Tracy Loew

Statesman Journal

Oregon’s 2017 Legislative session hit its halfway mark last week, as hundreds of bills died for lack of committee action.

That, in itself, isn't unusual. It's part of the regular winnowing process of legislation.

In this session, however, party tensions have forced some bills, which in other sessions would have easily moved, to be left on the table, according to those working in the Capitol.

“I think inside the building it’s kind of common knowledge that this is what’s going on,” Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, said in an interview Friday.

Democrats hold the majority in both chambers. But they need Republican support for the session’s two must-do issues: Filling a $1.6 billion budget gap and passing a transportation infrastructure funding package.

Both will require tax increases, meaning each must be approved by a supermajority. At least one Republican senator and one Republican representative must vote in support.

Democrats went into the session knowing that to win those tax increases, they would have to compromise by making some program cuts and addressing the growing cost of the state’s Public Employees Retirement System.

That means other bills that have nothing to do with taxes or spending are getting drawn into negotiations.

Supporters, who may have worked for years on legislation only to see it disappear without explanation, are left wondering just what happened.

“It’s hard to know whether negotiations on bigger issues are having an effect on these bills,” Ivan Maluski, policy director for Friends of Family Farmers, said after the Senate Environment Committee removed several bills from scheduled work sessions.

Lawmakers started the session vowing not to repeat the events of 2015, when Democrats immediately passed the Clean Fuels bill, angering Republicans and ultimately dooming passage of a transportation package that both parties agree is necessary.

The first two months of this session were comparatively slow, as legislators avoided moving many controversial bills that could damage bipartisanship.

Dembrow, a member of Senate leadership, emphasized that bipartisanship always best serves constituents.

“The need to achieve bipartisanship can certainly be a good thing – forcing us to find compromises that really are better public policy,” Dembrow said.

But this session, he said, it’s “challenging.”

“The threat of withholding support for revenue and transportation as a result of disagreements over any issue has the potential to give the minority party veto power over everything we do, essentially killing sensible policies that are favored by the great majority of Oregonians,” he said.

For example, lawmakers have worked for years on a proposal to regulate carbon emissions to help stem climate change and its impacts. Conversations this session centered on SB 557, in Dembrow’s Environment and Natural Resources committee.

As the deadline approached, the bill wasn’t ready to go to the floor for a vote, Dembrow said, so the committee agreed to move it to the Senate Rules Committee, where conversations could continue.

Instead, Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, sent the bill to the Business and Transportation Committee, where it is effectively dead, Dembrow said.

“There was either an explicit or implicit threat that continuing this conversation would get in the way of transportation, and maybe the budget,” Dembrow said. “Now, that’s kind of frustrating. But the Republican leadership in the Senate insisted that the process stop. And in another session, I don’t think that would have happened.”

Other Democratic lawmakers echoed Dembrow's take on events but declined to speak on the record.

Jonathan Lockwood, communications director for the Senate Republican caucus, called Dembrow's statements “a temper tantrum.”

“Democrats know we rejected Sen. Dembrow’s harmful and highly controversial energy tax because of our commitment to solving the real issues facing Oregonians, like transportation, PERS and the government’s overspending,” Lockwood said.

Courtney’s office declined to comment.

In the House, the majority caucus noted that of the 211 bills that have passed so far, only two have been partisan.

“Despite our political differences in some areas, we’re all really trying to work together to move our state forward,” House Majority Leader Jennifer Williamson, D-Portland, said. “My hope is that we can face the budget crisis together in a way that allows us to invest in a better future for all of us."

With just 11 weeks left until constitutional sine die, here’s where some of the session’s most high-profile bills stand:

Housing

Legislative leaders started the session with housing high on their priority lists as Oregon's biggest cities face rising rents, low vacancy rates and hefty moving fees.

At least a half-dozen tenant protection bills were introduced, and hearings on the proposals drew hundreds of people, including landlords and tenants.

On April 4, the House passed HB 2004, which would prohibit no-cause evictions and lift a statewide ban on rent control. It now goes to the Senate for consideration.

Another bill would have revised the state’s mortgage interest deduction and used the savings for home ownership. HB 2006 died in committee.

--Tracy Loew

PERS

Controversial bills to reduce the cost of state employee retirement benefits — Senate bills 559 and 560 — squeaked out of the Senate Workforce Committee without a recommendation as to whether the House should pass them or not, but lawmakers asked that the bills be carried to Ways and Means.

