Legislative Recap & Plans to Reconvene to Address COVID-19
As frontline defenders of Central Oregon’s rural lands, water, and wildlife and as proponents of sustainable, attractive, prosperous communities, another of the arenas in which LandWatch actively engages is legislative advocacy. We track bills, conduct background research, work with partner organizations, meet with legislators, provide testimony, and participate in crafting legislation. We work to support and strengthen good bills and to oppose, defeat, limit, or mitigate bad bills.
The Oregon State Legislature convened on February 3 for this 2020 even-numbered-year short session and imploded ahead of the scheduled sine die with a walkout that prevented the quorum necessary for legislative action. A number of factors likely contributed to this drama and dysfunction, but ostensibly the biggest was rancor over SB1530, the climate bill which proposed a system of greenhouse gas emission caps with fungible allowances that progressively decline over a period of years. LandWatch supported this initiative to carefully and creatively address the pressing threat of climate change.
As this cap-and-trade concept had been worked on over more than one legislative session, this most recent bill became complex with dozens of amendments in order to provide the concessions, exemptions, and regional phasing demanded by lawmakers and interest groups to ease economic impacts. Despite these modifications and prolonged public process there remained intractable resistance on the one hand and on the other a feeling that the limits of compromise had been reached, an impasse that culminated in the walkout. While the more comprehensive and flexible legislative approach had many advantages, the Governor is now moving forward administratively with some of the measures to curb emissions.
Prior to the session end, there were also a number of bills aimed at weakening Oregon’s landmark statewide land use goals, many under the guise of addressing housing shortages. LandWatch has been in the vanguard of proponents of incentives for workforce and affordable housing. We believe that the place for this is inside urban growth boundaries in proximity to work, schools, supplies, and services so that overall quality of life for individuals is enhanced while the costs for communities of providing infrastructure are contained. LandWatch is proud to have played a part in successfully defeating some of the most dangerous proposals early in the session, and we remain alert to the false choices that pit the real need for sufficient housing against the real need for preserving rural lands – these are not mutually exclusive.
The 2020 state legislative session had a strange end. Now, in these even stranger times, the legislature is expected to convene again for a special session to allocate money and pass laws to ease the COVID-19 outbreak’s impact. The Governor’s office has said the focus will be providing financial relief for workers and business owners, and addressing the needs of Oregon’s healthcare system and the workers responding to the outbreak.