Salem Political Snark

Democratic and Republican leaders preview 2025 legislature at Salem City Club

In the not-so-old days, the Oregon legislature only met every two years. Now it convenes for a short session in even-numbered years, like 2024, and for a long session in odd-numbered years, like 2025.

Today the Salem City Club had a program that featured the Senate Democratic Majority Leader, Kayse Jama, and the House Republican Leader, Christine Drazan (she ran for Governor in 2022).

Christine Drazan and Kayse Jama

Jama, a Somali-American, spoke first. Due to his accent and use of a handheld microphone (a built-in microphone wasn't working) I had some difficulty in understanding him. So I'll use this as an excuse for any errors in what Jama said, along with my notoriously bad handwriting as I took notes.

He noted that Oregon faces a lot of challenges, including rising prices. Unity is needed. Citizens expect Democrats and Republicans to work together in the upcoming legislative session. 

Protecting the rights of all Oregonians is a Democratic priority. So are building more affordable housing and dealing with homelessness, issues that obviously are related. Constructing infrastructure on land suitable for housing is needed: sewer, water, and such. 

He doesn't think that public safety can be achieved by arresting our way out of crime. LGBTQ rights are important to assure. Collaboration between diverse interests will be needed to solve the state's problems. We need to work together and be kind to each other.

Drazan then described the Republican approach. The status quo isn't working. This is an opportunity to work across the aisle (Democrats control both the state House and Senate). She said that billions of dollars already have been spent on housing without a whole lot of results.

There are still too many people living on the streets. We need to try something different, a new strategy. We need to better understand the population we're serving, whether this be the homeless or students. 

Oregon schools are falling behind on test scores. She urged that students be viewed as customers, putting them at the center of the conversation about education policies. Oregon's state budget is a moral document. The key question to be asked of programs is "Will it work?" Accountability measures are sorely needed. 

In the Q&A part of the program, I asked about Oregon's land use program, saying that in states with strong land use rules, farm and forest land is better protected but affordable housing is lacking compared to states with weaker land use rules. So where is the balance to be struck?

Drazan said that since the passage of Oregon's pioneering land use program (in the early 1970s), more requirements keep being added. Carve-outs from the program occur for particular purposes, but she prefers a general revamping of the state's land use rules that would better balance economic vitality with protecting the environment.

Someone asked Drazan if she would take money away from public schools and give it to private schools. She said that she believes in public schools but wants a focus to return to individual students, as some students are not being served well. She favors a "yes, and" rather than an "either, or" approach to the public-private debate. We need to be more flexible with education. 

After a questioner asked if the "kicker" should be done away with, Jama said that conversation is needed. Drazan gave a fairly intricate answer that, if I understood it correctly, basically said that if the legislature had been able to spend all of the revenue available in strong economic years, the state would be in worse shape now due to the need to either keep funding new programs during weak economic years, or eliminating them when times became tough. 

(The kicker rebates money to taxpayers when revenues come in several percent more than what was projected by the state economist for the next two-year period.)

After the program ended I went up to Drazan, shook her hand, and told her, with a smile on my face, that I was pleased to hear a Republican say things that made quite a bit of sense to me. I also said that it was a pleasure to have she and Jama engage in this dialogue, as Democrats and Republicans don't do much of that in Washington D.C. these days.

Of course, after the meeting I told someone else that Republican politicians in Oregon are prone to appearing more moderate in public than they do in private, given our state's electoral leaning toward the Democratic Party. So I'll take a wait-and-see approach to how collaborative Republicans turn out to be in the 2025 legislative session. 

I'm grateful Oregon is a bright side to 2024 election

I felt this way after the 2016 election, and I feeling it again now: I'm grateful that I live in Oregon, where the Trump red wave that soundly defeated Harris was more like a pink ripple.

According to the Cook Political Report, currently Harris' margin of victory in our state is 13.4% (54.9% for Harris, 41.5% for Trump). That's 2.7% less than the margin Biden beat Trump by in 2020. So Trump increased his vote share in Oregon, but only ten states had a lower increase in the Republican percentage of presidential votes.

Meaning, Oregon fared quite well (from the standpoint of a Democrat, which I am) in an election where nationally Trump gained about six points from his 2020 performance. 

In a November 5 story, "Oregon election results follow usual pattern," Randy Stapilus of the Oregon Capital Chronicle summed things up:

Oregon had few surprises in the  general election results that changed the political landscape very little.

Tracking closely with similar kinds of results in Washington state, the light blue Beaver state stuck with its usual voting patterns, careful to rarely edge over into landslides. In most cases, Portland remained deep blue and most of the eastern counties stayed deep red. 

Taken as a whole, Oregon remained generally blue, even as much of the country was awash in red-tinged results. 

The state Legislature will not be significantly changed by this election, even if a number of new faces will be taking their places in it.

Once again, all of the races for statewide elected officials ended up with Democratic victories. In the Secretary of State race, Tobias Read defeated Dennis Linthicum 54-42. In the State Treasurer race, Elizabeth Steiner defeated Brian Boquist 49-43. In the Attorney General race, Dan Rayfield defeated Will Lathrop 54-46. 

Pleasingly, since I live in the 6th Congressional District, Democrat Andrea Salinas beat Mike Erickson again, 53-47. It also warmed my liberal heart to see Democrat Janelle Bynum snatch the 5th District out of Republican hands by defeating Lori Chavez-Deremer 48-45. It's likely that the GOP will maintain narrow control of the House of Representatives, but Oregon did its part to reduce the Republican margin.

I think the ballot measures turned out fine.

Measure 115 passed 54-46, so now the Oregon legislature can impeach statewide elected officials by a 2/3 vote. Measure 116 failed 53-47, which is mildly surprising, since I expected voters would prefer that an independent commission set the salary for certain officials rather than the legislature. Measure 117 failed 58-42, showing that ranked choice voting isn't popular statewide. Measure 118, which would have increased corporate taxes to give an annual payment to each Oregonian was even less popular, failing 78-22. Unionizing cannabis businesses got a boost when Measure 119 passed 56-44.

