|
Friends and Neighbors,
It’s the end of March, and that means that this
legislative session is about 40% completed.
Things have slowed down a little after the frenetic opening weeks that
saw our change of governors and the passage of a number of high-profile bills
that were passed mainly on party-line votes.
These were bills that have been in the queue since 2013 or 2014, such as
those related to Clean Fuels, automatic voter registration, and class-action
lawsuit proceeds. I had voted for all of
them previously, and I was pleased to see them go through.
We’ve already seen dozens of bills come to the floors of
the House and the Senate, and nearly all of them have passed in a bipartisan
manner (most of them strongly bipartisan).
Many of these are technical and routine (e.g., fixing problems that have
surfaced in previously-passed bills, updating standards and modernizing
language in statutes), but many others are substantive and reflect real
compromises on both sides. Examples of
this kind of bill would be the hospital assessment fee (HB 2395), which brings
2-1 federal matching Medicaid funds to Oregon and the “central assessment” bill (SB 611), which makes it
easier for data centers to locate in Oregon. (I voted against this bill when it
first hit the Senate floor, then voted for it when it came back with amendments
from the House that improved it.)
But there are still many good, important, and yes,
controversial bills out there. I’ll talk
about a few of them in this newsletter.
I’ll have good news to tell on some, frustrating news on others, and
difficult choices to be made on at least one.
In any case, this is all just the tip of the iceberg when
it comes to what’s really going on in Salem these days. Hope I can see you at our town hall this
evening and/or at the constituent coffee this weekend, so I can tell you more
and answer your questions.
Town Hall Tonight & Coffee on Saturday
I hope to see you tonight at 7pm at the Hollywood Senior Center (1820 NE 40th Ave.) for a legislative update Town Hall. I'm co-hosting with Reps. Alissa Keny-Guyer and Barbara Smith Warner, so it's a chance to hear from each of us and to give your feedback.
Saturday morning, I'll be holding my monthly constituent coffee at 9am, also at the Senior Center. Stop by for a cup of coffee and some conversation!
An Early Vote on
the K-12 Budget
It looks as if the first of the state’s big budgets will
come to the floors of the House and the Senate this week. HB 5017, the $7.255 billion K-12 school fund,
is coming to the House floor this morning, and if it passes there, it should
come to the Senate floor on Thursday.
I’ve received many emails from constituents asking me to
vote against the proposed budget to signal my desire to see a higher
amount. However, I’ve decided that if it
makes it to the Senate, I’ll vote yes in order to lock in this amount, while
continuing to work to make it higher before the session adjourns.
According to our legislative revenue and fiscal offices,
this amount will allow nearly all districts to maintain their current services
for the next biennium. That should mean
no cuts for most districts next year, which is great, but it doesn’t make much
progress on reducing class size, adding school days, and restoring
electives. For that, we’ll need more
revenue. Section 8 of HB 5017 dedicates
40% of any new revenues that are projected to come to the State as a result of
the May 2015 revenue forecast to education.
However, we may still find ourselves unable to keep any of
those new revenues because the kicker will have kicked. If that happens, then the only way we’ll be
able to get additional money to K-12 is by voting to hold back or modify the
kicker. To do so requires a 2/3 vote of
both chambers—ie., some Republicans will have to join Democrats to do
this. Right now, this seems unlikely,
but remains a crucial goal.
On the positive side, this
budget does do a lot. It builds upon the
historic $1 billion increase in K-12 funding that we were able to do in 2013-15
with a further $600 million. It fully
funds full-day kindergarten all over Oregon, fulfilling a promise made back in
2011. It is a sizeable increase over the
Governor’s recommended budget and $5 million more than the Ways and Means
Co-Chairs’ original budget. On top of
the $7.255 billion allocation, the Legislature is also investing $12.5 million
in improvements to English as a Second Language Learning, $2.5 million to
ensure that every student who qualifies for reduced price lunches qualifies for
free lunches, and adds $17 million to the High-Cost Disabilities Account. We’ll also be seeing greater investments
later in the session in Career/Technical Education and in Pre-K.
 |
This level of K-12 funding will also allow us to put a little more money into community colleges, universities, and college student aid, all of which are still below pre-recessionary levels.
