 * “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”
—Helen Keller
At 4:15 this past Sunday afternoon, on opposite ends of the Capitol building, House Speaker Dan Rayfield and Senate President Rob Wagner pounded their gavels at the same time to adjourn the Oregon Legislature’s 2023 session sine die. Literally that means “without a day,” because no date is specified for reconvening. The regular 2024 session will begin February 5, but if a special session is called, which seems to happen more often than not these years, we’ll reconvene sooner than that.
It was a long, long 160 days. Before reflecting on how it came out, let me share an announcement that came across the news as I wrote the last sentence,
A New SoS
After the resignation of Secretary of State Shemia Fagan two months ago, Governor Kotek said she’d wait for the session to end before announcing a replacement. It did, and today (Wednesday) she did: former Portland Auditor LaVonne Griffin-Valade, full story here.
Speculating on the interim SoS appointment became the Capitol’s most popular guessing game through the session. This is more than Oregon’s second-ranking office, our lieutenant governor under another name. The responsibilities of the office are always critical, but these days one of them stands out. As Oregon’s chief election officer, Ms. Griffin-Valade will be under the spotlight and intense cross-pressures as she organizes and carries out the 2024 election, which many are already calling (yes, you’ve heard this one before) the most important of our lifetime.
Unlike most of the names tossed out in this guessing game—legislators and former legislators who the Governor worked with during her long tenure as House Speakers—I’d never heard of Ms. Griffin-Valade. She’s been a highly respected public auditor in the Portland area for many years. The choice tells me the Governor’s more interested in restoring public trust than positioning any candidate for next year’s election to the office.
That’s a good move. Trust in Oregon government has careened downhill for a mix of reasons in recent years, as it has in pretty much every state. Handing the 2024 election reins to a seasoned, highly competent professional with no public political profile makes a lot of sense.
Ok, so who won, the red team or the blue?
That’s the most common question from the media and others who’ve wanted my take about this session’s long walkout and its resolution (a better question, How did this work out for Oregonians? rarely gets asked). A less biased answer than any I’d offer came out Wednesday in the Capital Chronicle, here.
And what actually happened?
After the walkout kept us from passing any bill for six weeks, the sprint of the session’s final days felt like whiplash. OPB’s headline in this story was apt, and if you read through it you’ll get the overall picture of the main outcomes.
Here’s a deeper dive into some of the issues that kept me busy in the session’s last months.
 Wildfire
We can’t lose sight of the fact that northwest forest conditions and ongoing climate trends put our landscape and communities at grave risk every summer and fall. We’re strengthening our partnership with the northwest’s largest forest owner—the U.S. government—through a series of programs and grants. At the same time, we’ve stepped up as a state like never before with SB 762, the comprehensive wildfire protection bill we passed in 2021.
The 762 program is so vast and complex, and needed to hit the ground so quickly, that we knew it would take course-correction along the way. Two bills in particular did that this session
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SB 80 is a cluster of improvements to the program, beginning with reform to the wildfire map that triggered so much aggravation and confusion last summer. The new map, which will come out in draft form this fall or winter, will center on hazard factors that go beyond any single landowner’s ability to reduce risk, and will be finalized in collaboration with county commissioners and citizens who want to participate.
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SB 82 prevents insurance carriers from using the state’s risk or hazard maps to raise premiums or cancel policies, and tasks them to explain decisions like that to homeowners, and to suggest what policy holders could do to temper rising costs.
SB 82 will ease insurance problems for some, but it’s far from a solution to a spreading national crisis. The staggering property losses from different versions of climate chaos—hurricanes, flooding, tornadoes and, in our case, mega-fires—has turned the insurance industry on its head. Steep rate increases and policy cancellations are two of its tactics for reducing loses. You might have read about State Farm’s recent decision to pull out of the California market. Allstate, its biggest competitor, soon followed suit.
No matter what state government does or doesn’t do, keeping affordable insurance coverage will be a steep challenge for Oregon homeowners. It’s a symptom of a wildfire crisis that has no obvious fix. The only strategy that could make a lasting difference is to stay the course on our overall wildfire program until it brings down the number of community-devastating fires and the amount of insurance claims these companies have to pay out.
Staying the course won’t be cheap. I’m concerned that a couple of relatively mild wildfire seasons will blur our memory of Labor Day 2020 so that we let our guard down on wildfire readiness. That may be starting to happen. I think the 2023-2025 budget we just approved comes up short on a few critical line items for prevention and community readiness. If I’m wrong about that and all goes well this season and next, there’s still the reality that a robust program costs more than the state General Fund can support year after year.
