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February 7, 2024
Dear Neighbors and Friends,
I hope that you and your loved ones are doing well, staying healthy, and seeing February off to a good start.
Speaking of good starts, I think I can safely say, with fingers tightly crossed, that the 2024 session of the Oregon Legislature is indeed off to a good start. Following last week’s decision by the Oregon Supreme Court, clarifying that ten of my Senate Republican colleagues will not be able to run again (either this year or in 2026), speculations abounded that we would not have a full complement of legislators on opening day. In fact, everyone was there, and spirits were high. We were graced by two marvelous, moving poems by Oregon’s former poet laureate, Kim Stafford, and a performance of “Hallelujah” by the PSU choir that brought tears (of emotion and of hope) to many eyes. It was a truly uplifting way to open the session. And so far the work has proceeded without a hitch.
This is, of course, my final legislative session, something that I seem to be thinking about all the time—either on my own or because people keep reminding me again and again!
One of the key moments of the session occurred this morning, with the release of the March Revenue Forecast. As you can imagine, brains are hard at work parsing the implications for our ability to add necessary funding for much-needed programs. You can read my initial take on the report and links to helpful resources in tonight’s newsletter.
You’ll also find links to all the bills that have been introduced and information about how to follow their trajectory throughout the process. You’ll learn about the bills that have been identified for priority by the Environmental Caucus. And (how can I resist?) info about Week 2 of the Cascade Festival of African Films.
Before the week is over, half of all the bills that will have received their initial public hearings, but many questions will remain. In this weekend’s newsletter I’ll provide you a more comprehensive lookback at the first full week of the session, including deeper dives on some of the key, controversial issues out there this session: housing/land use; addictions treatment; and education.
And who knows what else we’ll know by then?
Stay tuned. Please do let me know if you have any questions about anything in this newsletter.
Joint Town Hall Debrief
Reps Pham, Tran, and I had a great pre-session town hall last Thursday. We had a large turnout to hear us go over our priorities and predictions for the upcoming session, and to hear participant questions, a combination of those submitted upon registration and those submitted via chat during the town hall. They give you a sense of what is dominating the concerns of our participants.
To share these concerns, here’s a summary document of the questions that came to us, along with the slides that we shared with constituents during the town hall. We shared this document with participants after the town hall ended. Let us know if you have any questions about any of them.
You Can Now Find All the Introduced Bills
Now that the session has begun, all the films (except for rare additions) are now available to be perused on the legislative website. They were introduced during the organizational meetings of the House and Senate Monday morning. Here they are:
Remember that these are the INTRODUCED forms of the bills. Most of them have already had amendments drafted that create changes—in some cases extremely substantial changes—to the introduced bill. You’ll want to stay up to date on the most recent changes. See the next item to learn about an easy way to do that.
Are There Any Particular Bills or Committees that Interest You?
If there’s a bill that is of particular interest to you, you’ll want to go to the webpage for the bill in OLIS and E-subscribe. You’ll then receive “bill alerts,” with any hearing dates or other information related to the bill. You can also go to the committee page for any committee you want to follow and sign up for notifications there.
You can also go to the individual committee pages and click on "Assigned Measures." That will show you the bills that have been assigned to this committee. By clicking on the bill, you can e-subscribe to receive notifications on its scheduled hearings, amendments, or other updates to it.
For more information about E-subscribe, here’s a useful informational page provided by LPRO, our Legislative Policy and Research Office.
Even easier, here’s a sign-up page that allows you to subscribe to a variety of services (including press releases, member newsletters, committee agendas, etc.) all at once. It will also allow you to see all your current subscriptions and let you make changes.
And of course, if you need any help with any of this, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
Just How Much Is Available to Spend This Session?
Now that’s an interesting question. Last week legislators received a rundown from the Co-Chairs of the Joint Committee on Ways and Means (Elizabeth Steiner in the Senate and Tawna Sanchez in the House). The good news is that we come into the session with around $1.1 billion dollars to spend, due to a combination of dollars we deliberately left unspent at the end of the last session and increases in the revenue forecast between then and December. The bad news is that nearly all of it is already accounted for (i.e., already targeted to certain programs this session), and there are probably more than $2 billion in member requests for new programs out there. We can thus predict that very few of those requests will be satisfied.
So where are all those additional dollars going? Some were already committed at the end of the last session, put into “SPAs” (Special Purpose Appropriations) to be awarded this year via the Emergency Board or during the short session. Others are increases in the compensation for state workers that were negotiated via collective bargaining during the summer. Others were dollars for certain programs that we knew would be coming but didn’t have the exact figures at the end of the last session.
