LOC News
Walkout Update: Senate Resumes Floor Sessions
The big news for the week and the legislative session came Thursday morning with the Senate reconvening at exactly 11:10 a.m. Caucus leadership from both chambers, along with Governor Kotek, have been engaged in negotiations over the return of enough Republican Senators to resume floor business. The statutory deadline is June 25, and more than 400 pieces of legislation have been sitting in the queue waiting for the Senate to return. This legislation included most of the state’s agency budget bills, policy legislation, and a variety of House and Senate resolutions. The Senate is not expected to have floor sessions over the three-day Juneteenth weekend, so next week’s sessions will involve all-day/night sessions to meet the June 25 deadline.
At this time, four Republican Senators have returned to the floor, which brings the total to 22 senators. Oregon is one of four states that requires a quorum standard of two-thirds, whereas the remaining states are a simple majority of 50+1%. All the details of the agreement that brought Senate Republicans back to the floor are not known, however HB 2002 (Reproductive Health Care), HB 2005 (Gun Safety Measures) along with Senate Joint Resolution 33 (Constitutional Amendment guaranteeing the right to same-sex marriage, abortion and gender-affirming care) were moved to the House Rules Committee as part of the opening decisions Thursday in the Senate chamber. HB 2002 and HB 2005 were significantly amended and are expected to pass both chambers. There are likely several policy bills that were included in these decisions, but we won’t know the full details of what’s in and what’s out until next week.
For the LOC’s remaining top priorities and other legislative work, we continue to push forward and are hopeful our efforts over the last several weeks have put our priorities in the best possible place to move forward. Rules were suspended on Thursday and are expected to remain suspended on most bills for the final days of the session in order to advance much of the backlog of legislation. If the full complement of Republicans does not return, some legislation that did not have the votes to be stopped may well advance unless other bills were also part of the terms of the agreement.
For more details on the story, you can see a write-up from the Oregonian, Oregon Capitol Chronicle, OPB, and Associated Press.
Contact: Jim McCauley, Legislative Director - jmccauley@orcities.org
Last Updated 6/16/23