That leaves unanswered a critical question: how will we sustainably pay for programs to adequately protect Oregon from wildfire? The answer I offered, SB 502, didn’t make it out of committee, and if it had, prospects were bleak that it would have drawn the 2/3 majority needed to redirect income tax kicker dollars. But it started a necessary conversation and reached readers across the state with this column.
The conversation has to continue.
Water & Ag bills
A number of non-wildfire bills that passed through my Natural Resources Committee early in the session looked like walkout casualties until the last month, when negotiation and compromise moved them over the finish line. I wrote in earlier newsletters about a couple of them:
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Restrictions on Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), those industrial-scale cattle and poultry businesses that have divided farming communities and sparked so much environmental and economic concern across the country. The strict measures in the original Senate Bill 85 didn’t gather enough support. The bill that finally passed curtails the “stock water exemption” that gives some CAFOs authority to use unlimited amounts of groundwater. It also establishes guidelines for where new CAFOs can locate.
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Limitations on canola cultivation in the Willamette Valley to protect specialty seed crops from cross-pollination of GMO material. A compromise was reached to extend protection for another year to let stakeholders try to hammer out a more permanent solution.
More on the outcome of those two bills and some water legislation is here.
A clear win for Rogue Valley farmers was the passage of HB 2929, which lets the Water Resources Department go to court for an injunction to promptly shut down illegal diversion or outright theft of irrigation water. Through the current drought, small farmers who’ve been shut off prematurely by their irrigation districts have had to watch massive water theft take place in broad daylight with no consequence for the thieves. The current legal process can take months to complete. By that time illegal growers have long since pulled up their crop and left the valley. This bill provides a tool that could make enforcement work. Here’s my explanation on the Senate floor.
 Beavers
As I think more about it, there was a very clear winner this session: Oregon’s beavers. Not Oregon State University fans, but the furry aquatic mammals that are currently on the state’s “predatory animal list,” meaning that they can legally be killed on private lands with no rules and no limits. Some have long seen that as inhumane and needlessly cruel. This session, with growing awareness of beavers’ ecological role retaining moisture at higher elevations in times of drought, there was critical support to remove them from that list. Here is how I described the bill on the Senate floor last week, just before it passed on to the Governor’s desk.
I learned pretty much everything I know about beaver and the good they can do from Diarmuid McGuire, whose campaign for their preservation was the last of many remarkable projects he took on in 80 packed years of life. Diarmuid made the Ashland/Greensprings community better in so many ways. He died in February, just as the legislative session began.
This one’s for you, Diarmuid.
 Diarmuid McGuire, 1942-2023
Criminal justice
Criminal justice legislation didn’t get much billing this session. As I look back on the whole session, though, it was a pretty full plate. Here’s what it looked like.
The battle of 3414
The last major battle of the session was fought over HB 3414, a broad bill designed to ease regulation of building and development in response to the severe housing shortage. It was an important part of Governor Kotek’s paramount objective to get more Oregonians in decent homes as fast as possible.
Arguments over land development are as old as Oregon’s pioneering land use program, SB 100, established exactly half a century ago. The need for more housing has shifted the conflict’s center of gravity, with nearly everyone involved willing to see rules revised for the sake of more affordable housing. This was the playing field for the session-long negotiation over HB 3414, which seemed to culminate about a month ago with a compromise that nearly all parties could live with. It would have passed easily.
But that didn’t turn out to be the end of the story. An additional amendment suddenly appeared without involvement from key Representatives who’d brokered the compromise. It authorized all cities to pull significant acreage into their urban growth boundaries for future development. That would have pre-empted the current process for UGB expansion, which obliges cities to show that they need more land within city limits to accommodate their residential development needs.
Some involved in the painstaking negotiations were angry that this provision, dropped out to gain broad bipartisan support for the bill, quietly found its way back in at the last minute. On Saturday, the session’s second-to-last day, Republican Senators suggested that they just might leave the building again if this bill weren’t approved. In a rushed bargaining session Saturday afternoon, it was agreed that the bill would get a clean up-or-down vote in both chambers to see if it could pass. On Saturday night, HB 3414 passed the House 33-21.
That left it up to us in the Senate to decide right before adjournment. We knew all eight Republicans would support it (the other five, protesting terms of the agreement that ended the walkout, never did return to the Senate floor). That meant the bill needed eight Democratic Aye votes to reach the magic 16-vote threshold for passage. Our vote count Sunday morning was hazy, with about six of us in clear support and about the same number opposed. The rest were staying fairly quiet.
The bill reached floor in the session’s last hours. Three supporters kicked off debate with eloquent descriptions of Oregon’s housing crisis and the brutal reality of homelessness. Most of us agreed with the picture they drew, but not with what the bill as written would do about it. I felt the conversation drifting away from the nub of the issue. On an impulse I didn’t expect, I pushed the button to speak and rose to my feet. Here’s what came out.
