A4 The BulleTin • Monday, June 28, 2021
Legislature
Continued from A1
“I feel like the focus that we
had on COVID, wildfire re-
covery, racial justice — that
was there for three months,”
said state Rep. Brian Clem,
D-Salem, one of the lon-
gest-tenured members of the
House. “As society opened up,
so did did the political spec-
trum.”
Though tensions flared at
times, lawmakers avoided
the serious breakdowns of
2019 and 2020, when Repub-
licans effectively shut down
the Legislature to block a cli-
mate change bill. Democrats
were inclined to describe the
session as a big success, while
Republicans complained
throughout that the major-
ity party was pushing bills
through without enough vet-
ting and without enough input
by the general public.
“We left in February and it
was hard, we were very bro-
ken,” Kotek said Saturday, ref-
erencing the chaotic end of
the 2020 session. “Then the
pandemic hit, and none of us
stopped working... I feel like
we’ve done everything we can
in this moment with the ca-
pacity we have to serve com-
munities that needed us.”
A focus on police reform
and equity
ollowing more than 100
days of protests in re-
sponse to the murder
of George Floyd last summer,
lawmakers like Rep. Janelle
Bynum, D-Happy Valley, and
other members of the BIPOC
caucus — Black, Indigenous
and people of color — were
vocal coming into the session
about their commitment to
advancing reforms around po-
licing and accountability. The
work followed up on six new
laws passed last June aimed
at changing the way police do
their jobs.
Out of more than a dozen
bills considered this session,
one of the biggest efforts to
come out of that policing
package was HB 2929, requir-
ing officers to report miscon-
duct or intervene to stop it.
Another bill, HB 2513, now
requires officers to be trained
in airway and circulatory anat-
omy and to be certified in car-
diopulmonary resuscitation.
Still another will set up a state-
wide background check pro-
cess that flags racist behavior
and requires agencies to report
evidence they find in their
search of a candidate’s history
and social media presence.
Other bills look at how po-
lice handle protests like those
that played out for months in
Portland last year. One mod-
ified a state law defining un-
lawful assemblies. Another
altered the offense of interfer-
ing with a peace officer, which
critics have argued was used
to improperly arrest protest-
ers. The change allows officers
to use the statute only when
someone actively interferes
with their ability to do their
job.
Work around police ac-
countability did not taper off
in the later days of the ses-
sion. Just last week, lawmak-
ers approved bills to curb law
enforcement’s use of pepper
spray, projectiles and sound
cannons in dispersing crowds.
They also directed Oregon po-
lice agencies to participate in
nationwide data collection on
the use of force and solidified
the authority of citizen over-
sight boards to review cases of
misconduct and participate in
arbitration proceedings.
In the same vein, social
equity and racial justice also
took center stage this session.
Juneteenth, celebrated to com-
memorate the day in 1865 that
slaves in Texas learned they
were free, is now an official
state holiday. And the Legis-
lature passed resolutions urg-
ing Congress to take a look at
reparations and changing lan-
guage in the 13th Amendment
that allows slavery as punish-
ment for a crime.
People convicted of bias
crimes on state recreation land
can now be barred from re-en-
try to state parks and waters
for up to five years, an attempt
to preserve safety and access
for people of color in Oregon
seeking to enjoy the state’s nat-
ural beauty and recreation op-
portunities.
The CROWN Act, a bill
banning discrimination based
on hairstyles, also represented
a win for some lawmakers.
F
The Oregonian file
“The Oregon Pioneer,” the gold-leaf covered, 23-foot tall statue
atop the Capitol dome, symbolically faces West. The Oregon State
Capitol, the third such building housing state government, was built
in 1938.
Stemming a worsening
crisis
ousing and homeless-
ness also got consid-
erable attention this
session. Bills extending the
eviction and mortgage fore-
closure moratoriums enacted
early on in the pandemic and
again last fall were crucial
safety nets that kept thousands
of Oregonians from losing
their homes as the pandemic
dragged on.
A fix to prevent a mass evic-
tion event in July also came at
the eleventh hour, providing
a 60-day pause for those who
could prove they’ve applied for
rental assistance. That same
fix also ensured landlords can
receive 100% of rent they’ve
had to forego during the pan-
demic.
