By State Representative Rob Nosse
Last month, my column was written roughly two weeks before the legislative session was predicted to adjourn. The column was published on March 1. The legislature’s constitutional sine die (our fancy Latin phrase meaning end of business) was supposed to be March 10. I would not have predicted that we would have actually adjourned on Thursday, March 7; yet, less than a week after I submitted my column, we were done. By my count, my last column contained approximately 13 political predictions (and one pop culture prediction); I am incredibly relieved to report I was right in all but one of them.
I predicted the legislature would pass a right-to-repair bill and we did! Right-to-repair is the simple idea that you should be able to take your electronics (especially your cell phone) to an independent repair shop—as opposed to solely using a repair shop run by, say, Apple or worse, or having to buy a new one. I sponsored a similar bill in 2019, and it’s been defeated every session since. This bill finally got across the finish line this year! I would like to give a special shout out to Free Geek, a not-for-profit based here in SE Portland, for helping to make that happen.
I expected we would pass more funding for employment related daycare (EDRC), summer learning and the COAL Act (Clean Oregon Assets Legislation). All three of these things passed. The legislature passed a whopping $171 million for EDRC this session, which will go a long way toward getting more families the childcare they desperately need. $30 million will go towards summer learning. This is less than what we’ve done in the past, but substantially more than the zero dollars it was looking like we might do before the session started. The COAL Act, which I was a sponsor of, divests the Oregon treasury’s investments in coal while putting the treasury on a path to be carbon neutral. All three of those concepts will go a long way toward making Oregon better for workers, parents and our climate.
I was honestly not sure what would happen around daylight savings time and campaign finance reform. Both of those issues are incredibly charged, as practically none of the people involved had moderate opinions. (My husband threatened to leave me if I voted to get rid of daylight savings time and I never really asked him how serious he was about it.) The Oregon State Senate ultimately passed a bill abolishing daylight savings time, but only if California and Washington do the same. That bill died in the Oregon House, and I am able to remain a happily married man. Campaign finance reform was an entirely different story. A historic compromise between business interests and labor groups resulted in a deal that establishes Oregon’s first ever campaign finance limits. It was incredible and surprising to see such a big bill pass in the last few days of the short session on a topic that has eluded results for decades.
I correctly guessed that no bills targeting discriminating against the transgender community would go anywhere. As chair of the House Committee on Behavioral Health and Health Care, I played a role in killing these kinds of bills, as all of them were referred to my committee. I also correctly predicted that we would not address school funding in a major way. This felt like too big of a topic to handle in a short session, although I bet we will deal with school funding in 2025. We also did not have a lot of extra money to spend, and the extra we did have was targeted for housing and substance use disorder services. I also predicted the legislature would not aggressively regulate pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). Unfortunately, I was right about this. Some minor regulations on PBMs were passed and I will run a work group that will look into this issue to prepare a bill for 2025.
Closing out, the legislature passed House Bill 4002, which made possession of certain drugs a misdemeanor again. We also passed a companion bill to fund a whole host of services to treat substance use disorders. Similarly, we passed a version of Governor Kotek’s housing proposal, SB 1537, to allow for expansion of urban growth boundaries, although the legislature slashed the allowable acreage to half of what the Governor proposed. This was also coupled with a large funding package for housing production and rental assistance, among other housing items.
I was delighted that arts funding did pass. I initially asked for $27 million and was expecting only a fraction of that. Instead, the legislature found nearly $13 million for arts and culture venues across the state, including several major venues right here in Portland.
I got one prediction wrong. I had hoped the legislature would help struggling college students access food stamps, Medicaid and other safety net programs. We failed to do this. I am not entirely sure why this proposal didn’t go anywhere, but for whatever reason the bill died. I may take this up in a bill in 2025.
Oh, and there was no walkout, Representative Julie Fahey was elected the new Speaker of the House and Oppenheimer won best picture, as I predicted, though in all fairness lots of people predicted Oppenheimer would win. All in all, it was one of the most productive, least acrimonious, short sessions in recent Oregon history.
