May 28, 2023

Dear Neighbors and Friends,

I hope that you and your loved ones are doing well, staying healthy, and looking out for your neighbors and friends during this past week.

First of all, let me wish you a very happy Memorial Day tomorrow.  We still called it “Decoration Day” back when I was young.  It was a day to visit the cemeteries, decorate the graves, recognize and remember those who’d given their lives to protect the rest of us.  It has become a day when we remember and pay respect to ALL veterans, respect and recognition that they so richly deserve.  Please join me in doing so. I hope that you're able to fill your day with love and fond memories.

In tonight’s newsletter I’ll give you the latest on the Senate Republican walkout that reached its 17th day on Thursday, along with more information about the bills that are passing those that we will likely lose if the walkout continues.

We continue to see the same two Republican Senate lawmakers coming to the chamber each day for floor session, along with their Democratic colleagues.  If just one more were to return, we remain on schedule to do our work and get it done.  But right now that's a big If.

Policy committees in both chambers will be wrapping up this week, if they haven’t done so already.  The Ways and Means subcommittees, on the other hand, will have very full agendas this week and the beginning of next.  The full Ways and Means Committee will meet Wednesday evenings and Friday mornings this week and next, and should be finished with their work by Friday, June 9.  What happens next, of course, is anybody’s guess right now.

The Senate Republican leader has said that no additional legislators will return before the last scheduled day of the session.  They will return on that day (June 25) in order to pass budget bills and presumably bills that would fund projects in their districts.  I can tell you that that is not going to happen.  It’s actually kind of ridiculous.   It would be impossible to get all those bills through both chambers in one day, certainly not with the kind of debate one would hope to have for important legislation.

If in fact the Republicans choose to stay away for the entire session, the Governor could and likely would reconvene us for a special session, simply to pass agency budgets before the new fiscal year begins on July 1.  But that would leave many crucial policy, appropriation, and tax credit bills dead for this session.  Many would remain on hold until 2025.

You can read about a few of the proposed funding packages that are currently out there awaiting action—those focused on Climate, Drought/Water, and the Educator Workforce.

Let’s hope I have better news to report next week.

As you’ll see in this week’s newsletter, the COVID metrics are continuing to creep up a bit, though they still remain overall relatively low.

Until next week, please do your best to stay happy, healthy and safe. And let me know if you have any questions or thoughts about anything in this week’s newsletter.

Next Constituent Coffee June 3

Saturday, June 3, is the first Saturday in June, and that means time for another constituent coffee, the last of this session.  

We’ll be back (with coffee and cookies) at the Hollywood Senior Center, 1820 NE 40^th Avenue (from 9 am to 10:30 am). 

This will be an opportunity for me to give you some behind-the-scenes analysis of the Republican walkout, an examination of our options going forward, a look at what has and has not made it through the session, and answer any questions that you might have.

We’ll also have a zoom option for the meeting to accommodate those who cannot be there in person. (Register for Zoom access here​)​

The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

As I write this, the Republican Walkout of 2023 has now prevented 17 floor sessions from being held.  As you’ll see further down, more than 150 bills continue to sit unworked on the Senate floor.  Many of them are of crucial importance and have gotten to the point of broad, bipartisan support, after significant effort.  Losing them would be tragic.  I’ll be giving you some examples in tonight’s newsletter.

What I mean by the reference to A Tale of Two Cities is that, speaking as someone inside the process, in many ways this has been a very successful session.  The Governor came in asking us to address her housing/homelessness and semiconductor priorities right away.  Although we weren’t sure at that point in the session how much money we would ultimately have to spend, these were bipartisan priorities, and the resulting legislation was passed quickly in a uniquely bipartisan manner, with co-leads from both parties.  

Speaking from my own experience, the committee work this session has been excellent. It’s in our committees that the great bulk of the work happens in the Oregon Legislature.  In Oregon a bill can only be amended in committee, so that if a bill comes out of committee, it is almost always ready to be passed.  As Education Committee Chair, I was blessed this time with having a Republican Vice-Chair with whom I could work closely and productively. Of the 84 bills that were voted out of our committee this session (a remarkable number in and of itself), only one moved out on a party-line vote.  That’s pretty amazing.