I was disappointed that Democratic Salem city councilor Virginia Stapleton lost to incumbent Republican Kevin Mannix 53-47 in the race for the state House District 21 seat. Probably her City Council support for the ill-fated employee payroll tax that was soundly rejected by Salem voters hurt her. 

The national election results depressed me, while the Oregon results helped cheer me up. This wasn't exactly a wash, since I expected Harris to win and I also expected that Oregon would remain solidly Democratic. That made Harris' loss, which extended to her losing all seven of the swing states, more strongly disturbing than the amount of pleasure I got from Oregon doing what it usually does, vote blue.

Nonetheless, I've found some reasons to hope in the face of Trump's victory. Time will tell if I'm justified in that hope. 

Measure 118 gives every Oregonian $1,600 a year. Here's the pros and cons.

Last Friday the Salem City Club had a program about Measure 118, a proposal on the November ballot that would give every Oregonian an estimated $1,600 a year by increasing the corporate minimum tax rate on revenues exceeding $25 million. 

While the presenters on the pro and con sides each made good points, I came away feeling that while Measure 118 has its heart in the right place, it is too flawed to merit a Yes vote. 

Measure 118 is a step in the direction of a guaranteed minimum income for Oregonians. However, it gives money to everybody in our state, including the wealthy. So much of the money raised will go to people who don't really need it. And it will reduce the money received by state government, which helps explain why Democrats and liberal organizations are opposing the measure. 

Here's photos I took of the presentations by Antonio Gisbert, the chief petitioner for Measure 118, and Preston Mann, the director of political affairs for Oregon Business & Industry, the state’s largest general business association, which opposes the measure. 

I've added some brief commentary following each photo.

The measure looks good at a first glance, and uncritically.

The claim is that Measure 118 is "designed" to be revenue neutral to the state's General Fund. But there's reason to question whether this will actually occur. More on that later. 

In general, corporate tax rates are indeed too low. Question is whether Measure 118 is an effective way to remedy this. Again, the money raised by the measure will go to every Oregonian regardless of income, so it's likely that many high income people will save the money or spend it on things (like travel) that aren't part of the "Main Street" economy. 

Some of the findings of the Legislative Revenue Office were touted by Gisbert while he pointed out some things he didn't like about the office's report.

Large corporations are opposed to Measure 118, which isn't surprising. 

Turning to the opponent of Measure 118, here's photos of the slides Preston Mann showed the City Club audience.

Opponents term Measure 118 a sales tax on the television ads that are shown frequently on Oregon stations. This is technically true, since it is a 3% tax on corporate revenues exceeding $25 million. But it isn't a sales tax on retail purchases by Oregonians, so in that sense the term is misleading.


Here it is claimed that "every Oregon business and consumer indirectly taxed." This assumes that large corporations will pass on the Measure 118 tax to their customers, which could either be other businesses or consumers. Hard to tell the extent this would happen.

Yes, the 3% tax could apply at every step of the supply chain in Oregon. It just is hard to know to what extent this would happen. It's a reasonable objection to Measure 118.

Mann argued that a 2x4 piece of lumber grown, milled, and sold in Oregon would be at a price disadvantage to a 2x4 brought in from out of state due to the various stages Measure 118 could tax this item.

If the Measure 118 tax was passed on to consumers, it could mean higher prices for Oregonians.

The same applies to small businesses, goes the anti-Measure 118 argument. 

Since Measure 118 would be a statutory change, not a constitutional change, the Oregon legislature could fiddle with Measure 118, raising the fear of politicians having a "blank check." Ooh, scary! (Especially to Republicans.)

Opposition to Measure 118 includes people and organizations who usually aren't on the same side of a political issue. 

This is a longer list of Measure 118 opponents. 

Places to go if you want to learn more the reasons to oppose Measure 118.

Mann mentioned the Oregon Center for Public Policy as an organization that usually leans liberal but has serious concerns about Measure 118. Check out the center's "What Measure 118 gets right and what it doesn't." Here's some excerpts that helped convince me that I'll be a No vote on the measure.

Juan Carlos: So is this a good idea? What’s your bottom line assessment of Measure 118? 

Daniel: To answer that, we need to step back a little bit and understand the context of what measure 118 fits into. We’ve spent decades, centuries in creating a tax and revenue system here in Oregon. And Measure 118 is going to come in and shake a lot of that up. 

But first, we have to also understand that big corporations should pay more in taxes. In 2017, Congress passed an enormous package of tax cuts. And as part of that, they cut the corporate tax rate and they created all sorts of new opportunities for corporations to avoid paying their fair share.

And the corporate tax rate, even that only applies to the profits a company actually reports after they apply their other tax shielding opportunities and, you know, tuck money away in tax havens overseas and things like that. So to give you one example, U.S. corporations parked about 45% of their profits in tax havens where they only had less than 2% of their employees. So 45% of the profits is marked up in these, where less than 2% of their employees are located. So a profit sitting in Singapore is a profit not properly taxed here in Oregon. So corporations, they’ve had their rates cuts. They’ve had plenty of opportunities to shield their profits from being taxed at all. And it’s really clear that corporations should pay more in taxes in Oregon and and nationally.

And we also know that giving cash to struggling families is a good policy. It’s an effective way to make families more economically secure. There are dozens of studies on cash programs, from guaranteed income pilots in communities across the nation, including here in Oregon, to research on the impacts of cash tax refunds like the Earned Income Tax Credit in the Child Tax Credit.

And they all point to the same general truth. If you give a family money to spend on their priorities, they spend it on meeting their basic needs. A safe room to sleep in, warm food for dinner, the ability to get around their community, getting to school or work. It also sets a family up to invest in starting a business, buying a home or getting a degree.

It’s a catalyst for further economic stability. And importantly, children who grow up in economically secure homes are more likely to succeed as adults, to really thrive. Fewer crimes, more education, more income. Longer, healthier lives. And all of this, to be clear, has really immense benefits to the state and to society as a whole. So when we start from this perspective – cash is good giving struggling families money is a good thing, taxing corporations is good and needed – it’s clear that Measure 2018 gets some things right. 

