Posts published in “Oregon column”

Sometimes the facts on the ground don't change, but attitudes toward them do.

In Oregon witness this session's Senate Bill 548., which has just passed the Senate with just one vote in dissent, and now heads to the Oregon House.

It concerns the youngest age at which two people can be married, which at present in Oregon is 17. The bill would change that to 18.

An organization called Unchained at Last, which focuses on forced and child marriages and which has weighed in supporting the new bill, said that from 2000 to 2018 about 200,000 people - mainly girls - were married, most of them 16 or 17 but some as young as 10 years old.

It estimates the number for Oregon at 3,891, about midway among the states per capita. (The number in Idaho, with less than half of Oregon's population, is 5,160, the second-0highest per-capita rate in the nation after Nevada.) No minimum age at all is specified in California. Oregon is one of nine states with the limit at 17, and would be one of just nine - Washington being one - set at 18.

This is a trend line with a long reach. Back  in colonial days, the typical marriage age for females was 12 and for males 14. That has adjusted very gradually over time, but only recently as a serious push for ending the practice really gotten under way. Legal ages for other things - voting, drinking, serving in the military, signing contracts and more - mostly have coalesced about age 18 (drinking being a relatively recent exception to that trend). But in many places, marriage can be carried out at younger ages, And states generally give full faith and credit to marriages from other jurisdictions.

Unchained pitched three core arguments against it:

1. Can easily be forced marriage, since minors have limited legal rights with which to escape an unwanted marriage (typically they are not even allowed to file for divorce);

2. Is a human rights abuse that produces devastating, lifelong repercussions for American girls, destroying their health, education, economic opportunities and quality of life; and

3. Undermines statutory rape laws, often covering up what would otherwise be considered a sex crime. Some 60,000 marriages since 2000 occurred at an age or spousal age difference that should have been considered a sex crime.

There are elements of perspective and culture in this (which doesn't constitute an argument against).

And the breadth of change seems broad. The backers of the new Oregon bill are bipartisan, including Representative Kevin Mannix of Salem, Senator. David Brock Smith of Port Orford and Senator Janeen Sollman of Hillsboro - two Republicans and a Democrat, respectively. And as noted, only one senator voted against it on the floor.

Committee testimony was unified as well, with 18 people submitting statements in favor and none against.

What once seemed clear and obvious enough in one direction has shifted. Progress can happen.

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Elected and other government officials are being threatened more often and in more ways than they were even just a few years ago, and legal pushback has been limited.

The effort to counter that wave of intimidation should be broader than most advocates have proposed in the past, but maybe framed in different ways — as an Oregon judge proposed at a legislative hearing earlier this month.

The hearing concerned Senate Bill 473, which would create a new crime of threatening a public official. It was proposed by the city of Eugene, and sponsored by Senator Floyd Prozanski, D- Eugene, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. The measure would target a person who “knowingly delivers or conveys, directly or indirectly and by any means, a threatening communication to a public official or a member of the public official’s immediate family,” and it could be reasonably interpreted as a warning of violence. It would be a misdemeanor first time out, and felony for repeat instances.

Some opposition has arisen. In a few cases, it comes from people arguing it goes too far.

“This seems like a law that would be abused to silence members of the public and limit protected free speech,” one opponent said in written testimony.

The bill’s supporters pointed out, however, that only threats of imminent violence would be covered under its terms. Though differing in some details, it is set up along the lines of  existing laws on menacing, harassment, stalking and intimidation.

Similar bills have failed before, but the pressure to take some effective action has grown. One national study released in December said that in 2024 there were about 600 threat and harassment incidents targeting local officials, across almost all states, a number up by 19% from the year before and 108% the year before that.

In response to the proposal, the Taxpayers Association of Oregon said that, “During a three-year period of the Portland violent protests, the Taxpayers Association of Oregon documented many examples of violent threats placed upon local officials — including state lawmakers. These threats were sometimes placed on public buildings or accompanied by arson and vandalism. Three Portland elected officials had arson events outside their homes.”

The new bill came from the Lane County area partly because of a seeming explosion of threatening messaging there. The city of Eugene cited dozens of threatening emails to attorneys and others in the court system, Eugene’s mayor and chief of police and many others.

Much of the comment about the bill suggested, however, that limiting a new crime to threats of immediate harm wouldn’t go nearly far enough to address the problem.

The League of Women Voters, for example, urged that doxxing — the use of digital records to harass psychologically, economically and otherwise — should be barred.

Most provocative, though, was committee testimony from a judge of Oregon’s Court of Appeals, Ramon Pagan. Before his current posting, he was a Washington County judge assigned to the family law team.

