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Daily Kos
Rep David Gomberg
Week Two – The Freight Train is On Track Feb 12, 2024
Dear Neighbors and Friends,
Last week I described our five-week “short” session as a freight train – a heavy load moving fast with little time or opportunity for detours or unplanned deliveries.
A total of 280 measures have been introduced. That’s 172 in the House and 108 in the Senate. (The House has twice as many members.) All are available for public view on OLIS here.
The short-session moves very quickly, as illustrated in the Legislative Policy and Research Office 2024 Short Session Survival Guide below. Monday, February 12th, brings us to the “first chamber work session posting deadline.” This means, for a bill to remain viable it must be scheduled for a work session.
The big session issues remain unchanged – housing and drug policy.
As co-chair of the budget committee that manages housing investments, I have been meeting with policy chairs and House and Senate leadership for the past few weeks. And this week, Governor Kotek appeared before a legislative committee to present her own proposals.
The Governor’s bill comes with a hefty price tag: about $500 million in state funds to pay for land, infrastructure development and expanding utility services. Governor Kotek is proposing a new state agency, the Housing Accountability and Production Office, that would help developers and local governments navigate state housing laws. But the most controversial piece of the legislation would allow cities a one-time chance to bypass state land use laws to bring in either 150 or 75 acres of land for housing as long as it meets certain criteria, including at least 30% being set aside for affordable housing. A similar proposal failed last legislative session.
I have my own proposal for a $100 million investment in 50 local water and sewer projects to support housing growth. Across Oregon, too many of these systems are at capacity, aging out, or falling apart and small towns can’t afford the high cost of replacing them. Siletz is a good example. The city of 1,100 faces a $12 million sewer problem and without repairs or replacement, they cannot build new homes, can’t support the tribe, and can’t service the people who live there now.
Drug addiction, treatment, and criminalization is the other high-profile concern.
At the center of the conversation is a fierce debate over whether to end Oregon’s three-year drug decriminalization experiment. That question took center stage Wednesday in a four-hour long hearing.
On one side were those urging lawmakers to leave in place the decriminalization policy created by 2020′s Measure 110. They argued that expanding the state’s approach of treating addiction as a public health matter, rather than a crime, is the best way to steer drug users to treatment. In the other camp were those convinced that Measure 110 must be undone, in whole or in part, in order to give police a greater role in disrupting the open drug use and disorder playing out on some city streets.
At the center of the conversation is a fierce debate over whether to end Oregon’s three-year drug decriminalization experiment. That question took center stage Wednesday in a four-hour long hearing.
On one side were those urging lawmakers to leave in place the decriminalization policy created by 2020′s Measure 110. They argued that expanding the state’s approach of treating addiction as a public health matter, rather than a crime, is the best way to steer drug users to treatment. In the other camp were those convinced that Measure 110 must be undone, in whole or in part, in order to give police a greater role in disrupting the open drug use and disorder playing out on some city streets.
Warm regards,
Representative David Gomberg
House District 10