But unfortunately, Measure 118 is poorly designed and it triggers an array of damaging, likely unintended consequences that make it really a measure that is not a good idea as it has been drafted and proposed. 

...Juan Carlos: What are those unintended consequences that you’re talking about? Can you flesh those out for us?

Daniel: Of the unintended, negative consequences that appear as part of 118 is that the measure would reduce the funds available for Oregon schools, child care, health care and other essential services that we pay for through the Oregon General Fund. 

Let me explain what the Oregon General Fund is. The corporate income tax is the second largest source of funding for the general fund. And this is what people mean when they talk about the state budget. The vast majority of the general fund pays for three things: education in largely K-through-12 education, health and human services and public safety. And under Oregon’s corporate income tax, corporations pay the higher of a profits based tax or of the corporate minimum tax.

Oregon’s existing corporate minimum tax is quite small at roughly 1/10 of 1% of a corporation’s sales in Oregon. And to pay for the rebates in Measure 118, it would expand Oregon’s corporate minimum tax to 3%. So from 0.1% to 3% for corporations that have receipts in Oregon above $25 million. So as a result, many large corporations that currently pay the tax based on their profits would instead pay the corporate minimum tax.

And the taxes they pay would go instead towards the rebate, whereas before it would have gone into the general fund, would have helped fund those fundamental services. If you consider a corporation that had a $100 million in profits in one year and they had, you know, a set amount of receipts here in Oregon, sales here in Oregon, that company might be currently paying 7% on those profits. Right.

But with the new corporate minimum, because they would have such a significant amount owed due to the minimum tax because of their receipts in Oregon, they would no longer pay that tax on their profits. Instead, that money would go directly into the rebate and the general fund would get less money as a result. 

Juan Carlos: So, in other words, the one of the unintended consequences is that money that otherwise would have gone into the state budget to pay for K-through-12 schools, health care and so on – some of that money will instead go to help pay for these tax rebates because of the way the measure is written. Is that a general summation of it? 

Daniel: That’s right. I mean, the general fund right now gets more than a billion dollars per tax year from the corporate income and excise tax rate, from the profits based tax. And that’s projected to increase to one-and-a-half billion dollars per year. If Measure 118 passes, then a big portion of that, a significant share of that more than a billion per year, instead of going into the general fund, will now go towards the rebates.

And I don’t expect the proponents of this measure realized that they were going to be seeing that kind of an impact on the general fund. I think their intent was to raise new revenue that would go to the rebates. But unfortunately, because of how the measure was drafted, it doesn’t seem like that is what the outcome would be.

Juan Carlos: What other problems, what other unintended consequences, do you see with the measure? Because you mentioned several unintended consequences. 

Daniel: Yeah, there are other consequences besides the fact that I was just describing that we could see billions of dollars over the next decade pulled out of the general fund and instead going into these rebates. Another consequence is that the measure is designed to send it equally to every Oregon resident that meets those, you know, minimal eligibility requirements. And that includes people who don’t need the money. 

There are people who are able to, you know, buy a second boat or a third home or invest hundreds of millions of dollars in stocks and bonds and other investment opportunities. Not saying they shouldn’t. Good on them. But why is the state going to send them a check, when we have families that are struggling to survive, struggling to stay housed, struggling to find a way to give their children or their parents the care they need? And so one of the other real problems with the measure is that universality, because it doesn’t target the resources at the families that are in greatest need.

Now, some federal some universal programs are a good thing. Not saying that we shouldn’t have universal programs, but the challenge is, how do we fund it when we as a state do not have the fiscal flexibility of the federal government? We don’t have a Federal Reserve to lean on. We can’t spend at a deficit. We can’t build up a huge debt as a state.

We have to pay for what we spend. We have to raise the taxes and raise the fees to fund the services that we invest in. And so a program like this, where we’re taking billions of dollars of new revenue and we’re sending it out equally, including to the richest Oregonians in the state, is a real missed opportunity to focus the resources more on the Oregonians that are struggling most. To really target the resources where they could do the best.

The revenue raised could be continued to be sent out as cash payments, just focused on low income families. That would be an improvement. It could also look like taking a piece of it and investing it in affordable housing and child care and higher education, and many of the services that Oregonians depend on. We can’t really afford the luxury of giving cash rebates to those who are well-off and don’t need a rebate.

And not only is it an issue that we’re spending so much of these resources on the rich, but we also are making it really hard to raise any further taxes to invest in our schools or in other facilities that need more resources. We need to build more housing, we need to build childcare facilities, we need to staff them.

And it’s going to be really hard to raise more money beyond that $7 billion or more annual tax increase in Ballot Measure 118. It’s going to be really hard to raise more money for those services Oregonians depend on after this measure is passed. And after all of those dollars, including the piece going to the richest households, are flowing out the door.

Salem City Club looked at ranked choice voting, which is on November ballot

Last Friday ranked choice voting was discussed at a Salem City Club program that featured Shannon Grimes from the Sightline Institute in Seattle, where she focuses on electoral reforms in Washington and Oregon. 

This November Oregonians will vote on Measure 117. If approved, the measure puts ranked choice voting into effect on January 1, 2028. Measure 117 was referred to voters by the 2024 state legislature, where it was passed on a party line vote, aside from one Republican who voted with the Democrats.

So what is ranked choice voting? Here's an explanation that reflects what I heard Grimes say. 

Measure 117 requires that ranked choice voting be used for partisan primaries and general elections to federal and state offices, including the president, U.S. senator, U.S. representative, governor, secretary of state, attorney general, state treasurer, and commissioner of labor and industries.

For some reason, the Oregon legislature exempted itself from being subject to ranked choice voting. Cities, towns, and other local governments can use ranked choice voting if they desire.

Currently Benton County, which includes Corvallis, uses ranked choice voting in local elections. In the upcoming November election, Portland voters will use ranked choice voting to elect a mayor, auditor, and three councilors to represent their district. Nationally about 50 places use ranked choice voting. 