Also amazingly, we were also able to get bipartisan support for a number of environmental and climate-action bills this session.  That includes SB 522, which sets new, more aggressive targets for reducing our Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and SB 530, which directs us to invest in Natural Climate Solutions to sequester carbon in our natural and working lands. (More on these below.)

And just this past week, I’m proud to say that SB 85 passed out of Senate Rules on a unanimous 5-0 vote (including the Senate Minority Leader, Tim Knopp). This is the bill that modernizes our regulation of Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), which started out as one of the most contentious of the session. It required nonstop negotiation (consuming many, many hours of my time this session), but in the end, if it is allowed to be voted on in the Senate, it will be a huge step forward.

Also on the “Best of Times” side of the ledger, not only have we been seeing good work coming from our policy committees, but our Ways and Means committees have also been very productive and efficient.  We’re on track to finish all of the agency budgets in record time.  For the first time ever, the presiding officers have had the policy chairs and the Ways and Means subcommittee chairs working to create bipartisan, bicameral funding packages (you’ll see more about a few of them below).  It’s a great model going forward, leading to investments that will benefit every part of the state.

And with the positive revenue forecast that I wrote about last week, we have the ability to fund these packages in a way that will work for all of Oregon.

But unfortunately that brings us to the “Worst of Times.” Because, as a result of the 2023 Walkout, we cannot vote on these bills and these packages in the Senate--and it seems at the moment unlikely that we will before the session ends--all of this work will have been for naught. 

Committee and floor have been like night and day in the Senate this session.  So have personal relationships: when the mic is on, we get rhetoric, brinksmanship, and hyperbole from one side; away from the mic, one-on-one or in committee, relations are cordial, friendly, good-humored, and professional.

Though our committees have been unusually workmanlike and efficient, the same cannot be true of our floor sessions in the Senate this year.  From the very beginning, there has been a deliberate effort by the minority party to slow us down: through bill reading, remonstrances, vote explanations, and all those other tactics that I’ve written about before. 

Unfortunately, beginning right after their defeat in the November election, the Senate Republican media machine has been churning out offensively critical statements about Senate Democrats, zeroing in on the newly-elected Senate President in an effort to undermine his support.  Anyone who knows and has worked with Rob Wagner knows how far from the truth these baseless, hyperbolic statements are. It’s the kind of distortion that we have sadly come to expect during political campaigns.  However, once the election season is over, it’s time to put down the gloves, reach out, and find ways to work together.

I’m proud to say that even now, despite prolonged, deliberate efforts to provoke us into responding in kind, Senate Democrats are managing to stick to the high ground that governing requires and deserves. It’s not easy, especially when faced with these personal attacks and the frustration of seeing our system of governance abused in this way, seeing politics and rhetoric obstruct the future of so much good work.  

But only time will tell—will the 2023 session turn out to be “The Best of Times” or “The Worst of Times”? We should know in the next week or so.

House Continues to Pass Bills

While the Senate continues to accumulate bills, mainly House bills now, the House continues to be able to pass Senate bills and send them to Governor Kotek for her signature.  Last week they passed 118 bills in all.  In order to do that, they suspended the requirement that bills be read aloud in their entirety.

Looking at the week ahead, only 17 bills remain on the docket right now for House floor votes this week (way down from last week’s 101).

On the Senate side, bills coming out of committee continue to stall. The Senate to-do list now includes 154 (27 more than last week’s count of 127 stalled bills). Most of them are bills that have already passed in the House.

As you can imagine, House members are becoming increasingly frustrated to see the bills that they have crafted, developed, compromised to get the votes needed for passage, all sitting in limbo and likely death on the Senate floor.

