“Study” Bills Make Me Wonder

Legislative sessions come with a long list of introduced bills. Oregon’s 2025 session is no exception to that.

Often buried deep in this list are various bills that mandate a state agency perform a study. They tend to be so broadly vague, such bills make me wonder if there is some backstory behind the request.

I can give you three pending examples. The first two come from Representative Julie Fahey (D-Eugene). HB 2008 would mandate “The Department of Consumer and Business Services shall study consumer protection.” One would expect DCBS to study consumer protection in the normal course of the agency’s work, right? She has also introduced HB 2009 where, by statute, “The Department of Education shall study the adequacy of public education in this state.” Is this just a softball for ODE to lobby for more money or is it an attempt to genuinely get to the bottom of the tough questions raised this session about the adequacy of how Oregon spends education funding?

Finally, there is Representative Rob Nosse’s (D-Portland) HB 2014 which mandates: “The Oregon Health Authority shall study hospital discharges.” Do we have a crisis in hospital discharges in this state that needs to be addressed?

How efficient is this mandating of studies? All three bills have specific dates to submit a report to the legislature. Imagine you work at one of these agencies and are assigned the task of writing such a broad legislative report. That inherently calls for you and a team of colleagues to do less of your normal portfolio of work and compose a thick volume encompassing the broad subject. The result will be an encyclopedic tome. Will anyone then read that thing, cover to cover?

Or is there an expectation that, buried deep inside that vast report is a very specific policy proposal the legislator wanted? Does this detailed expectation get communicated privately from the legislator to the agency? If so, this seems like a wastefully inefficient means to get what one is looking for.

Eric Shierman lives in Salem and is the author of We were winning when I was there.