Grimes said that 80-90% of people say ranked choice voting is easy and they like it. Voters perceive campaigns as less negative, since candidates have to appeal to more than their most avid backers given that ranked choice voting moves from whoever gets the most votes (which could be as low as 20% in a race with many candidates) to whoever gets the support of a majority of voters (since as shown in the example above, votes for the lowest ranked candidate are allocated to other candidates until someone gets at least 50% + one vote).

Grimes added that underrepresented candidates (such of people of color) tend to run and win more under a ranked choice voting system as they don't have to worry about being a spoiler candidate. That probably explains why the endorsers on the Yes on 117 web site include many organizations representing the underrepresented, along with progressive, environmental, and civic groups like the League of Women Voters.

TIME magazine offers a few examples of how ranked choice voting likely would have affected the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections.

The most notorious example of this [spoiler effect] is the 2000 presidential election, when nearly 3 million mostly left-leaning voters cast their ballots for third-party candidate Ralph Nader. If ranked-choice voting had been in place at the time, Democrat Al Gore may have prevailed in the key state of Florida, where neither Gore nor Republican George W. Bush won a majority of the vote, says Don Saari, author of Decisions and Elections.

(Florida was the center of a vote-counting scandal, and Bush’s narrow win there ensured his ascension to the White House, despite losing the popular vote nationwide.)

“Gore was the second-place choice of many of Ralph Nader’s supporters, particularly in the states of Florida and New Hampshire, where Bush narrowly won,” says Saari. “A goal of Nader’s Green Party was to reach a certain percentage of the total vote, which is a reason why many Nader voters did not want to vote for their second-ranked Gore.”

...Because it helps eliminate vote-splitting, a ranked-choice voting system can have the effect of encouraging more third-party and centrist candidates, advocates say. Michael Bloomberg, a centrist, third-party candidate, considered running in the 2016 presidential election but decided not to upon concluding that he might split the Democratic vote with Clinton, increasing the chances of Trump’s victory. (Trump, of course, still won the election, though he lost the popular vote to Clinton.)

Again, the 2016 election offers a good hypothetical example. If a ranked-choice voting system had been in place in Michigan, then Clinton, not Trump, may have won that state. Because neither candidate received a majority of the Michigan vote, ranked-choice voting would have come into play. And if we can assume that most Stein voters would have chosen Clinton as their second choice, the former Secretary of State would have won, according to Saari. Trump won Michigan by 10,700; Stein received more than 51,000 votes.

Though these examples are of how ranked choice voting could have benefitted Democratic candidates, and Alaska is considering doing away with ranked choice voting after it led to a loss by Sarah Palin in a special election to fill a seat in the House of Representatives, which ended up being won by a Democrat, an avid local Democrat, Aileen Kaye, sent me some reasons to oppose Measure 117 after I'd asked her to do this, knowing from a question she asked at the City Club program that she isn't a fan. 

Why I will vote “No” on M. 117, Ranked Choice Voting

1. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  As an active member of the Oregon and Marion County Democratic Party, I am very grateful that we Dems hold all the statewide offices, including the governorship, the Oregon House, and the Oregon Senate.  The Marion County Democratic Central Committee voted last week to oppose this measure.  There is no good reason to change Oregon’s election system. 

2. Legislative leadership was paid BIG bucks to vote for this.  They took the money and voted for it; but they omitted themselves from having to be elected via Ranked Choice Voting!  And no one can find out the names of the contributors to the PAC’s who lobbied hard for this!  I think the push and the money is NOT from Oregonians.  

3. Having gone door-to-door for the past many elections, I will tell you most voters pay little attention to government/elections.  They also do not like voting for people they know nothing of.  To have several choices for an office will result in many voters throwing up their hands and not voting for anyone for that office.

4. It will be very expensive!  There is no mention of this and there is no info on from where the funding would come. 

5. Election workers are already very stressed due to the MAGA election-denying culture.  This will this add to the stress because there is no way we will get election results the night of the election due to Ranked Choice Voting.

Lastly, if you want to experience ranked choice voting with dessert preferences, scroll down to Example #3 on this Ballotpedia article. I was shocked that people are rating ice cream above cake, which obviously is the best dessert. (Cake did make it to the third round, where it was knocked out in favor of chocolate and ice cream, the winner.)

Corporatization of Oregon health care is a big problem

It's obvious that the health care system here in the United States has major problems. As is heard so often, we spend much more per capita than other comparable countries, but have poorer health.

Since I worked in this state as a health planner and policy analyst way back when (1970s and 1980s), I like to joke that I must have done a great job, since now our health care system is problem-free. Of course, the unfunny reality is that the same cost, access, and quality of care problems then are with us now.

Plus some.

Such as the corporatization of health care in Oregon, the subject of last Friday's Salem City Club program. It featured Senator Deb Patterson, Chair of the Oregon Senate Health Care Committee; Rep. Ben Bowman (D), House Majority Leader; and Hayden Rooke-Ley, J.D., Health Care law and policy expert.

Bowman, Patterson, and Rooke-Ley

The basic problem is that there's been a rapid increase in for-profit corporations buying up medical practices in Oregon. Yet everyone agrees that physicians should be in charge of providing medical care, and our state requires that physicians must have at least a 51% ownership of a practice.

So how is it that, according to a story in today's Oregonian ("Health care giant Optum faces new scrutiny in Oregon after fumbled arrival in Eugene, but it's already entrenched in Oregon"), physicians at the Oregon Medical Group are deeply unhappy with their new corporate owner?

Here's how the story starts out:

Dr. Amandajo Sanders knew changes were likely when, in 2020, health care colossus Optum purchased the Eugene medical group where she worked.

She never suspected that Optum’s reboot of the Oregon Medical Group would so completely reinvent the place. The focus, she said, became money, efficiencies and quotas. In addition to treating patients, doctors were expected to do medical coding, answer patient questions submitted on the group’s digital “My Chart” system, and perform other administrative chores once the job of support staff.

And she took a 5% pay cut.

Sanders quit seven months later, leaving the practice of medicine at age 40.

