A couple recent episodes knocked chunks out of the figurative barrier between Eastern Oregon and the state’s population and political centers in the Willamette Valley.

Both involve a budding relationship between Baker County and a key Democratic legislator, Sen. Elizabeth Steiner, co-chair of the budget-writing Ways and Means Committee.

Steiner, who represents a district in the Portland area, visited Baker County in late October. She stayed with Mark Bennett, former longtime county commissioner, on his ranch near Unity. During her visit, Steiner also talked with commissioners from several counties as well as local landowners about the effects of increases this year in the fire protection fees they pay to the Oregon Department of Forestry.

Those increases, which ranged from 32% to 79% and for some landowners totaled thousands of dollars, resulted from the legislature’s failure to include a $15 million “offset” in the forestry department’s budget for the biennium that started July 1, 2023.

Steiner said during her visit to Baker County that she believes there is a “strong probability” that the legislature, when it convenes for a short session on Feb. 5, 2024, will take action to ease the financial burden on property owners.

Steiner’s visit, and her statements, were tangible evidence that not all urban lawmakers are dismissive of issues, such as the cost of wildfire protection for forests and rangeland, that are significant for many residents in Eastern Oregon and other rural parts of the state.

More recently — and even more importantly for our region — Steiner said legislative leaders, working with Gov. Tina Kotek, had committed to boost the Oregon Department of Transportation’s budget by $19 million to prevent cuts in snowplowing and other winter maintenance on secondary highways that the agency had announced earlier this fall.

This allocation is intended to maintain highway maintenance at current levels for the next two winters.

Legislators should have acted during the 2023 session, to be sure, which could have forestalled ODOT’s “reduction of service” announcements and the concerns they provoked among Eastern Oregon residents.

And lawmakers face a more daunting challenge than approving the $19 million influx. Due to declining gas tax revenue, as vehicles become more fuel efficient and are, albeit slowly, replaced by electric cars, Oregon needs to revamp how it collects money to maintain roads.

For now, though, residents in our region should be pleased that some legislators not only will make the long journey to the hinterlands, but they recognize issues that affect our lives and will address those issues.

There will continue to be frustrations, no doubt.

But although our region is isolated geographically from the state’s power centers, that isn’t inevitably true from a political standpoint.