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To contact me, please click here: Sen.MichaelDembrow@oregonlegislature.gov

July 25, 2024

Dear Neighbors and Friends,

I hope you and your loved ones are doing well and able to enjoy this lovely weather that we’re now experiencing at least for now here in the Metro area.  I wish that I could say the same for our neighbors in other parts of Oregon.  Far too many are experiencing dangerous wildfire conditions, which you can read about further down in this newsletter.  Please stay safe and keep those brave and hardworking firefighters in your thoughts.

Today’s newsletter has information about our next constituent coffee (August 3) and—drumroll please—our upcoming BIKE TOWN HALL (September 14)!!!  You’ll also find an appreciation for the life and service of President Peter Courtney, along with appreciation for President Biden and his decision to turn his presidential campaign over to the next generation (something that I can obviously identify with right now . . .).

You’ll also find news of the big $200 million grant that Oregon just received from the Environmental Protect Agency to ramp up our Climate Action. I’ll also provide information about the latest work related to school funding for K-12 student success. That will be followed by information about the next round of transportation hearings and about Oregon’s new Consumer Privacy Protection law that has just gone into effect.  Then finally a bunch of links to legislative-related articles and the latest on COVID.  Whew!

As always, please do reach out if you have any questions about anything in this newsletter.  And do take care.

Next Constituent Coffee Will be Virtual

Saturday, August 3, is the first Saturday in August, and that means time for another constituent coffee. 

This being an even-numbered month, it normally would be an in-person gathering with a zoom option, but this one will need to be all-virtual.  I’ll be out of town for two important meetings: the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators and the National Conference of State Legislatures. So, this one will be zoom and the September 7 constituent coffee (my last) will be in-person, with a zoom option..

As usual, the meeting will be 9-10:30 a.m. You can register for it here.

I look forward to elaborating on news covered in this newsletter and bringing you up to speed on the work groups and task forces (state and national) that I’m involved with.  And of course I look forward to hearing your priorities and concerns, as well as your thoughts about what I should be focusing on during my final months in office.

Hope to see you there!

Coming Soon: BIKE TOWN HALL in September

It’s time for the Fifteenth (my very last as a legislator) SD 23 Bike Town Hall. It will be Saturday, September 14, 12:30-4:00 p.m.

All three SD 23 legislators (Reps Khanh Pham, Thuy Tran, and me) will be there, and we’ll be joined by HD 46 Representative-elect Willy Chotzen for his first bike town hall. 

This year’s bike town hall will cover neighborhoods in HD 45, the northern half of SD 23.  As usual, we’ll be making a number stops to get a better sense of both the challenges and the successes occurring in those communities. We'll hear from community members, activists, officials, and experts. I’ll have more details in the next newsletter.

I’m proud that we’ve been able to arrange these bike town halls for 15 of the 16 years that I’ve been in office, both as HD 45 representative and SD 23 senator (we had to skip 2020 because of COVID).  It was the brainchild of one of my first staffers, Alex Berke, who saw it as a way for us to bring constituents together, take the traditional town hall outdoors, meet with community activists, and see first-hand what was going on in a chunk of the district.  Together with my SD 23 colleagues at the time, Senator Jackie Dingfelder and Rep Ben Cannon (HD 46), we tried it, and it worked!  And it has kept on working.

Hope you can join us for this one!

Saying Farewell to Peter Courtney

Last week I had the pleasure of doing some hiking with my daughter in the high country of the Cloud Peak Wilderness in Wyoming.  It was delightful.  But when I returned to cellular access, I received the shocking news that we had lost longtime Senate President Peter Courtney Tuesday morning. 

It is hard to imagine this world without Peter Courtney in it.  I’m sure you’ve read the many tributes to him, correctly portraying him as a larger-than-life figure, which he certainly was. He was a very complicated man: I always thought of him as an onion, layer upon layer of contradictory elements. But what surrounded  that complexity was a powerful, enduring love of the state and his responsibility to it. Despite his many illnesses over the years, and the physical pain that was ever-present in his later life, he insisted on carrying on and performing what he saw as his duty.

He had a very big heart, particularly when it came to children (though animals were a close second).  I first met and partnered with him when I was still in the House and he was Senate President. The issue was Tuition Equity, the effort to extend in-state university tuition to so-called DACA youth, those young people without documentation, who had been born in other countries, were brought to Oregon as children, and educated in Oregon schools. The 2011 tuition equity legislation (SB 742)  never had a problem in the Senate, with his leadership and strong sponsorship from two Republican senators (Frank Morse of Albany and Dave Nelson from Eastern Oregon), but it did in the House, where the Ds and Rs were tied 30-30. Despite Co-Chief Sponsorship from my Republican colleague Republican Bob Jenson from Pendleton, we still couldn’t get it over the finish line that year.

