By Representative David Gomberg, House District 10
1/29/2024
Dear Neighbors and Friends,
Dark, dreary, rainy days are back! Thank goodness!
I never thought I’d be celebrating 48 degrees and a downpour, but here we are. Almost everyone has power back, neighborhoods are busy assessing damage and cleaning up what they can, and for many of us, we made new connections with our neighbors borne out of necessity.
This daunting ice storm is a stark reminder that we need to be better prepared for the changes Mother Nature continues to present. Colder winter storms with the threat of ice, longer hotter, drier summers, and the threat of wildfires, planned power outages, swelling rivers, and floods – the infrequent and unusual are becoming more frequent and more usual. Are you and your family ready for the next challenge?
Last Sunday, the Oregonian editorialized that we need to build a culture of resilience. “Certainly, we can and should ask more of our public entities to reassess policies and practices that fail to match the urgency of an event”. “And finally, but perhaps most critically, Oregonians must take ownership of their role in protecting themselves and the community and prepare for emergencies as state and local agencies have long urged”.
All of this is a warm-up for the eventual “big one”.
Last Friday was an important anniversary. On that day, 323 years ago, a megathrust earthquake occurred in the Cascadia Subduction Zone, creating a tsunami that struck the West Coast. This event serves as a good reminder to think about our own earthquake and tsunami preparedness. The three most important steps in becoming prepared are 1) Make a plan, 2) Build a kit, and 3) Get informed!
I also urge you to sign up for local emergency alerts at:
By signing up, you will receive time-sensitive emergency and safety alerts from County public safety officials. You choose how and where to receive alerts, including your cell, home, and/or work phone, by email, text messages, TTY (hearing impaired devices), and more. Visit ready.gov to learn more about preparedness.
| Did you know the median age in HD 10 is 52.3 while the median for all of Oregon is 40.6? Did you know the median household net worth here is $157,316 or that 79% of us filled a prescription last month?
The Legislative Policy and Research Office (LPRO) has just updated several useful tools for better understanding our district.
The Fast Fact information pages detail Population Characteristics and Trends, Housing and Households, Health Care Information, and Employment Information. |
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| You can also review interactive maps that detail everything from city boundaries to the location of health services, fire stations, and airports, to the amount of federal lands or state parks within district boundaries. |
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| LPRO has developed “District Fast Facts,” a dashboard-style resource for each of Oregon’s 90 state legislative districts. It is a good and interesting read. |
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| In his last year as Oregon state treasurer, Tobias Read is proposing a roadmap to make the state’s $100 billion pension fund carbon-neutral by 2050.
The state’s retirement fund serves about 400,000 current and former public employees. Of the $100 billion in the fund, more than $5 billion is invested in fossil fuel companies, according to a recent analysis. Treasurer Read previewed his “net-zero plan” at a meeting of the Legislature’s Emergency Management, General Government and Veterans committee the day after environmental groups visited the Capitol to promote another bill that would divest the state’s Public Employees Retirement System, or PERS, of its coal investments. |
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| You can listen to the presentation here. |
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| The new Oregon Kids Credit is a refundable credit for low-income people with young dependent children. As a refundable credit taxpayers will get money back from the state even if they don’t owe any taxes or less than the credit amount. Families with $30,000 or less in annual income can claim up to $1,000 per child, for up to five children aged five and below. |
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| Eligible families need to file an Oregon state income tax return—something many of them may have never done because their low incomes mean they haven’t had a filing requirement. Families may need help with filing a return – learn more here about Oregon Kids Credit and other programs. Learn more here about free tax preparation assistance and resources. |
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| The Coastal Caucus has again written the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management urging time be taken to better review plans for wind energy farms off our Oregon Coast.
“We recognize this is a federal process in federal waters. However, we are in agreement with the overwhelming majority of our coastal stakeholders and residents and are deeply concerned that the needs of existing ocean users and coastal communities are not being prioritized. We ask that BOEM take further steps to consider the concerns coming from our fishing community and all of those who are stakeholders in one of the best-managed, most sustainable fisheries, and one of the most ecologically abundant and diverse ocean ecosystems in the entire world. As we have said in the past, we stand ready to weigh in and work constructively on this matter, however, it should not come at the cost of family wage jobs and the commercial seafood industry that is so critical to our Oregon coastal constituents, their communities, and the businesses that support them.”
You can read the entire letter here. |
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| In August, after more than a year of gathering data, BOEM proposed more than 200,000 acres across two locations off the coast of Southern Oregon. The draft wind energy areas would begin about 13 miles offshore and stretch out to about 57 miles from each location. |
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| Every vote I take in Salem has potential consequences here at home. I was reminded of that on a recent visit to our local grocery store.
Back in 2019, I voted to support Oregon Senate Bill 1019. That law mandated that commercial farms with 3,000 or more chickens give their birds room to move around and that any egg producers looking to sell within the states also have cage-free birds. It brought Oregon to the same chicken rules as Washington, California, and a dozen other states. The bill passed with a large, bi-partisan majority and gave egg producers five years to comply. New standards went into effect January 1st.