The bills would nip and tuck the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) benefits by initiating a fee that high-cost PERS recipients would contribute toward their benefits and reduce the monthly payout by basing monthly benefit calculations on five years instead of three.

House Bill 3428 aims to reduce the total cost of providing health care to public employees by placing them into coordinated care organizations like those launched to provide Affordable Care Act coverage to Oregon Health Plan recipients. The House Health Care Committee forwarded the bill to the House — without a recommendation as to passage — last week with a referral to the Rules Committee.

--Diane Dietz

Education

Senate Bill 8, which would permit the merger of a community college with a public university, has been referred to Rules, where its chances of moving ahead are slim.

Senate Bill 55 Boosts the Oregon Promise grants to more than $10 million per fiscal year during the biennium ending on June 30, 2017. The bill became a law on April 4 and is now effective. This will allow more Oregon students to utilize the college-access program.

Neither Senate Bill 579 and SB 580 got out of committee. They would have required health care practitioners, before administering any vaccination to a child, to obtain informed consent from a parent of the child or, if the child is emancipated or has reached age of majority, from the child.

Another vaccination proposal also died in committee. Senate Bill 687 would have changed the state definition of "abuse" to not include the refusal to vaccinate a child or the decision to delay the vaccination of child.

Two proposed resolutions regarding education funding also died:

Senate Joint Resolution 18 proposed an amendment to the Oregon Constitution that would have required the Legislature to appropriate funds for state's system of K-12 public education before passing any bill appropriating funds for any other state agency.

Senate Joint Resolution 20 was similar to SJR 18, but added that education funding had to be passed by the 65th day of the session and that lawmakers could not be paid or compensated if it wasn’t.

House Bill 2691 would have required students demonstrate proficiency in civics in order to receive their high school diploma. The bill had a public hearing in February, but did not move out of the House Committee on Education.

--Natalie Pate

Environment

Conservation and environment groups saw many of their priority bills die last week. Among them:

Two bills that would have restored local control over where genetically engineered crops can be grown. Both SB 1037 and HB 2469 would have allowed local jurisdictions to ban GE crops and would have allowed a ban approved by Josephine County voters in 2014 to take effect.

Two bills would have tightened rules around aerial pesticide spraying. The legislation was prompted by several recent incidents of people sickened by improper spraying.

SB 500 would have eliminated a requirement that people who think they have been injured by pesticides file a “report of loss” with the state within 60 days or forfeit their right to sue.

SB 892 would have required aerial pesticide applicators to notify the state of planned applications on privately owned forest land and report on them afterward and required the state to maintain an electronic reporting and notification system with free public access.

SB 197 would have required the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission to implement recommendations from a 2008 task force, which concluded dairies have the potential to emit ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, methane, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds and particulate matter.

“Oregon is becoming a 'manure magnet' for an increasing number of out-of-state mega-dairies looking for lax oversight, loopholes and tax subsidies,” Kendra Kimbirauskas, a member of the task force, said in response to the bill's failure.

A bill that would increase regulations on diesel trucks and reduce the number of older diesel engines on the road was moved to the Senate Rules committee Monday, keeping it alive. But its backers say it was gutted to a shell of its former self first.

“A menu of solutions that would clean up our air and put a deadline on dirty diesel in Oregon was thrown off the table,” said Chris Hagerbaumer, deputy director of the Oregon Environmental Council.

SB 1008 now only authorizes Oregon to use $72.9 million in VW settlement money and requires the state to conduct an inventory of off-road equipment.

Among the bills that survived the deadline:

HB 2739, which would allow landowners to seek three times actual economic damages if genetically engineered organisms are present on their land without permission.

HB 3427, which would require emergency exercises and periodic examinations of high-hazard dams.

--Tracy Loew

Gun control

Following a gut-and-stuff, Senate Bill 719 passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee along party lines Tuesday and will head to the Senate. The bill would create a way to get an “extreme risk protection order,” which would, in theory, halt a person at risk of hurting themselves or someone around them from having a firearm.

--Jonathan Bach

Marijuana

The Joint Committee on Marijuana Regulation wasn’t beholden to the April 18 deadline because it’s a joint committee.

Senate Bill 302 deals with revamping the law around marijuana offenses and passed March 14 in the Senate. It passed April 6 in the House.

