NEWS UPDATE FROM STATE REPRESENTATIVE DAVID GOMBERG: Early Session Thoughts on MLK Day

By Representative David Gomberg, House District 10

1/20/2025
Dear Friends and Neighbors,

As I detailed last week, the Oregon legislature convened last Monday to begin the six-month 2025 session which will consider proposed laws and budgets.

The first day was largely one of formalities and procedures as members were sworn in and leaders were selected. Bills were introduced, committees appointed and then we heard the State of the State address from our Governor.

On a personal note, I was asked briefly to preside as “Temporary Speaker” while a permanent Speaker was nominated and elected. You can hear my short remarks here.

While presiding, I read the words carved in the walls of the Capitol Rotunda that most members have never seen because of ongoing construction.

I was then honored to be nominated and elected as the Speaker Pro Tempore. Please take a moment to listen to the very kind nomination speech by Representative Ricki Ruiz.

In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the number of new legislators entering their first session. In 2023, we had over 20 freshmen join the Legislature, and in 2025 we have 11 new members of the House and 8 new Senate members. Legislating is hard, time-consuming, emotionally demanding work that pays as well as serving fast food. But still, we have great people arriving and ready to serve. I look forward to building these new relationships and to sharing what I have learned in my time as a House member.

The Governor’s speech focused on three issues that continue to be her priorities: a housing and homelessness crisis, a frayed and overtaxed behavioral healthcare system, and flagging student test scores. You can watch the entire speech here. And you can watch the republican response here.

While I have read comments from some of my republican colleagues that being in the minority makes it difficult or impossible for them to be effective, I am mindful that here in Oregon, despite Democrats holding a “super majority”, republican legislators have been appointed to a number of significant committee positions. Fred Girod is Senate co-chair of the powerful Capital Construction Committee which allocates all lottery dollars and funds most infrastructure investments. He is also a vice-chair of Ways and Means. Representative Greg Smith is the House chair of the General Government budget committee that oversees funding of the Department of Revenue, and the offices of the Governor and Secretary of State.

In a unique power-sharing arrangement, republican Mark Owens will co-chair the House Committee On Agriculture, Land Use, Natural Resources, and Water together with democrat Ken Helm. The Committee on Conduct in both the House and Senate have bi-partisan co-chairs. And despite a democratic majority in the House, the Committee On Economic Development, Small Business, and Trade has an equal number of Democrats and Republicans.

Nowhere else in the nation have I seen a partisan majority willingly sharing power as we see here in Oregon. Certainly, we will see differences emerge as the session unfolds. But it is important to note that leadership is making an effort at cooperation right from the start.

I’ve said before that as many as 4000 bills will be introduced this session and only about one in ten will become law. I have authored roughly a dozen proposals and wanted to share a few of them with you this week.

Our district enjoys 75 miles of ocean front which affects jobs, livability, and our collective futures. My legislative focus continues to be on our marine environment and economy.

In the last long session, I authored HB 3410 committing $100 million to a variety of rural economic development initiatives. One of those programs was a plan to bring more Oregon seafood to Oregon restaurants. (Regular readers know only about 10% of the seafood served in Oregon comes from Oregon.) This year I will bring a proposal to get more Orgeon seafood into school lunches.

I will have a bill to better protect rocky nearshore habitat and our eelgrass meadows. I’m working to ensure funds already allocated to the Department of Fish and Wildlife for Marine Reserves are not diverted for other purposes.

I’m continuing to work on support for the Maritime workforce that includes everything from welding and diesel mechanics to aquarium science and new products from fish processing waste.

I’ll have a bill proposing tax benefits for investments by homeowners or businesses in resilience and natural disaster preparation like power back-ups and generators.

And I’m continuing to support marine science and research with funding for the Oregon Ocean Science Trust.

Over the past few sessions, I have worked hard to build stuff – ports, parks, cultural plazas, and of course, improved water and sewer systems. I have done this by crafting bi-partisan bills that support infrastructure not only in our district but across rural Oregon.

I’m back again with a big infrastructure bill, this time addressing rural public safety infrastructure. I’m looking at aging fire stations, police facilities at capacity, critical buildings that need to move out of the tsunami inundation zone, wildfire training, and improving drinking water and generator fuel storage at our coastal hospitals.