The 2023 Funding Package

As I mentioned above, the Senate President and Speaker of the House have decided to package together a number of policy bills that were sent from Senate and House policy committees to Ways and Means.  The relevant policy and Ways and Means chairs and co-chairs worked with LFO to prioritize and fund the bills within the available budget resources.  Each package contains bills that have passed out of committee or are parts of agency budgets. Those belonging to a particular issue area will be grouped together in a single bill for a single vote in the appropriate Ways and Means subcommittee. 

The bill vehicle for each of the packages is for the most part a “placeholder” House bill sitting in the House Rules Committee.  You’ll find these five “placeholders” (at this point they simply call for a study of some sort) on the House Rules Committee agenda from last Tuesday (under the heading The following bills are scheduled solely for the purpose of moving to the Joint Committee on Ways and Means).  You can get a sense of what the package will include by looking at what the bill is “related to.”

Legislative Counsel is finishing up the drafting of the amendments to these placeholders, which will become the final bills. The amendments should all be posted on OLIS early this week. I expect that they will be assigned to Ways and Means subcommittees and passed to the full Ways and Means Committee by the end of the week.

Funding Package #1: Climate Action

The first funding package that I worked on will be HB 3409, which brings together and funds a number of bills related to climate action. The package invests nearly $100 million in crucial climate action this session, though it has the potential to draw down many times that amount in federal funding that has become available.

Here are the programs and policies that are included in this package.  I’ll provide more explanation and the final funding levels in the future.

Here are the bills included in the package:

• REBuilding Bills (SB 868, 869, 870, 871, HB 3166)
• State Energy Strategy and Resilience Planning (HB 2534 & 3378)
• Community Resilience Hubs (HB 2990)
• Community Green Infrastructure Act AKA TREES Act (HB 3016)
• Woody Biomass for Low-Carbon Fuels (HB 3590)
• Environmental Justice and Tribal Navigator (SB 852)
• Medium and Heavy-Duty EV Incentives (HB 2714)
• Renewable Energy Siting (HB 3181)
• Natural Climate Solutions (SB 530)
• Climate Action Modernization (SB 522)
• Residential Solar Rebate Program Extension (HB 3418)
• Residential Heat Pump Program Extension (HB 3056)
• Climate Protection Program Fee Bill (HB 3196)
• Harmful Algal Blooms (HB 2647)
• Community Renewable Energy Grant Program (HB 2021, 2021)

In addition, there are a number of Agency Policy Option Packages (POPs) and new climate-related programs included in the Climate Package.  

Again, though, the future of this package, like all the others, remains up in the air.

Funding Package #2: Drought/Water

The second package that I was involved with includes $30 million in General Fund and $90 in infrastructure bonding to better prepare our state to address the ongoing drought in much of Oregon and the ongoing stresses to our water supply as a result of climate change.  Although I was involved in the package through my role as Senate co-chair of the Natural Resources subcommittee of Ways and Means, I need to acknowledge the central and tireless work performed by two House members--Representative Ken Helm (D-Beaverton) and Mark Owens (R-Crane)--and their staff this session. This package is a noteworthy blend of agricultural and environmental priorities, not surprising from a Portland-area Democratic fisherman with roots in central Oregon and an Eastern Oregon Republican farmer.

This package will be located in HB 3124.

Here are some of the projects that it will fund:

• Aquifer storage and recharge. Mid-Columbia Water Commission
• Drought Relief, Resilience, and Adaptation Support for Small-Scale Producers.
• Food Hubs Drought Resilience.
• Local Food System and Drought Resilience. Oregon Farmers Market Association
• Pass-through funding for Beaverton Purple Pipe Project.
• Pass-through funding for Rogue River and Medford Irrigation Districts
• Pass-through funding to Deschutes River Conservancy
• Passthrough funding for Oregon Association of Water Utilities Water System Training Center.
• Pass-through to High Desert Partnership
• Juniper Removal
• Fish Screens and Passage
• Wildlife Passage
• Water Reuse and Recycling
• Water Acquisition Grants
• LIDAR Water Mapping
• Catching up on backlog of water rights applications
• Place-based planning
• Agricultural water technical assistance

As you can see, these are projects that will benefit Oregonians all over the state. Again, losing them at this time would be tragic.