President Courtney committed to getting it through the Senate in 2013 if we could do so in the House first.  We did so with HB 2787, this time passing it in the House 33-23, and he was true to his word.  Peter carried the bill to passage in the Senate with a passionate speech about “Oregon kids, Oregon’s future,” delivered in his booming, unforgettable voice on the Senate floor.

Little did we know at the time that I would soon be joining him in the Senate when SD 23 became vacant.  See the pictures below, taken at my swearing-in ceremony in November 2013.   

Peter and I would go on to have a somewhat turbulent relationship, full of further partnerships (including Tuition Equity 2.0 and more) but also our share of disagreements.  I was looking forward to our being in retirement together, looking back and sorting it all out together. Sadly, such was not to be.  But I’m grateful that Peter retired when he did and was able to spend his final year and a half with his family, free finally of the burden of responsibility that he carried upon himself every minute of every day. 

Peter’s funeral mass will take place next Tuesday morning at Saint Mary Catholic Church in Mt. Angel (he was a devout Catholic).  A celebration of life is being planned for sometime in the future.

Oregon Democrats Endorse Kamala Harris

I’m sure you’ve been following the news around President Biden’s decision announced on Sunday not to seek reelection and to endorse Vice-President Kamala Harris as his replacement.  In a whirlwind of events, Democrats quickly coalesced around the Vice President as the candidate most likely to unify the party and defeat Donald Trump.

Oregon is no exception. 

On Tuesday Oregon Senate Democrats voted unanimously to endorse Harris. And on Wednesday Oregon’s elected delegates to the Democratic National Convention also voted unanimously to send their votes her way.

If you’re curious about the convention rules and how the substitution will play out, here’s an email that just came out from the convention secretary with the rules and the process.

I think we all know how difficult this decision was for the President.  It’s hard to let go and move on (don’t I know!).  But it’s so important to recognize when it’s time to turn things over to the next generation.  President Biden promised to be a bridge to the future, and he has certainly accomplished that.  But he also has achieved an enormous amount—just consider the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, the most powerful investments in Climate Action this country has ever undertaken. Not to mention the appointment of the supremely capable Ketanji Brown Jackson. Or the selection of the first woman (and woman of color) to serve as Vice President. We owe him an enormous amount.

Speaking of which, I just saw this column from the Washington Post’s Leona Wen, reminding us of the admirable way in which President Biden handled the COVID crisis during those difficult first months of his administration.  Worth a read.

Oregon Receives Nearly $200 Million for Climate Action!!!

As I mentioned above, one of the key accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration has been passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.  This program is sending billions of dollars to the states for much-needed, game-changing investments. Most of them are designed to reduce our dependence on the fossil fuels that are heating our planet and disrupting our weather, while advancing environmental justice for low-income frontline communities.

Key among them is the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant Program (CPRG), administered through the EPA.  These are competitive grants, generally going to fund projects that are most “shovel-ready.”  Oregon DEQ and the Oregon Department of Energy partnered jointly in requesting funding for Oregon projects. 

They felt they had a good shot at drawing down some funds, but in the end this award--$197,181,796--far exceeds what might have been expected for a state of our population.

The reason for this success can be traced back to Oregon’s long-standing efforts with climate-action programs, but more specifically to the 2023 session. Serving as Co-Chair of the Joint Ways and Means Subcommittee on Natural Resources (together with my impending replacement, Rep Khanh Pham), I can speak as an insider.  Despite the Republican walkout that disrupted that session, we were able to stay focused on working with the new Governor’s Environment/Natural Resources team to make sure that the agencies were coordinating their grant requests and that we were positioning Oregon to leverage federal dollars from the new IRA.  The result was our three big Climate, Energy, and Drought/Water packages. They created the programs and the appropriated the funds that ultimately helped us leverage this big investment from the Feds.

The funding will go to the following specific programs:

• Reduce GHG emissions from the transportation sector by installing charging infrastructure for both light- and heavy-duty vehicles and offering zero emission rebates for vehicles of all classes, such as through Oregon’s Medium-Heavy-Duty ZEV Rebate Program.
• Provide nearly 4,500 electric vehicle rebates to lower-income households. 
• Improve the efficiency of existing and new buildings including the construction of 10,000 affordable, high-efficiency rental housing units.  
• Expand weatherization assistance for nearly 3,000 homes prioritizing environmental justice communities and low-income households.  
• Install 12,000 heat pumps in homes and community buildings. 
• Invest in composting, food waste recovery infrastructure, and landfill methane controls at landfill sites. 

