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Dear Friends and Neighbors,
Just to let you know, this will be my only newsletter for the week. There’s always plenty of news to share, but my team needs a few days of rest. If this week’s holiday is an important one for you, I hope you celebrate it in the healthiest way possible with the ones you love.
Yesterday, the Oregon Legislature convened for a one-day special session and passed four bills to address urgent issues facing Oregonians whose lives have been impacted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the Labor Day wildfires. Last week, legislators held six hours of virtual public hearing time on the concepts, receiving hundreds of oral and written testimonies in the process. This public input informed our work and helped us pass the best bills possible.
It was incredibly important that we got this work done before the end of the year. The legislation will keep people in their homes, support independent restaurants that are barely hanging on, and dedicate funding for critical pandemic-related programs and wildfire recovery efforts.
Here was my statement on the session:
“State legislators showed up and did their jobs to help Oregonians who were facing tremendous risk in the month ahead because of some critical year-end deadlines. It was absolutely essential to extend the eviction moratorium and provide more funding to stabilize the rental market. The moratorium worked to keep Oregonians housed during the worst public health crisis of our lifetime. Small landlords will also get an important lifeline.
“Despite our success today, I’m frustrated that we couldn’t do more, including an extension of foreclosure protections that expire next week. We need to do all we can to avoid the mistakes of the Great Recession and keep people housed. This means recognizing that income inequality has been magnified by the pandemic, especially for communities of color and low-income workers. We must act with urgency with one more Emergency Board before the start of the 2021 session next month.”
Below is a summary of the legislation that passed on Monday:
House Bill 4401 - Eviction Moratorium and Landlord Compensation Fund
HB 4401 ensures that renters across the state cannot be evicted through June 30, 2021, if they can’t pay their rent during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also establishes a $150 million fund to cover overdue rent payments, which will help eligible renters avoid falling further behind, while also ensuring landlords have a voluntary way to recover payments they were counting on.
House Bill 4402 - School Limited Liability Protections
HB 4402 provides temporary liability protections to schools that are complying with COVID-19 emergency rules. Schools are not protected if they are not following Oregon Occupational Safety & Health (OSHA) and Oregon Health Authority (OHA) rules. This bill provides additional incentive for schools, administrators, and teachers to follow health directives and best practices. The measure provides whistleblower protections to third party contractors, such as janitorial service providers, bus drivers, and food service providers.
Senate Bill 1801 - Restaurant Relief
SB 1801 allows restaurants and bars temporarily to sell mixed drinks or wine by the glass to-go if the drink is sold in a sealed container. The bill caps the fee that third-party delivery providers can charge restaurants at 15% of the tab. Local governments with already-existing third-party fee caps can maintain their own lower limits. Many independent restaurants are currently hanging on by a thread, and this support for small businesses comes at a critical time as the pandemic continues and restaurants have had in-person dining disrupted.
Senate Bill 5731 - Emergency COVID-19 and Wildfire Recovery Funding
SB 5731 appropriates state dollars to the legislative Emergency Fund to meet urgent needs next month and to pay for the rental help approved in HB 4401. A large portion of the federal funding that Congress passed through the CARES Act came with an expiration date at the end of 2020. This bill includes $500 million to allow the state to continue to fund critical pandemic-related programs that will support Oregonians in the first few months of 2021, as well as $100 million to fund wildfire recovery efforts. It also includes $150 million for the Landlord Compensation Fund and $50 million for rental assistance (as defined in HB 4401).
In addition to the lawmaking that took place, yesterday’s session garnered attention because of the protests that happened outside the building on the Capitol grounds. Frankly, the destructive and intimidating actions by some of the protesters are simply unacceptable, including the assaults on two journalists who were just doing their job. Oregon Public Broadcasting covered the story here.
I strongly support the right to engage in nonviolent protest and assembly. However, some crossed the line by their actions. I thank the Oregon State Police and Salem Police for their work to deescalate the situation. The work of the Oregon Legislature needed to get done, and it was essential that legislators could show up and do their jobs safely so that Oregonians could be helped before the end of the year.
Now we’ll shift our focus to a pre-session Emergency Board meeting and the upcoming 2021 session where the work will continue. This is already the most inequitable economic recovery in modern American history, and the burden of the pandemic-induced rescission is falling disproportionately on lower-wage workers, as the Salem Reporter covers here.
I understand that too many people are hurting this holiday season. We have good news on the horizon as the vaccine continues to be distributed throughout the state. The Oregon Health Authority announced that 4,475 health care workers were vaccinated in the first week of the state’s COVID-19 immunization program. Long-term care residents and staff began receiving COVID-19 vaccinations this week under a statewide rollout plan that prioritizes Oregonians the pandemic disproportionately impacts.
While this will be a long process and the state will have to take more action as the pandemic continues, I remain hopeful that the new year will be far different than the one that is ending. Stay tuned for more work that is coming to support our ongoing recovery.
If you haven’t certified for Lost Wages Assistance (LWA), and haven’t received any LWA payments, the deadline to certify is this coming Sunday, December 27.
As long as you received unemployment benefits for a COVID-related reason anytime between July 26 and September 5, you’re eligible for LWA. If you do not self-certify by December 27, you will not be eligible for the $300 LWA payments.
If you are waiting for the Oregon Employment Department to determine your eligibility for benefits, you will still get LWA payments if you certify by December 27 and are found eligible for them.
If you received LWA funds but didn’t certify, you’ll have to pay back those funds to the state. As with all benefit programs, federal law requires the state to recover benefits paid to people who don’t meet legal eligibility requirements. Here are instructions for paying back LWA.
If you’ve already certified for LWA, you don’t need to do anything else. The Oregon Employment Department is working on issuing payments.
And, as always, if you have questions and haven’t been able to get through to the department, you can email my office for assistance on navigating the system.
- Congress finally passed another federal relief package worth $900 billion, the Associated Press reports here. While there are many ways I wish this bill went further, including more direct support for state and local governments, this is so very needed as we enter 2021. The package includes a temporary $300 per week supplemental jobless benefit and a $600 direct stimulus payment for most Americans, as well as additional funding for rental assistance, small business support, child care, and more.
- The Western States Scientific Safety Workgroup confirmed that the Moderna vaccine is safe, KGW reports here. This additional vaccine will be distributed to Oregon next week.
- Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley have been assured by the U.S. Army General in charge of COVID-19 vaccine distribution that there will not be any cutbacks in the state’s vaccine supply, Willamette Week reports here. Last week, we found out, without much explanation, that the state’s initial supply from the federal government had been cut by 40%.
- The Oregon Health Authority reported 1,282 new confirmed cases of coronavirus, bringing the statewide total of new and presumptive cases to 105,073. The OHA also reported 35 more deaths, meaning 1,382 Oregonians have died of the coronavirus. You can click the images below for links to interactive data tables about coronavirus in Oregon.
To read past newsletters, you can go to this link. For up to date information, please check this link to the Oregon Health Authority where regular updates are posted: https://www.oregon.gov/oha/ERD/Pages/News-Releases.aspx
Please email me at Rep.TinaKotek@oregonlegislature.gov if you have specific concerns that have not been addressed by the OHA. Our office will do all we can to help and protect all Oregonians.
Thank you for reading! We will get through this together.
Best,
Tina Kotek
State Representative
House District 44
Speaker of the House
email: Rep.TinaKotek@oregonlegislature.gov I phone: 503-986-1200
address: 900 Court St NE, H-269, Salem, OR 97301
website: http://www.oregonlegislature.gov/kotek
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