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March 7, 2017
Friends and Neighbors,
We are now into the second month of this 2017 Legislative
Session. Things are still moving
relatively slowly. Until this week,
Senate floor sessions have been limited to two a week (three a week for the
House); starting this week, both chambers will have floor sessions Monday
through Thursday. The pace of bills
coming out of committees is starting to pick up.
Until now, the bills coming to the floor have been largely
routine, technical, and bipartisan.
Nearly all of them have come out of committee on unanimous or
near-unanimous votes. I suspect that
that will begin to change this week.
As I mentioned in the last newsletter, last Tuesday was the
deadline for bills to be submitted for entry into the system. As a result, we saw a number of bills “first-read”
(i.e., formally introduced) last Thursday, and we’ll see the remainder of those
that hit the deadline first-read this week.
(Legislative Counsel is putting the final touches on them.) By the end of this week, nearly every bill
for this year will already have been given a number and introduced. (Each member and committee has a few
“priority bills” for late entry, but those will be few and far between.)
Now that doesn’t mean that what you see in these bills is
what you will ultimately get. Most of these
first-read bills will require amendments before they make it through the
process (and of course the great majority of them will NOT make it through the
process). Some of these amendments will be minor, but some will ultimately be
complete overhauls (what we call a “gut-and-stuff”).
Once a bill has been first-read, it becomes available for
you to follow on OLIS (the Oregon Legislative Information System; go to
oregonlegislature.gov and click on OLIS).
The next step will be for them to be referred to the relevant committee
by the Speaker of the House’s staff (for House bills) and the Senate
President’s staff (for Senate bills).
The decision of where to send bills is an extremely important one. That decision is often clear-cut, but often
it’s not; and getting it to a sympathetic chair and committee can be the
difference between success and failure.
So, I’ll soon have a pretty clear sense of all the bills
that are coming my way as Chair of Senate Environment and Natural
Resources. This latest group, by the
way, includes some of the most important and most controversial. They haven’t been ready for release yet, for
various reasons, but now it’s time for them to enter the public arena.
OK, that’s enough background talk for this week. In this newsletter, I want to mention a
couple of the highlights of last week for me, and a couple of things that are
coming up this week.
As always, please get in touch with us if you’re curious
about what’s going on with a bill, or anything else you have questions about. If I don’t get back to you myself, be assured
that Logan, Elisabeth, or one of the interns (Braeden, Walker, Libby, Rachael, Benny, Jamal, Rich, Janelle, John, or Levi)
will.
I hope you can join me this Saturday, March 11th, for our monthly constituent coffee. As you'll recall, a scheduling snafu at the senior center forced us to move the date back a week. But now we are all-systems-go for this Saturday!
March Constituent Coffee
Saturday, March 11th at 9am
Hollywood Senior Center (1820 NE 40th Ave.)
Last week was a big week for the Legislature’s efforts to seriously
address the problem of climate change. The
Senate Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, which I chair, is the
committee responsible for leading the Senate’s efforts on dealing with the
growing challenges related to climate change and also for exploring the many
ways in which the effort to reduce greenhouse gas pollution can be crafted in a
way that will be beneficial to Oregon’s economy, workers, and families,
including those who are low-income and reside in our rural communities.
This is extremely important
work. Our committee has already heard the latest report from the Global Warming
Commission that let us know that Oregon is NOT on track to meet the goals that
our state set back in 2007, and we also know now that those goals are inadequate,
given the spiraling effects of climate change.
We heard two weeks ago from OSU’s Oregon Climate Research Institute,
which was established by the Legislature to survey the best climate science and
let us know the particular effects of climate change on Oregon’s economy,
agriculture, forestry, and fisheries.
Their latest report, frankly, is dire.
On the positive side, there is
interest in the Capitol as never before in seeing Oregon step up and play a
leading role in curbing greenhouse gas pollution. It’s increasingly clear that action on
climate change will have to happen at the state and local level, and ideally on
the regional level. That must involve
setting annual caps on emissions and creating economic incentives for
transitioning to a cleaner economy.
To that end, we find ourselves
with five bills between the Senate and the House that seek to cap and price
carbon pollution. On Wednesday the
Senate Committee met jointly with the House Committee on Energy and Environment
today for a public hearing on those bills.
We received a huge amount of
public testimony, both written and in-person, with many people from rural parts
of the state, traveling more than 100 miles to testify before us. Of the more than 100 individuals who spoke
during the 2 ½ hours of public testimony or submitted testimony, only one who
testified in person was opposed to carbon pricing (representing Associated
Oregon Industries and the Oregon Business Association), and only three who
submitted written testimony were opposed.
