaged with. I spoke with our governor yesterday about this situation and for those looking to be a part of this conversation or plug in locally, ONA, the Oregon Nurses Association, there are some community events that are planned that will offer more information and certainly allow for people to be more directly engaged.

So very much appreciate Council raising this issue and just want to highlight for the public that this is not a two-, six-, 10- month conversation we’re having. This is days—days and weeks—in terms of the importance of this issue in our community.

Presenter: Eugene’s mayor and City Council briefly celebrate another successful legislative session, but must quickly turn to the latest crisis, as they express concern for a local independent physicians practice that has been replaced by a new Atlanta-based corporation in what some legislators are calling “a carpetbagger takeover.”