Funding Package #3: Educator Workforce (SB 283)

Unlike the other two packages that I’ve mentioned, SB 283 was already designed to be a package.  I’ve mentioned it before.  It’s the result of a year-long workgroup that included a number of professionals, along with a bipartisan, bicameral group of legislators.  The presiding officers gave us a budget of $25 million to craft the final package to help improve the recruitment and retention of educators in our schools. They will be found in the -9 amendments to SB 283, which should be posted soon. 

The package will help us to track and focus on the areas of greatest need, make it easier for potential educators to apply for jobs, develop new “Grow Your Own” and apprenticeship models, and overcome the conditions that are causing educators to leave the workforce.  The package will prioritize three areas that rose to the surface as needing the greatest focus: Special Education teachers and instructional assistants, rural educators, and the need for more diverse teachers.  

Here are the highlights:

• Creates an Oregon statewide educator workforce data system
• Creates an Oregon statewide educator jobs portal
• Creates regular online surveys and exit surveys of educators
• Allows districts to pay Special Education educators a pay differential or bonus
• Requires districts to employ Special Education instructional assistants a minimum of five hours a day.
• Creates a $5 million fund for “train the trainer” training in de-escalation intervention.
• Provides classified workers with Just Cause protection from arbitrary discipline and dismissal.
• Creates a Task Force on Substitute Teachers to make recommendations on improving the working conditions to stabilize the substitute teacher workforce and keep them as public employees.
• Directs districts to include substitutes in any necessary training.
• Directs districts to fill anticipated long-term vacancies (e.g., to replace someone on parental leave) with someone on a temporary contract, not a series of ten-day substitutes.
• Creates the Task Force on Educator Salaries to explore and make recommendations in three areas:
  • A statewide salary schedule
  • Statewide minimum salaries
  • Paid student teachers
  • Statewide pay differentials for Special Education
• Directs $10 million to support registered apprenticeships for Teaching, creating supported pathways to teaching licensure for incumbent classified employees
• Allows retired teachers to receive a substitute teaching license at no cost and without an additional background check within three years of retirement.
• Extends to ESD superintendents the Just Cause employment protections given to school district superintendents last year in SB 1521 (2022).
• Relieves individuals in Early Childhood Special Education from having to undergo multiple background checks.

An additional $9 million is being put into a special fund for appropriation during the 2024 short session, to be distributed based on what we will have learned from investments made during 2022 and 2023.

Together with the record appropriations in the State School Fund and the Student Success Funds, SB 283 has the potential to make a real difference.  Let’s hope it gets to have a vote in the Senate.

What’s Going On With My Priority Bills in the House?

The Good:

A number of my personal and Education Committee priorities have made it out of the Senate.  They’ve already been signed, or should be soon, by the Governor.  They all passed by very large bipartisan margins.

SB 529: Provides substance abuse treatment for adults in custody. (Governor signed 5/19)

SB 123: Directs DEQ to include consideration of Digital Labeling for more successful recycling (Governor signed 5/19)

SB 940: Easing transferability of credits earned outside the U.S.  (House floor 51-1-1-7, Senate floor 21-8-1)

SB 270A: Facilitating Higher Education for Adults in Custody (House floor 43-12-1-4, Senate floor 23-5-2)

SB 423A: Adds a faculty member and a non-faculty employee to the OHSU Board of Trustees (House floor 39-18-3-0, Senate floor 21-8-1)

SB 519A: Expands Automatic Expungement of Juvenile Records (House floor 54-0-6-0, Senate floor 28-1-1)

The Bad AND the Ugly

Six others have also passed both chambers in recent weeks.  However, small amendments were added in the House, which means that they need to come back to the Senate for a concurrence vote.  Normally, this is a formality unless the relevant committee chair objects (which I do not!).  And when they do come back (normally the next day), they are automatically voted on before anything else.  Once the concurrence vote happens, they go straight to the Governor.