“They did not give us the support that we needed,” Sanders said. “I was taking all that work home, and it was unsustainable.”

About 30 of her colleagues left, too, over the past two years.

As first reported by The Oregonian/OregonLive in March, the exodus of Oregon Medical Group physicians has put hundreds, perhaps thousands, of patients into health care purgatory. Its new owner notified many — it hasn’t specified the number — by letter that it no longer had the capacity to treat them, and that they would have to seek care elsewhere. With no primary care doctor, people don’t have access to preventive care, they can’t get referrals to specialists, and it’s hard to even refill a prescription.

This fiasco after a corporate takeover of the Oregon Medical Group was cited by the panelists at the City Club problem. They said that 10,000 people in Eugene are without a doctor now, because of the departure of so many physicians who used to be with the practice.

What makes the situation even worse is that the departing physicians had to sign non-compete agreements that prevent them from working in the Eugene area after they left the Oregon Medical Group.

I'd never heard of such a thing. It seems horribly wrong. Health care isn't like working for a technology company where you might have proprietary information in your head. A physician's knowledge is supposed to be used to help people, not enrich a greedy corporation. 

(The Federal Trade Commission has banned non-compete agreements in health care and elsewhere, but that regulation hasn't taken effect yet and will be challenged in court.)

But what about the 51% physician ownership requirement? How did Optum get away with a for-profit corporation controlling the Eugene medical practice? The answer provided by Rep. Bowman was complicated, but went something like this.

A legislative committee with health care oversight responsibilities got ahold of a piece of paper that showed the ownership structure of the Oregon Medical Group after Optum took over. The MSO (Management Services Organization) that handled administrative and management duties at the medical clinic was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Optum corporation.

A MSO is supposed to serve the needs of the physicians at a practice. But in this case the servant became the ruler, telling the physicians what they had to do. Somehow none of the physicians who previously owned the Oregon Medical Group were shown as owners on the piece of paper. Instead, I recall that a single physician constituted the 51% ownership requirement, and that person was doing the bidding of Optum.

So the corporation found a legal loophole in Oregon law that allowed Optum to take over the Oregon Medical Group. House Bill 4130 was an attempt to limit the role of corporations in health care. It was introduced in this year's short legislative session, passed in the House, then got stuck in the Senate after a great deal of corporate lobbying against it.

Bowman and Patterson said the bill will be reintroduced in 2025, with some changes to strengthen it. Hopefully it will pass this time. An Oregon Capital Chronicle story describes what HB 4130 would have done. 

House Bill 4130 would prevent private equity firms from controlling medical practices and dictating patient treatment or making hiring decisions, though clinics could hire outside administrators to handle paperwork and the bill would exclude telemedicine providers, hospitals and long-term care facilities. 

Bill to make standard time permanent is dead this session. Great news.

My day, which wasn't going so well, in part because I'd left my iPhone at home so felt out-of-touch while grocery shopping, brightened up a lot when I returned, checked on what's happening in the world, and saw a notice from the Statesman Journal that the bill to make standard time permanent in Oregon had met a well-deserved death in the short legislative session that is wrapping up soon.

House Speaker Dan Rayfield essentially killed legislation to adopt permanent Pacific Standard Time in most of Oregon, sending the proposal to the Emergency Management, General Government and Veterans Committee with just days left in the 2024 short legislative session.

This is great news for us lovers of Daylight Saving Time, which begins next Sunday. My wife and I much prefer having an extra hour of light in the evening rather than the morning. So do most Americans, since  a recent poll showed that two-thirds said they prefer daylight saving time in some form, permanent or part of the year, with just one-third preferring permanent standard time.

As I said in "Oregon needs permanent daylight saving time, not permanent standard time," this was a screwy idea by State Senator Kim Thatcher of Keizer that never should have seen the light of day.

The reason it passed the Senate on a narrow 16-14 vote is that an amendment was added requiring that the only way Oregon could move to permanent standard time is if both Washington and California do the same thing. Which makes sense, since otherwise a Vancouver resident who works in Portland would have to change their clock twice a day upon crossing the Columbia River.

Big thanks to House Speaker Dan Rayfield for saving Oregon from the nightmare of permanent standard time. I'm so grateful to him, Rayfield already has my endorsement for governor, or any other higher office he might choose to pursue, along with a $100 commitment to his campaign fund.

An Oregonian story by Lizzy Acker has more details about how House Bill 1548 met its end. The only bad news, according to the Statesman Journal story, is that Thatcher plans to reintroduce her bad idea in the 2025 legislative session.

The clock, it seems, has run out on Oregon’s chance to switch to standard time for good.

A bill that have would put Oregon on permanent standard time if Washington and California made the same switch narrowly passed the Senate on Monday. But shortly after its passage, House Speaker Dan Rayfield, a Democrat from Corvallis, consigned the bill to die.

Now, the House will not get a chance to vote on whether to end the twice-yearly time change.

“We received the bill later than we would usually take on Senate policy bills since it got referred back to committee before making it over here,” said Hazel Tylinski, a spokesperson for Rayfield. “Given the shortened timeline and the queue of critical bills we’re still working through, we aren’t able to give enough time to consider the merits of the bill in the time we have left this session.”

Senate Bill 1548 would have ended the practice of switching to daylight saving time and instead kept most of Oregon on standard time year-round.

“I like the concept that was brought forward this session and would be interested in supporting something similar in the future,” Sen. Elizabeth Steiner, a Portland area Democrat and one of the sponsors of the bill, in a statement. “This is an important change that will make a difference for not only the health and safety of Oregonians but also for people like me whose religious practices are tied to sunrise and sunset.”

Oregon passed a bill to switch to permanent daylight saving time in 2019, but that requires an act of Congress which has yet to materialize. After that effort, many groups came out against the idea of a permanent daylight saving time, noting that in the past, switches to permanent daylight saving time caused a variety of problems, including the deaths of children who were hit by vehicles on the way to school in the dark.

A change to permanent standard time requires no congressional involvement.