Prior to that, most hens used in egg production were confined to stacked single-hen wire cages with about 70 square inches of floor space – less space than a single sheet of paper. |
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| A 2022 Associated Press report said that the percentage of U.S. hens in cage-free housing rose from 4% in 2010 to 28% in 2020, and “that figure is expected to more than double to about 70% in the next four years.”
But did this bill result in fewer eggs or higher prices?
Yes, economists say more ethical eggs can mean higher prices. But there’s an egg shortage because the ongoing bird flu outbreak has affected millions of egg-laying chickens. As of January, more than 81 million birds have died in the U.S. due to the outbreak, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of the birds affected were egg-laying hens. What is not clear is if they died from the disease or were destroyed to reduce the spread.
Egg prices reached a historic high in 2023 for a variety of reasons, including the shift to cage-free production, the pandemic, inflation, higher costs for feed and fuel, and particularly outbreaks of avian flu. |
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The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps track of how much, on average, U.S. consumers are paying for a dozen eggs. Here’s how that price has fluctuated since 2010.
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| As we get closer to the beginning of the 2024 Short Session, it’s been long 12-hour days to fit in all the people who want to meet and discuss bills and budget requests. This week alone, I’ve met with community partners, local jurisdictions, interested community members, and many of my legislative colleagues.
And while I’ve been largely focused on the Session that begins in a week, I still have time to get out and around the district with stops at the Waldport Chamber breakfast, visiting the new display at the Pacific Marine Heritage Center, cutting ribbons at Serenity Boutique, meeting with the Oregon Coast Community College Foundation, checking out the new fabric exhibit at the Cultural Center in Lincoln City and attending the Oregon Coast Council for the Arts annual meeting. I also sat down with Congresswoman Hoyle, Sheriff Landers, and the new Lincoln County Emergency Manager to review the ice storm.
Getting back to the Session, proposed measures will soon be available on the Oregon Legislative Information System (OLIS). |
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Video Instructions for tracking bills and votes through OLIS HERE
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| The main goal of a short session is to balance the state’s budget. While recent revenue forecasts have continued to show upward momentum and a stabilizing economy, state leaders are preparing for a tightening financial reality. We’ll have a better sense of how much money is available to spend after the next revenue forecast on February 7, but we know a few things already.
The bulk of the available dollars to spend this session will likely go towards rebalancing agency budgets and three key priority investment areas (see below). The preliminary agency reports lead us to believe that two of the agencies where we can anticipate significant rebalancing are OHA and DHS, as these agencies are facing immense increases in their caseloads. ODOT has also requested funds for winter driving conditions, striping, garbage, and graffiti clean-up.
Housing Production: The Governor has issued a preview of her 2024 legislative housing proposal, which we can expect to see in Senate Bill 1537 this session. Included in this whopping $500 million package will be the creation of a Housing Accountability and Production Office, assistance with adding land for housing into urban growth boundaries, new affordable housing requirements, grants for climate-friendly construction, housing planning technical assistance funding, site mitigation and readiness funding, and more. In addition to this package, the Governor issued another executive order on January 9 to maintain added capacity to the state’s shelter system, rehouse people experiencing homelessness, and extend Executive Orders 23-02 and 23-09. I’ll also be working to fund water and sewer projects around the state to support housing expansion.
Addiction Crisis: With the creation of the Joint Committee on Addiction and Community Safety Response, and ongoing pressure from the public making national headlines, we know that managing Oregon’s addiction crisis and the public safety response will be a top priority this session. We can expect that conversations around Measure 110, treatment and recovery services, the behavioral health care workforce, and addiction prevention will all make a significant appearance and will be a top-priority investment area. On Tuesday, lawmakers introduced an initial legislative concept that we can expect to hear more about in the coming weeks.
Education and Early Learning: In addition to the growing caseload and funding needs for the ERDC program, the financial gap for the Early Intervention/Early Childhood Special Education program is expected to increase. ODE has tracked the expansion of the student population and referral rates over the biennium, and the need continues to surpass the estimates. The funding shortfalls were shared with the Joint Ways and Means Committee during January Legislative Days — with a bare minimum increase of $22.1 million needed to bridge the existing gaps. With several other childcare and education-related investments put forward already, we can expect education and early learning services to be top-of-mind for legislators this session as well. |
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| In addition to balancing the budget, short sessions tend to be the Legislature’s opportunity to make technical fixes or improvements to previously passed legislation. So far, there are policy bills related to education, recycling programs, pharmacies, affordable housing, family and medical leave, wildfire risk reduction, agricultural issues, immigration, child care facilities, economic development, student data, higher education affordability, campaign finance, addiction, public safety, cybersecurity, and perhaps the best relating-to-clause so far: fostering coexistence with beavers.
The House Desk has now finished processing what we believe to be all of the 2024 Regular Session pre-session filed measures. I expect the Senate will have roughly half as many because, well, there are half as many Senators.
• House Bills – 164
• House Joint Resolutions – 3
• House Joint Memorial – 1
• House Concurrent Resolutions – 3
Much of this information came from the weekly report of Mahonia Public Affairs. You can subscribe here.
That’s the latest news with one week left to go before Session convenes. Thanks as always for reading. |
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