In wrestling with the state’s
growing homelessness crisis,
lawmakers concentrated on a
pair of bills that curb camp-
ing regulations: one will re-
quire local jurisdictions to give
longer notice before clearing
encampments; the other at-
tempts to stifle anti-camping
policies by requiring them to
be reasonable in regards to
people experiencing home-
lessness.
Lawmakers also passed bills
aiming to make it easier for
those who lost their homes
in the 2020 wildfires to re-
build and authorized counties
to adopt policies that forgive
property taxes for those same
folks.
H
A more restrained
approach to environment
fter a contentious cap-
and-trade proposal
twice led to Republican
walkouts, Democrats brought
a less ambitious environmen-
tal agenda to Salem this year.
Even so, advocates say they
accomplished a lot with two
bills the majority party pushed
through on the session’s final
days.
With House Bill 2021, the
Legislature set some of the na-
tion’s most ambitious targets
for switching to 100% clean
energy. Under the legislation,
the state’s two largest power
companies will have to elimi-
nate their carbon emissions by
2040, with interim goals along
the way. Just as important, ad-
vocates say, are provisions that
grant impacted communities
a say in how power compa-
nies switch to green sources
of energy, and set strong labor
standards for new renewable
energy projects.
Lawmakers also grappled
with the state’s troubled recy-
cling system, which has seen
more recyclable materials sent
to landfills because items are
deemed “contaminated.” Un-
der Senate Bill 582, the state
will require producers of pack-
aging to help pay the cost of
recycling, assist in achieving
higher recycling rates, and
help local governments im-
prove their processes, among
other things.
A
Bracing for fire season
erhaps the most omni-
present issue of the past
couple of years in Or-
egon is wildfire, a topic law-
makers decided to hold off
on until the end of session.
Whether that was for strategic
reasons — Democrats want-
ing to motivate Republicans to
stick around — or to give the
topic as much consideration as
possible, is unclear.
This year’s big omnibus bill,
Senate Bill 762, sent nearly
$200 million to state agencies
in order to mitigate wildfire’s
impact on Oregon’s landscape,
adapt communities to smoke,
map out fire risk, establish
rules on defensible space
around rural properties, and
fund forest restoration proj-
P
ects. The bill seeks to define
what areas of the state should
be considered part of the wild-
land-urban Interface (WUI)
and categorize land based on
wildfire risk. It also requires
electric companies to start
drafting plans for how they’ll
adapt infrastructure and shut
off policies to wildfire condi-
tions, and directs the state’s
Public Utility Commission to
oversee that process.
Much of the negotiations
on the bill took place in pri-
vate, so when Republicans an-
nounced heavy opposition as
the bill came up in the legisla-
ture’s joint budget committee
the last week of the session,
that resistance was somewhat
a surprise to many who felt
the state couldn’t ignore long-
range wildfire planning for a
second year in a row.
But lawmakers were able to
cut a deal securing bipartisan
support for the bill which will
delegate responsibility to de-
fine the WUI to the Oregon
Department of Forestry.
The bill passed with strong
support in both chambers.
A revealing fight on guns
espite their ongoing
dominance in Salem,
Democrats had been
stymied for years in their at-
tempts to pass new gun con-
trols. That changed in 2021.
In one of the session’s most
contentious and illustrative
fights, Democrats pushed
through Senate Bill 554. The
bill sets new requirements
for how gun owners must se-
curely store their weapons
when not in use, a policy gun
control advocates had pushed
for years. It also banned guns
in the Capitol and Portland In-
ternational Airport, and paved
the way for public schools and
universities to pass their own
gun bans.
SB 554 was universally dis-
liked by Republicans, but it left
the party in a bind. After years
of walking away from Salem to
block climate legislation, GOP
members had created expecta-
tions they would walk to dis-
favored bills. That meant that,
rather than applying pressure
on Democrats, gun rights sup-
porters began putting heat on
Republicans.
“Some unscrupulous or-
ganizations have misled Or-
egonians into thinking that
lobbying any Democrat is a
waste of their time — that in-
stead they should push the
easy button, to call on me to
deny quorum,” House Mi-
nority Leader Rep. Christine
Drazan, R-Canby, said when
her chamber took up SB 554.
