IMAGE: Illustrations by Jonathan Hill

The Legislature took little more than three weeks to pass about 100 bills in its just-completed special session.

Before ending the brief 2010 session last week, legislators extended unemployment benefits to 19,000 Oregonians, and set aside $13 million to fund more day care. Lawmakers also OK’d targeted consumer bills and created two programs to loan and give money to small businesses.

Democratic leaders ignored a request from Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski that they take up kicker reform. And while cutting $30 million to balance the budget,they added 200 full-time employees to the state payroll (mostly in the Judicial Department), declined to limit their post-legislative employment opportunities in state government and approved a $65 million renovation of the Oregon Department of Transportation headquarters.

One final thing: The Legislature asked voters this November to enshrine annual sessions in the Oregon Constitution. By law, the Legislature meets only in odd-numbered years. Special sessions in 2008 and 2010 were meant to show annual meetings’ merits.

Ex-state Rep. Greg Macpherson (D-Lake Oswego) wrote in a Feb. 26 wrap-up that the 2010 session “didn’t attempt much and accomplished even less.” House Speaker Dave Hunt (D-Gladstone) disagreed, calling the session “productive and efficient.” So who won and lost in this unusual February session?

Winners

Consumers

Thanks to legislation proposed by Rep. Nick Kahl (D-Portland), banks are now covered by the Unlawful Trade Practices Act. Insurers squirmed out of Kahl’s original bill, but the measure will let the attorney general prosecute banks as he can other industries for ripping off consumers. Probably no accident that Kahl’s bill and another successful measure prohibiting the use of credit scores for employment purposes were top priorities of Our Oregon—the group that ran the successful “yes” campaign to pass tax-increasing Measures 66 and 67 in January. “The average citizen may not have known we were in session,” says state Sen. Diane Rosenbaum (D-Portland), “but both of these laws did a lot for them.”

Oregon Education Association

The state’s largest public employee union, fresh from kicking in $2 million to pass Measures 66 and 67, saw lawmakers green-light the use of $200 million in reserve funds for public schools; clip the wings of successful online charter schools; end a prohibition on public school employees serving on the state school board; and made the state liable for overly generous estimates of retiree benefits. “We think the focus of this session should have been seven consecutive quarters of declining state revenues,” says House Republican spokesman Nick Smith. “But that’s not what happened.”

ODOT

The fix of mold problems and seismic deficiencies that apparently plague the transportation department’s Capitol Mall headquarters will cost more than the controversial renovations in 2008 for the entire Capitol building. Rep. Scott Bruun (R-West Linn), a construction industry executive who’s running for Congress, slammed the expenditure in floor debate for exempting the project from competitive bidding. “We’re paying an extra 30 percent because of that,” Bruun said. ODOT got a booby prize, however, when lawmakers also gave it control of the troubled $400 million Oregon Wireless Interoperability Network project.

Losers

Enviros

In its session wrap-up, the Oregon League of Conservation Voters trumpeted one underwhelming new law—a 10-year ban on offshore drilling—and another that establishes six traffic-planning districts statewide. Not nothing but not much. The failure of two higher-profile bills—a plastic grocery bag ban sponsored by Sen. Mark Hass (D-Beaverton) and a ban on bisphenol-A in plastic containers used by young children—showed that a super majority is only super when Democrats exercise party discipline. Both bills died in the Senate, where D’s enjoy an 18-12 majority. OLCV’s new director, Jon Isaacs, formerly a top aide to U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, signaled a more aggressive stance after the session. “We are extremely disappointed that the Oregon Senate rejected the opportunity to protect Oregon’s kids from toxic chemicals,” Isaacs said in a Feb. 25 statement. “Senators will be held accountable for their votes.”

Bipartisanship

Senate Democrats spiked a priority bill for House Republicans—a measure that would have prohibited lawmakers from taking state jobs for two years after leaving office. Sen. Rick Metsger (D-Welches) says the bill was overly broad and too complicated for the short session. The proposal followed the migration of three Democratic lawmakers to high-level state posts after the 2009 session. For their part, House R’s nearly scuttled the highest priority of the Legislature’s longest-serving member, Senate President Peter Courtney (D-Salem). A hastily convened conference committee helped save Courtney’s constitutional referendum to establish annual sessions—although the proposed schedule of 160 days in odd years and 35 days in even years adds up to less time than lawmakers have met in most recent sessions.

The Initiative System

Legislative leadership referred several measures, such as annual sessions, to the November ballot. In each case, they wrote the ballot title, explanation and argument in favor of passage. Writing ballot titles and their accompanying explanations is a powerful tool. Portland lawyer Dan Meek, a veteran of numerous initiatives, says lawmakers are perverting a process that historically has consisted of titles, explanations and arguments written by bipartisan committees. “It is fundamentally unfair for the author and proponent of a measure to write the ballot title, explanatory statement and fiscal impact statement,” Meek says. In a fiery floor speech and subsequent written communication to journalists, Sen. Brian Boquist (R-Dallas) made that point even more emphatically. “This is a set of kangaroo referrals which makes a mockery of Western democracy,” Boquist wrote.