NEWS UPDATE FROM STATE REPRESENTATIVE DAVID GOMBERG: Special Session and “Leg” Days

Oregon lawmakers convened Thursday for a brief emergency session related to this year’s record-setting wildfire season. At the heart of the session are hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid bills owed to the workers who helped put out blazes.

This year, wildfire touched over 1.9 million acres, making it Oregon’s most destructive fire season in terms of acres burned. In the end, Oregon spent a whopping $350 million fighting fires across the state.

A graph showing the number of acres burned on public and private lands in Oregon since 1995.

The federal government helps pay for wildfires through disaster funds. It also reimburses the state whenever Oregon lends firefighting support on federally managed fires. But it can take years for those federal dollars to make their way to Oregon.

Small business can’t wait years to pay their employees or other costs. Ultimately, Governor Tina Kotek called a special session to more quickly pay this year’s contractors.

With traditional Chambers closed for renovations, the House and Senate convened in hearing rooms for the special session. This required special rules and procedures for members to speak and vote.

About $108 million will come from the state’s emergency fund, with the remaining $110 million coming from leftover general fund money, which state forecasters expect to be above $2.8 billion.

Despite the lack of drama, the session was complicated and unusual. The process was awkward because both the House and Senate chambers are closed until January for ongoing renovations. That meant the full 60-member House met in one of the larger committee hearing rooms requiring special rules and procedures. This was something I’ve not seen before and don’t expect to see again.

The Senate and House chambers are supposed to be ready in January for the 2025 Legislature.

The lone bill up for consideration, Senate Bill 5801, which allocated $218 million in taxpayer money to cover the costs of a fire year sailed through a legislative committee and both chambers on nearly unanimous votes in just a few hours.

But decades of aggressive fire suppression has resulted in unhealthy, crowded forests that are more prone to extreme, high-severity fires. Hotter, drier temperatures from climate change have made matters worse.

The result is bigger and more catastrophic wildfires. The average number of acres burned in Oregon has been rapidly increasing. By 2014, the state’s 10-year average increased by 64%. This year, it increased another 57%.

As fires get bigger, they can spread into areas where people live, like the 2020 Labor Day weekend fires, which destroyed upwards of 5,000 homes and businesses in Oregon including portions of northern Lincoln County.

Much of this report comes from OPB. Read more here.

Read more about the project in the Oregonian here. To donate to the Vietnam War Memorial at the Oregon Capitol, visit here.

The Committee On Commerce and Consumer Protection heard a presentation on Age Discrimination in the Workplace as a preface to a bill Chairman Nathan Sosa and I will introduce in January. You can listen to the hearing here.

Chairman Natan Sosa and I will introduce age discrimination proposals for the session next year.

Nuclear power produces most of the emissions-free electricity in the United States. It produces over 48%, with wind at 26%, hydro at nearly 15%, solar at 10% and geothermal at 1%. A broad range of companies, including in Oregon with NuScale Power, are trying different scales of nuclear power plants from the big ones that produce 1,000 megawatts of energy to smaller micro plants, producing about 50 megawatts.

You can listen to the committee hearing here.

Bills have been introduced in the past proposing to ask voters to overturn Oregon’s effective nuclear ban. What do you think?

And finally, the Emergency Board received a report from Housing and Community Services about our efforts to address homelessness in Oregon.

In January 2023, Governor Kotek declared a state of emergency and signed executive orders with the aim of building more homes and creating more shelter beds. But the order and the $130 million funding it included relied on methodology aimed at primarily urban counties. Not included were the remaining 25 rural counties in the state.

Twenty-five rural counties were not included in the original housing declaration.

The report provided by the Housing Division this week provided good news but had some bad news just below the surface.

We are well ahead of our goals in creating shelter beds in rural Oregon. We targeted 309 beds and have in fact provided 352. But in the report’s footnotes, I found the following charts that show our progress is not broadly available.

*EDITOR’S NOTE:  In TILLAMOOK COUNTY, Helping Hands Recovery Center in Tillamook just opened 40 new shelter beds; and an emergency shelter is open during inclimate weather.

I called out these inequities in the Emergency Board and said that rather than celebrating, we need to be striving to provide shelter in all parts of the state. You can see my remarks here.

Listen to my remarks about rural homeless shelter beds here.

I was sad to miss the ribbon cutting at Schooner Creek Discovery Park’s new playground – especially since I helped secure funds to get the park started. But instead, I opted to help lay 200 wreaths on veteran graves at the Eureka Cemetery on Yaquina Heights as part of the Wreaths Across America program. Local Girl Scouts also braved the damp weather to participate.

From there I went to the Newport Performing Arts Center to celebrate the opening of new performance, rehearsal, and backstage spaces.

I am a strong supporter of the arts and culture as a means to enhance the livability, vitality, and economy of our small communities. And I continue to marvel that a town of 10,000 can boast a symphony, a world-class jazz party, and nearly a dozen local performing arts groups. I also marvel at the generosity of our community members who make these things possible. Opportunities are still available to sponsor aspects of the PAC expansion. For example, you can have your name placed on one of the restrooms backstage. “What a legacy”, I joked. “Imagine a famous performer stopping in the ‘Gomberg’ before going onstage!”

In Oregon, when you donate to any of our qualifying nonprofits directly, and then match another donation to the Oregon Cultural Trust, you can earn a dollar-for-dollar tax credit from the state.

And still on the generosity theme, it was a bidding frenzy at the Pacific Communities Health District Gala & Auction Saturday night. Proceeds will help fund important programs for patients and staff at the Samaritan Treatment and Recovery Services Center on the coast. Earlier this year, we brought home $1.3 million from the ’24 legislative session to support the Center.