A8
OREGON
East Oregonian
Thursday, April 15, 2021
Legislature lurches into second half of 2021 session
By GARY A. WARNER
Oregon Capital Bureau
SALEM — Disease,
dysfunction, and deadlines
are challenging the Oregon
Legislature as it starts the
second half of the 2021
session.
Friday, April 9, was the
80th day of the 160 days the
Oregon Constitution allows
lawmakers to meet this year.
The session has been marked
so far by shutdowns and slow-
downs.
Senate Republica ns
walked out for the third
session in a row, for a day
to protest the lock Demo-
crats have on the legislative
agenda.
But some GOP senators
would receive death threats
from gun control opponents
for not walking out on a bill
to bar concealed weapons in
state buildings.
One email had a subject
line “SELLOUT” and a chill-
ing one-line message: “You
should be shot.”
The Oregon State Police is
investigating the threats.
All the turmoil has played
out against the rollercoaster
ride of falling, then rising
COVID-19 numbers.
As of Monday, April 12,
the House has passed 115
bills since gaveling to order
on Jan. 19. It currently has a
backup of 122 bills scheduled
for a final vote.
“The tension has started
earlier,” House Speaker Tina
Kotek said last week. “I think
it is really hard to tell what is
happening.”
Committees in both
chambers are scurrying to
slide under the deadline to
have legislation approved by
committees and sent to the
floor of the originating cham-
ber (House or Senate). Other-
wise, the mass majority die.
“A number of those bills
at the end of the day will not
be ready for deadline,” Kotek
said. “Things are pretty
fluid.”
What survives will still
have a daunting road to the
governor’s desk due to a basic
partisan split on the direction
of the session.
Democrats hold a 37-23
supermajority in the House
and an 18-11 supermajority
in the Senate, with a former
GOP senator declaring
himself an independent, but
voting most of the time with
his old party.
Both parties agree the
COVID-19 pandemic and
2020 wildfires, along with the
EO Media Group, File
Friday, April 9, 2021, was the 80th day of the 160 days the Oregon constitution allows lawmakers to meet this year. The ses-
sion has been marked so far by shutdowns and slowdowns.
state budget, are at the top of
the agenda.
Republicans say that’s
enough for the narrowly
focused session they want.
“The House is running a
crushing number of commit-
tees and pushing contro-
versial legislation,” House
Republican Leader Christin
Drazan, R-Canby, said early
in the session.
Democrats say they have
large majorities because
voters want more: affordable
housing, health care, envi-
ronmental safeguards, police
reform, social equity, gun
control and more.
“Votes matter,” Kotek has
said of Republican opposi-
tion.
Whatever the outcome,
the Legislature has 75 days
as of Wednesday, April 14
— weekends included — left
on its calendar. After June
28, lawmakers are required
to adjourn, no matter what.
Then go home and enjoy
summer.
But be ready to come back
in the autumn.
That caveat arose on April
9 when the Oregon Supreme
Court ruled the Legislature
would draw the increasingly
overdue legislative district
maps to be used for the 2022
election. COVID-19 is delay-
ing U.S. Census data used for
the once-a-decade redistrict-
ing by up to six months.
The court said the Legisla-
ture could return in a special
Unemployment
drops to 6%, state
adds 20,000 jobs
By MIKE ROGOWAY
The Oregonian
SALEM — Oregon’s
jobless rate dropped slightly
in March, according to new
data released on Tuesday,
April 13, from the Oregon
Employment Department,
falling one-tenth of a percent-
age point to 6%.
Oregon added 20,000
jobs last month. Most of the
gains were in the leisure and
hospitality sector as bars and
restaurants steadily reopened
after a broad wintertime
shutdown that accompanied
a spike in COVID-19 cases.
The state has now
regained 54% of the jobs
lost in the early days of the
pandemic, 153,100 alto-
gether. Oregon’s jobless rate
is less than half its peak 11
months ago, 13.2%, but it’s
still well above the historic
lows around 3.5% in the
months before the pandemic
hit.