 After a few more comments, the most dramatic roll call vote of the session began. One Republican senator stayed silent as his name was called out a dozen times, wandering around the floor to confer with the minority leader, the majority leader, the parliamentarian and a huddled knot of his colleagues. He wasn’t answering because his vote, the last one to be counted, would have brought a final total of fifteen to the Aye column, one shy of passage. It was a highly confusing half-hour (ok, 10-15 minutes, maybe—the suspense distorted time). Our guess was that they’d sent out an emergency signal to their absent colleagues to rush back to the Capitol to cast a winning vote. None did, the dawdling Senator said Aye, and the battle over HB 3414 was over.
Some of this bill’s content is good. Meeting the housing crisis will take some give from all parties, including those who have staunchly defended Oregon’s remarkable land use system from erosion for fifty years now. But times change. Challenges change. It’s our job to find a path to adequate housing that carefully weighs the real, not claimed, benefits against the costs of each proposed change. Land use regulation will prove to be a one-way ratchet: easing restrictions in today’s political environment is much, much easier than imposing them.
That’s why we have to proceed more carefully than the final version of HB 3414 did. I hope to take part in next session’s conversation on how to do that.
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That’s some of what moved, and didn’t, through the 2023 legislative session. If you have comments or questions about other bills, bring them to our Town Hall—the first one in-the-flesh for quite a while— in the Gresham room of the Ashland Library on Tuesday, July 18 at 5:00pm. If you can’t do that and wonder about the fate of one bill or another, email us at
sen.jeffgolden@oregonlegislature.gov and we’ll track it down for you.
Enjoy the new summer and the 4th holiday, and try to stay cool!
 Senator Jeff Golden, Oregon Senate District 3
Chief of Staff Andrew Baker
The 2023 legislative session felt like the start of a new chapter. The last long session had been completed on Zoom in the shadow of COVID. As we came back into the building in January, the pandemic mostly behind us, a new Senate President for the first time in 20 years, and an energized group of legislators, staff and advocates, it felt exciting.
The physical Capitol felt different of course, as we are in the midst of a huge construction project affecting every part of the building. In the long run, the Capitol is being seismically upgraded, repaired and refurbished so it can be the home of Oregon democracy for generations to come. In the short run, this came with the continual piercing drum of construction noises, cramped hallways and occasional dusty air. The work being done today to strengthen the building for tomorrow came with real headaches, and often tangible signs of progress were illusive.
As the session progressed, tensions grew, culminating in the longest walkout in Oregon history. The internal dynamics began to feel painfully similar to the construction around us. A lot of headaches with little sign of real progress. At my most cynical, it was easy to ask if it was all worth it.
A few weeks into the session my wife gave birth to our first child. Becoming a new parent is exhilarating and at times terrifying, but most of all rewarding. On the most cynical of days, I would drive home from work and hold my son, see him smile, and I’d be grounded in my new role. He is the reason I continue to do this work. Even on the hard days, I want to play a part in creating the best possible future for him.
Looking at the session holistically, we accomplished a lot of good for Oregonians. As we weathered partisan discord and a walkout, along with the pounding of concrete and construction, those working in the Capitol made real progress. Moving forward, I know that our Capitol is stronger for it, and Oregon is too.
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Legislative Aide Sarah Settimo
After working remotely for two years in my role, I was excited to work at the Capitol this session. I thought of the bills I’d work on, the constituents I’d help, and the friends I’d make. There’s no question that this session didn’t go as many of us expected, and what’s been mostly reported on are the ways in which it went wrong. But what struck me the most this session were the positive interactions I had with the people in the building. While I could write at length about the security guards, custodial staff, volunteer security, and lobbyists, the people I want to highlight are the staff. I had the opportunity this session to meet staff from both chambers and from both sides of the aisle. While many of us hold different political views and come from different parts of the state, we were all united in our desire to make Oregon a better place. Their stories of what brought them to the building echoed aspects of my journey.
As many may know, I grew up in Ashland and began working for Senator Golden and Senate District 3 in May of 2020. The opportunity to work for my hometown district has been incredibly special and fulfilling. I feel honored to have had the opportunity to support our community in this role.
- Do you know about Double Up Food Bucks? Double Up Food Bucks is a program that matches SNAP benefits, dollar for dollar, for the purchase of fresh fruits and vegetables. Double Up is also available at participating small grocers, farm stands, and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs. Check the map here for locations that participate in our district.
- Access provides over 30 food pantries across Jackson County. Click here to locate one near you.
- The Oregon State Fire Marshal's office is currently taking applications for the wildfire season staffing grant. Applications are open through May 19. Learn more here.
- You can find information about grants through the Oregon Department of Forestry here.
- Access hosts informative events throughout the year. You can see their upcoming events here.
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