In sum, I wish I could be voting for a higher amount at this point. Given our revenues at this point, I just don’t see a way to do that without causing further damage to higher education and to badly-needed services for low-income children and families and people with disabilities.
I’m sure we’ll be discussing these challenges further at the Town Hall and at the Constituent Coffee. I look forward to your thoughts.
A New Form of
Access for Tuition-Equity Students
One of my proudest moments of the 2013 session was the
passage of HB 2787, which allowed undocumented children who’d grown up in
Oregon and graduated from an Oregon high school to attend public universities
at an in-state tuition rate. This was a
real step forward, coinciding with initiatives at the federal level that
provided them with a temporary legal status and the ability to work
legally.
Still, barriers remain for these students. Some artificial and unnecessary timelines in
HB 2787 made it difficult for some students to achieve tuition-equity
status. Moreover, while paying in-state
tuition definitely helped, their inability to access federal or state financial
aid continued to hold them back. Other
states—Texas, California, Washington, Minnesota, and Massachusetts—have allowed
their tuition-equity students to access their state need-based aid programs. I’ve been hearing from students, from high
school and college counselors, teachers, and advisors from all over the state,
that we need to take this next step.
The result is SB 932, the Access to Opportunity Act, which
fixes the timeline problems and extends access to the Oregon Opportunity
Grant. It had a great public hearing in
the Senate Education Committee last week, with more than a hundred students and
their teachers in attendance. I was honored to lead off the hearing with my House colleague Jessica Vega Pederson. The
testimony was again heartfelt, inspiring, emotional, and consistently in
support of these changes. No one spoke
against the bill.
SB 932 is scheduled for a committee vote on this week. I expect that it will be voted out with
committee approval and sent to the Ways and Means Committee for action on its
budget impact. I’ll let you know how it
goes.
Paid Sick Leave
Voted Out of Committee
One of my primary responsibilities as Chair of the new
Senate Workforce Committee has been to find a path to extend sick-leave time
off—which is the norm for some Oregonians but an unattainable dream for many
others—to all Oregonians. Right now,
four out of five low-wage Oregonians don’t have access to a single day of sick
leave to care for themselves or their children.
This needs to change.
I’m happy to report that after many, many, many hours of
meetings and negotiations with a number of people, SB 454 is ready to meet this
need and move Oregon to a standard that is the norm in most other
countries. After 22 amendments (!), I
think we’ve gotten it right. You can
find a summary of the bill here.
SB 454 was voted out of committee last Wednesday and is
now in Ways and Means. I’m hoping to see
it hit the Senate floor sometime soon and will let you know when it does. This is very, very exciting.
Aerial Pesticide Struggle Continues
I’ve written before about SB 613, the bill that would improve the way we handle aerial
pesticide spraying of our forest lands.
It would provide neighbors with real-time notification when spraying is
about to happen, would create science-based, reasonable buffers between sprayed
areas and homes, schools, and streams that provide drinking water and
fish-bearing habitat. I started work on
this issue while I was chairing the Senate Environment/Natural Resources
Committee and was presented with the after-effects of a terrible instance of
pesticide misapplication down in Curry County.
I partnered with Representative Ann Lininger in producing
this bill, which has gained support from a number of environmental and public
health groups and has been featured in various newspapers. This past weekend’s Eugene Register-Guard included a fine op-ed in
support of SB 613 from a
former deputy chief of the U.S. Forest Service.
Despite this
support, the bill is facing a real uphill battle. Not surprisingly, it’s facing strong
opposition from the timber industry, pesticides industry, and farm bureau. Now that I’m no longer chairing the
Environment Committee, I’m not in a position to determine the bill’s trajectory. There are a number of alternative bills out
there, some supported by industry, others proposed by other legislators. At this point, a group of legislators,
advocates, and industry people are meeting in a work group to see if there’s a
path forward for any legislation on aerial spraying this session. Right now, it’s very frustrating, a real
challenge. We’ll see where it goes.
See you in the district,
 Senator Michael Dembrow
District 23
email: Sen.MichaelDembrow@state.or.us
web: www.senatordembrow.com
phone: 503-281-0608
mail: 900 Court St NE, S-407, Salem, OR, 97301
| 