After Oregon senators evenly split on an earlier version of the bill in late February, changes were made to the proposal to ensure that Oregon would not switch to permanent standard time unless California and Washington also did. That version of the bill passed the Senate on a 16-14 vote Monday before Rayfield referred it to a House committee that is not scheduled to meet before the session’s required end of March 10.

A similar bill in the Washington state legislature also did not move forward this session.

And time marches on. Daylight saving time will begin at 2 a.m. on March 10.

Bill to make standard time permanent in Oregon falters in legislature

Good news today for most people in Oregon, given that national polls show that about 2/3 of people either want daylight saving time made permanent, or favor sticking with the current twice-yearly time change, and there's no reason to think Oregonians feel differently.

But state Senator Kim Thatcher figures that she knows best, so she introduced SB 1548, which would make standard time permanent in our state. I think this is a terrible idea. Here's the reasons why that I included in messages to my state senator and representative where I urged a "no" vote on the bill.

(1) This bill affects every Oregonian. It deserves wide discussion and debate, not a rushed vote in a short session of the legislature.

 

(2) National polls show that most Americans favor daylight saving time, either in permanent or the current eight-month form. There’s no reason to think that Oregonians are any different.

 

(3) If SB 1548 passed, Oregon would only be the third state to have permanent standard time, joining Hawaii and Arizona. Those states are much farther south than Oregon with much more daylight year round.

 

(4) SB 1548 would put Oregon in a different time zone than Washington, California, and every other state other than Hawaii and Arizona. So every trip across the Columbia River would put an Oregonian in a different time zone, as would crossing into Idaho or California.

 

(5) Oregonians hugely value outdoor activities. This bill takes away an hour of daylight in the evening from March until November, which is when the weather is best for walking, hiking, biking, and other activities outdoors.

Today SB 1548 was voted on in the senate. At first it failed on a 15-15 tie. Then Thatcher changed her vote to "no" so she could make a motion to reconsider the bill. That had to be done today given rules for the short legislative session. 

One senator agreed to keep SB 1548 alive by requiring that the bill be sent back to the Rules Committee so language could be added that says Oregon would only move to permanent standard time after Washington and California pass legislation to do this. This passed on a 16-14 vote.

I'd prefer that SB 1548 be killed completely, but this was a positive move for us lovers of daylight saving time. This month Washington failed to pass a bill to make standard time permanent in our neighbor to the north for the second year in a row. Hopefully that trend will continue.

In California, a bill to make standard time permanent, AB 1776, was introduced in the state legislature this year. Because it modifies a voter-approved initiative, the bill needs a 2/3 vote in the legislature to be approved, which is a pretty high bar. Also good news.

So even if the Oregon legislature were to pass SB 1548, since the amended version will require Washington and California to make standard time permanent before SB 1548 takes effect, it sure seems like our neighboring states are unlikely to do this soon, though politics is full of surprises.

The Oregon Capital Chronicle has a good story by Julia Shumway about today's SB 1548 happenings. Like I said, the bill survived, but given the low probability of both Washington and California approving legislation to make standard time permanent in the near future, the agreement to amend the bill is the next best thing to killing it. Here's excerpts from Shumway's story. Sara Gelser Blouin is my state senator. Good to see that she voted "no" on the bill, offering some good reasons why.

An effort to switch Oregon to permanent standard time will live to see another day after hitting a temporary roadblock on Tuesday when the state Senate split evenly on the bill.

It takes 16 “yes” votes to pass a bill in the 30-member Senate, and Sen. Kim Thatcher’s Senate Bill 1548had just 15 senators on board when it first came up for a vote on Tuesday. That set the Keizer Republican and other supporters on a mission to change a colleague’s mind or find a compromise in the minutes before the Senate adjourned for the day and dashed all hopes for ending the twice-annual clock change.

Several hushed, intense conversations later, Thatcher and Sen. Elizabeth Steiner, D-Portland, had a solution: Instead of trying to have Oregon lead the way on switching to standard time and hoping other West Coast states would catch up, supporters agreed to amend the bill to add a trigger clause clarifying that Oregon would only ditch daylight saving time if and when Washington and California do the same. 

...Sen. Lynn Findley, R-Vale, represents a vast section of eastern Oregon including Malheur County, which is on Mountain time and would have ended up two hours ahead of the rest of Oregon if the bill passed as drafted. Findley supported it.

But Sen. Bill Hansell, the Athena Republican who represents northeast Oregon, had the same concerns as Sen. Michael Dembrow, a Democrat who represents north Portland. Hansell said his constituents, many of whom do business in Washington and go to Walla Walla, Washington, for services that aren’t available in smaller eastern Oregon cities, want to make sure they stay in the same zone as Washington. 

Dembrow sees the same issue on a larger scale in Portland, where thousands of people commute between Portland and Vancouver or southwest Washington each day. 

“What that means is that for two-thirds of the year, Portland will be an hour different from Vancouver and southwest Washington,” he said. “All of those people – there are thousands of people who live in southwest Washington and commute to Oregon, or vice versa, are going to have to change their watches twice every day.” 

...Sen. Sara Gelser Blouin, D-Corvallis, said switching to standard time might make more sense in southern states that don’t see the same swings in daylight hours. Portland is dark for nearly 16 hours a day in December, while the sun is out for more than 15 hours in peak summer. Her constituents and her brother have strong feelings about ending the annual switch, which Gelser Blouin said her brother calls “abuse of clocks.” 

Gelser Blouin said she understands arguments for keeping standard time for students who need to get to school safely. The sun has been rising earlier and earlier for the past few weeks, and by March 9, the last day before daylight saving time begins, it’ll rise around 6:30 a.m. The following Monday, the sun won’t rise until 7:30 a.m. But Gelser Blouin said the real problem to fix is early school start times. 

“With apologies to my brother, my no vote will once again support ‘abuse of clocks,’” she said. 

Oregon needs daylight saving time, not permanent standard time

One of the worst bills introduced in this year's short legislative session calls for Oregon to move to permanent standard time, thereby doing away with the much-beloved (by me and many others) daylight saving time.

This is a horrible idea.