Here’s the announcement from the EPA.

Here are links to the the EPA’s summary  description of the Oregon appropriation and to all the appropriations currently being made under the CPRG.

And here is the detailed proposal from Oregon DEQ that led to this historic appropriation.

Here’s reporting from the Capital Chronicle's Alex Baumhart.

And here’s a story from KOIN.

More on School Funding: Current Service Level

In the last newsletter I described some of the ways that the Governor’s office and legislators are working to reform K-12 funding and spending. One of the areas of engagement has been fixing the way that the Current Service Level (CSL) for education programs (i.e., what it would cost to continue to operate the same programs with the same people is calculated) for the following biennium. I mentioned that the outcome of those discussions means a potential $515 million increase to the State School Fund.  However, it was too soon for me to share specifics with you.  Now I can.

Here are the details of the new CSL methodology from the Governor’s office.  This increase will presumably be reflected in the Governor’s recommended budget for the next session, which will be released early in December and become the starting point for legislative deliberations.

Last week the Governor’s Education Advisor, Pooja Bhatt, gave a detailed presentation to our Taskforce on Statewide Educator Salaries on CSL reform and the other ways in which we’re partnering on creating long-range improvements. You can watch it on the the Taskforce meeting website.

Here's Pooja’s PowerPoint presentation.

And here’s a slide from that presentation that lays out all the different processes underway to better define and fund student success here in Oregon:

Governor Kotek gave a press conference on the issue of funding/spending for student success last week, and it was picked up by various news sources.  Here’s the Capital Chronicle's reporting.

Here's OPB's.

And here’s reporting from the Oregon School Boards Association.

More on School Funding: the Quality Education Model

As part of last session’s Education Omnibus bill, SB 1552, the Legislative Policy and Research Office (LPRO) was directed to commission a study of Oregon's system of financing public K-12 education and the state's Quality Education Model, which is badly in need of revision.  This is an important step in answering long-standing questions and potentially resolving problems with our school funding/spending system in Oregon.

The bill authorized LPRO to contract with a public, private, or nonprofit research entity to conduct the study. The interim legislative committees on education are due a final report on the study's results by January 31, 2025.  The bill requires that the study include the following elements:

• Review of the state's current K-12 education funding formula and exploration of possible alternatives;
• Evaluation of the methods and processes used for the Quality Education Model;
• Identification of trends in student performance and funding levels in Oregon since the 2019-2020 school year;
• Establishment of a baseline for costs and inputs necessary to provide adequate education opportunities and
• Review of the costs and funding for special education considering alternative funding methods.

As I mentioned in the last newsletter, LPRO contracted with the American Institutes for Research (AIR) through a competitive procurement process.

The AIR team that will be doing this study has a great deal of expertise in this area, having evaluated and advised on school finance systems in at least 18 states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming.

This team has recently developed state-specific cost models for the Delaware Department of Education, the New Hampshire Legislative Commission to Study School Funding, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and the Vermont Agency of Education.

To get a sense of their work, here’s their Delaware report: "Assessment of Delaware Public School Funding.'

Sometime in the next week or two, I’ll be meeting with the AIR team to help map out their work, together with House Education Chair Courtney Neron and the two Ways and Means Education Subcommittee Co-Chairs (Senator Lew Frederick and Representative Ricki Ruiz).  I look forward to helping to get this work going in my final days in the Legislature. 

Oregon Is Burning Once Again

In the last newsletter I mentioned that we had experienced our first wildfire of the season in Oregon (the relatively small Darlene-3 fire near Prineville, now fully contained) and expressed my hope that this would be an easy year for wildfire.  Well, I’m afraid those hopes have already been dashed.  It’s already shaping up to be a bad year, with four “megafires” (more than 100K acres burning) already on the landscape. More acres are estimated to have burned already than all of 2023 combined. Oregon currently has as many fires burning as California, Washington, and Idaho combined.

Here are the four current megafires:

• In southeastern Oregon, near Burns, the 132,751-acre Falls fire is now 40% contained
• In Gilliam County, the Lone Rock fire has now grown to 131,407 acres and is 40% contained.
• The Cow Valley fire in Malheur County, which started on July 11, is now 133,490 acres. It is 78% contained.
• The adjacent Durkee fire has just merged with the Cow Valley fire. Combined, the two fires are burning more than 300,000 acres.

Nearly 3,500 Oregonians are currently under Level 3 (Go Now) Evacuation Orders. You can follow the state’s evacuation orders here.

