Legislative Update
By Oregonians for Food and Shelter,
March 21st is the deadline for bills to cross their first hurdle to stay alive: bills not scheduled on a committee agenda for a work session by the end of today (Friday March 21st) will be deemed dead. A “work session” is when the committee considers bills for amendments and/or a vote to move out of the committee. While many bills will die after today, it doesn’t take much for a committee chair to list a bill on an agenda to give parties and sponsors just a few more weeks to resolve issues and build support. Bills that have not had a work session take place by the next deadline, April 9th, will be officially dead.
With these looming deadlines, OFS continues to remind legislators of the myriad of issues with several proposed bills. This week, we expressed opposition to HB 2960 and what it could mean for responsible recycling of various ag plastics including chemical containers. We are also voicing concerns around the neonicotinoid restriction (HB 2679), which as currently proposed would prohibit any residential applications, even by licensed applicators around multi-family housing. The proposal also fails to exempt treated wood products. And we are still concerned with the definitional and enforcement problems with the PFAS phase-out (HB 3512) and joined one of many coalitions opposing the measure.
The Governor’s office is proposing additional changes to their recently dropped bill, SB 1154, a comprehensive proposal amending Oregon’s groundwater protection statutes and associated agency authorities. OFS has sent several letters and proposals back to the Governor’s team and we remain concerned about the bill moving forward without appropriate vetting by either natural resource organizations or legislative policy committees. Finally, we are meeting with legislators regarding HB 2684, which would create a statutory requirement for school districts to create their own interpretations of the “low-impact pesticide” statutory definition that determines the types of pesticides that can be used in or near schools. The bill fails to provide any resources to do this work properly, which to date has been done annually as a courtesy by experts at Oregon State University. This creates an unfunded mandate on school districts, which overwhelmingly lack the scientific and technical expertise to do the work.
In budget news, this week, the Ways & Means Co-Chairs (Oregon’s budget leaders) released their initial framework for the 2025-27 budget. As we move past the policy deadlines, the focus will shift to the budget, and the inherent uncertainty based on federal funding. This may also impact any policy bills that have a price-tag to the state upon passage.
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