However, needless to say, “normally” does not apply now.  Unless things change, these bills (and many other concurrence votes) will join the 150+ bills already languishing and likely to die.

SB 275A: Examine combining the Teachers Standards and Practices Commission (TSPC) and the Oregon Department of Education (House floor 39-19-1-1, Senate floor 22-7-1)

SB 279B: Authorize Oregon to join the new interstate compact for teacher licensure (House floor 55-2-3-0, Senate floor 27-2-1)

SB 269A: Another important step in restoring prison education programs (House floor 53-1-6-0, Senate floor 28-0-2)

SB 523B:  Allows community colleges to offer Bachelor of Science degrees in Nursing (BSN) (House floor 54-0-6-0, Senate floor 28-0-2)

SB 424B: Prohibits colleges and universities from withholding transcripts from students for financial reasons (House floor: 34-19-6-1, Senate floor: 25-2-3)

SB 273B: Makes important improvements to university governing boards (House floor 33-14-12-1, Senate floor 16-12-2)

In addition, many of my biggest priorities are currently in the Ways and Means process, including the Climate, Drought, and Educator Workforce funding packages that you saw above. Once they make it through Ways and Means, however, they too seem doomed for this year.

How Did We Get Here? A Brief History of Quorum – Thanks to Rep Reynolds & Staff

As background to help constituents better understand the rules that allow the minority to prevent the Legislature from doing its business, Representative Lisa Reynolds and her chief of staff, Christopher McMorran, provided the following history of the quorum requirement in her latest newsletter. Out of a sense of "nerd solidarity," she has kindly allowed me to share it with you.

Oregon is one of only four states that has a quorum requirement of two-thirds to conduct business in our legislature. [The others are Indiana, Tennessee, and Texas; Wisconsin used to have a 2/3 requirement, but changed that in the last decade.] This means two-thirds of members must be present in order for a chamber to do their work. 

This is a wonky, but very important, detail: in order to do anything on the floor of the Oregon House or Senate, such as vote on bills, the body must have a “quorum” of legislators present. This is also the case for other public governing boards throughout our state, like city councils and school boards. However, for these local governing boards, a quorum is almost always defined as a simple majority of the decision-making body. So, if a city council has seven members, four would be a quorum, and if a school board has five members, three would be a quorum. This is designed to ensure that decisions made by a governmental body are representative of the majority.

And, much like our school boards and city councils, the quorum requirement for almost all other state legislatures in the country is a simple majority. But under the Oregon constitution, we cannot conduct any business in the House or Senate without two-thirds of our members present. That means we need 40 members of the House and 20 members of the Senate to show up for work in order to even vote on passing bills. And, since the Senate Republicans currently hold 12 of the 30 seats (plus one Independent who often joins them), they are able to deny a 20-person quorum by refusing to show up for work. We’re joined in this bizarre quorum requirement by states like Texas, Wisconsin, and Indiana.

And, to be clear, denying a quorum in an effort to kill legislation is nothing new. Democrats did it here in Oregon when Republicans were in power, and both parties have used it in other states in the past. In fact, then-Illinois-state-legislator Abraham Lincoln jumped out of a window in the State Capitol in Springfield in 1840 in an effort to deny a quorum and prevent a bill from passing that would have threatened the Illinois State Bank (the doors of the Capitol had already been locked to prevent just such an escape).

So, why does Oregon have this odd two-thirds requirement? It’s a matter of history. When Oregon’s founders were drafting our state’s original constitution in 1857, they ended up copying over half of it from Indiana’s constitution – yes, from one of the other three states with this heightened quorum requirement (Indiana’s constitution, in turn, borrowed various language from Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Tennessee… there was a lot of copied work going on at this time as new states were writing their founding documents). Sadly, part of what appealed to Oregon’s territorial leaders about Indiana’s 1851 constitution was its prohibition of Black people immigrating to the state. In Oregon’s original constitution, slavery was explicitly prohibited, but Black Americans were also forbidden from living in the state. This provision, along with the provision for a two-thirds quorum requirement, were copied over from Indiana – although only one remains today.