Hotter, drier conditions are the primary reason for this intensity.  The actual cause of most of the fires so far, however, has been human activity, mainly fires getting out of control. Unfortunately, as the summer progresses, we inevitably are seeing more lightning strikes hitting the back country, and these are already resulting in fires.

The Governor provided a briefing for reporters on Friday.  Here’s reporting from OPB.

On Monday legislators received a briefing from Doug Grafe, the Governor’s Wildfire director; Kyle Williams, Deputy Director of the ODF Division of Fire Operations; and Mariana Ruiz-Temple, the State Fire Marshal.  They walked us through the megafires and the challenge of containing those while also having to do quick initial attack on new lightning-strike fires to keep them from spreading.  Just the night before there had been a dozen new ones.

Fortunately, coordination between ODF, OSFM, and local fire agencies have been excellent, and we’ve been the beneficiaries of firefighting teams from all over the country.  However, increasing numbers of fires elsewhere in the country will put a strain on those resources.

Although most of the new starts are now weather-related, a troubling number remain human-caused, the result of carelessness. Campfires are now prohibited in state and federal campgrounds. Grafe, Ruiz-Temple, and Williams concluded their briefing with the following plea—the firefighters are working incredibly hard to contain these fires, but they can’t do it alone.  All of us must step up and focus on prevention. 

With the planet warming as it is, and fire season extending farther and farther, we all need to change our habits. (And of course also step up, change our consumption habits, and do what we can to slow that warming.)

Later that day, legislators received this written summary brief from ODF and OFSM.

The fires in the Northwest were reported on in Monday's New York Times.

Here's the most recent reporting from OPB.

And one from a couple of days ago that includes reporting on the impact of smoke on road visibility in eastern Oregon.

You can follow the fire season here in Oregon in the ODF Wildfire Blog and the Oregon State Fire Marshal blog..  For news about Oregon AND the entire Pacific Northwest, check out the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center blog, All three are updated each day.  

Even when there is not a wildfire nearby, your region may be experiencing smoky conditions.  You can track those conditions at Oregon Smoke.  Here again is the link to that site. https://www.oregonsmoke.org/

I’ll provide a further update after the next briefing.

More Transportation Sessions Coming Up

Turnout for the Joint Transportation Committee’s listening sessions around the state has been very strong so far.  Oregonians definitely have strong opinions about what the Legislature should prioritize next year. For the most part, the focus so far has been on investments in maintenance and safety projects.

If you’d like to review them, you can do so at the Joint Committee website (both via the written testimony and the session recordings)..  Nine more sessions are coming up over the next two months, with the final one a virtual session coinciding with Legislative Days at the end of September.

Here are the remaining dates:

• Coos Bay - Wednesday, August 7
• Medford - Thursday, August 8
• Ontario - Wednesday, August 28
• Hermiston - Thursday August 29
• Bend - Thursday, September 12
• The Dalles - Friday, September 13
• Happy Valley - Thursday, September 26
• Hillsboro - Friday, September 27

Members of the Joint Committee on Transportation, along with other local legislators, will be there to take your testimony (in person and in writing) during those sessions. There will also be a virtual session during September Legislative Days (during the fourth week of September).

I don’t yet have the details on the Coos Bay and Medford locations, but I’ll try to include them in the next newsletter.  In any case, you’ll find details once they’re posted on the Joint Committee website.

New Privacy Protections for Oregon Consumers

As of July 1, Oregonians have a new and powerful set of consumer privacy rights and protections with the enactment of the Oregon Consumer Privacy Act (OCPA). The OCPA, created by SB 619 (2023), went into effect on July 1^st. 

SB 619 came at the request of Oregon Attorney-General Ellen Rosenblum and was a real priority for her. Here is a writeup from her office.

The OCPA defines personal and biometric data broadly, protects consumer data rights holistically, and holds companies that have access to our data to high standards. The Act also gives consumers control over how businesses use their personal data. It guarantees Oregonians affirmative rights to manage and safeguard their personal data.

While this new law may seem complicated, the Oregon Department of Justice is working hard to make it accessible and immediately helpful to all Oregon consumers. The OCPA website focuses on educational outreach for consumers and businesses,   For consumers, it contains tailored FAQs to cover the nuances of the law, a template form for consumers to use when requesting their privacy rights from businesses, educational handouts, and other materials. 

