PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

The question in the headline is on the minds of those following the 2016 short legislative session as lawmakers are gathered at the Capitol for a month.

There are at least two answers to the question, but plus variations on the theme.

To Democrats, who are in charge in the Governor’s Office and in both the House and Senate, the answer seems to be that the short session is a time to consider big issues – an increase in the minimum wage, freedom to let voters decide on a major, public-employee-union backed corporate tax increase, and new environmental regulations.

They would call these “emergencies.”

To Republicans, in the minority everywhere, the short session should be a time to consider legislative fixes – read, housekeeping measures – and variations in the state government budget that have emerged since legislators were last at the Capitol. In other words, short session-small issues, which Republicans contend is what voters were led to believe would happen as they passed a constitutional change allowing every-year legislative sessions.

Republicans say “emergencies” are just that – small fixes that cannot wait.

At the start of the short session February 1, Republicans surprised everyone by demanding that all individual pieces of legislation be read on the floors of both houses in their entirety, word-for-word, not just by title. They said that was a way to stall major issues, which should wait for the long session in 2017.

House and Senate administrators responded by looking for a computer program that would read all bills aloud faster than any human could.

If you were to talk with Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, the main architect of the annual session idea, and Senator Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day, the Senate Republican Leader, you would hear two markedly different descriptions of annual sessions.

To Courtney, annual sessions are a way to put the Legislative Branch on more equal fitting with the Executive Branch and that often means considering major issues.

To Ferrioli, Democrats are using annual sessions to try to achieve major changes, such as the minimum wage increase that he says will harm rural Oregon.   Such issues should wait for a longer time in Salem.

Here is the way he put it in a news release issued on February 4:

“Yesterday’s assertion by Linn County Commissioner Roger Nyquist that the Oregon Constitution allows counties to not comply with a proposed minimum wage mandate shocked policymakers convinced Oregon needs a higher minimum wage. This major hitch in the minimum wage plan left supporters stunned and scrambling to determine if their plan is enforceable, and if not, how they can compensate local governments for the unfunded mandate.

“This sudden hiccup in the majority party’s plans is a symptom of a pervasive disease in the Oregon legislature: Democrat leaders have ambitious goals to pass major new policies in just 35 short days. 35 days is not enough time to consider sweeping changes to the way Oregonians live and do business, from a $5 billion gross receipts tax to a cap and trade model for energy policy.”

That so-called “hiccup” – either a two-thirds vote or an allocation of state resources to help local government respond to a minimum wage increase – struck many observers are more than a hiccup. The fact is that it stood a very chance of derailing the increase, which Governor Kate Brown hoped to usher through the session, in part to avoid a battle at the polls next November.

Taxes in general also are on the minds of those in Salem. A huge tax increase on business, proposed by public-employee unions, will make for a major fight at the polls next fall, one that will feature millions of dollars in advertising on both sides. It will be a bruising battle, with some businesses saying they will pull up stakes in Oregon if the increase passes.

Union leaders and others say the threat is overstated.

Early in the short session, Senator Mark Hass, D-Beaverton, made a courageous proposal for a middle ground solution, one that gained weight because of his position as the chair of the Senate Revenue Committee. But, at first blush, the Hass proposal did not appear to have any chance to derail unions from their appointed rounds leading up to next November.

In the spirit of full disclosure, as the intro says to this blog, I served as a private sector lobbyist for about 25 years and, thus, I have a number of biases built up over those years.

One is the annual sessions is a mistake. To use a lobby term, it is “the first step down a slippery slope” toward a professional legislature that would function much like – perish the thought – the U.S. Congress.

A better alternative would have been to develop a variety of legislative proposals to hold state agencies accountable for performance and results, and then use those proposals in the every-other-year legislative session to assert a legislative prerogative to make government work better.

As lawmakers have descended on Salem for their “short annual legislative session,” the time is right to emphasize again questions legislators should ask as they contemplate adding to Oregon laws.
It used to be that Oregon’s Constitution limited sessions to every-other-year – the odd year. That changed several years ago when, led by Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, legislators proposed and voters approved a move to annual sessions.

Courtney and others sold the idea as a way for legislators to move farther toward being equal with the Executive Branch rather than just showing up in Salem every other year, leaving the State of Oregon’s business mostly to state agencies.
Courtney wanted the short session – it lasts only for a month – to deal with housekeeping measures, emergencies and other smaller-gauge issues that could not wait until the regular odd-year sessions. It would not be a session devoted to major policy proposals. No one seems sure this year that small issues will dominate the session. Democrats headed to the Capitol with what has been described as an aggressive agenda — new taxes, a minimum wage increase and affordable housing proposals.

Republican leaders countered that those issues were too big for a short session and responded, on the first day in Salem, by demanding that individual bills be read in their entirely, word-for-word. Usually, bills are read aloud by title only. The Republican move appeared to catch Democrats off guard, but clerks in both the House and the Senate were reporting to be looking for computer programs that would bills aloud, but at warp speed.

Before the session, Courtney’s counterpart in the Senate, Senator Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day, issued a news release questioning whether Courtney and the Ds had designed the short session properly.

“As I recall,” Ferrioli wrote, “Oregonians were sold on the idea of annual meetings with the promise that the short session would focus on balancing the budget, making small legislative fixes, often referred to as housekeeping measures, and responding to emergencies that need immediate attention from the Legislature. I’m sorry to report that the short session has become little more than a setting for the majority party to pursue an over-reaching agenda of tax increases, regulation, and ideological issues dear to the progressives who rule Portland and to a great extent, the rest of Oregon.”

Ferrioli expressed concern that a minimum wage increase, a “cap and trade” energy mandate that he said would raise energy costs for businesses and families, and a mandate for affordable housing that the said would force construction contractors to build a certain amount of below-cost housing units for people of limited means, to be paid for by higher costs passed on to more traditional home buyers were appropriate for consideration in a short session.
Courtney and Ferrioli will never agree on policy, nor should they as they play their leading roles for Democrats and Republicans.

But, as they meet at the Capitol, legislators on both sides of the aisle should be prepared to ask at least four questions in relation to each legislative proposal, however big or small it is.
1. What is the problem for which a proposed policy or action is deemed to be the solution?

2. Is there an appropriate role for government to play?

3. If there is, what does the state expect to get for the money it is spending — in other words, what is the expected return on investment?

4. How will state government action affect the private sector, especially individual and corporate taxpayers on whom the state depends for money to fund its operations?

If legislators would ask and answer these questions with a constructively critical eye, observers have said Oregonians would have both a better legislature and better results.