Fast forward almost two centuries, and we’ve seen quorum-busting walkouts happen with greater frequency and with much more frustrating and potentially detrimental effects. Voters across the state have grown tired of a group in the minority, meaning they did not win the will of the voters, hijacking a legislative agenda to force their unpopular positions on the rest of the state. That’s why a group of advocates proposed Measure 113 in the 2022 elections, which prohibited legislators with 10 or more unexcused absences from running for reelection. In theory, this measure was supposed to prevent walkouts. The thinking went that politicians care about reelection more than anything else, and that the threat of being disqualified from running again would be a big enough deterrent to keep them from walking out.

Well, Measure 113 passed (68% of Oregonians voted in favor!), and, still, here we are – in the middle of yet another walkout. It’s clear that Measure 113 did not achieve its desired effect, and the reason is quite simple: it dealt with a symptom of the problem (walkouts) without solving the actual problem itself (Oregon’s quorum requirements). In order to prevent these damaging and undemocratic walkouts from continuing in the future, the only solution is to amend Oregon’s constitution to reduce the quorum requirement to a simple majority, rather than two-thirds.

I firmly believe that the party in the majority has a mandate from the voters and a duty to deliver on their platform. We know that our top priorities – things like housing, reproductive rights, gun violence prevention, behavioral health supports, and more – are broadly supported by the majority of Oregonians. It’s what so many of us heard about from voters on the campaign trail. That’s why they elected us! So we cannot negotiate away these priorities to satiate the unending appetite of a minority party which spends their time finding procedural loopholes to slow down our agenda instead of spending that time developing a platform that could actually help them win elections and gain the support of Oregonians. We will not negotiate away our democratic values, and that is why we are here.

ON THE COVID FRONT

Weekly Data Report:

OHA is no longer providing updates on COVID test results each week (because most tests are being done at home and not reported), but it is reporting on the other metrics. Here is the most recent set of results, for this past week from 5/18/23 through 5/24/23.

This week’s report shows some increases in the COVID metrics in Oregon. Again, this is what we were told to expect in the most recent forecast from OHSU back in April.  Dr. Graven predicted an uptick in cases at the end of May and early June, though with much less impact on our hospital systems than we saw in earlier surges.

On Wednesday there were 150 COVID hospitalizations, an increase from the previous week’s 126 COVID-19-related hospitalizations statewide. Hospitalizations are now our best indicator of disease spread. Again, however, many of these hospitalizations are not in and of themselves due to COVID—most are those who tested positive after having been admitted for other reasons.

On Wednesday there were 21 COVID patients in intensive care, another small increase from last week’s 19. These are the most serious cases.

Testing percent positive was reported at 4.6%, a small increase from the previous week’s 4.2%. Test positivity is a function of those who are tested in medical facilities and other testing sites.

The most recent count of COVID deaths remains the 3 that were reported for the week of May 7^th, which had been a decline from the previous week’s 11.

Weekly County Report: All Oregon Counties Remain at Low Risk for Hospitalization

The CDC is continuing to assign risk levels based the number of people in hospital for COVID.

According to the CDC Daily Counter (updated each Thursday),  all 36 Oregon counties are again at Low Risk for hospitalization.

Here’s a national map of all counties.  As you’ll see, Oregon’s experience is currently being replicated in nearly all the states. (98.8% of Oregon counties are showing low levels of COVID hospitalization.

This Week’s Wastewater Monitoring Report: Decreased Levels Last Week

With testing reports giving us just a fraction of infections out there, wastewater monitoring has become a more reliable indicator of the amount of virus in cities around the state.  That report is updated each week.

