By State Representative Rob Nosse
Depending on what day you are reading this, the 2024 session is either about to start or is already underway. In case you do not know, the Oregon constitution prescribes: (a) A session beginning in an odd-numbered year may not exceed 160 calendar days in duration; and (b) A session beginning in an even-numbered year may not exceed 35 calendar days in duration.
This is why sessions in odd-numbered years are called “long” sessions and sessions in even-numbered years are called “short” sessions. In theory, a session is about actively legislating—committee meetings, hearings and votes to pass bills and budgets. I feel like the meetings and research I am constantly doing in preparation for sessions are part of actively legislating. More on that for another time.
Also in theory, short sessions are for legislation that is not particularly ground breaking or for budget adjustments. However, in 2016 we increased the minimum wage. That was contentious. In 2018, Republicans started reading the bills on the floor of the House, word for word, line for line. That was contentious and tedious. In 2020, there was a walkout over climate change legislation just before the pandemic started. In 2022, the legislature passed the farm worker overtime bill. It was the most contentious bill that session. And this year is likely to be no different. Between Governor Kotek’s housing proposal and the legislature’s response to Oregon’s addiction crisis, we will be dealing with contentious issues.
Let’s start with Governor Kotek’s housing proposal. For some context, in last year’s long session, the governor’s signature bill for housing was voted on in dramatic fashion on the Senate floor. The bill amended laws that are at the heart of Oregon’s unique land use system. The environmental community came out in force against Kotek’s bill (I voted “no”). Now the governor is back with her plan to adjust zoning and land use laws, albeit in a scaled down manner. She is also asking for $500 million to pay for improving infrastructure or expanding utilities for future housing developments.
It has been widely speculated that, had a handful of Republican senators actually returned to work from their walkout, Kotek’s bill would have passed. Maybe this time around Kotek’s housing proposal will pass, if the governor can expand her coalition to include skeptical Democrats without turning off Republicans.
Housing will take a back seat to what the legislature is going to do about Ballot Measure 110 (BM 110). The ballot measure was approved back in 2020, when Oregonians decided a new approach was needed to tackle the state’s growing addiction crisis. The decades-long war on drugs failed to adequately prevent people from slipping into addiction. Oregonians voted to decriminalize small amounts of certain street drugs (including heroin and methamphetamine), while marshalling cannabis taxes to better fund addiction treatment. The results have not been quite what Oregonians were expecting.
We struggled to set up or expand services to those struggling with substance use disorder. We also have a workforce shortage in the behavioral health space; there simply are not enough counselors and other workers to staff new programs. Then, our country saw a nationwide influx of fentanyl and P2P methamphetamine (which produces very different effects than other methamphetamine), both of which are harder substances than we are used to seeing.
The result? An explosion of people using very hard substances and not enough treatment in place to deal with the new challenges around drugs. The ongoing houselessness and unsanctioned camping problems have not helped either. By the way, this is not the fault of the proponents of BM 110. A group of wealthy individuals led by Max Williams (the former head of Oregon’s corrections department and a former lawmaker) has promised to bring a ballot measure to November’s ballot repealing most parts of BM 110 around drug decriminalization and some of the measure’s operations should the legislature fail to do something.
The pressure is definitely on. The legislature has to find a way to address the workforce shortage, expand services and treatment, and give law enforcement some tools to handle public use because many people are upset about what they are seeing all around our city. I suspect my thoughts about this will continue to make the news and I will end up writing about where we ultimately land in my March column.
Closing out, as chair of the Behavioral Health and Health Care committee, one of the two bills I am introducing seeks to tackle the administrative burden faced by behavioral health providers. Literally seeing if we can remove some of the bureaucratic “stuff” that gets in the way of providing more care. The bill also calls for a study of what it takes to fund and operate our county-based community mental health programs, in light of all the things we require and the funding we provide. My hope is that more clarity on the services we say we want with analysis of the funding gap to deliver them will help me and the rest of the legislature make better decisions about funding going forward.
There will be other bills in the committee that could have big impacts, including a bill to manage pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) practices, a bill overhauling EMS services and a bill addressing the corporatization of hospitals. With so much going on in this short session, stay tuned. I always seem to say that don’t I?