“They were told that instead of
voting no, I have an obligation
to leave right now before the
final gavel drops.”
House Republicans did
not bow to that pressure, but
nearly half of Senate Repub-
licans walked away from the
Capitol, rather than showing
up to vote on SB 554. While
the six Republican senators
who did attend votes on the
bill all strenuously opposed it,
that has not been enough to
avoid blowback: Two of those
senators now face recall cam-
paigns because their presence
allowed Democrats to pass
the bill.
D
Delay tactics lead to
redistricting deal
hile 2021 did not see
the extended Re-
publican walkouts
that marred the prior two ses-
sions, it was hardly peaceable.
The session began with tumult
— and never really let up
Lawmakers, still shaken by
a Dec. 21 incursion into the
Capitol, delayed the start of
session by two days amid se-
curity concerns. No similar
breaches of safety would occur
W
in the next five months, but a
central flashpoint of that De-
cember incident — the closure
of the Capitol to the general
public — was an ongoing issue
of the session.
As lawmakers met in virtual
committee hearings and con-
vened in person on the House
and Senate floors, Republicans
demonstrated their ongoing
disagreement with protest
votes and repeated calls on
Democrats to buck Gov. Kate
Brown’s COVID-restrictions.
The most consequential
such effort by the minority
party was House Republi-
cans’ insistence for more than
a month that bills be read in
full before a final vote in the
chamber. From March 9 un-
til April 14, every bill — no
matter how benign or biparti-
san — was read out loud, line
by line, slowing the session’s
progress to a crawl.
The tactic led House lead-
ers to read bills with computer
software for the first time in
state history. And while it did
not force Democrats to re-
think the closed Capitol, the
standoff did result in what
might be one of the more con-
sequential twists of the session.
In exchange for Repub-
licans’ giving up their right
to force bill readings, Kotek
offered them full parity on
a committee responsible for
drawing new political districts
in the state that will last for
the next 10 years. In doing so,
the House speaker got a green
light to pursue her party’s
short-term legislative goals,
but she gave up a stranglehold
on the redistricting process
that Democrats had secured in
the 2020 election.
The decision, critics say,
could especially impact Ore-
gon’s congressional delegation,
since Republicans will have
far more say in how the state’s
newly-acquired congressional
district will be drawn.
“That was like shooting
yourself in the head,” U.S. Rep.
Kurt Schrader, a Democrat,
recently told Politico.
Consequences for
lawmaker behavior
wo years after updating
its rules governing con-
duct by lawmakers and
others in the Capitol, the Leg-
islature got plenty of chances
to put the process into action
in 2021.
Over the course of the ses-
sion, three male lawmakers in
the House faced accusations
of harassment and other prob-
lematic behavior — with two
of them ultimately forced out
of the body.
In a series of wrenching
hearings that began shortly
after the session convened,
House lawmakers took up ha-
rassment complaints by nu-
merous women against then-
state Rep. Diego Hernandez,
D-Portland. The allegations
largely concerned women
with whom Hernandez had
had consensual romantic re-
lationships that ended badly,
and who also worked or did
business in the Capitol.
Lawmakers found Hernan-
dez had violated legislative
harassment policies and were
preparing to expel him when
he resigned before that could
happen.
In April, allegations
emerged against state Rep.
Brad Witt, D-Clatskanie, after
T
a female Republican lawmaker
in the House accused him of
sending harassing texts. In a
series of hearings, a biparti-
san panel of lawmakers found
that, while Witt likely did not
mean for the texts to be inap-
propriate, they came off that
way.
The committee ordered
Witt to undergo training, but
deadlocked on more seri-
ous consequences. Kotek, the
House speaker, enacted some
of her own.
But the most dominant
conduct issue of the session
involved Nearman, a four-
term representative from Polk
County who was captured on
tape allowing far-right dem-
onstrators into the Capitol as
lawmakers met on Dec. 21.
Based on that footage, Dem-
ocrats and liberal groups had
called on Nearman to resign
for months. But with mem-
bers of his party keeping quiet
on the issue, he refused, con-
tent to play a marginalized
role.
