2014 Session Recap

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

Earlier this month, the Legislature declared Sine Die, marking the completion of the 2014 legislative session. Despite the brevity of our February session, legislators in Salem successfully tackled a wide range of issues and delivered on Oregonian’s top priorities:

In my role as Chair of the Senate Finance and Revenue Committee, I helped guide legislation to make some important clarifications to the “Grand Bargain” revenue package passed during the special session last fall.

We built on our work from 2013 by continuing to invest in students and spur job growth for Oregonians. HB 4116 will provide $750,000 for a competitive grant to develop scholarship programs and support services to help more Oregonians enroll in community colleges and make progress toward a degree or certificate. HB 4117 appropriates $500,000 to fund summer programs that will add at least 60 hours of learning time for over 5,000 of Oregon’s most vulnerable K-12 students. SB 1527 establishes a retraining pilot program tailored to underemployed engineers to address the skills gap in Oregon’s developing bioscience industries.

We passed legislation that will provide relief to Oregonians affected by the technical problems with the Cover Oregon website rollout. HB 4154 will ensure proper treatment of Oregonians under Cover Oregon and increase accountability over the exchange.                                                                                              

These are just a few examples of our accomplishments from this short session. I heard from many of you over the last few weeks about the issues most important to you. I want to thank each of you that took the time to contact my office about these important matters. If you’d like more information about the bills we passed, or those that were not successful this session, please feel free to contact my legislative aide, Ariel Nelson with your questions.

I plan to provide a more detailed session recap at a town hall in April. Please stay tuned for a save the date and more details. I hope you can join us.

Yours truly,

Senator Burdick
Senate District 18