A Day in the Legislature

In a well-run business, the leaders focus on the important issues first and leave less important ones for later. Such leaders know that some issues are so important to the health of their enterprise that they are willing to spend whatever effort is needed to get them right. Our legislature appears to have other ideas. The way the House of Representatives of Oregon dealt with two bills on Friday provides a good example of the problem.

Two Bills. One on School Funding: This Friday, the day the Hillsboro school district closed for the year for lack of funds, the Democratic minority in the Oregon House of Representatives attempted to discuss the school funding problem for the next biennium. House Bill 3636 would appropriate $6 billion for Oregon's schools to correct the shortfalls school districts are experiencing across the state. The bill, unfortunately, has been tied up in the House Ways and Means committee at the direction of the Speaker of the House and the majority party leadership for weeks.

In an effort to discuss maintaining our public school classes and school days, Rep. Elaine Hopson, with the support of the rest of the Democratic House members, moved to withdraw HB 3636 from committee and vote on it on the floor. This motion, had it passed, would simply have allowed the House to debate the bill appropriating money for our schools. Over half of the house members had sponsored the bill. But the leadership forced the Republican sponsors to vote against debating it.

The motion was voted down along strict party lines. This means that the House was not even allowed to talk about the danger to our children caused by too few classes and a school year with too few days. If the last regular session of the legislature is a guide, the issue will never be discussed in any significant way in public. In 2001 the school funding budget bill was one of the last things the legislature did as it rushed toward adjournment in the early days of July.

The Other Bill:
The Budget for The Oregon Board of Clinical Social Workers: House Bill 5007 establishes the budget for a small licensing board which is entirely funded by licensing and exam fees paid by the Clinical Social Workers themselves. There is nothing remarkable about this bill. The funds are essential to carry out the board's responsibility to police the Social Workers it licenses. There are many other similar bills. It just so happened that this bill came up today.

Why do I mention it? The House was unwilling to talk about school funding, but spent almost half an hour debating the merits of this small agency even after the Ways and Means sub committee had held a full hearing on the bill. At least six members spoke to the bill. The House finally did get it right and passed the bill, 52 to 2 with six members excused.

I wish it were not so, but this House seems unable to tell the difference between vital and less important matters. With some schools closing today for the year for lack of funds, the House is still unable to debate vital public policy. I hope this changes soon.