Oregon’s unemployment
rate in March matched the
national figure. But the state’s
unemployment rate has
barely budged since Decem-
ber 2020.
And more than 9,000
Oregonians filed new jobless
claims in each of the past
two weeks, the fastest pace
of new filings since January.
Permanent layoffs make
up a rising share of all job
cuts, indicating that Orego-
nians losing their jobs now
don’t expect their employ-
ers will ever call them back
to work. That could slow
the pace of recovery in the
months ahead.
Meanwhile, many work-
ers have exhausted their
eligibility under prior jobless
programs after a year of
unemployment. That doesn’t
necessarily mean the end
of benefits payments, but it
does require that unemployed
workers make a complicated
shift to extend their aid.
That’s produced a flood
of phone calls to the employ-
ment department, more than
at any point since the early
days of Oregon’s “stay home”
order a year ago. The depart-
ment’s phone lines remain
jammed, as they have been
for most of the past year, and
the agency says it expects to
take until the end of the year
to unclog the lines.
So for now, the depart-
ment recommends people
with questions about their
claims use its online Contact
Us form to make inquiries
about their benefits.
The form spares laid-
off workers the anxiety and
frustration of trying to get
through the department’s
exasperating phone system,
but 80% of inquiries submit-
ted online take more than a
week to resolve.
Courtney
Drazan
session later this year to do
the mapmaking. No dates
are set, yet. But the window
to draw maps that would be
used until 2032 will be weeks
instead of months. It will
limit the chance for public
comment and may force
lawmakers to use possibly
iffy data that could attract
lawsuits.
For now, that is a future
Girod
Kotek
fight. There’s an overflowing
plate of problems right now.
Democrats have enough
votes to pass any legislation
without Republican votes.
While unable to defeat
bills, Republicans can slow
or stall all lawmaking.
Senate Republicans held a
one-day walkout early in the
session to remind Democrats
that they ignored GOP input
at their peril. Republicans
in both chambers departed
Salem in 2020, killing the
session with hundreds of bills
awaiting action.
Drazan has opted instead
to use parliamentary rules to
require bills be read out loud
in their entirety. The glacial
process reached its bizarre
apex when a computer
program with a metallic
female monotone voice read a
170-page bill. It took two days
to finally vote on mostly tech-
nical revisions to the newly
designated Oregon Liquor
and Cannabis Commission.
Kotek has countered
Drazan’s slo-mo move by
doubling the weekly floor
sessions to include evenings
and Saturdays.
Starting on Thursday,
April 15, Kotek is having
three sessions per day.
The partisan jockeying
goes on amid a pandemic
that has sickened 170,850 and
killed 2,441 in Oregon, as of
April 12.
The Oregon Capitol has
been closed since March 2020
due to the COVID-19 crisis.
The Oregon Health Authority
has reported the Salem ZIP
code that includes the Capitol
has most often recorded the
highest number of new infec-
tions per week throughout the
crisis. Committee meetings
can be held virtually, but final
votes on bills have to be done
on the floor of the two cham-
bers in the Capitol.
Republicans have called
for reopening the Capitol,
citing Democrats’ lengthy
agenda and now extended
floor debates as evidence
that the infection danger is
either over-hyped or Kotek
in particular is putting poli-
tics before lawmakers’ health.
Democrats have countered
that it is Republicans who are
causing undue exposure to
infection by insisting on so
much dead time in the build-
ing while bills are read.
The House has twice shut
down for short periods amid
reports of a positive test, but
has not reported the person
infected as a House member.
Gov. Kate Brown stepped
in to order a special vaccina-
tion clinic on April 7 for any
as-yet unvaccinated lawmak-
ers, who qualified as “essen-
tial workers” as of March 31.
They received the one-shot
Johnson & Johnson vaccine,
the same one Brown was
vaccinated with last month.