PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

Perhaps not all of the following qualify as pet peeves, but, as department director, it is up to me and me alone about what to include. [The me and me alone phrase – sounds like Donald Trump, doesn’t it?]

So, here is a new list.

A PRESCRIPTION FOR POLITICAL PROGRESS: It is easy these days to “bemoan the loss of civility in politics,” a phrase uttered a few years ago by none other than Colin Powell who would have made a great candidate for President this time around.

Put another way, the ability to find middle ground – call it compromise – is a lost art.

One way to allow for such middle ground would be to ban two hard-wired political action committees from being involved. They are NRA and NARAL.

On gun control issues, the NRA refuses to compromise, even when the issue comes to making it more difficult for criminals to get guns or to ban assault rifles. No one is advocating doing away with the Second Amendment. The issue is doing something about access to guns used to commit crimes.

Or, consider NARAL. For this organization, on the abortion issue, there is no room for compromise, even when it comes to banning late-stage abortions or putting any limits on elective abortions.

If the NRA and NARAL were banned from acting, we’d see middle ground compromises on both guns and abortion.

A USEFUL AMENDMENT FOR HOMEOWNER INSURANCE: I encountered a problem the other day that has come close to prompting me to request introduction of a “bill for an act” in the next legislative session.

It is this. With new predictions of the likelihood of an earthquake hitting the Northwest, my wife arranged for a bid to install earthquake retrofitting on our 30-year-old house. When the company looked through the crawl space, it discovered something: An underground spring had compromised part of our house’s foundation.

So, at substantial cost, we had no choice but to approve a fix. What happened next defies description.

We contacted our homeowners’ insurance company and were told, no, the work is not covered because homeowner insurance policies do not cover “preventive maintenance.” Why not, I asked, because, if the house foundation caved in, insurance would come into play and the cost would be far greater.

Still no, I was told because the cost of general preventive coverage around the Northwest – or in the country – would be too large.

Makes no sense to me and I say this having represented health insurers for almost 25 years as a lobbyist at the Capitol in Oregon. Health insurers cover preventive procedures as a matter of routine, especially faced with the specter of far larger costs down the road.

So, a “bill for an act” is in the offing.

SPEAKING OF EARTHQUAKE PROSPECTS: Heightened awareness of earthquakes in the Northwest raises a clear – and unfortunate – irony. In the 2015 and 2016 legislative sessions, when two Democrats – House Speaker Tina Kotek and Senate President Peter Courtney – couldn’t get their act together, long-standing plans to retrofit Oregon’s Capitol Building came tumbling down.

An earthquake, of course, would do the same thing.

Experts had spent more than five years studying what to do about Oregon’s “public building,” the Capitol, which almost came down in the last earthquake.   Courtney stood as the major advocate for taking action, along with another priority – retrofitting Oregon’s K-12 school buildings.

Legislators did nothing, which now strikes the ironic chord as those who live in the Northwest have been alerted to greater prospects of a major quake.

For legislators to have turned their backs on finding middle ground is tragic and we’ll pay a price if there is another earthquake.