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In an hour and 45 minutes on Thursday, the Oregon House debated and passed seven pieces of legislation, along with conducting the usual perfunctories. The Senate met for an hour and acted on two bills.

Senate President Rob Wagner, D-Lake Oswego, has been resolute when speaking with reporters: Republican senators are within their rights to insist that bills be read aloud word-for-word before debating and voting on them. Democrats, he said, can still pass their agenda despite the slowdown.

And so, Wagner added a floor session for Tuesday evening, March 21, to handle the two bills that make up the Legislature’s $200 million-plus housing package.

The Oregon House passed them and an unrelated measure in less than 90 minutes on Wednesday. However, senators have been told to expect a floor session Tuesday evening lasting three to four hours. HB 2001 is 74 pages; HB 5019, which provides the money, is only three pages. Even with a computer-generated voice doing the reading, those 40,000-plus words take time.

On the House side, Speaker Dan Rayfield, D-Corvallis, takes a similar line in discussions with journalists: It’s simply a matter of managing the legislative calendar to account for potential use of delaying tactics.

“It has become the norm to read bills in protest when you’re not happy about the direction or maybe a bill. Who knows what the case may be, right?” he said.

But so far, House Republicans have been agreeing to waive the Oregon Constitution’s bill-reading requirement.

“I have found this to be the most bipartisan session I have participated in so far, where legislators are given the opportunity to have a voice. I am grateful for my colleagues’ intentional efforts to have a diverse range of bills in each committee, encompassing both liberal and conservative viewpoints,” Rep. Mark Owens, R-Crane, told constituents last month in his newsletter.

Will those good feelings continue?

House committees will hold hearings next week on more contentious issues – reproductive health and gun control. Republicans adamantly oppose the bills, lack the votes to prevent passage but have limited ways to pressure Democrats.

When I asked further about the possibility of House Republicans eventually refusing to waive bill readings, Rayfield’s spokesman sent a diplomatic response: “The process and business of the House are an ongoing conversation between the Speaker and the Republican leader (Republican Vikki Breese-Iverson of Prineville). They continue to meet regularly – including continued conversations regularly on waiving bills – and have what the Speaker feels are positive and productive conversations.”

Wagner has said that he and Senate Republican Leader Tim Knopp of Bend meet at least weekly but have not addressed the bill reading.

On Thursday morning, Knopp spoke on the Senate floor about how Republicans feel. With a major deadline approaching on Friday, he said, Democratic bills were advancing at a rate of more than 2-1 over Republican bills.

“That does not sound bipartisan to me,” he said.

Knopp then listed six Senate bills – on agriculture, taxes, health care and other issues – that Republicans want killed: “We want them dead. They are bad bills. They will do damage to our economy. They will do damage to our democracy.”

And Republicans want more of their own bills to survive Friday’s deadline.

Although the Democrats’ main agenda may be moving along, the Senate slowdown has claimed collateral damage. Senators have cited bill length as a reason for sidelining proposals.

Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, gave an example in his March 5 constituent newsletter. He and others hoped to use a particular bill to recognize the new Space Force military branch in Oregon law, as the Department of Defense requested. That normally would be routine.

“However, making those technical changes would have turned a 4-page bill into a 65-page bill —i.e., a 3-hour bill-read vs. a 10-minute bill read,” he wrote.

Dembrow described the Senate environment as odd: “In my own experience with committees and the floor, there is a high degree of civility and even bipartisanship, lots of mutual respect and co-sponsorship. Floor debates in the Senate are brief and cordial, and I don’t believe that a single bill has come down to a party-line vote.

“Yet at the same time, we continue to have to read bills on the Senate floor for no apparent reason other than the minority party’s insistence, a real waste of precious time.”

Personal note: Thank you to the many readers who wrote in response to last week’s Capital Chatter. Much appreciated.