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The Oregon legislature wrapped up its 2007 session last month. Let’s take a look at what’s happened to the issues addressed in our Action Alerts so far this year. We grouped these items by area, so just scroll down to see them.
 Senate Bill 2: The Oregon Equality Act
This bill prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Signed into law – May 9, 2007
House Bill 2007: Oregon Family Fairness Act
This bill allows civil unions for partners of the same sex, ensuring that all the rights and responsibilities are granted to civil unions as are granted to marriages.
Signed into law – May 9, 2007
HB 3543: Climate Change Integration Act
Will establish short and longer-term science-based goals for statewide reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and provide for the coordination of global warming mitigation and adaption measures in Oregon.
Passed, but not yet signed by the Governor
SB 707: Modernize Oregon’s Bottle Bill
Water bottles have been added to the current bottle-redemption program.
Signed into law – June 7, 2007
SB 838: Oregon Renewable Energy Act
This act creates a renewable energy standard in Oregon that requires the state’s largest utilities to meet 25% of their electric load with new, renewable energy sources by 2025.
Signed into law – June 6, 2007
Say NO to new coal plants
This was a letter campaign demanding that no new coal-burning power plants be constructed in the state. In February, the Oregon Public Utility Commission (OPUC) sided with NW Energy Coalition and its allies in denying PacifiCorp's request to acquire two new coal plants totaling more than 1,100 megawatts by 2013.
Vote YES for Measure 26-80
Bond Measure 26-80 for natural areas, parks, and streams will raise $227.4 million to buy and protect natural areas, neighborhood parkland, and trails throughout Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington Counties.
Measure approved by voters in November, 2006
Urge the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to protect against mercury pollution
A grassroots campaign to put in place more stringent safeguards against mercury pollution resulted in the Environmental Quality Commission voting to require Portland General Electric (PGE) to cut mercury pollution from its coal-fired power plant near Boardman in Morrow County. PGE will install pollution controls to cut mercury emissions 90 percent by 2012.
Urge the EPA to require stricter regulation of benzene content in gasoline in the Pacific Northwest
Oregon Senator Ron Wyden requested our help in convincing the US EPA to regulate all gasoline refineries equally and bring down the excessive levels of benzene that were allowed in Oregon. The federal government will require Northwest refineries to produce gasoline with lower levels of benzene, a toxic compound that rises to dangerous levels in the air in and around Portland and the rest of the region. Under the new EPA rules issued in February, 2007, the region's gasoline will end up about as clean as the rest of the country on average -- and even cleaner than in some other Western states.
HB 2574: The Oregon New Educator Mentoring Program
Turnover among newly hired teachers in Oregon schools runs as high as 33% and costs taxpayers an estimated $45 million each year. The impact on our students is even more costly. The New Educator Mentoring Program will provide support to new teachers and administrators from seasoned, experienced professionals.
Passed in both the House and the Senate
 HB 3476, 3185, 3307: Connecting schools to farmers
These bills would promote school gardens and provide funds for school lunch programs to buy food from Oregon farms. This would help connect local farmers to school cafeterias and support learning about healthy foods.
HB 3307 passed, not as a bill but as a budgetary item for the Department of Agriculture, and will help in connecting farmers to school districts and in setting up teaching gardens. No funding was provided for school lunch program to purchase Oregon farm products (HB 3476) or to set up school gardens (HB3185).
Fund the Multnomah County SUN Program
SUN (Schools Uniting Neighborhoods) works with schools and surrounding communities to extend the school day and develop schools as community centers in their neighborhoods.
The funding was not approved.
SB 38: Affordable Housing
Oregon’s Housing Trust Fund has been depleted and cannot create enough affordable housing options to meet Oregon’s need. SB 38 would provide essential, reliable funding for housing using fees collected for recording of documents in deed and mortgage records of county.
In committee when legislature adjourned
SB 833: Reform Measure 37
Measure 37 requires that the counties compensate landowners for the unrealized developed value of land. But the Measure was never funded; as a result, landowners are exempted from zoning regulations regarding development. The legislature was asked to suspend Measure 37 until a fair solution with public input could be devised.
In committee when legislature adjourned
 Bend Infrastructure First Initiative
This initiative would prohibit the City of Bend from approving new real property development, unless infrastructure necessary to support the new development is available within two years of the occupancy date for private development (four years for publicly funded development). “Infrastructure” is defined as water, sewer, stormwater, transportation, electrical power facilities, schools and parks.
Citizen drive petition process is still underway to gain enough signatures to bring the initiative to a vote.
HB 2250: Healthy Foods for Healthy Students
This bill gets the worst junk foods out of schools by setting nutritional standards on snack foods and beverages sold in cafeterias and vending machines.
Signed into law – June 1, 2007
HB 3088: Fair Health Care Charges for the Uninsured
This bill would prohibit hospitals from billing to or attempting to collect charges from uninsured patients that exceed either the Medicare rate or the rate paid by the hospital's highest volume commercial insurer. It would allow patients to claim treble damages and attorney fees if a hospital billed or attempted to collect charges in violation of the Act.
The bill was passed in the House. In committee in the Senate when legislature adjourned
SB 3: The Governor’s Healthy Kids
Governor Kulongoski proposed increasing the tobacco tax by 84 ½ cents per pack to fund health care for kids under the age of 21 as well as funding smoking prevention and education programs. The concept was narrowly defeated as HB 2201, but will likely have strong support when the people vote on it in November.
Passed, but funding for this program has been referred to the voters this November as a ballot measure to amend the Oregon constitution to increase the tax on tobacco products
SB 27: The Oregon Better Health Act
This bill would create an Oregon Health Fund to pool state and federal expenditures for health care in Oregon and to finance treatment of a defined set of essential health conditions for all Oregonians. It explicitly defines this core benefit through a transparent process, which prioritizes health services based on their relative effectiveness in producing health. It seeks to realign financial incentives to ensure fair and reasonable payment to providers, value-based cost sharing for consumers, and the transition to a more efficient delivery system. It squarely confronts the underlying federal structure of our current health system to control cost and create a system that is both fair and economically sustainable. We were pleased to see that amendments were prepared to this bill that would have clarified the role of the committee established by the act to look at medical malpractice and medical error issues, and specifying a role for patients’ representatives (trial lawyers) on the committee. Because this bill never got a hearing in Ways and Means, these amendments could not be introduced.
In committee when the legislature adjourned
SB 329: The Healthy Oregon Act
SB 329 creates Oregon Health Fund and seeks to develop a strategy for pooling state and federal resources in that fund to help finance health insurance for Oregonians who currently cannot afford it. Though it does not address the looming crisis in Medicare, it does seek to deal with the financial barriers to access faced by over 600,000 uninsured Oregonians. If the tobacco tax increase is approved by the voters this November – and if the provisions of SB 329 are successfully implemented in 2010 – many of these Oregonians would, for the first time, be able to afford needed medical care for treatment of essential health conditions.
Signed into law – June 28, 2007
Lane County Fair Standards
The West Eugene Enterprise Zone now includes standards for wages, benefits and other job-related criteria.
We’ve done pretty well so far this year, but there will be more challenges and opportunities requiring our action in the coming month. Let’s continue to work together for progressive change in Oregon.
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