2024 Legislative Short Session Recap
Progress on Housing and Drug Treatment and Incomplete Work on Campaign Finance Reform
Perennial high hopes for the short session are often dashed by the realities of a five week session time limit. There just isn’t time to complete the refinement and compromise that should happen in any major piece of legislation. Instead, the Legislature most often only passes minor bills to implement consensus policy changes or budgetary adjustments. This session proved the exception, with two important bills passing to increase housing and recriminalize the possession of hard drugs, and a campaign finance reform bill that makes some progress.
Housing. The Legislature passed the Governor’s highest priority - a $369 million housing funding package that will help spur construction of new housing and improve services for the unhoused. The package contains $100 million for cities to use for infrastructure needs to support new construction, $75 million for a revolving fund for lower-cost housing, and a one time 50 to 100 acre expansion of the urban growth boundary in many cities for new housing. The $100 million provision patches a long-standing problem with cities pushing excessive infrastructure costs, often worsened by years of underinvestment, onto new development. While neither the state nor the developer of new housing should be responsible for a city’s decades-long refusal to maintain its infrastructure, the funding will decrease the cost of new construction. The $75 million provision will help cities develop affordable and market-rate housing by reducing financing costs for developers.
The land use provision is the most controversial. It takes an end-run around the lengthy, careful process of urban growth boundary expansion. However, a successful precedent exists in smaller bill that was successfully used by Bend to expand housing there. Democrats killed this provision in earlier sessions, but it passed with relatively little opposition this time.
The homelessness provisions provide $65 million for homeless shelters, $34 million to prevent evictions, $18 million for recovery housing, and lesser amounts for land acquisition for affordable housing, low income housing repairs, heat pumps, and similar projects. While most of these are patches to structural deficits, rather than long-term fixes, they will improve access to shelter for the unhoused and keep low income people in their homes. I was particularly pleased to see $2 million going to support extreme weather shelters like Egan Warming Center.
The Legislature partially repealed Measure 110 by re-criminalizing the possession of hard drugs. The new provisions allow for a diversion from the criminal justice system for drug users who opt in to treatment, a 30 day maximum initial sentence, and a 6 month maximum penalty for unsuccessful completion of probation. The net effect is to push drug users into treatment through the threat of jail time, while providing additional funding to ensure that treatment is available.
While many of my friends believe that we should never force people into treatment because it is not effective, I disagree. In my experience as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I saw people who were pushed into treatment who were eventually successful. Treatment is not a magic cure; it is a toolbox of skills to help people who want to become sober. Treatment may not lead to sobriety immediately, but that toolkit remains available when the addict is ready.
Pragmatically, the success of the new provisions will depend heavily on local buy in. Ironically, conservative rural counties often have the lowest success rates and shortest jail terms, as access to rehabilitation services is lower and, despite higher nominal sentences, rural taxpayers rarely want to support the kind of large, expensive jail with space adequate to house people for their full sentence. More often, space requirements dictate early release.
I give the Legislature an “incomplete” for its work on campaign finance reform. Thanks to pressure from people like you, the initial, awful proposal that would have worsened the inequities between corporate donors and individual donors was modified. It still has serious deficiencies, including a high donation cap ($3,300 per person in many campaigns) and a huge loophole for so-called “small donor committees” but it is, at least, not worse than the current system. Compare this to the voter-approved Measure 47 from 2006, which imposed a $500 cap before the Oregon Supreme Court struck it down (and later reversed itself). I look forward to the inevitable ballot measure when the voters realize just how big the loopholes are in the current bill.
Looking to the 2025 Session. The House Speaker identified transportation funding as a challenge for the long session next year. The federal government often helps build state highways, but does not generally provide support for maintaining them. Specific challenges include a potential new I-5 bridge across the Columbia River, tolling, and decreased revenue from gas taxes as vehicles achieve greater efficiency. While there are few easy answers, I am heartened that it is at least an area where there remains some possibility of bipartisan cooperation.
Election News
4J Schools Levy. Eugene schools rely on a property tax levy to pay for about 25% of teacher salaries. The voters have renewed the levy every 5 years for decades. It’s up again this May. While I sometimes have disagreements about how 4J spends their budget, it is never wasted. I hope you’ll support the renewal, which will not increase your taxes above where they are now.
Doyle Canning for HD 8. My friend Doyle Canning is running for House District 8. Doyle is a strong environmentalist who will represent the district well. She will always put the voters first.
Recommendation
Equity in College Admissions. How can we make college admissions more equitable without racial preferences? The New York Times has done an excellent data science exercise on this topic. The upshot is that highly selective colleges could have significantly more diverse student bodies if they identified and recruited “outlier” students who performed significantly better on the SATs than would be expected based on their family income and school quality. However, I look forward to a future article where the paper addresses dream hoarding in the form of legacy admissions, the reality that even smart students who work hard at poor schools will likely not be as well prepared as students who attended better/richer schools, and the preference of some of the most selective and best endowed schools to face tax penalties before spending a reasonable amount of their endowments to help poor students. Keep in mind that the income alone of some of these endowments exceeds the entire annual operating budget of the institutions they (purport to) support. Want to know why highly selective private colleges don’t have more equitable admissions? Start with greed.
Saturday Night Live. Their take on the State of the Union and Republican response is priceless.
Keep Letters from a Recovering Politician Free
As always, the best thing you can do to support this column is to share it with people who might be interested. I do not have a paid plan because I want folks to be able to access it without worrying about money. If you’d like to leave me a tip to show your appreciation, you can click on the “buy me a coffee” button below.
Thanks Marty. We always appreciate your information and thoughtful analysis. Keep up the good work!