The Oregon Legislature enters a short final week of the 2023 session with an avalanche of bills to dig itself out from under and Sunday’s constitutional deadline hanging over lawmakers’ heads.

A 42-day Senate walkout that brought much lawmaking to a near standstill for six weeks will now be followed by marathon sessions to pass possibly hundreds of bills in a matter of days.

The House gets an early start Tuesday at 8 a.m., with just one bill on its list up for final approval. But another 38 bills and three resolutions are listed as being in earlier stages of consideration by the House and through the waiving of rules can swiftly move to votes if lawmakers wish. 

Over in the Senate, a more leisurely 10 a.m. start is scheduled, but the workload is heftier.

The collection included 177 bills and five resolutions at various points on the much-delayed legislative timeline. Senate bills that have yet to have final votes before going to the House, House bills coming over for Senate approval, Senate bills amended by the House and back for votes by the senators . 

Lawmakers line up for local project funding

Some of the biggest action will occur off the floors. Despite Monday being a holiday, the list of local projects requested and approved by lawmakers was posted on Monday. Running 33 pages with 25 projects per page, it’s a collection of water projects, highway fixes, theater renovations and other hyper-local projects that lawmakers can tout back home.

Also popping onto the state website was the revised higher education capital construction list, which in a last minute surprise, would fund some but not all the projects on original university wish lists. Gov. Tina Kotek had asked for just $100 million to cover  maintenance on existing structures throughout the state.

But the version that was sent over from the Legislative Finance Office for consideration by the Joint Ways & Means Committee on Tuesday includes $219.5 million in projects – with the biggest amounts going to the three most influential universities in the state system.  The Univeristy of Oregon in Eugene would get about $72 million for the renovation of Friendly Hall.

The Ducks top rivals scored too. Oregon State University, would receive $72 million for the Collaborative Innovation Complex at the Corvallis campus. Portland State University is in line for just under $56.9 million for the Vernier Science Center and Gateway Art and Design Complex. Supplementary funding for the Vernier Center is included in another part of the capital budget.

While the big three campuses got a golden egg at session end, the Legislature served up a goose egg to Oregon State University-Cascades. Not on the list for the committee budget votes Tuesday is $45 million in state bonds sought by OSU-Cascades to help pay for a 40,000-square-foot health and recreation center. It would be located along Rim Road on the 128-acre campus in west Bend. Student fees would pay for the remaining $15 million. Barring a last-minute change, the list will leave a two-year gap in new construction at the Bend campus, which has faced on-and-off again support and opposition from the Legislature – including Kotek – and then Gov. Kate Brown in recent years. 

Tuesday vote-a-mania

Once the floor voting starts in the House and Senate on Tueaday, bills will go every which way.

In the Senate, House votes that went through committees and were not amended by the Senate would go to Gov. Tina Kotek if approved. 

The bills that will got through the quick-march voting system range from the technical to the sweeping, obscure business transactions to deeply emotional family issues.

HB 3234 prohibits the commitment of children with intellectual disabilities to state facilities without permission of parents. 

HB 2127 would allow the city of Pendleton to take part in an affordable housing pilot project involving land outside of its urban growth boundary similar to projects already underway in Bend and Redmond.

The Department of Corrections would be required to provide doulas for pregnant inmates at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility under HB2535. Possession penalties of certain amounts of the synthetic opioid fentanyl would be incrested under HB 2645.

In addition to the capital construction committees, others will have bills both crucial and actually fun to vote on to send to the floors.

In the House Rules Committee, three Republicans have banded with House majority leader Julie Fahey for House Joint Resolution 16, creating a way for the Oregon Legislature to impeach, try and if necessary, remove a governor from office. Oregon is the only state without an impeachment process, a reality that hit home hard in 2015 when Gov. John Kitzhaber briefly considered staying in office instead of resigning over allegations of influence peddling in his office.

If he stayed, the only way to force Kitzhaber out would have been a likely year-long recall. In the end Kitzhaber, decided to step down and Secretary of State Kate Brown became governor. But seven years later, the law remains unchanged. The resolution would cover all state executive office holders as well. Approval of the resolution would send the issue to voters in the 2024 election as a constitutional amendment.

House Rules also will consider HB 3414, which would limit the ability of local governments to deny variances for construction within urban growth boundaries. It was requested by Kotek and has the backing of House Speaker Dan Rayfield, but has a long way to go to get through the House and Senate before deadline.

One bit of legislation sure to bring out the fun and pun in lawmakers is Senate Concurrent Resolution 3, which would result in a final victory for retiring Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Athena, in his drive to have the potato named as the official vegetable of Oregon. Lawmakers once part of the tongue-in-cheek onion lobby have been quietly absent as Hansell has announced his retirement at the end of his current term and the elevation of the spud to the top of the state political food chain is a bit of a goodbye present to a lawmaker popular on both sides of the aisle.

House Bill 2757 to fully fund the 9-8-8 suicide prevention hotline was a Republican push during the walkout negotiations and it appears to be up for approval in the House Revenue Committee on Tuesday.

Other legislation on ranked-choice voting, wind turbine energy and more will be on tap. Even one revision will require bills to go back to the other chamber.

While the walkout is over and no one seems in a mood for a fight, the final versions of House Bill 2002, shorn of some of its portions dealing with abortion and transgender medical rights, and House Bill 2005 with its vastly reduced gun control restrictions, will require an official reconsideration on the House floor on Wednesday.

Both Democrats who think the deal went to far in cutting legislation supported by the majority of lawmakers and their constituents, and Republicans who saw the bills as majority overreach, could bring those thoughts to the floor during the debate.