You can read all the written
testimony here.
The Portland Business Journal ran a good description of last week’s
public hearing.
OPB had coverage as well.
Starting this evening, a
number of legislators will meet as a workgroup on a weekly basis to really dig
hard and dig deep into the various proposals and explore ways in which Oregon’s
economy could benefit from climate action if done right. These weekly sessions will, I hope, give us
the information we need to decide on the best strategy for climate action going
forward by session’s end.
You can watch the work group
in action and read all the supporting meeting materials via the committee’s web
page.
SB 1008, which addresses the problem of dirty diesel emissions from
older trucks and construction equipment, will be the subject of a public
hearing this Wednesday in the Senate Environment Committee. The long-awaited product of the diesel work
group, SB 1008 is a wide-ranging package that uses a combination of incentives
and regulation to speed up the transition to newer, cleaner engines.
The Senate Committee on the Environment and Natural
Resources held a hearing two weeks ago on the science of dirty diesel’s
negative health effects. We learned that
many Oregonians face serious health risks, notably cancer, heart disease, and
asthma, as a result of exposure to the effects of diesel pollution.
On the other hand, any engines built after 2007 include
filter technology that remove the serious risks from cancer, heart disease, and
asthma that exist in areas of dense population where the older trucks and
equipment are most prevalent. Unfortunately,
older diesel engines can last for decades and are expensive to replace. But it’s crucial that we take action to speed
up the transition and prevent dirty engines from being dumped on us here in
Oregon from other states that have already acted.
Needless to say, this effort, though critically important,
is controversial. Wednesday’s hearing
will feature a range of perspectives, including expected pushback from
industry. It won’t be easy, but I’m
convinced we can find a path forward that is beneficial to public health
without creating undue burdens on industry, particularly on smaller companies.
Here's an overview of the main points of the Clean Engines,
Clean Air Act. I welcome your thoughts
on this important effort.
SCR 14,
our resolution recognizing the 75th anniversary of the unfortunate
executive order that incarcerated thousands of Japanese-American Oregonians
during WWII. The next stop for the
concurrent resolution was the House Rules Committee, where it was heard on
Thursday. I presented the resolution to
the committee, along with several fellow legislators and members of the
Japanese-American community.
The House committee responded very positively to the
resolution and in fact decided to amend it slightly to make one part of it
stronger. That amendment will be voted
on tomorrow, and the resolution will head to the House floor for passage later
this week or early next week. An
important step for an important resolution by the Oregon Legislature,
particularly at this moment in our nation’s history.
I’ve written before about Jade Greening, an Oregon
Solutions project designed to make the Jade District of Southeast Portland
healthier and more livable. Oregon
Solutions projects are designed to bring together state agencies, non-profits,
and others working on certain problems, and create a framework for them to work
in a more coordinated manner, to break down silos and be more effective.
This particular issue revolves around air quality issues in
the Jade District, the area between 82nd Ave. and I-205, roughly
between Division and Foster Rd. It’s
home to a growing, vibrant culture, many first-generation Americans, lots of
ethnic restaurants and other businesses.
It’s definitely a community in transition—largely low-income, but at
risk of displacement and gentrification if we’re not careful.
It’s also an area whose population is vulnerable to a
number of health issues related to compromised air quality. Exposure to diesel emissions from nearby
roads and highways, combined with a relative dearth of tree canopy, have led to
a number of health risks for area residents, according to statistics gathered
by Multnomah County.
I was asked to co-convene this project, along with Huy Ong, executive director of OPAL, a leading environmental justice organization. The Jade Greening project brings together a number of local governments and non-profits in an effort to bring more greenery into the community through depaving, tree planting (both on private property and alongside roadways), and adding backyard plantings. Partnering with local community-building organizations like APANO (the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon) and OPAL will ensure that outreach to Jade District residents is done in a variety of languages and in a manner that speaks directly to them and elicits their input and decision-making.
We commemorated the end of the planning phase of the project on Friday morning with a formal signing ceremony outside Harrison Park School, which included planting two lovely trees, a Princeton Sentry gingko and a Chinese pistache, alongside the community garden that flanks the school.
For more information about the project, go to http://orsolutions.org/osproject/jade-greening-project
Until next time,
 Senator Michael Dembrow
District 23
email: Sen.MichaelDembrow@oregonlegislature.gov
web: www.senatordembrow.com
phone: 503-986-1723
mail: 900 Court St NE, S-407, Salem, OR, 97301
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