Here's a table that we received last week that summarizes us those agency requirements:
We also knew that we would need to put a lot more money into housing and more money into behavioral health and addictions treatment, likely somewhere around $500 million. And we needed to maintain some level of ending fund balance so that we wouldn't have to start the next biennium with nothing. At the end of the day, as of last week, that left around $100 million for new agency requests and new legislation. Here’s a table that gives the overall budget framework:
 It's a real challenge—though not an unusual one for a mid-biennium short session, where it’s unusual to undertake very much in the way of new appropriations. Our one hope was that we would see another big jump in projected revenues in the new revenue forecast scheduled for release on February 7th—i.e., this morning. As you’ll see below, the forecast did show some additional available dollars—but not many.
Today’s Revenue Forecast: Strong Economy, Stable Revenues
The good news that we received today was that Oregon’s economy is continuing to perform very well, both in historical terms and relative to the rest of the country. Individual and corporate incomes continue to rise, and we seem on track, as a state and as a nation, to be on track to the desired “soft landing” from the pandemic and its resulting inflation. The possibility of a recession is now completely off the table. That’s a relief.
For those of us who have experienced multiple forecasts that showed revenue declines and forced us to make budget cuts that hurt many Oregonians, it’s a relief to know that we should be able to balance our budgets and provide much-needed financial support to address our housing/homeless and addictions crises right away. (Always assuming, of course, that we can get through the session walkout-free.)
However, the team at the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis (OEA), which produces the forecast along with national economic advisors, also does not foresee any big jumps in revenues in the coming years. The last three forecasts suggest that we are in a period of stability for our personal income tax revenues. We’re continuing to see increases, but not by too much. This forecast is technically $560 million more than the December forecast; however, most of that is those unspent revenues from last session that carried over and were already targeted for particular programs.
The budget people are still analyzing the results. At the end of the day, the net result will likely be an additional $100 million or so on top of what we were expecting for additional programs..
One of the other results of this relatively stable forecast is that at this point the economists are not predicting an individual kicker for this biennium.
Corporate revenues, on the other hand, are continuing to outperform expectations, and the corporate kicker is projected to kick. It is currently projected to kick to the tune of more than $500 million by the end of 2024, and that number may well grow. The good news is that those dollars all go to support K-12 education next biennium. Our school districts will definitely benefit from this added support.
I’ll provide a few more interesting details about the economic forecast, including the workforce challenges that we will continue to face, in the next newsletter this weekend. In the meantime, here are some resources for you:
Priority Bills for the Enviro Caucus
I’m pleased to report that the Legislature’s Joint Environmental Caucus is continuing to get organized and set up for the long run. It’s a group of legislators from both Senate and House, committed to pursuing legislation and budget investments, who believe that government has a critical role to play in building our communities’ resilience to the impacts of climate change, while also preventing further environmental decline through consideration of our working lands, energy and transportation systems, and land use. Members also believe that these actions can be taken in a way that brings economic advantages to all parts of the state and benefits to all Oregonians.
It consists of most of the relevant committee chairs from both chambers, as well as other members committed to this work. It’s a growing list. I’m currently serving as the caucus co-chair for the Senate.
For more information, here’s the caucus website.
The caucus has just released its list of priority bills for the session, as well as other related bills that we support. Here’s the press release for the list. on the Enviro Caucus priority policy bills for the 2024 session. And here’s a one-pager on the bills.
We’ll soon be releasing our list of budget priorities for the session.
Please let me know if you’d like more info about the caucus and its important work.
Time for Week 2: Cascade Festival of African Films!!!
I can’t say enough about how stunning last weekend’s CFAF films were, and the after-film Q&As and discussions were extremely insightful. I’m grateful that I was able to carve out the time to attend the evening films and am hoping to keep that going this weekend.
Because the Week 2 films seem very promising. As you’ll see at africanfilmfestival.org, this week’s films (Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) come from Mali, Nigeria, Kenya/Zanzibar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Cameroon. As always, the films are free of charge. This week’s films will be shown either at PCC-Cascade, PCC-Sylvania, or at the Tomorrow Theater..
The director of Sunday night's film, Mambar Pierrette--Rosine Mbakam, from Cameroon--will be at the Tomorrow Theater to present and lead a discussion of her film.
Check out the schedule at africanfilmfestival.org for more details.
Please let me know if you have any questions or need more info.
Best wishes,
 Senator Michael Dembrow
District 23
email: Sen.MichaelDembrow@oregonlegislature.gov
web: www.senatordembrow.com
mail: 900 Court St NE, S-407, Salem, OR, 97301
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