Nearman’s fate took a severe
turn, however, when more
footage emerged showing him
planning the Capitol breach
with supporters. Members of
his party immediately turned
on him and, when he refused
to resign, he was expelled on
June 10.
He has shown interest in
trying to recapture his seat by
being appointed to serve as his
own replacement.
An unprecedented budget
ever the most thrilling
aspect of a legislative
session, the two-year
budget lawmakers crafted
this year was remarkable.
What had once figured to be
a painful exercise in cutting
costs turned into a spending
bonanza, thanks to $2.6 bil-
lion in federal help from the
American Rescue Plan Act
and eye-popping revenues that
defied all expectations.
“I’ve done budgets for
years,” Kotek said Saturday.
“The complexity of this one
has been mind-boggling.”
Between general fund
money, lottery revenues and
federal aid, lawmakers worked
out a plan for spending some
$29.4 billion. That’s a far cry
from the $23.6 billion in gen-
eral and lottery funds ap-
proved for the current budget,
and led to some interesting ar-
rangements.
Flush with aid money,
Kotek and Senate President
Peter Courtney hatched a
novel plan to give each law-
maker personal control over
how millions of dollars would
be spent. Those allotments
— $4 million for senators, $2
million for House members —
allowed legislators to handpick
favored projects or causes to
support, with little limitation.
The budget also included
more than $300 million to
help bolster the state’s trou-
bled mental health system,
more than $500 million for
water infrastructure, and more
than $600 million on helping
people recover from the 2020
wildfires, and to prevent future
fires. Lawmakers spent more
than $760 million on housing
initiatives, including money
for affordable housing and
assistance for landlords and
renters. And they approved
$100 million to expand the
state’s Medicaid program for
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Things left undone
Lawmakers were not suc-
cessful in getting all of their
priorities for 2021 across the
finish line.
Democrats entered the ses-
sion hoping to fundamentally
reshape the state’s framework
of mandatory sentences for
violent crimes, approved re-
peatedly by voters. But op-
position by district attorneys
and a requirement that the
changes achieve two-thirds
support in each chamber
wound up tanking the effort
— even after concessions by
supporters.
Another bill that would
have limited the ability of po-
lice to arrest people for some
crimes also failed to garner
enough support, despite
backing by an array of com-
munity groups and Kotek,
who called its failure “far and
away my biggest disappoint-
ment of this session.”
“When you have a commu-
nity driven process sometimes
it just takes longer to make
sure you get the bill right,”
Kotek told reporters on Mon-
day. “Frankly the Legislature
has a lot to learn from a pro-
cess like that.”
One stark area of inaction:
Lawmakers failed to pass
any new laws impacting the
state’s campaign finance sys-
tem, despite being explicitly
granted authority to place
limits on political contribu-
tions in the 2020 election.
Proposed frameworks for
limiting contributions failed
to win enough support, in
a building famously touchy
about changes to campaign
dynamics.
At the same time, a pro-
posal to create a system for
financing campaigns using
public money was left for
dead at the end of session.
Lawmakers did enact one
significant elections-related
change, passing a bill that will
allow ballots to be counted if
they’re mailed — rather than
received — by Election Day.
“If we weren’t in the middle
of a pandemic, dealing with
wildfire recovery and a couple
other crises to boot, I think
we would have gotten cam-
paign finance done,” Kotek
said. “That’s a big lift from a
political standpoint and just
to make sure you get it right,
and honestly there were just
too many other large things
going on.”
Other proposals that failed
to get a vote: A bill that would
have allowed Oregon pris-
oners to vote (which could
not muster support despite
the pleas of John Legend), a
proposal to tighten the state’s
vaccine requirements, and
several bills that would have
created new consequences if
lawmakers flee the Capitol to
block a bill.
undocumented adults.
“Truly an amazing sight,”
said state Rep. Paul Holvey,
D-Eugene, offering highlights
of the budget to his colleagues
on the House floor.
In the most contentious
piece of the state budget, law-
makers approved a $9.3 billion
budget for K-12 schools. That
was a record sum, and well
more than legislative budget
staff said would be required
to fund the schools at a status
quo level, but came under fire
from Republicans and schools
officials, who argued $9.6 bil-
lion was necessary.