Oregon’s 90 lawmakers are beginning their work in earnest on Tuesday, with about five months to pass a spending plan for the next two years, figure out how to plug a transportation funding hole and make progress on the state’s housing crisis. Lawmakers have introduced nearly 2,300 bills so far, with more to come. A group of legislators spent the summer traveling the state to solicit ideas about transportation needs and funding, while Senate President Rob Wagner, D-Lake Oswego, drove thousands of miles to meet with senators at their homes in hopes that better relationships between lawmakers would lead to better laws and prevent a repeat of the six-week Republican-led walkout that derailed the 2023 session. How to engage with the Legislature Much of the Capitol will remain closed for construction until later in the year, but a few committee hearing rooms, the House and Senate chambers and lawmakers’ offices are open. Oregonians can enter the Capitol through a door on State Street, across the street from Willamette University, and go through security screening. They can also watch committee hearings and debates online at the Legislature’s website (oregonlegislature.gov). The website also displays meeting agendas and bills with links to submit written testimony and includes contact information for lawmakers. During a Thursday news conference, Gov. Tina Kotek and legislative leaders indicated that they generally agreed on the big issues facing Oregon — though not on the way to address those issues.  “We’ve got to make sure that our government is working, and that it’s working for everyday people,” said House Speaker Julie Fahey, D-Eugene. “What that means to me is that we’re moving forward on housing and health care and child care, and that there aren’t people sleeping on the streets, and that we’ve got an education system where students are showing up ready to learn and are getting a quality education and a transportation system that is safe and efficient.” Passing a budget Lawmakers’ chief task each odd-numbered year is approving a spending plan for the next two years. They have a starting point in the $39.3 billion budget Kotek proposed in December, but members of the Joint Ways and Means Committee will spend the next several months vetting requests from agencies, local governments and other lawmakers for a share of state funds. The state’s latest economic forecast, released in November, estimated that lawmakers could spend up to $37.8 billion. Lawmakers will see two more forecasts — one in February and one in May — before finalizing Oregon’s budget for the two years that begin July 1.  Democrats now hold three-fifths of seats in both the House and Senate, giving them more flexibility to raise revenue. But they’ll face opposition from Republicans if they try to do so. Senate Minority Leader Daniel Bonham, R-The Dalles, pointed to a post-election newsletter from Portland Democratic Rep. Rob Nosse that said the supermajority meant Democrats wouldn’t be “held hostage” by Republican opposition to raising taxes. “I’m struggling right now as a member of a minority party that doesn’t feel included to want to participate, especially when we have members of the Democrat leadership in the House saying they’re interested in going it alone, that they’re going to bypass any Republican feedback and pass taxes without us,” he said. “That’s just an absolute terrible approach to this conversation.”  Sen. Daniel Bonham, R-The Dalles, talks during a legislative preview on Jan. 16, 2025, while Senate President Rob Wagner, D-Lake Oswego, and Senate Majority Leader Kayse Jama, D-Portland, watch. (Photo by Ron Cooper/Oregon Capital Chronicle) Funding transportation Along with the state’s budget for the next two years, lawmakers set themselves the task of coming up with a plan to sustainably fund Oregon’s transportation needs. The Oregon Department of Transportation estimates it needs $1.8 billion more each year to pay for road maintenance and repairs, and that number doesn’t include expensive projects like the Interstate 5 bridge connecting Portland and Washington.  Transportation funding issues aren’t unique to Oregon. A recent report from the Pew Charitable Trusts noted transportation as one of five key debates expected in statehouses around the country this year as states deal with reduced gas tax revenue resulting from more electric and fuel-efficient vehicles. States including Maryland and Washington are looking at cutting transportation budgets, while Colorado has pulled more than $1 billion from its general fund to pay for transportation needs. Kotek rejected the idea of using the state’s general fund to pay for transportation, saying it wasn’t feasible.  “Unless someone wants to bring a bill that takes $2 billion out of the general fund for transportation — that is $2 billion out of education, that is $2 billion out of mental services, that is $2 billion out of housing — (the) general fund will not fill this gap,” she said. “We know how to fund these things. We’ve done it in the past, and we need to do it again.”  House Minority Leader Christine Drazan, R-Canby, said she didn’t trust the Oregon Department of Transportation to follow through on promises after it failed to complete projects that received funding from a 2017 transportation package.  “There were clear expectations in the legislation, there was clear authority in the legislation and yet they didn’t perform,” Drazan said. “And so now they’ve got their hand out, and they’re saying, we need more. We want more, and from our perspective, we need them to succeed. What’s changed from the agency?”  Education Education priorities for the year ahead look much like they did this time last year, centering on more money for the state’s 197 school districts, investments in programs and staff to improve student literacy and an urgent need for summer school funding.  Kotek said her primary education priority this session will be to make a few overdue tweaks to the school funding formula to add more than half-a-billion dollars to the biennial education budget. She is proposing a historic $11.36 billion for the next two school years. She’s also called for nearly $80 million in funding for summer learning programs, more than double what the Legislature passed in 2024.  Kotek said with more money comes more responsibility and accountability. She supports legislation that would give the Oregon Department of Education more authority to intervene in underperforming schools that have high absenteeism rates, low graduation rates and low student proficiency in key academic areas.  “That is something I want to see done in the legislative session, because we need more transparency and accountability. More money is just not enough,” she said. Drazan said the shift should be toward giving the state education department less, not more, authority over student outcomes and to “move responsibility, to the extent that is possible, back to the students and the family, with supports from these larger education systems.” She said issues like high absenteeism rates are not a question of policy or how education is funded in Oregon, but a “culture question,” that needs to be answered at the school and family level.  “The pivot point shouldn’t be from small government to big government. The pivot point should be from the school to the family and the student,” she said.   Gov. Tina Kotek answers questions from reporters during a press conference on Jan. 16, 2025. (Photo by Ron Cooper/Oregon Capital Chronicle) Behavioral health care Kotek and lawmakers are looking for ways to help Oregon’s behavioral health care system. Problems run throughout the system. Oregon has a shortage of beds for people who need mental health and addiction treatment in a residential setting. And Oregon State Hospital, the state-run psychiatric residential facility, struggles to admit people who wait in jails and need care before facing criminal charges. Kotek wants to see a new model of supportive housing — called “intensive permanent supportive housing” that helps people with serious mental health challenges live independently. It’s one way of helping people navigate beyond the streets and shelters into a long-term solution. Rep. Pam Marsh, D-Ashland, has introduced House Bill 3146 to create a pilot program that offers emergency shelter for people who are on a waitlist for residential addiction treatment. The proposal is intended to shelter homeless people while they wait for care, and enable providers to find them quickly when a bed opens up. More housing Kotek wants the Legislature to expand on one of her biggest legislative accomplishments, a 2019 law that allowed duplexes, triplexes, cottage clusters and other “middle housing” to be built in areas that could previously only have single-family homes. House Bill 2138 would allow middle housing to be built in more places, including unincorporated lands, and limit the ability of local governments or homeowners associations to block those types of homes from being built.  “We still need lots of big apartments,” Kotek said. “We’re never going to stop building single family standalone homes. We have to have middle housing to fill in the gap, and I think we’re just at the cusp of seeing more of this happening because people are getting more comfortable with it. The bill I’m working on will make that easier.” Senate Majority Leader Kayse Jama, D-Portland, said that lawmakers have done a lot in recent years to try to keep Oregonians from becoming homeless, help those who are homeless back into housing and help more Oregonians manage to buy homes. But there’s a lot more to do, he said.  “We have been underbuilding for decades, and we have to acknowledge that we’re trying to catch up,” Jama said.  Civil commitment changes  Lawmakers will consider changes to how Oregon civilly commits people who face serious mental health challenges. Civil commitment puts people in care, usually a hospital, after a judge determines they pose a risk to themselves or others. A state workgroup has suggested a slate of recommendations to lawmakers. The Oregon chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, in particular, wants to make it easier for a judge to civilly commit people.  It would make changes like allowing judges to consider prior suicide attempts and other factors, like how likely a person is to harm others within the next 30 days and not immediately.  Kotek said it’s important for people to have a place to go for care and for communities to have the resources they need. Hospital discharges This session lawmakers could pass changes aimed to helping people exit hospitals sooner when they are ready to be discharged.  Last year, a state task force made recommendations for improving the flow of patients through the state’s 7,135-bed hospital system.  They include changes to Medicaid to cut down on red tape and allow people to move to a long-term care facility sooner when they no longer need a hospital bed.  Oregon’s hospital system is strained. People who are ready to exit the hospital but have no place to go linger there while waiting for either a bed in a long-term care facility, Medicaid approval, or both.  This means that patients who enter through the emergency rooms wait longer for a bed.  Environment Kotek and her natural resources advisor Geoff Huntington told the Capital Chronicle that their primary environmental concerns for 2025 will be water quality and water quantity. Kotek is backing updates to the state’s Groundwater Quality Protection Act to which would modernize the state’s laws — including some more than 100 years old — around groundwater allocation. In less than a century, Oregon water officials have allocated all surface water under their purview, overallocated groundwater in several basins and have no clear accounting of how much water is still available in others.  Kotek and legislators also expressed a commitment to finding sustainable sources of wildfire funding for the years ahead. A wildfire funding committee convened by the Legislature in 2024, which met to discuss possible funding solutions throughout the last year, shared a document Wednesday of ideas for the Legislature to consider. Among them are increasing the transient lodging tax and sending the revenues to the state’s wildfire fund, and a one-time investment of the state’s $1.8 billion revenue surplus, known as the “kicker” tax rebate, into a fund where it would earn at least 5% interest per year. That investment would yield at least $180 million per biennium for wildfire funding, according to Sen. Golden, D-Ashland, who proposed the idea. None of the proposals include new funding from insurance companies or private investor-owned electric utilities, responsible for some of the most expensive wildfires in Oregon history.  Companies disproportionately responsible for pumping out greenhouse gases that are fueling climate change could, however, be on the hook for the real-world costs of their pollution. Golden is proposing Senate Bill 682, modeled after similar climate superfund laws passed in Vermont and New York, which would allow the state to collect fees from fossil fuel companies to cover natural disaster expenses and climate adaptation.  Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: [email protected]. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on Facebook and Twitter. STORY TIP OR IDEA? Send an email to Salem Reporter’s news team: [email protected]. The post Oregon Legislature gets to work on budget, transportation and other issues appeared first on Salem Reporter.