The total package is being finalized now and will include a dozen improvements stretching from suburban Multnomah County to Harney County. Included will be police buildings in Toledo, the fire station in Waldport, and critical care in Alsea.

Public safety infrastructure investments will help move the Toledo police station out of the tsunami zone.

Water and fuel at our hospitals are a particular need. The average coastal hospital has a three-day supply when we are asking our local families to be two weeks ready for a major natural disaster. You can listen to my thoughts on this and the support of our local hospital administrators on last week’s Double R Show titled Next on the Agenda.

School districts are funded partly by enrollment. But in the aftermath of the 2020 wildfires, Lincoln County school enrollment has declined. As families leave, their state funding leaves with them.

Those districts particularly impacted by the loss of families due to wildfire include Phoenix-Talent School District, McKenzie School District, Lincoln County School District and Santiam Canyon School District.

To try and address this, I have sponsored two bills together with State Representative Pam Marsh (D-Ashland). One bill would give just over $6 million to the districts immediately to cover anticipated expenses this school year, and the other would give more than $38 million over the next four school years. The money would be distributed among the four districts based on their enrollment.

The legislature gave these districts $25 million in the 2022 legislative session, allowing them to use their 2019 enrollment numbers, before the fires, to calculate funding, rather than their current enrollment numbers. Recovery is not yet complete, and more help is needed.

On my own street, one-third of the homes were lost to the Echo Mountain fires. Half have not yet been rebuilt.

This one is going to be creepy. And the salient point is that I will introduce a bill next week to address it.

Think for a moment about what your car knows about you. Do you prefer Starbucks or Dutch Brothers? Do you drive to a church on Sunday, a bar each night after work, or to a hotel each Thursday during the lunch hour?

A team of researchers at Mozilla has reviewed the privacy and data collection policies of various product categories for several years now in a series called “Privacy Not Included”. They recently turned their attention to modern-day vehicles, and what they found shocked them. Cars, to put it bluntly, are a privacy nightmare.

Our cars already track where we drive. According to the team’s research, Subaru passengers allegedly consent to the collection of their data by simply being in the vehicle. Volkswagen says it collects data like a person’s age and gender and whether they’re using their seatbelt, and it can use that information for targeted marketing purposes. Nissan and Kia say they can collect information about consumers that can even log – get this – “sexual activity”!

“What really creeps me out [is] they go on to say that they can take all the information they collect about you from the cars, the apps, the connected services, and everything they can gather about you from these third party sources,” researcher Jen Caltrider said, “and they can combine it into these things they call ‘inferences’ about you about things like your intelligence, your abilities, your predispositions, your characteristics.”

Listen and learn about the data that cars can collect, how that data can be shared, how it can be used, and whether consumers have any choice in the matter.

My bill will limit car access to your texts and emails when you connect and make sure rental cars and leases are wiped clean when you return them.

Here is an issue I’m watching closely.

Cities and counties in Oregon are proposing changes to the state’s lodging tax law as a source of revenue to help pay for local services and infrastructure.

For decades, local governments have collected lodging taxes from hotels, motels, and other short-term lodging providers. In 2003, the Legislature established restrictions around how new lodging tax dollars could be spent, requiring at least 70% to go toward tourism promotion and tourism-related facilities and reserving the remaining 30% for local discretionary spending. Taxes approved before 2003 were not subject to the new law.

The law is meant to support tourism while also putting money back into communities, but many local governments have called out what they see as an imbalance.

The League of Oregon Cities (LOC) says increased flexibility for lodging tax spending is on their list of legislative priorities for the upcoming session. The hope is to expand or potentially add a definition to the law to include tourism-impacted services within the 70%. Their concern is that, without making changes to the lodging tax, local jurisdictions may not be able to maintain service levels without eventually raising their rates.

Data shows that in Lincoln County, roughly 30% of law enforcement contacts and adults in custody are from outside of the county.

Tourism dollars help support the performing arts and playgrounds on the coast. Now cities want more lodging tax dollars for police, housing, and general services. What do you think?