State Senator Kim Thatcher of Keizer introduced Senate Bill 1548, which hopefully will have a well-deserved legislative death. Senator Deb Patterson, who represents part of the Salem area, is a co-sponsor of the bill. I hope she comes to her senses.

Oregon already has passed legislation calling on Congress to allow our state, along with Washington and California, to be on permanent daylight saving time. This would have several benefits: no more changing of clocks twice a year, more light in the late afternoon and early evening when most people want to be outside after work or school.

National polls show that most Americans prefer permanent daylight saving time. For example:


Two-thirds of those polled said they prefer daylight saving time in some form, permanent or part of the year, with just one-third preferring permanent standard time.

We'll be returning to daylight saving time on March 10. I can hardly wait. It's great to be able to walk our dog in the late afternoon when the sun is still shining brightly, instead of close to or after it sets. My mood perks up when daylight saving time returns. 

Sure, it's a bit of an inconvenience to switch clocks twice a year. I adjust to the change in sleep pattern quite easily, though I realize others have more of a problem with this. Well, the solution for them is to press Congress to approve the request of Oregon, Washington, and California to make daylight saving time permanent in the west coast states.

It sure isn't to pass unpopular legislation making standard time permanent. The only states that have done this are Hawaii and Arizona. Note their characteristics: they have lots of sun and are much farther south than Oregon!

There's no way Senate Bill 1548 should even have a hearing, much less be considered a serious legislative proposal.

This subject deserves a lot of consideration and public input. Given the popularity of daylight saving time, it's much better to do nothing and preserve the status quo where Oregon enjoys daylight saving time for part of the year, than to rush into permanent standard time.

You can read about the benefits of daylight saving time in "Daylight Saving Time Is Actually a Good Thing." Excerpt:

In reality, DST is an eight-month experiment designed to make life, well, more pleasurable for humans. The basic idea: In the Western world, we typically spend more awake time in the evenings than in the mornings. We also enjoy many benefits from being awake in the sunshine. This National Institutes of Health overview is a good place to read about vitamin D, increased exercise, increased socializing, and overall improvements to mental health that come with sunlight.

Absent DST, for eight months per year our days would not be structured to enjoy the most sunlight possible. Our mornings would be bright and cheerful, but the sun would tend to be set before we leave work each day. This stinks! This gives the average 9-5 adult very little time to enjoy sunlight.

So during the spring, summer, and early autumn, we tweak it, just a bit, so that there’s more sunlight in the evening. In the winter, we abandon DST, because there just isn’t enough sunlight to make a difference. Winter is pretty much a dark hellworld no matter how it’s scheduled. Winter DST would give us a very, very late sunrise and not enough light in the evening to provide the effects we want.

Well, I disagree with that last conclusion. And it doesn't fit with the preference of 46% of Americans for permanent daylight saving time. But like I said, eight months of daylight saving time is much better than no daylight saving time. I'm fine with leaving things as they are. What I'm strongly opposed to is the screwy idea of permanent standard time.

Republican state senators who walked out can't run again. Sweet justice!

It was an Oregon Supreme Court decision that made me ever so happy.

Yesterday the court ruled unanimously that a ballot measure passed by voters in 2022 meant that ten Republicans in the state Senate can't run for re-election because they walked out of the 2023 legislative session for ten days.

An Oregon Capital Chronicle story describes the decision. 

Republican senators who participated last year in the longest walkout in state history cannot seek reelection in 2024 or 2026, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled Thursday. 

In a unanimous decision, the court rejected arguments from five Republican senators that Measure 113, a voter-approved 2022 law meant to dissuade lawmakers from walking out and shutting down the legislative process, was poorly worded and would give them another term in office. Instead, the court agreed with state attorneys, who urged justices to consider voters’ intent with the 2022 law, which bars any lawmaker with 10 or more unexcused absences from serving another term. 

“Because the text is capable of supporting the secretary’s interpretation, and considering the clear import of the ballot title and explanatory statement in this case, we agree with the secretary that voters would have understood the amendment to mean that a legislator with 10 or more unexcused absences during a legislative session would be disqualified from holding legislative office during the immediate next term, rather than the term after that,” the ruling said. 

The ruling means 10 Republican senators – one-third of the Senate – are ineligible for reelection. Two of the 10, Sens. Bill Hansell of Athena and Lynn Findley of Vale, already planned to retire. Four others – Sens. Daniel Bonham of The Dalles, Cedric Hayden of Fall Creek, Kim Thatcher of Keizer and Suzanne Weber of Tillamook – were elected to four-year terms in 2022 and will serve until January 2027.

And four, including Senate Minority Leader Tim Knopp, R-Bend, must end their Senate careers – at least temporarily – in January. Knopp and Sens. Brian Boquist of Dallas, Dennis Linthicum of Klamath Falls and Art Robinson of Cave Junction all tried to file for reelection last year and were waiting on the outcome of the court case. 

Hopefully this will be a wakeup call for Republicans in the Oregon legislature.

You were elected to be part of representative democracy. That's your political job. If you don't feel like doing it, you should resign and let someone serve who actually wants to fulfill their duty to the constituents who voted them in.

Walking out when you can't get your way because Republicans are the minority party in both the state House and Senate is akin to an adult temper tantrum. Childish. Immature. Deserving of a time out. Which is exactly what the ten Republicans who can't run again deserve, and what they're getting.

Astoundingly, Senate Minority Leader Tim Knopp, one of the walkouts who can't run again in 2024, said on Wednesday in another Oregon Capital Chronicle story that if the Supreme Court doesn't rule in favor of them, Republicans might stage another walkout in the short legislative session that begins next week. 

Knopp, who led the walkout, said Wednesday he thinks Republicans will win regardless of how the court rules: Either Republicans will get to run for reelection, or Democrats will need to provide incentives for lame-duck Republican senators to attend floor sessions. He made his comments during a session preview event hosted by the Oregon Legislative Correspondents Association. 

“If the court sides with us, it’s a clear victory,” Knopp said. “If it doesn’t, I think we still win because our members literally have no reason to show up, and so in order for them to show up, they’re going to want to see that they’re going to be able to make a difference.”

