The
MitchMessage
January 28, 2007
I’m sorry that my first MitchMessage
of the session has been delayed. I
had an accident on 12/27 and have been working confined to a wheel chair. (For more information you might check
Harry Esteve’s Inside the Capitol column “Health care is no issue;
it’s real life” in the Oregonian on Friday, January 26.
Click here to read the article.) This is my first weekend home since I
had bilateral knee surgery on December 28.
Not withstanding the health events,
the session has been very exciting for me.
Since the Democrats have only a 31-29 majority it was necessary for me to
leave the hospital on January 8 to cast my vote, the 31st vote, to
elect Jeff Merkley as Speaker of the House. A controversy developed in the opening
session and the vote on the rules of the House was delayed until 2:30pm that
afternoon. I was scheduled to leave
after the morning session and get back to the hospital, but the Republican
leadership refused to assure they would provide a courtesy vote so I could get
back to my hospital bed.
Consequently I stayed until 4pm, to cast a vote for the proposed
rules. The final vote was 56-4, so
it really would have been no problem for them to let me off the
hook.
The big fight that slowed the rules
voting was a controversy over a new set of ethics rules that Speaker Merkley had
proposed. And the battle seemed to me to be totally artificial. After making no headway over the past
four years in restricting what legislators could receive from lobbyists, most of
the Democratic candidates campaigned on ethics reforms. After the Oregonian reported on several
trips that legislators had taken courtesy of Paul Romaine, a beer and wine
lobbyist, the issue became central in at least two campaigns. Merkley’s ethics proposal, which banned
such free trips, also banned gifts with a value greater than $10. The minority leadership, apparently
driven into an ethical frenzy after blocking reform for several years, decided
that $10 was too high a limit and began to fight for a total gift ban. This despite the fact that they were
included in the group developing the new rules and had approved them the
previous week.
It seemed a shame to mar the opening day of session with partisan bickering. The new leadership is working to create a bipartisan spirit in the House, changing a set of rules and behaviors that had led to a significant reduction in rights for the minority party over the last several years. One important inclusion in the rules returned the House to proportional representation on all committees, with a minority vice-chair on all committees. In the prior session Speaker Minnis had named seven Rs and two Ds to the Emergency Board. That will be five and four under the new rules. It does seem that the beginning of a bipartisan spirit is beginning to emerge. It is, however, a very fragile thing. The Republicans seem really bruised, losing control of the House after 16 years. It may be their plan to focus on the next election, rather than to tackle the difficult problems we face in a bipartisan way. But I hope not.
I’m thrilled to have the opportunity
to chair the House Committee on Health Care this session. That, of course, has been my dream since
I began to run for the legislature in 1999. The other Democratic members on the
committee comprise four wonderful freshman members, including Rep. Tina Kotek,
one of the vice chairs and Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, who replaced Brad Avakian when
he moved on to the Senate
I was released from the hospital on January 12, just in time to gavel in
the first meeting of the Committee – well only fifteen minutes late. We immediately began to work on several
critical issues, the first of which is Governor Kulongoski’s Health Kids
proposal (HB 2201), which would use an 84 cents a pack increase in cigarette
taxes to help all kids in Oregon to get health insurance.
We held joint hearings with our sister Senate committee on the bill,
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this past week, a total of seven hours of
hearings. Then the House committee
moved into a work session at 4:30pm Friday night, and passed the bill out. We had a bit of debate on the bill and
on two amendments offered by Vice Chair Richardson. I tried to work out a compromise on one
of those issues, but it appears that the Republican caucus isn’t ready to
compromise yet and preferred to have the amendments fail. Consequently, the bill passed by a 5-4
vote, along straight party lines.
The bill is now on its way to the
House Revenue Committee and ultimately to the Committee on Ways and Means before
it gets to the House floor. I hope
that we can work out a compromise so we can move forward to provide health
insurance to the 117,000 uninsured kids in
Next we will begin to work the bill
to further expand the prescription bulk-purchasing pool that the voters expanded
during the last election. Sen. Bill Morrisette and I started that
program with SB 875 that we passed in the 2003 session.
Being in the majority creates a very different set of pressures for me
than I faced as a member of the minority.
First, I find being a committee chair takes an enormous amount of
time. I meet several times each
week with the committee administrator and with both vice chairs. Second, every group with a bill that
could be referred to the committee wants to meet with me. It turns out that the committee chair
has some very strong powers, including the ability to hear or to kill a bill
without a hearing. It is certainly
my plan to hear bills that have a chance to get out of committee, and probably
many other bills as well. But it
has the proponents very concerned to talk to me early.
In the past two sessions I worked a very large legislative agenda,
perhaps as many as 40 bills in each session. And I was relatively successful as a
member of the minority. The irony
is that this session, with a better chance of passing bills, I need to narrow my
personal legislative agenda. Rather
than pushing some of the bills I have in the past, I’ve signed on to bills
sponsored by other members to do the same thing. I’ll focus on passing the health agenda,
working on significant health care reform, and attending to a smaller set of
bills, such as my plan for PSU/OHSU.
I’ll work with Tom Powers, my new legislative assistant to keep track of
other bills. I’ll discuss key items
from my legislative agenda in my next MitchMessage. And in future MitchMessages I’ll fill
you in on the progress of things like the bio-fuels and Measure 37 reform.
During the second week of the
session we passed a bipartisan resolution that signaled our intention of
experimenting with a short session during the second year of the
biennium. This follows the recommendation of the
Commission of the Legislature. As
part of that plan we also adopted a very strict legislative calendar that moves
toward ending this year’s session by June 28. If we can achieve that schedule it would
mean the combined length of the two sessions would be about ten days shorter
than the average of the sessions held during the last 20 years. That tight schedule is already having an
effect. Monday is the deadline for
us to submit bills to be drafted.
And the end of February is the deadline for us to introduce a bill. It will be a political and a management
challenge to keep to that schedule..
Please keep an eye out for the
MitchMessage to look a bit different.
The system I use to e-mail it out is both antiquated and cumbersome… and
we’re exploring a new system. I
hope you will continue to find it useful, even if it looks a bit
slicker.
Mitch