A8
STATE
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, June 23, 2021
Rare cooperation on tax and housing speed
Legislature closer to end of the 2021 session
Deadline to close session
is Sunday, June 27
By Gary A. Warner
Oregon Capital Bureau
Back in January, the Legislature
thought it would be adjourning for
good on Friday.
Too optimistic.
Mid-week, lawmakers seemed
doomed to working right through
to the constitutional deadline of
11:59 p.m. June 27, with maybe a
break for Father’s Day.
Too pessimistic.
House and Senate members
headed for the exits Thursday after-
noon with a few hours of sunlight
left to spare and word not to be back
in Salem for floor sessions until
Monday.
“They didn’t really want to work
on Saturday, either,” Rep. Jack Zika,
R-Redmond, said of his colleagues in
the other party and other chamber.
Lips that are rarely zipped stayed
shut as sheaves of bills and resolu-
tions moved swiftly through the Leg-
islature. The work was a late-session
nod to the reality that bills cannot be
amended on the floor of the House or
Senate. It was either yes, no or send
it back to committee, which at this
point is the equivalent of no.
It also helped that on some of
the contentious issues during what
has been one of the most hotly par-
tisan legislative sessions in recent
memory, a middle path was cleared
when a member of each party worked
together to cobble a compromise that
was palatable to a majority.
The 30-member Senate, the
smaller and usually more sedate of
the two legislative bodies, moved
through its agenda in the time of
a good baseball game in the days
before television: Two hours and four
minutes.
On Thursday, legislators ping-
ponged between taxes, affordable
housing, racial equity and mental
health.
For most of the past decade, law-
makers have debated a 2013 tax cut
meant to spur small businesses to
hire employees but instead ended up
as a popular tax-slicing tool of what
critics called “suits and scrubs,” or
incorporated small operations that
often include doctor and lawyer
offices.
Oregon Capital Bureau file photo
The House chamber in the state Capitol in Salem.
The political rewind worked on
Thursday because it was drawn up
by two longtime senators who on
most issues are at polar opposites.
Sen. Ginny Burdick, D-Portland,
the former Senate majority leader
who has announced she is retiring,
joined with firebrand conservative
Sen. Brian Boquist of Dallas. A long-
time Republican, Boquist had chafed
under attempts by the GOP cau-
cus to control his words and actions
and officially declared himself an
independent.
“The requirements we had in
2013 were pretty loose,” Burdick
said. “Most of the benefit went to the
highest income earners.”
Senate Bill 139 eliminates the
tax break for businesses taking in
over $5 million in profits and puts a
floor under the minimum number of
employees that had to work for the
company in order for employers to
qualify. There’s an offsetting slightly
lower tax rate for businesses bringing
in as much as $1 million.
The 16-13 vote broke mostly
along party — or what used to be
party — lines. Boquist, the former
Republican, voted yes. Sen. Betsy
Johnson, D-Scappoose, and Sen. Deb
Patterson, D-Salem, voted no.
While there weren’t many sur-
prises in the tally, the brevity of com-
ment was unusual. Besides Burdick
and Boquist, only Sen. Tim Knopp,
R-Bend, spoke at all.
Knopp, who like the bill’s spon-
sors had been in the Legislature
when the original bill passed, said he
opposed it because Thursday’s rem-
edy didn’t cure the original sin in
2013 of financing the tax break by
changes to a senior citizen tax credit.
“I’m not happy about it now, I
wasn’t happy about it then,” Knopp
said.
Zika helped build a similar solu-
tion with House Bill 278, where he
joined with Rep. Julie Fahey, D-Eu-
gene, that extended eviction pro-
tections for tenants for two months
past the current July 1 deadline in
exchange for revising an earlier plan
in which the state paid landlords back
rent owed, but only if they agreed to
take just 80% and forgave the rest.
It was the rare compromise that
seemed to satisfy everyone, passing
the House 56-0. The bill will have
to go back to the Senate early next
week for a vote on whether to agree
to the landlord repayment plan added
after long debate in the House Rules
Committee.
Not all the action in the capitol
was in the two chambers. Up on the
second floor, Gov. Kate Brown was
taking heat for a line-item veto of
the $200 million the Legislature had
taken out of the Education Stability
Fund as part of a sprawling $9.3 bil-
lion schools budget.
The move drew a harsh rebuke
from Rep. Suzanne Weber, R-Tilla-
mook, who used a time for personal
comments on the House floor to lash
Brown for agreeing to questionable
deals on public campaign financing
and assistance targeted at other sec-
tors, but saying she was holding the
line with the education funds.
She challenged the 60 House
makers to decide if they were with
students, teachers and parents, or
with the governor.
“We cannot stand with both,”
Weber said.
In the east wing, the Secretary of
State’s Office announced the latest
volley in the ongoing gun wars. The
Legislature had already passed Sen-
ate Bill 554, which would have the
effect of barring firearms from the
Capitol and Portland International
Airport, along with requiring locks
on guns kept at home.
A group of conservative current
and former Republican lawmakers
had filed a referendum with the sec-
retary of state that if it gains enough
signatures over the next three months
to put it on the ballot, would freeze
the implementation of the law now
scheduled for September. Only after
the November 2022 vote would any
action be taken.
The Secretary of State’s Office
also said Thursday that notices of the
intent to file two gun control initia-
tives had been received: “The Reduc-
tion of Gun Violence Act” and the
“Reduction of Harm from Weapons
Act.”
Also received by the secretary
of state was a notice from a Grant
County resident of an attempt to
recall Sen. Lynn Findley, R-Vale,
who was among Republican law-
makers who were criticized for stay-
ing in the Senate to oppose and vote
against the gun bill, instead of walk-
ing out to deny the 18 Democrats the
two additional lawmakers needed for
a quorum.
While the relatively bare agenda
for the Senate and House on Mon-
day and Tuesday gave an appear-
ance of a light schedule, not every-
one is going home for the weekend.
The main budget writing committee
— Joint Ways & Means — is read-
ing and revising several large items,
including the funding for university
construction and other public works
projects.
The House Rules Committee and
House Revenue Committee will also
get together in the Capitol on Fri-
day to shuffle through the dozens
of bills that are still on its calendar.
Both panels are among a select few
that are exempted from the multiple
deadlines that cull bills from most of
the more than 35 legislative commit-
tees this year.
The chambers’ two rules com-
mittees could still pluck several dor-
mant items to be brought up for a
vote and sent to the chambers at the
last minute. A development project at
Stevens Road in Bend is one that is
scheduled for the first hard look since
it was introduced near the start of the
session in January.
Most of the measures are expected
to expire when the Legislature gavels
out for the final time in the 2021 reg-
ular session — the exact date is still
open to speculation ranging from as
early as Tuesday to as late as the con-
stitutional deadline on Sunday, June
27.
Whatever the expiration date, the
slate of more than 2,500 bills — dead
and living — will be wiped clean in
time for the short session scheduled
for early 2022.
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