A Case of Mis-Guided Priorities - The 2022 Oregon Legislative Short Session
3/8/2022
The comment I hear the most as I meet with people in Central Oregon is, “Oregon is great. Oregon government is a disaster.”
I got a firsthand look at why people feel this way when I visited Salem a couple weeks ago to observe the Oregon legislature wrapping up its month-long 2022 session. Our legislators serve year-round, but (except in the case of emergencies) convene for sessions lasting around six months in odd-numbered years and short sessions in even-numbered years. The intent of the short session originally was to allow the legislature to adjust the budget as necessary and address any pressing needs that had arisen since the last full session. In practice, has turned out to be just another month for legislators to hastily jam through ill-conceived special interest bills.
The comment I hear the most as I meet with people in Central Oregon is, “Oregon is great. Oregon government is a disaster.”
I got a firsthand look at why people feel this way when I visited Salem a couple weeks ago to observe the Oregon legislature wrapping up its month-long 2022 session. Our legislators serve year-round, but (except in the case of emergencies) convene for sessions lasting around six months in odd-numbered years and short sessions in even-numbered years. The intent of the short session originally was to allow the legislature to adjust the budget as necessary and address any pressing needs that had arisen since the last full session. In practice, has turned out to be just another month for legislators to hastily jam through ill-conceived special interest bills.
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A couple weeks ago, I wrote an article for The Bulletin arguing that the legislature should use the short session to address one of Central Oregon’s biggest and most persistent problems: the lack of affordable housing for people who work in Central Oregon. Our state government is awash in cash thanks to record tax revenue and huge sums of federal deficit spending supposedly related to COVID. Those funds created an opportunity to make a lasting difference on the availability of workforce housing. They could also have been used to address other critical issues in the state, such as the shortage of safe and affordable childcare, the shortage of mental health and addiction treatment centers, and public safety issues related to the abject failure of Measure 110, which decriminalized hard drug usage.
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A couple weeks ago, I wrote an article for The Bulletin arguing that the legislature should use the short session to address one of Central Oregon’s biggest and most persistent problems: the lack of affordable housing for people who work in Central Oregon. |
Instead, the legislature spent a lot of time addressing things that have nothing to do with the real interests of Oregonians, like tying the hands of the police and blocking traffic stops that could lead to drug pusher busts. I watched the supermajority Democrats bludgeon through a bill to strip local school boards and the parents who elected them of the power to fire school superintendents. As just one more example, the legislature authorized $600 payments to 240,000 low-income recipients. That equals $144 million dollars, which was supposedly intended to help with childcare expenses, among other things.
I don’t lack compassion for low-income families. Come to think of it, once elected to the legislature, on a $33,000 per year legislator’s salary (about $17/hour) Cathie and I might qualify. What I’m not in favor of is wasting taxpayer money. $600 does not solve anyone’s problems. All it does is virtue signal and attempt to buy votes. $600 is only 75% of the cost of low-end childcare for one child for one month. It hardly solves the problem. Plus, shoving $144 million into the economy is inflationary, in a time where inflation is rampant, and it offers no long-term benefit. In short, the bill is a very bad idea.
I think the money should have been invested in building childcare centers. At $2mm apiece, we could have built 70 new centers that could have provided care for 7,000-14,000 kids…year after year for decades. Now that would do some good. Instead, and I sincerely mean no disrespect to the $600 recipients, we wasted the money.
The way these bills were passed says a lot about how things work, or don’t work, in Salem. They were drafted by Democrats without any real Republican input. Passage was a foregone conclusion once they had the support of Democrat leadership. The best policy arises out of solid bi-partisan debate and intelligent discourse. We have some good Republicans in Salem who are trying hard to bring common sense to legislation. However, although I’m a Republican, I hardly believe that only Republicans have good ideas. There are also rational Democrats in Salem. We need to design good legislation together.
Unfortunately, The Democrat super majority and lack of balance in Salem results in laws being quietly bulldozed through. If the people were properly informed and adequately represented, many of these bills would never even get to a vote. Wanting to change that is a big reason I’m running for State Representative.
As usual, the recently completed short session included a mad dash at the finish. Legislators spent billions and rammed big bills through at the last minute (bills that did not address the issues that are the most important to Oregonians). Committees, which are supposed to do the hard work of crafting legislation with public input, are commonly bypassed during these legislative sprints.
Often, in the final days and hours, legislators replace entire bills, instantly, with huge legislative packages in a maneuver called “gut and stuff.” The result is the dysfunctional state government we have today and is one reason there is very little public trust in the people who govern us.
This is one reason why people say they love Oregon, but hate Oregon politics. The good news is that things are the way they are because of people and policies. The right people and the right policies can fix things.
What I saw in our state Capitol needs fixing. We don’t have a money problem. We have a priorities problem. It does not have to be this way, but it will continue to be until we send more common sense, business minded people to Salem who reject the way things have been done for the last ten years, and who are willing to make the place work to meet the real needs of Oregonians.
It will be a great day when I start hearing people say, "We love Oregon, and one reason why is that our elected officials listen, respond and and govern wisely for the benefit of us all." It can happen.
I don’t lack compassion for low-income families. Come to think of it, once elected to the legislature, on a $33,000 per year legislator’s salary (about $17/hour) Cathie and I might qualify. What I’m not in favor of is wasting taxpayer money. $600 does not solve anyone’s problems. All it does is virtue signal and attempt to buy votes. $600 is only 75% of the cost of low-end childcare for one child for one month. It hardly solves the problem. Plus, shoving $144 million into the economy is inflationary, in a time where inflation is rampant, and it offers no long-term benefit. In short, the bill is a very bad idea.
I think the money should have been invested in building childcare centers. At $2mm apiece, we could have built 70 new centers that could have provided care for 7,000-14,000 kids…year after year for decades. Now that would do some good. Instead, and I sincerely mean no disrespect to the $600 recipients, we wasted the money.
The way these bills were passed says a lot about how things work, or don’t work, in Salem. They were drafted by Democrats without any real Republican input. Passage was a foregone conclusion once they had the support of Democrat leadership. The best policy arises out of solid bi-partisan debate and intelligent discourse. We have some good Republicans in Salem who are trying hard to bring common sense to legislation. However, although I’m a Republican, I hardly believe that only Republicans have good ideas. There are also rational Democrats in Salem. We need to design good legislation together.
Unfortunately, The Democrat super majority and lack of balance in Salem results in laws being quietly bulldozed through. If the people were properly informed and adequately represented, many of these bills would never even get to a vote. Wanting to change that is a big reason I’m running for State Representative.
As usual, the recently completed short session included a mad dash at the finish. Legislators spent billions and rammed big bills through at the last minute (bills that did not address the issues that are the most important to Oregonians). Committees, which are supposed to do the hard work of crafting legislation with public input, are commonly bypassed during these legislative sprints.
Often, in the final days and hours, legislators replace entire bills, instantly, with huge legislative packages in a maneuver called “gut and stuff.” The result is the dysfunctional state government we have today and is one reason there is very little public trust in the people who govern us.
This is one reason why people say they love Oregon, but hate Oregon politics. The good news is that things are the way they are because of people and policies. The right people and the right policies can fix things.
What I saw in our state Capitol needs fixing. We don’t have a money problem. We have a priorities problem. It does not have to be this way, but it will continue to be until we send more common sense, business minded people to Salem who reject the way things have been done for the last ten years, and who are willing to make the place work to meet the real needs of Oregonians.
It will be a great day when I start hearing people say, "We love Oregon, and one reason why is that our elected officials listen, respond and and govern wisely for the benefit of us all." It can happen.
