Special Update from SD 23

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May 4, 2023

COMING ON SATURDAY:  May Zoom Constituent Coffee at 10am!!!

I should have mentioned in my last newsletter that we’ll be holding our May constituent coffee this coming Saturday, May 6th. The days are passing so quickly!

However, in any case, this coffee will be different than planned because of events at the Capitol.  The plan had been to have a hybrid in-person and zoom meeting.  However, I need to be on the Senate floor at 9 am (more on that below), so it’ll have to be a zoom meeting starting at 10.

It will be a chance for me to share big-picture info on where we are in the 2023 session, including the current Republican walkout, and hopefully provide answers to your questions about the bills and initiatives that are priorities for you. 

You can register for Zoom access here​.

See you there!

Senate Republicans Deny Quorum

I mentioned in last week’s newsletter that the House would be spending an unusual amount of time in floor session on Monday and Tuesday.  That’s because those days would be spent on two of the most controversial bills, hot-button issues, that the Legislature will be addressing this session: HB 2002 (Ensuring Reproductive and Gender-Affirming Rights) and HB 2005, the House’s firearms safety package.  It was an easy prediction to make, and it indeed turned out that way. 

There were multiple efforts to derail the bills via parliamentary means—e.g., efforts to refer them to one committee after another and such.  There were many passionate and in some cases memorable speeches made on the floor, but at the end of the day things went almost exactly as predicted.  The one surprise was an aye vote on HB 2002 by a freshman Republican.  He submitted a written vote explanation, which is a very thoughtful and articulate commentary on the issue.  You can read it here.

The next step for these two bills is a vote on the Senate floor.  Not surprisingly, the minority Republicans have been working hard to come up with a way to slow them down and ideally, from their perspective, keep them from being voted on. For Senate Democrats, on the other hand, reproductive rights and firearms-safety efforts are top priorities, as they are for the voters who returned us to the majority in November. (Full disclosure: I'm one of the sponsors of HB 2002.) 

We knew that our colleagues would try to come up with something, but I have to say that I was surprised by the tactic that they came up with.  Some clever staffer discovered a law that was passed in 1979, calling for the printed bill summaries of all bills to be written at an 8^th-grade reading level and that has been ignored ever since (irrespective of which party was in the majority).  Starting on Monday, Republicans began saying that this was suddenly a major concern, and all the bills that have already been passed in one chamber must be sent back for redrafting and start all over again in their original chamber (knowing that the deadline for consideration by the first chamber has passed). 

Legislative Counsel has advised us that this demand is neither timely nor with merit. 

Nevertheless, in pursuit of their effort to stop the reproductive rights bill, Republicans then filed suit to delay its consideration due to its summary not meeting the 8^th-grade reading standard.  As I write this, that petition has just been denied by the Salem judge.

Not surprisingly, in further pursuit of their effort to stop HB 2002, Republicans have chosen to deny a quorum on the Senate floor, which is required for us to take up the measure.  In addition to Democrats, we need four Republicans to show up (ordinarily we would only need three, but one of the Democratic senators is recuperating from major surgery). On Wednesday and today, just two Republicans showed up.  A few others had pre-approved absences, and the rest decided to stay away (though some of them have shown up for committee meetings).

It's a deliberate, organized, somewhat cynical testing of the ballot measure (BM 113) that was passed by an overwhelming margin in November.  That measure made it clear that legislators are expected to show up and vote on measures, even if they might wind up on the losing side of some of them.  It imposes consequences on legislators who rack up more than ten unexcused absences over the course of a session. 

I can tell you that Senate Democrats remain committed to hearing and voting on HB 2002, along with all the other important bills that remain to be passed. (And remember, as I told you recently in a newsletter, that 94% of all bills passed in the Senate so far have been bipartisan.)  In pursuit of that goal, we will be scheduling floor sessions every day for the next two weeks (and beyond if necessary).  Here’s the schedule that went out to all senators yesterday:

And now you can see why we can’t have our next constituent coffee in Portland at 9 as planned. 

I’ll provide an update in Sunday’s regular newsletter.

Sincerely,

Senator Michael Dembrow
District 23

email: Sen.MichaelDembrow@oregonlegislature.gov
web: www.senatordembrow.com

mail: 900 Court St NE, S-407, Salem, OR, 97301