'Witching hours' and 'lifeboats' decide fate of key bills in 2022 Oregon Legislature

The Oregon Legislature's task over the next dozen days seems daunting: Deciding the live-or-die fate of more than 270 pieces of legislation that were brand new on Feb. 1 but could be dead and gone by March 1.

With the 35-day session now past the mid-point, is there time for legislation to take flight?

"We've got enough runway," said House Speaker Dan Rayfield, D-Corvallis.

How and when the culling is done is crucial to keeping at least two-thirds of lawmakers inside the Capitol amid a bitter cold snap and still-high COVID-19 counts. 

Democrats have bills and budget items for fixes to housing, homelessness, child care, farmworker overtime, rural infrastructure, environment, and criminal justice reform. Each has to go through a labyrinth of drafting, analyzing, introducing, debating, amending, and voting during the tight calendar of the short session.

New year, new leaders - new outcome?

Rayfield is trying to reset relationships with Republicans following a rough year between former House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland, and former House Minority Leader Christine Drazan, R-Canby. Both have left the House to run for governor.

The calmer atmosphere in both chambers has allowed the 2022 session to already surpass the sorry record of the 2020 short session. House and Senate Republicans walked out in the third week over a proposed carbon cap bill, and never came back. Only three bills were passed before the session derailed.

As of Wednesday, the 2022 session passed the 21st day, pushing past the length of the 2020 session. The House and Senate have approved eight bills, with more on the verge of making the trip to Gov. Kate Brown's desk.

Rayfield is working with a group of Republican moderates to come up with a plan to get $100 million in "rural infrastructure" funding to areas mostly represented by GOP lawmakers.

The effort was praised by Senate Minority Leader Tim Knopp, R-Bend.

“It’s a good day when Republicans and Democrats can come together for the good of all Oregonians,” Knopp said in a statement on Monday.

But just in case the goodwill gets fractured, Rayfield is also putting the House on a double-time march through the backlog of legislation, convening twice a day, including a double session on Saturday.

Partisan punching

While no walkout is looming, Republicans haven't forgotten they are the opposition party.

Knopp on Wednesday called on Brown to immediately drop the state's indoor mask mandate.

"Oregon should not be the last state," Knopp said. The move would "free up the state of Oregon and get back to a more normal life."

Brown has announced mask rules will be dropped once there are fewer than 400 people in state hospitals. A state forecast puts the likely date at March 20.

Sen. Lew Frederick, D-Portland, rose to credit state residents with speeding the drop in infections that led to fewer people in the hospital. His wife can now have "not elective" surgery.

"Thank Oregon for managing to put together a system where we pay attention and care for each other," he said.

Brown was also the target of GOP barbs in the other chamber.

House Minority Leader Vikki Breese-Iverson, R-Prineville, condemned Democrats for not taking up Republican-authored crime bills, including limiting the governor's ability to pardon prisoners.

“Democrats voted down these proposals and pushed ideas to let convicted criminals vote from prison and make it harder for law enforcement to stop destructive riots," she said.

'Witching hours'

Self-imposed deadlines required lawmakers to keep a brisk pace. Under rules adopted at the beginning of the session, Thursday is the final day that a bill can receive a vote in nearly all committees. Anything left behind at the stroke of midnight is dead for 2022.

Sen. Sara Gelser Blouin, D-Corvallis, said Wednesday that she is mad and frustrated Democratic leaders have told her there won't be enough time for her child welfare reform package this session.

"We are the state Senate, we can and should fix this," she said. 

A $50 million fund for the Department of Forestry to thin wildfire-prone forests received a hearing Feb. 8, then sat in the Senate Natural Resources and Wildfire Recovery Committee without a vote as time runs down.

An attempt by Sen. Fred Girod, R-Stayton, to bring the wildfire bill to the floor failed on Wednesday failed. Girod said he believed thinning would have limited the growth of the Beachie Creek Fire in summer 2020 that destroyed 470 homes, including Girod's.

"I paid probably the ultimate price," he said. "This body really has failed in the avenue of dealing with forest fires."

Back-from-the-dead legislation

Legislation that will survive into the final weeks of the 2022 session are in 11 "lifeboat" committees exempt from the deadlines, including all joint House-Senate panels, plus the Revenue and Rules committees of the House and Senate. Not surprisingly, the list of "assigned measures" to these panels has become increasingly crowded. 

No bill is ever truly dead until the final gavel is dropped. Anything can be resurrected by a legislative sleight-of-hand.

One tactic is called a "gut-and-stuff," in which a dead bill is resurrected by making its contents an amendment to a bill that is still alive in one of the "lifeboat" committees. The old bill is removed ("gut") and the amendment replaces it as the text of the bill ("stuff"). 

The move is rarely successful without the approval of top leaders. Rayfield said early this week that he knows of no issue as yet that would call for such a tactic.