According to LOC, “When you have a huge rush of tourists who come over a weekend and your population doubles, for some communities, your roads wear out a lot faster. There’s a strain on your water system. Sometimes that means people tend to buy vacation homes in your area to rent out and things like that, but that impacts your housing stock. People come to your parks because they have children and they want to experience your community and everything it has to offer. You’ve got public restrooms in a lot of communities that have transient lodging taxes, public parking lots, and all of those are things that the city bears the burden of maintaining and operating.”

Over the past two decades, the Oregon Restaurant & Lodging Association has consistently opposed changes to local lodging taxes. “In our opinion, they’re working really well. The laws include what we feel is an ongoing robust contribution to local governments across the state in providing unrestricted funding through lodging taxes that governments can use however they see fit.”

Lodging taxes don’t always pencil out to a perfect 70/30 split because the rule only applies to local tax rates set after the law passed in 2003. Some local governments actually have more than 30% going toward the general fund. According to the Oregon Coast Visitor’s Association, Lincoln City, Coos Bay, North Bend, and Yachats put about 60% into general city funds, while just 40% goes to tourism.

These percentages tell a story but also need some context. Over the past fiscal year, Lincoln City collected about $13 million in lodging taxes and Newport about $6.4 million in the 2023 calendar year.

Tourism contributes directly to the Oregon Coast economy. Tourism in Oregon has grown to become a $14 billion industry and in many communities – particularly in rural parts of the state – tourism is the number one economic driver. For the Oregon Coast specifically, tourism brings nearly $2.4 billion of new money into the economy that was not there before.

Tourism also contributes nearly 26,000 jobs, employing workers and keeping restaurants, recreation, and cultural opportunities available to year-round residents. Read more here.

Earlier I wrote about water and propane storage at our coastal hospitals.

I’m proud of our two new hospitals in Lincoln City and Newport. I’m proud of the communities that helped build them, the people that work there, and the service they provide. But I am also cognizant that often, coastal residents who need health support have to go to the valley to get it.

A new article in Yachats News provides a lot more insight into our health care environment and the economics of hospital care. Our two hospitals in Lincoln County with 1,000 employees try to provide the best short and long-term medical care possible in an economically disadvantaged rural area of the Oregon coast. In Lincoln County, 25% of patients are on Oregon’s Medicaid program for low-income residents and 50% on Medicare for the disabled or retired.

Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital in Newport and Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital in Lincoln City are financial bright spots in the five-hospital Corvallis-based Samaritan Health Services system, according to state and federal records.

The Newport hospital’s financial performance has been strong for many years. Samaritan Pacific with 25 beds made a profit of $23 million in 2023. North Lincoln is a different story. It typically breaks even or produces a small profit. North Lincoln Hospital, which has 16 beds, made $2 million in 2023.

The two local hospitals don’t keep their profits, however. The Samaritan system’s finances are pooled, with profits from some facilities and services covering money-losing services or going into reserves for capital projects.

Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital and Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital had to make a series of small budget cuts in 2024 after a variety of factors affected their profitability.

The system’s two big hospitals, Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Corvallis and Samaritan Albany General Hospital, typically lose money or break even. The Corvallis hospital has reported operating losses totaling $8 million for the first half of this year, on top of losses totaling $54 million the previous two years, according to filings with the Oregon Health Authority. Profits from the system’s three smaller hospitals – Samaritan Pacific in Newport, Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital in Lincoln City, and Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital, have covered those losses, the filings show.

Changing reimbursement rules, insurance policies, and increasing operating costs may affect all of this in the near future. The article is a good read with a lot more detail.

Take a look at the coins in your pocket or the bills in your purse. E pluribus unum. “One out of many” is a traditional motto of the United States. I thought of that phrase in recent days as we struggled to respect and embrace all of the different kinds of people in our communities and the different parties and values I encounter in our capitol.

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and it’s a meaningful opportunity to take action that will impact our neighborhoods positively through a day of service.

However, the spirit of MLK’s service and activism should not be limited to one day a year. We should consider every day as a day to celebrate his legacy by serving others the best we can, participating in respectful and peaceful dialogue, honoring the diversity of our communities, and providing more support and opportunities for all.

We must continue to overcome setbacks, just as MLK showed us through his convictions and actions.