Capital Chatter: Bills’ resurrections aren’t miracles, just politics

Published 8:00 am Thursday, April 20, 2017

After a heated public hearing on Monday, three firearms bills in the Oregon Legislature succumbed to accidental deaths.

However, until the Legislature adjourns for the year, nothing is truly dead. It’s revival of the fittest. And the not-so-fit but politically feasible.

One gun measure was quickly resurrected. It was a bipartisan bill from Senate Democratic Leader Ginny Burdick of Portland and Republican Sen. Brian Boquist of Dallas to allow family members or police to have firearms removed from a person who was suffering a mental health crisis, and thus a threat to himself or others.

At Monday morning’s hearing, that measure was Senate Bill 868. By Tuesday evening, it was Senate Bill 719.

The switch came about because the Senate Judiciary Committee held the Monday hearing on the three bills, but neglected to schedule work sessions to move them along in the legislative process.

Tuesday was the Legislature’s self-imposed deadline for most Senate and House committees to hold work sessions on bills that originated in their own chamber. For example, the Senate Judiciary Committee ran through a bunch of Senate bills Tuesday morning, then met for a half hour late in the day for work sessions on a dozen more bills.

• The political art of gutting and stuffing: Because SB 868 had not been placed on Tuesday’s agenda, it could not be worked. But wait! When there’s a legislature, there’s a way. The Judiciary Committee stuffed it into another bill — the aforementioned SB 719 — that was scheduled for a work session.

Such “gutting and stuffing” is not unusual, although it more commonly happens in the hectic final days of a legislative session as advocates try to resurrect a proposal.

The catch is that the bills — the one whose guts are being used and the one being stuffed with those legislative guts — must have similar “relating clauses.” Supposedly, that means they are on similar topics.

In this case, SB 719 was — and still is — “Relating to courts.” Originally, it was a token bill directing the state court administrator to study methods for improving court efficiency. Whoopee! Such bills are introduced in hopes of achieving some good, but also in case they are needed for gutting and stuffing.

SB 868 was “Relating to extreme risk protective orders.” Because the protective orders would be issued by a court, the Legislature’s lawyers agreed that the bill related to courts and thus its language appropriately could be inserted into SB 719.

• Political promises work, too: The other two firearms bills also are alive. SB 764 was a tiny bill ordering the Oregon State Police to study reasons for denying concealed handgun licenses. SB 797 prohibited the sale of a firearm if the State Police had been unable to complete a required criminal background check on the buyer.

Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, told me that the Senate leadership has promised that SB 764 and 797 can be combined into one bill and be re-introduced. He chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.

House members had told me that no firearms bills would pass the Legislature unless they came from the Senate, and that appears to be playing out. Still, passage was not assured.

Monday’s hearing was passionate, usually thoughtful and sometimes wacky. In one person’s testimony, he said the state troopers providing security in the room were derelict in their duty because they should have arrested Prozanski for violating the Constitution by considering the firearms legislation.

However, it’s up to the courts to decide whether something is constitutional. To the best of my knowledge, there is no crime known simply as “violating the Constitution.” There are many ideas, from across the political spectrum, that don’t survive legislative scrutiny because their constitutionality is dubious.

• Which brings us to PERS: The Senate Workforce Committee has been unable to reach agreement on changes to the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System. To keep SB 559 and 560 alive, the committee sent the bills to the Joint Ways & Means Committee.

It’s common to park bills in the Legislature’s Ways & Means, Rules or Revenue committees because they — like the top legislative leaders — have special powers. They don’t have the same action deadlines as regular committees.

Before sending the bills on their way, the Workforce Committee voted to have them take effect Jan. 1, 2018. Committee members were concerned that state workers and other public employees were rushing to retire because they feared immediate changes to their pensions.

The rub is that if Legislature does pass PERS reforms, it likely will be as part of an overall bargain on tax increases and spending reductions. Even if the changes don’t affect workers and retirees until next year, the bills would need to take effect months earlier so the PERS bureaucracy could prepare for those changes.

Despite the committee’s well-intended effort to reassure public employees, the Legislature continues to send mixed signals on PERS.

• Taking him to the woodshed — not: The leaders of the Workforce Committee have a good relationship, despite their political differences. Chair Kathleen Taylor is a liberal Democrat from Milwaukie. Vice chair Tim Knopp is a conservative Republican from Bend.

Monday’s meeting produced this humorous moment: The two had different understandings of a bill, so Taylor called a recess, and she and Knopp went into the hallway to work it out privately.

Minutes later, she returned alone and resumed the work session. The other committee members and the audience appeared puzzled by Knopp’s absence, as if the pair had fought it out in the hall and she’d won.

Looking up, Taylor abruptly realized what people were thinking and quickly said, “Oh, he’s coming back” to peals of laughter from her colleagues and the audience.

That is just one small way in which the Oregon Legislature is more collaborative than is often portrayed.

Knopp soon returned.

• The governor hits the road: Gov. Kate Brown is a personable politician, so her staff now is trying to get her on the road more. This week she made appearances in Southern Oregon.

It’s good for a governor to travel the state. Oregon doesn’t have an executive aircraft, so she sometimes flies on planes from the state Department of Forestry or the Oregon National Guard. For the feds to cover the cost of National Guard flights, the governor must attend a Guard event as part of the trip.

Some legislators want Brown to be like predecessors John Kitzhaber and Ted Kulongoski, who would bring warring parties together and force them to find common ground on a seemingly intractable issue. That’s not her style.

Dick Hughes has been covering the Oregon political scene since 1976. Contact him at TheHughesisms@Gmail.com or follow him at Facebook.com/Hughesisms.