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March 5, 2020
Dear Neighbors and Friends:
Sorry it’s taken me so long to get this newsletter out. Believe it or not, despite the Republican walkout, work at the Capitol is only now starting to slow down. Our policy committees started shutting down last week, followed this Tuesday by Ways and Means. The Senate Rules Committee, on which I sit, continues to meet and do business nearly every day.
I know you’re wondering what the chances are that Republican legislators will return to work and allow floor votes on the many bills remaining this session. I wish I could tell you. I certainly hope so. But it is looking increasingly doubtful.
If the absent legislators return today (given that the session is constitutionally required to end by the end of this coming Sunday), we’ll be ready to vote on a number of important bills waiting for action, in addition to the Climate Action legislation. In their absence, we’ve been able to move legislation through the committee process. Our committees only require a simple majority attendance for a quorum (which is also the norm for floor votes in nearly every other state), so the budget and policy bills have continued to move through the process.
Included on the waiting list are a number of bills that are widely seen as bipartisan priorities, some of them addressing true emergencies, others the result of work that’s been going on years. That includes needed investments in all 36 of Oregon’s counties. Here’s a list of those investments approved by Ways and Means just yesterday.
However, today is realistically the last day that the missing legislators could return to work and allow final passage of these bills in accordance with our rules. They could return and agree to extend the session for five days (that requires a 2/3 vote), but will they?
While I can’t answer that one, in this newsletter I’m going to try to answer some of the other questions that are out there regarding this short session and its controversies. But first, here are a couple of items regarding upcoming gatherings:
If we are not down in Salem this weekend (looking less and less likely by the hour), then I will be holding my usual monthly constituent coffee this Saturday, March 7th. We'll be at the Hollywood Senior Center at 9am with coffee, tea, and all the dirty details of the session. I hope you'll join me. Watch the newsletter for updates -- if you don't get an email from me that means that the coffee is ON.
To get the scoop from all three of your legislators, join me next Wednesday, March 11, for a joint town hall with Rep. Barbara Smith Warner and Rep. Alissa Keny-Guyer. We will be at the Regents Center (3185 NE Regents Drive) from 6pm to 7:30pm to give you the rundown and answer your questions about what comes next.
One of the questions that’s out there is around the ultimate purpose of the short, even-year session. There are those who are arguing that the special session should only be for the purpose of rebalancing budgets and that a controversial bill like SB 1530 has no place in it. If we look back on the short sessions that we’ve had both prior to and after they received a formal place in the Oregon Constitution, we will see that the only thing unusual about this short session is the walkout.
Prior to 2012, the Oregon Legislature met only every other year (during odd-numbered years), beginning in January and ending when business was done (which sometimes was not until August or even later). This is not unusual for state legislatures, but increasingly states are moving to annual sessions.
In 2008 the Oregon Legislature began to experiment with having a short session during even-numbered years. A “special session” was called in February of that year, ultimately lasting three weeks, to take up a variety of issues.
We had another three-week pilot session in 2010. By then, I was in the Legislature, representing House District 45, and was able to experience it first-hand. It was FULL of controversial bills on a variety of topics. Check it out: bit.ly/2I2GfUO. What was THE MOST controversial bill that session? In fact, it was SB 41, the constitutional referral that created annual sessions! When we ultimately passed it and sent the question to the voters for a constitutional amendment, this 2010 pilot session was the model we asked them to adopt (though increased by a couple of weeks), & they did.
The subsequent 2012, 2014, 2016, & 2018 short sessions were similar. They took up and resolved some of our most controversial issues ever. Look at the bills that have been introduced and passed, and you’ll see that short sessions have come to fulfill several purposes: (1) to rebalance budgets; (2) to address emergency situations that can’t wait another year; (3) to craft nuanced legislative solutions to issues that would otherwise be put on the ballot in the fall via initiative petition; and (4) to finish work on bills that had extensive public hearings & work sessions in the previous long session but didn’t quite make it over the finish line.
SB 1530, the Oregon Greenhouse Gas Initiative, definitely fits into more than one of these categories.
Timelines are always extremely tight in a short session. It takes time for a bill to get out of committee, on to the floor, and then over to the other chamber in the best of times. Normally, we would have seen a number of House bills pass and come over to the Senate by the fourth week (which is when Senate and House Republicans left work). Unfortunately, on top of the walkout, House Republicans were insisting on having all bills read aloud in their entirety in an effort to pressure the majority to give up on the Climate bill. It didn’t work, but it slowed the number of bills passing out of the chamber—even though most of them ultimately passed with nearly unanimous support. By the time they came to the Senate, the walkout had already happened and they could not make it to the floor.
