Legislature grinds to crawl. Expect big April shakedown

Taxpayer Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

Last week the Oregon State Legislature tried to quickly resume meetings right after the State’s largest snow storm power outage (300,000) and with the additional challenges of COVID handicapping people’s access to the building.  It didn’t work.

People tried to testify by zoom but were unable to access power and internet signals.  Hearings were plagued by examples of citizens who signed up to electronically testify but were disconnected or lost when they were called.  Hearings were forced to reschedule.

At this point, only a small fraction of bills have passed through committees.  They are painfully behind schedule.

The Legislature can either proceed with caution, transparency and extend great bipartisan workmanship to pass the most important bills, or they can try to force more of their agenda with less time by ramming everything through come April and May.    Guess which will happen.

April and May is usually when the Legislature goes into emergency quick mode.   Public notice is shortened and public involvement is reduced to the most connected lobbyists and activists.  This is traditionally when all of the worst tax bills seems to pass — a the last minute — with less public involvement.

Compound this usual April-May abuse of the process with COVID making the Session the least transparent and least involved in our lifetime and you have even a bigger shakedown coming.

This is tragic because we are still in the middle of a health pandemic and economic crisis, and that alone deserves our priority, but what we will get is the worst of the usual politics and a whole lot more more.

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