Oregon lawmakers are preparing to return to Salem Wednesday for a special session focused on passing police accountability laws and measures to respond to the coronavirus crisis.
Late Friday night, leaders in the Democratically controlled Legislature released publicly a list of 13 proposed bills they want to pass next week. Sen. Michael Dembrow made public six additional proposed bills, and a few more were expected by Monday. Gov. Kate Brown announced on June 16 that she would call lawmakers into special session on June 24.
The public can watch hearings on the proposed bills online at 3:30 p.m. Monday and 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, on the Legislature’s website. There are also instructions on the website for how to submit testimony on the proposals.
Speaking of public access to government meetings, it’s among the topics addressed in a broad coronavirus policy bill. The governor in April ordered governments to allow people to listen to or watch public meetings in real time. The proposed bill appears to allow governments to record the meetings, without a deadline to make the recordings public.
Here are the proposals lawmakers will discuss at public hearings on Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning. The last six were widely distributed by Dembrow on Friday evening but, as of 10 a.m. Saturday, they were not on the Legislature’s official website.
- Making it harder for arbitrators to overturn law enforcement discipline
- Require law enforcement officers to intervene and report when colleagues use unreasonable force
- Prohibit law enforcement agencies from using tear gas, long range acoustic devices or sound cannons
- Ban law enforcement from using holds that inhibit a person’s ability to breathe, including but not limited to choke holds
- Put the Oregon attorney general in charge of investigating cases of deadly use of force, and force that causes serious injuries, by law enforcement
- Create a statewide database of law enforcement officer discipline and publish the information online.
- New cell phone fee to pay for rural broadband, a version of which died in the 2019 legislative session
- A bundle of coronavirus-related policies, from limiting the liability of governments and temporary lodging businesses that provide “isolation shelter” to people during the coronavirus public health emergency, to inserting a moratorium on evictions into state law and loosening restrictions on RV camping
- Changes to child welfare investigations and oversight, including allowing abuse screeners to temporarily close at screening reports of third party abuse not concerning people most frequently in contact with the child and requiring state licensing of all out-of-state programs used by the state
- Tweaks, largely technical in nature, to the state’s new business tax passed in 2019 to fund education
- Require the Eastern Oregon Economic Development Board to make grants and loans to help workforce development
- Extend by one year small school grants and state funding for foreign exchange students
- Increase, for one year, the percentage of students in a school district who can enroll in a virtual charter school not connected with the district
- Prohibit commercial evictions during the coronavirus state of emergency.
- Extend judicial timelines during the pandemic.
- Create a state inspection program for meat-processing plants.
- Put into law a compromise reached by timber companies and environmentalists regarding pesticide use.
- Modify rules for distribution and spending of some funding streams for transit systems.
- Expand the scope of work that dental hygienists are allowed to perform.
-- Hillary Borrud: hborrud@oregonian.com; @hborrud
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