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Hi folks,

Well, we are wrapping up another long session and it has been a doozy. Many important Democratic priorities this year had their fates hinge on the conversations surrounding the transportation package. I can tell you the impacts of that have been felt in literally every policy realm from housing, to early childhood education, to health care, and more. The good news is that by the time you read this newsletter the final form of the package will likely be known and it will be nearing a vote on the floor of the House. If you would like to follow the progress you can look to HB 2025 in OLIS. I will also give a short update below.

Constituent Conversations

On a related note, I have scheduled my next few Constituent Conversation events. I host these around the district on a rotating basis. The first three of the interim will be in three different areas of HD 41: Milwaukie, the Woodstock neighborhood, and Oak Grove. See below for details. There is much to debrief and I am looking forward to answering your questions, hearing your thoughts, and discussing plans for the next legislative session. From the transportation package, to cap and invest, to homelessness prevention, there are many hot topics for us to delve into and I hope you will join me at one of these events.

Federal Chaos

Even if you don’t know me well you can surely guess my thoughts about everything going on at the national level. It is clear that our federal government is rapidly moving towards autocracy and that the Republican Party has been captured by fascists. In our state legislature it is still a common occurrence to find agreement across the aisle on important issues, and that needs to be celebrated. A core principle of democracy is that we are able to have respectful disagreements and still make decisions and abide by the will of the majority. In contrast, the national GOP has been clear in its aim to create a one-party state that obeys the whims of a wannabe dictator and not the People. The most immediate thing we can do to counteract this is to all turn out for the mass nonviolent protests that have been happening all across the country. The purpose of these is not to persuade the federal administration to change course, but to show our institutions, communities, and other powerful segments of our society that they have the popular backing to stand up to fascism. I have been out marching and protesting at every opportunity and it almost feels like going to church. The feelings of love and solidarity have been rejuvenating. I hope to (continue to) see many of you out there.

Transportation Package

Constitutional sine die is this coming weekend. That means the legislative session has to end whether or not we have completed everything we set out to do this year. I certainly see the transportation package as one of those things we absolutely have to do. The state gas tax is a declining revenue source that will continue funding less and less of our maintenance needs. This literally means that if we don’t change something, our bridges are going to start falling down and many more of our roads are going to deteriorate to such a poor state that merely driving on them will damage your vehicle. In that context, I am also mindful of the fact that Oregon spends less on its transportation system than every single other western state. I will repeat that because it is important: Idaho, Utah, and all other states in our region fund their transportation systems at (sometimes much) higher levels and our approach in Oregon is simply unsustainable.

A better system is possible. It is shaping up to look like we will be able to pass a transportation package this week that holds ODOT accountable to the taxpayers, kicks the can down the road on maintaining our roads and bridges, and preserves access to transit for those who don’t have a car. Over the weekend I participated in negotiations around this package and held the line on the things I know my district cares about. There was more compromise. It is getting even further away from the SMART Package that Senator Khanh Pham and I have been championing. But a functional transportation system is a core service of government and Oregonians are counting on us to be responsible adults and get this done.

Legislative Update

The final status of most of this year's bills is now clear. Below are highlights on some of the legislation I introduced and championed.

Passed

• Transmission: Two of the three bills in my transmission package passed. HB 3681 reforms the permitting process for transmission lines and should shave years off of each project. HB 3336 encourages implementation of grid enhancing technologies, which allow us to transmit more energy, more efficiently, and on currently existing lines. 
• HB 3569: This bill requires that when an agency stands up a rulemaking advisory committee (RAC) to implement a new law passed by the legislature, they must invite the chief sponsor of the legislation to participate. These RACs are often stacked with highly paid lawyers and lobbyists who work to alter the law. My bill addresses that by ensuring there can always be someone in the room to speak to the actual legislative intent.
• HB 2964: This bill will enable construction of more affordable housing. It opens up the eligibility and makes modifications to the state housing agency's predevelopment loan program to help faith communities and nonprofits get past the very initial barriers to construction.

Pictured: My floor carry on HB 3336, one of my transmission bills we successfully passed into law this year.

Ways and Means 

I successfully got these bills out of their policy committees but they did not get funded and pass out of Ways and Means.

• HB 2968: This bill would lower the cost to build housing by enabling cities to defer system development charges paid by developers, thereby enabling them to be financed later in the construction process and at much lower interest rates. I will be trying again in a future session.
• HB 2966: This bill would launch a task force aimed at revolutionizing certain aspects of state financing and very well could result in creation of a state public bank. This would allow us to start taking back all the dollars Wall Street banks extract from us in interest and fees to pad their profit margins. I will be bringing this back.
• HB 3609: This bill created a program for “virtual power plants”, or a means to utilize customer-bought resources, such as rooftop solar, battery storage, smart thermostats and electric vehicles to name a few, and aggregate them into a “power plant” which a utility can control and deploy. In practice, with customer coordination, this may look like a utility bumping one person’s smart thermostat down a degree during a peak load time, while deploying another customer's stored energy from their battery during the same peak load. I will be bringing this bill back, too.

Unfinished Business

There are more bills on this list than I will cover but here are some highlights.

• Transmission Authority: HB 3628 stands up an Oregon Transmission Authority to help expedite the modernization of electrical transmission. Bonneville has dropped the ball and we will start seeing rolling blackouts in the near future unless we build new lines to get power from where it's produced to where it's needed. This will likely be one of the two bills I run in the 2026 short session and I expect to have the active support of the Governor's office behind it.
• Kicker Accuracy: HB 3659 directs the state economist to give us more accurate revenue forecast numbers. It will not alter Oregon's kicker law but it will make our revenues and budgeting process more stable and predictable. We also devised a way to enable the state to pay down PERS costs to save school districts and cities millions of dollars. This is likely to be the other of my two bills in the 2026 short session.
• Houseable Wage: HB 2962 is a solution for the unhoused crisis. It ties Oregon's minimum wage to the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in a given region. For decades, working-class wages have stagnated and the cost of living has accelerated. This is literally why more than 7,200 renter households in Oregon are being evicted every month and why a growing number of people are being relegated to survival in tents on our streets. I am hearing rumblings of a ballot initiative if the legislature does not get its act together on this soon. I will continue working on this.
• OCERA: SJR 28 would amend the state constitution to grant Oregonians the right to a clean and healthy environment. This has been done successfully in other states and will allow the court system to be used as more of a remedy to protect the health of our people. Corporate polluters hold most of the cards when it comes to making the societal changes required to save our planet. This is one more small tool we could use to push back.

Sine die is nigh. We have just a short time left until the session must end. As an advocate humorously put it to me the other day, "we can survive anything for a week." In the meantime, I will stay focused on finishing strong with a transportation package that is not completely watered down and I will look forward to seeing many of you in the interim at my Constituent Conversation events.

Thanks for reading. If you have thoughts or questions, please send them directly to my office as we do not receive responses to this newsletter address. You can reach me at Rep.MarkGamba@oregonlegislature.gov.

All my best,

Mark Gamba

Capitol Phone: 503-986-1441
Capitol Address: 900 Court St. NE, H-477, Salem, Oregon 97301
Email: Rep.MarkGamba@oregonlegislature.gov
Website: https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/gamba​