In addition, budget bills are always the last ones to make their way through the process. Budget bills came out of Ways and Means yesterday, middle of the final week, which was very much in line with a typical short session.
In an effort to stoke fears about the climate bill, a great deal of misinformation has been put forth regarding the potential costs of the program. Much of my time these days has been spent trying to clear up this misinformation. The reality is that the program, especially in its current form, phases in cost impacts gradually and selectively, with low-income Oregonians everywhere protected for the life of the program and rural Oregonians in general brought into the program very slowly.
To get a sense of the true cost impacts of this bill on Oregon households, take a look at this chart. Here’s a write-up on the cost impacts from The Oregonian’s Ted Sickinger: https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2020/02/democrats-offer-estimates-on-what-the-cap-and-trade-climate-bill-will-cost-oregon-households.html
And here’s a graph with information about the projected funding levels for the investments provided in the bill.
Also, here’s a link to a website (created by the Senate Democratic caucus) with information about the bill.
Finally, my colleague Sara Gelser (D-Philomath) has put together an EXCELLENT series of Q&As about the bill for her constituents. I strongly recommend it.
Obviously, in our highly-polarized world, the answer is that it depends on the sources you read. But I would say that most of the coverage in the local and national media has been critical of the walkout and generally supportive of the bill in its current form. Here are links to some of them:
My own personal bill for this session was SB 1573, a bill that will allow juveniles who have committed low-level offenses to have their records expunged (i.e., cleared), upon reaching the age of 18 if they have not committed further offenses. It also allows those eligible for expunction but have committed more serious offenses to have access to a public defender in order to petition the court to have their records cleared.
Our current system is convoluted and difficult to navigate, especially for those from families without means. As a result, the current annual rate of expunction is barely 4%. It’s a broken system.
I’m happy to report that we were able to get the bill successfully through Senate Judiciary and Ways and Means without a single no vote. It’s an important first step in an ongoing process to improve our juvenile justice system. It awaits a vote on the Senate floor.
Unfortunately, the bill will likely die as a result of the walkout.
As many of you know, I’ve been working for years to secure funding to help those teaching part-time at our public colleges and universities gain access to decent health insurance. We have many part-timers who are teaching at multiple colleges and universities; given inadequate state funding for higher ed, without their service and personal sacrifice, the system could not function function. They don’t qualify for employer-paid health insurance at any single institution, though many of them are teaching what amounts to a full load if you combine their work at the various public institutions. They need and deserve this support.
This session’s effort, HB 4146, brought us closer than we’ve ever come. It had strong bipartisan support and diligent effort on the House side by Representative Susan McLain, leading to a unanimous vote out of House Education and a pathway to secure the necessary annual funding of approximately $9 million. I was proud to present the bill alongside Sen. Rob Wagner in the Education Committee hearing.
At the end of the day, the Senate Ways and Means Co-Chairs chose to vote against it, and it died yesterday.
While it likely would have died anyway, along with the rest of the bills, its loss was a bitter pill to swallow. But we’re committed to coming back and getting this done.
Another way that those of us coming to work have been spending our time during the walkout has been staying informed about the spread of the new coronavirus. Legislators have been getting regular briefings over the last week on COVID-19 from the Oregon Health Authority and the State Epidemiologist. What we know about the disease is still limited, but it’s growing day by day. Governor Brown has herself been part of regular briefings with other governors, Vice-President Pence, and federal officials.
Legislators have received information on resources that our constituents can use to get answers to their questions and find out where to get help if they need it. A resource that I can recommend is a partnership between 211 and OHA at https://www.211info.org/corona-virus. It will connect you with specialists who can answer your questions and provides links to resources at OHA and the Centers for Disease Control. I encourage you to use it and stay safe.
Obviously, with the prospect of the session ending without any more bills passing and without money having been allocated to the Interim Emergency Board, we’re in uncharted territory. This (mis)use of our unusually high quorum requirement (nearly every other state requires only a simple majority to be present for floor business) will be used again and again if we don’t find a way to fix it. Last year it was first used in an attempt to kill the Student Success Act. It’s been used twice since then to delay and kill climate action. Our representative system of democracy is at risk if we capitulate to this tactic. I’m proud of those who are working to resist it and find answers to it.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to share some of these answers with you at this Saturday’s coffee and at next week’s town hall. Hope to see you there!
 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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