Under the OCPA, Oregonians gain important rights over their personal information. The OCPA imposes specific obligations on businesses, including nonprofits. Highlights of the bill include these consumer rights:

• Right to Know — Consumers can get a list of the specific entities that received their personal data.
• Right to Correction—Consumers can edit any inaccuracies in the data about them.
• Right to Deletion— Consumers can delete the data a business has about them.
• Right to Opt-Out—Consumers can say no to a business selling, profiling or otherwise using their data for targeted advertising.
• Right to Data Portability—Consumers can get a copy of the personal and sensitive data a business has about them.
• Sensitive Data Protections — The OCPA contains heightened protections for “sensitive data”, which is broadly defined and includes personal data revealing racial or ethnic background, national origin, religious beliefs, mental or physical condition or diagnosis, sexual orientation, status as transgender or nonbinary, crime victim status, or citizenship or immigration status; genetic or biometric data; and precise geolocation data.
• Special Protections for Youth — Children and youth are given heightened protections under the OCPA. Controllers (handlers of consumer data) must follow the requirements of the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) when processing data of children under 13 years old. Further, “opt in” consent is required for targeted advertising, profiling, or sale of the personal data of a youth 13 to 15 years old.

Consumers can expect clearer and more tailored privacy notices, and an easy way to contact businesses. The OCPA requires covered businesses to appropriately limit their collection of personal data, be transparent about how they use and secure that data and obtain consumer consent before collecting sensitive information.

Consumers are on the front line of the OCPA! The Oregon Department of Justice wants to hear from consumers, both about any possible violations of their consumer privacy rights, or to request additional educational materials, trainings for consumer groups, etc.  To file a complaint about a business not honoring privacy rights, consumers should visit our complaint form and provide us with detailed information about their experience.

I’m proud to have been a sponsor of this legislation.  Now that it’s in effect, I encourage you to use it and please let me know how it’s working out.

Additional Links of Interest, Including the Latest on COVID

• During the 2023 session the Legislature passed SB 3, which adds a semester course on Financial Literacy and a semester course on Future Planning to Oregon’s graduation requirements. The Oregon Department of Education recently completed a rulemaking process to create the standards for these new courses. It turned a bit rocky when school districts tried to get the standards relaxed so that these didn’t need to be actual courses--even though the Department made it clear that having actual courses is the best way to assure student learning.  Senate Education and Legislative Counsel pushed back because the legislative intent had clearly been for stand-alone courses and no objections to that had been raised during the drafting of the bill. The State Board ultimately aligned the rules to legislative intent. You can read more about it in this story from the Oregonian.
• In another rulemaking story, OPB reports on the new rules put forth by the Department of Agriculture to regulate Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) to implement  SB 85, the successful CAFO Modernization Act that we were able to pass in 2023. In this case the rules accurately and successfully reflect the intent of the legislation to regulate very large dairy, cattle, and dairy operations in order to protect Oregon’s diminishing groundwater supplies and to protect the interest of agricultural and residential neighbors.  
• I’ve been concerned for quite some time about the poor performance of for-profit colleges in creating success for veterans, whose tuition is paid via their G.I. Bill benefits. Two new reports on the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill show that veterans who use their benefits to enroll at private nonprofit institutions and public flagships tend to have higher college completion rates and salaries than those who enroll at for-profit institutions. Here’s reporting from Inside Higher Education. 
• In the last newsletter I discussed the important work being done by Oregon’s student loan ombudsperson to address misconduct by student loan servicers. Here’s more on the “rocky road to repayment” by OPB's Tiffany Camhi.
• Interested in the latest employment numbers for Oregon? Here they are. In a nutshell, our unemployment rate is at a low 4.1% (same as the U.S. average).
• One of the arguments provided by opponents of Measure 110 for the Legislature to overturn the voter-approved initiative was that M110 was subverting the important work of Oregon’s drug courts. This argument was instrumental in creating support for HB 4002, which is about to go into effect. A recent study from Portland State suggests that this was in fact not the case, and that M110 had little effect on the efficacy of our drug courts.. Here's reporting on the study.
• I'm proud to say that Oregon has long been a leader in providing access to healthcare to its residents through  vigorous use of federal Medicaid, through a combination of legislative action and creative agency proposals. Here's reporting from the Capital Chronicle on how far ahead we are.
• Have you or anyone you know recently picked up the latest version of COVID? If so, that’s not surprising.  Wastewater analyses show very high levels for the Northwest, including Oregon now. You can follow the levels here.  
• Here's reporting on the “COVID Summer Wave.”
• And from the Washington Post's Leona Wen..
• On the positive news front, an epidemiological study by the Department of Veteran Affairs shows that the incidence of Long COVID has declined over the years, a decline that is connected to the use of COVID vaccines.
• And here’s reporting on that same study reporting on that same study from the NY Times, again pointing out that rates of Long COVID are dramatically lower among the vaccinated. [You may need to be a subscriber to access this one.]

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