This week’s report, updated on Wednesday, reveals that 9% of the cities tested showed increases or sustained increases last week (a big drop from 22% the previous week). Twenty-five percent showed declines or sustained declines (up from 9%).

Overall, once again most cities showed little change one way or the other: the remaining 66% (down slightly from 69%) report being at a plateau.

Florence and Lincoln City reported sustained increases last week.  Though it is officially listed as Plateau, Portland’s virus concentration levels appear to have dropped significantly last week.

COVID Q & A from OHA (from OHA weekly newsletter)

Dr. Melissa Sutton, OHA medical director of respiratory viral pathogens, and Dr. Paul Cieslak, OHA senior health advisor and medical director, Communicable Diseases and Immunizations program, answered today’s questions.

Q: If OHA is no longer providing the public with updated COVID-19 data such as the number of hospitalizations and deaths, how are we supposed to know how much precaution to take when out in public? – Helen, Portland

A: “OHA continues to track and report COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths on a weekly basis, but we have transitioned to a more sustainable model for COVID-19 surveillance, which aligns with recent changes made by the CDC. Moving forward, OHA will monitor and report COVID-19 activity in Oregon based on virus transmission at the community level, monitoring for hospitalizations and deaths rather than case numbers. This is similar to how we monitor influenza activity.

“We created a new set of respiratory virus data dashboards which can be found here and which include community-level transmission metrics (e.g., wastewater monitoring, percent positivity and variant monitoring), hospitalization rates, death counts, emergency department visits for COVID-like illness, hospital capacity and vaccination rates. To assess your personal risk, you can look at test percent positivity to get an idea of how much COVID-19 is circulating in the state and can look at trends in your area within the wastewater dashboard.”

Q: I am currently 31 weeks pregnant and have never had COVID-19. I had a bivalent booster in September, one month before I became pregnant. First, am I considered immunocompromised to be eligible for the second bivalent booster? Second, if so, is there an optimal time to get a second booster to help maximize passing antibiotics on to my baby? – Ariel, Portland

A: “It’s a good question, Ariel. Being pregnant you are at higher risk of severe COVID-19 illness, and after you deliver, your baby will be at some risk. This CDC page lists a variety of immunocompromising conditions, and although it does not list pregnancy, it notes the list is not complete.

“I do recommend that you discuss it with your health care provider, but I think it would be reasonable to get another bivalent booster dose, either from your provider or a pharmacist. The best time to do this for your baby would be at 27-36 weeks, because (assuming baby is born at term) you’d have time to develop antibodies, and then to pass them to your baby across the placenta before delivering – thereby protecting your baby ‘right out of the gate.’ Good luck and congratulations!”

Additional COVID Updates and Links

• The White House is struggling to preserve $5 billion that was appropriated to develop the next generation of COVID vaccines and treatments. They are on the chopping block in the debt-ceiling negotiations.
• Here’s what Pfizer and Moderna say is next for their COVID vaccines.
• The National Institutes of Health have produced a framework of twelve key symptoms that define Long COVID.
• And here’s more from the Washington Post.
• People with Long COVID are having a hard time hard time qualifying for federal disability.
• We know that prisons and jails had a great deal of difficulty meeting the COVID   New information from the federal prison system shows it was even more of a disaster.
• Are “interventionists,” providing intense tutoring, the answer to help students catch up from pandemic learning loss?
• NPR asked its listeners how they’re feeling now that the COVID health emergency is over. Here's what they had to lose.

Here again are some COVID resources that you will find useful:

•  Here is the OHA’s coronavirus page, with links to a number of resources.

• Here’s a daily data tracker from the CDC.

If the above links are not providing you with answers to your questions or directing you to the help that you need, please consider me and my office to be a resource.  We’ll do our best to assist you or steer you in the right direction.

Sincerely,

Senator Michael Dembrow
District 23

email: Sen.MichaelDembrow@oregonlegislature.gov
web: www.senatordembrow.com
phone: 503-281-0608
mail: 900 Court St NE, S-407, Salem, OR, 97301