Democrats, who hold 17 seats in the state Senate, need at least three Republicans to attend each day of the legislative session to meet the Legislature’s two-thirds quorum requirement. Otherwise, they can’t pass a single bill. 

That gives Republicans in the Senate – and the House, where Republicans control 25 of 60 seats – leverage to scuttle Democratic proposals by refusing to participate in the month-long legislative session that begins Monday. The session will focus on spurring housing production, something Republicans and Democrats largely agree on as a priority, but also on responding to the state’s addiction crisis and tweaking a voter-approved drug decriminalization law. 

So we'll see. Will Republicans show up to do their job, or will they act like a three-year-old who cries and screams because she didn't eat her dinner but wants dessert nonetheless?

I'm hoping they'll do their job. But if I were to bet, I'd put money on the temper tantrum. 

Measure 110 should be reformed, but going back to "war on drugs" is a bad idea

Oregon is continuing to get national attention for Measure 110, which voters approved in November 2020. It decriminalized possession of previously illegal drugs. Now, though, the backlash against Measure 110 threatens to make Oregon a poster child for what not to do about drugs.

An article in the January 22, 2024 issue of The New Yorker describes the high hopes that accompanied the passage of Measure 110.

In November, 2020, Oregon launched a historic experiment: the Drug Decriminalization and Addiction Treatment Initiative, known as Measure 110. Approved by fifty-eight per cent of voters, it made Oregon the first state to decriminalize possessing small amounts of illicit drugs. It also funnelled hundreds of millions of cannabis-tax dollars toward addiction treatment, housing, peer support, and harm reduction.

A citizen panel that included people with “lived experience”—histories of substance use—would decide how the money was spent. Programs in Black, Native, and other “historically underserved” communities would be prioritized. The law’s overarching goal, according to Tera Hurst, the director of the Health Justice Recovery Alliance, was to force “a shift in attitude toward people who use drugs and how we treat them.”

The article notes attempts to either repeal or drastically revamp Measure 110.

Throughout 2022 and 2023, there seemed to be a new op-ed or county resolution each week calling for Measure 110 to be repealed. “Did Measure 110 take away ‘rock bottom’? Oregon cops seem to think so,” KGW News proclaimed. It did not escape notice that almost no one used the hotline number that police were supposed to give drug users.

In its first fifteen months, there were only a hundred and nineteen callers, at a cost that worked out to more than seven thousand dollars per conversation. A report by Oregon’s secretary of state dryly noted, “It is unclear if the M110-specific hotline provides the best value.”

Legislators came under pressure to either reform the law or dismantle it. A group bankrolled by Phil Knight, the Nike co-founder, and by Tim Boyle, the C.E.O. of Columbia Sportswear, filed paperwork to gather signatures for a partial repeal. Max Williams, a former Republican legislator and corrections official who helps lead the effort, told me, “I don’t think it should ever be the policy of a state to accept that people have a legitimate choice to use lethal drugs.”

In Portland, he said, “we’ve got an exodus of capital, a cratering out of the central city.” Last June, the state recriminalized minor possession of fentanyl. Governor Tina Kotek, who had remained largely silent on Measure 110, recommended recriminalizing most drug possession and public use.

It seems clear that some sort of legislation to reform Measure 110 will be introduced in the short 35-day legislative session that begins in early February.

And it will probably pass, so long as the bill(s) aren't as extreme as the repeal Republicans want, nor as minimal as the "let Measure 110 stay mostly as is" approach the Drug Policy Alliance wants.

An opinion piece by Randy Stapilus in the Oregon Capital Chronicle, "Measure 110 in need of fixes rather than repeal," strikes a nice balance between the haters and lovers of Measure 110. Here's an excerpt:

For all the talk about repealing Measure 110, most legislative activity now seems to involve additions and fixes for its problems rather than changing the core direction, which is what approval of Measure 110 by voters signals the public wants.

However, the will of voters can and should be met with changes on how to execute that new direction. The largest failure with Measure 110, so far, has been implementation: Prevention and treatment efforts have been slow, along with measures to ban activity, such as the public use of drugs, to mirror state law on alcohol and marijuana.

Measure 110 has suffered from its timeline – changing enforceable drug laws in just 13 weeks between the election and the law change and long before treatment and other efforts could be set up – along with several gaps in the law.

Many early complaints about the measure concerned the slow expansion of treatment efforts. More recently, however, those projects have expanded. The 2021 Senate Bill 755 set up Behavioral Health Resource Networks, described as “an entity or group of entities working together to provide comprehensive, community-based services and supports to people with substance use disorders or harmful substance use.” This took time. The state set up a network in each county and tribal area before using grant funds to cover the cost of services to individuals.

The measure probably was overly comprehensive and uniform: Different drugs may call for different responses. Approaches to dealing with opioids (many of which are legal in some cases) is a different proposition than going after methamphetamines or cocaine. Legislation could address the differences.

Even more important is the absence in 110 of serious leverage to pressure – even force – drug users away from bad behavior and into treatment or some other consequence. What might that leverage look like? One option might involve building on the drug courts, active in Oregon as in many other states for many years by giving public officials – and maybe judges – broad authority to compel people to comply with recovery efforts. 

Policymakers can consider as well that much of Oregon’s law relating to drugs, establishing crimes and penalties relating to manufacture and trafficking, remains in force and continues to be a powerful tool.

In October a large Oregon delegation visited Portugal, which two decades ago moved from a crimalized-based to a health service approach to drug use, to pick up lessons from the experience. Portugal seems to have little interest in reversing its course. 

One of the participants, Janie Gullickson, the executive director of the Portland-based Mental Health and Addiction Association, remarked that, “It took Portugal eight years to see results they were hoping to see from their drastic change from a criminal approach to addiction to a health care approach. So it’s going to take time, innovation and collaboration. We’re year three, right?”

Elected officials seldom are wise simply to smack down a clearly expressed will of the voters. Voters do tend to appreciate, though, efforts to make their will work better.