Senate Bill 303, which deals with underage marijuana possession, was signed off by both the House and Senate.

Senate Bill 307 is the “social consumption” bill that would allow the Oregon Liquor Control Commission to regulate the sale and use of marijuana at events. It had a public hearing February 14, but isn’t beholden to the April 18 deadline because it is before the Joint Committee on Marijuana Regulation. No further meetings are scheduled, though.

--Jonathan Bach

READ MORE: Happening at the Capitol this week | March for Science attracks 1000 in Salem | Salem-Keizer school board will have wholesale changes

Health Care

Bills to stem opioid addiction and overdose — which claims the lives of roughly 200 Oregonians a year — are still alive and moving to the Joint Ways and Means Committee. But first, accountability strategies for physicians who prescribe the drugs were stripped out of the legislation.

The House Health Care Committee tabled a proposal to make HIV patients look and feel better. House Bill 3086, sponsored by Rep. Sheri Malstrom, D-Beaverton, would have required health insurance companies – and eventually the Oregon Health Plan – to pay for either or both liposuction and implants for patients with a condition called lipodystrophy or lipoatrophy.

The condition carves deep hollows in the HIV patients’ cheeks, limbs and buttocks, while at the same time depositing fatty “humps” at the back of the neck or the breast area.

Lipodystrophy is a side effect of longtime use of antiretroviral therapy and a result of the infection itself. It’s common, with 40 to 50 percent of HIV-infected patients experiencing the problem some time in their lives according to the New England Journal of Medicine.

About 7,000 Oregonians were living with HIV at the end of 2015, according to the state Public Health Division.

The condition causes “devastating physical deformities that ravage our bodies, and increase the stigma associated with our community,” Eric Landon, who was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS over 30 years ago, told the health committee in March.

“Some stare, others refuse to look me in the face, all are wondering what condition I have,” Daniel LaForce, who has been living with HIV since 1988, told the committee. “It would be a dream to get my cheeks full again.”

Insurance companies deny coverage of the filler to round out faces or the liposuction to take away humps on the basis that it amounts to cosmetic surgery, HIV patients told lawmakers.

The America’s Health Insurance Plans lobbyist opposed the bill on the grounds that when the procedures are “medically necessary,” they’re covered.

An anti-tobacco bill, Senate Bill 235, died in committee. The bill would have required mini-marts, grocery stores and other retailers to get a state license to sell tobacco.

Most states require licensing, Oregon Nurses Association lobbyist Jenn Baker said. The goal was to tighten up on sales to minors.

The Oregon Health Authority would continue sting operations to test retailer compliance with the law against sales to minors.

In fiscal year 2017, the state says it issued 247 fines to retailers caught selling tobacco to minors through the state enforcement program.

The bill would have prohibited cities and counties from passing their own licensure requirements — and Lane and Multnomah counties already have.

Retailers, such as e-cigarette vendors, tobacco shop owners and grocers opposed the bill. They also have turned away at least two previous attempts to establish statewide tobacco sales licensing.

Proposals to control prescription drug prices, aren't dead, but are probably on life support.

Senate Bill 792, which would have required drug advertising to include the price, and Senate Bill 793,would have allowed the state to limit price increases greater than 3.4 percent a year, both died in committee last week.

But in the House, Rep. Rob Nosse at the last minute got his drug price-control bill, House Bill 2387, out of the Health Care Committee with a “do-pass” recommendation and a referral to the Joint Ways and Means Committee.

Nosse presented examples of rapidly escalating prescription prices, including Tetracycline, which cost 7 cents in 2012 and $8.54 in 2016; anti-cholesterol Niacin ER, which was 6 cents in 2012 and $2.42 in 2016; and arthritis drug Duexis that went from $1.73 to $22.02 in the same period.

The bill would empower the state Consumer and Business Services department to establish a formula to determine what drugs are excessively priced. The agency would collect rebates on those drugs, according to the bill, and the agency would reimburse payers for the excess cost.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America are opposed on the basis that it would be a “windfall” for insurance companies and ultimately hurt Oregon consumers, according to earlier testimony.

The surviving bill is not yet scheduled for review in the Joint Ways and Means committee.

--Diane Dietz

The Statesman Journal's Jonathan Bach, Diane Dietz and Natalie Pate contributed to this story.