GOP boycott in Ore. stalls bills
Gun, abortion debate affected
SALEM, Ore. — Most Republican members of the Oregon Senate failed to show up for the second-straight day Thursday, delaying action by the majority Democrats on bills on gun safety, abortion rights, and gender-affirming health care.
The stayaway prevented a quorum, with Senate President Rob Wagner calling for another try on Friday. Republican lawmakers have used walkouts in the past, but this time — if they continue to stay away — they’ll be testing a law approved overwhelmingly in a ballot measure last November that bans lawmakers with 10 unexcused absences from running for reelection.
The boycott comes as several state houses around the nation, including in Montana and Tennessee, have become battlegrounds between conservatives and liberals. Oregon has increasingly been divided between liberal population centers such as Portland and Eugene and its mostly conservative rural areas.
The leader of Senate Republicans, Senator Tim Knopp, spoke on the phone Thursday with Democratic Governor Tina Kotek after telling journalists Wednesday that a derailed legislative session would jeopardize the governor’s legislative agenda, including tackling homelessness.
Knopp’s spokeswoman, Ashley Kuenzi, said Kotek expressed willingness to help resolve the impasse. But the governor’s office had a different characterization of the call, with Knopp being asked to stop the boycott.
“The governor listened to his concerns and reiterated that he is making choices,” said Kotek’s spokeswoman, Elisabeth Shepard. “She asked him to choose to get back to work to do the people’s business.”
Republicans say they are protesting over bill summaries not being written in plain language, citing a 1979 state law requiring summaries of bills to be readable by those with an eighth- or ninth-grade education — measured by a score of at least 60 on the Flesch readability test, Knopp told a news conference Wednesday.
Senate Majority Leader Kate Lieber said that's just a pretext, and noted that the vast majority of bills have passed with bipartisan support, including on housing and attracting the semiconductor industry to Oregon.
“This is about abortion, guns, and transgender rights,” Lieber said. “The timing of this is such that they’re walking out on important legislation that Oregonians sent us here to do.”
The existence of the readability law, passed in 1979 was discovered in April by a Republican caucus staffer. Knopp said he does not know when the law was last employed to make bill summaries easy to read.