While there in 2021, he encountered a litigant who, he said, behaved without problem at the trial but later began a pattern of threatening behavior. Pagan recalled that the man’s attorney said he “had become delusional, had started forming conspiratorial thoughts about me and had been repeatedly pointing out that he knew where I lived.”

The man started sending online maps showing, among other things, where Pagan and his wife walked their dogs. He even researched and copied paperwork related to his wife’s personal history.

Pagan said his life changed entirely because the man made a veiled threat but knew enough not to be direct about it.

This sort of harassment, which also included elements of doxxing, would not be covered by the new Eugene legislation.

Pagan had another suggestion: Instead of basing a law around prohibiting menacing or harassing conduct, the committee should consider a different angle and orient it instead around the idea of coercion.

“If the intent was either to affect a pending proceeding or to harass a judge for revenge for a prior proceeding it should be enforceable,” Pagan testified.

He suggested that it would be in the government’s interest to prohibit action that impeded or intimidated public officials from doing their jobs, whatever mechanism a harasser used.

That, too, is a complex question, and legislation would have to be crafted carefully to avoid reeling in people who are using their right to speak out in criticism of government action.

But Pagan’s broader argument, focusing on the specific problem resulting from the new-style campaigns of intimidation, probably offers a road map for developing a more effective law. As the Senate Judiciary Committee starts adjusting legislation, that might be something for lawmakers to consider.

(This column appeared originally in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.)

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On Tuesday night as President Donald Trump spoke to Congress, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon sat in the chamber and, when the subject of Ukraine arose, held up a blue and yellow Ukraine flag to show solidarity.

Oregon’s other senator, Ron Wyden, wasn’t there but he was plenty busy. For two hours, he answered questions at an online town hall.

Key items in the Trump speech included transgender people, buying Greenland, “wokeness,” mass deportations, praise for Elon Musk (and his DOGE operations) and opposition to semiconductor manufacturing.

The subject matter and the tenor of the Wyden discussion was a lot different: Medicaid and Medicare, firefighting, tariffs, Social Security. Threats to the constitutional order, Ukraine and budget cuts among them.

The participation was open, though the questions and online comments leaned strongly Democratic. A few people - or possibly in some cases bots, as some commenters suggested - took Trump’s side, but nearly all were either supportive of Wyden’s critical stance or complaining that it wasn’t tougher. Andm, for an online town hall held by a senator from one state, it was robust in size: More than 3,500 questions from more than 5,000 participants; both groups included people from all 36 Oregon counties, as well as a few from other states. .

Comments poured in at a rate of one a second or better over the two hours. Most reflected some of these sentiments:

 

People, Oregonians, are going to die without access to health care. It won't just be "hard times". It won't just be "sacrifice a bit". We will die. If our elected officials cannot fight for us, we will not survive possibly even this first year, let alone 4 more.

What legal actions can we as regular citizens (not wealthy) take to help stop this madness?

how can wed stop Trump and Musk from destroying our country. I am concern about loosing my Medicare.

How do we save SNAP, Medicaid, Social Security and Medicare?

Our democratic institutions are being dismantled in front of our eyes. Congressional Ds need to lead a coalition to push back hard!

If they cut Medicaid the way they have proposed, every single member of congress who votes for that is complicit in murder. People will die if they make those kinds of cuts to Medicaid.

Oregon Medicaid covers my home caregiver and that service is critical for me as a disabled person.

no kidding - I volunteer witgh North Plains Food Bank and we are seeing rapid growth in need.

Why would we need a drug-addicted depressive to take a chainsaw to our government? BTW, the poverty rate in Argentina is 50%, and that's who TRusk wants to emulate!

I want to know what our recourse is when SCOTUS lets us down again and we have no further recourse. What comes next if the Supreme Court doesn't support us because they are of course in Agent Orange's pocket as has been demonstrated in many situations,

They've always wanted to privatize social security and if it was we'd lose everything as stock market tanks. AS IT IS NOW

We receive electricity from Canada. Will Canada attach tariffs to our electric, impacting our bills?

Trump is heading towardsa Dictatorship, what are the Dems doing? People are scared! HELP!!!

 

Many of the others came from a similar perspective but with a harder edge:

 

I read Republicans are now getting death threats (a Dem lawmaker was the source--he'd heard it from colleagues). trump also threatened Stormy Daniels years ago...it's part of his toolbox. So it's not just fear of their jobs, it's fear for their lives …

Address how we stop Trump and Musk.

With all due respect Senator, Democrats are not doing enough, you're playing by the old rules of decorum when we live in a world of NO RULES.

This convo is too tame imo. Level 10 catastrophe being treated like a level 4.

is there anyway pressure can be put on Bentz to break with the Republicans?

 

For his part, Wyden had plenty of hard talk himself: “We’d like an alternative to Donald Trump’s no-reality … I think Elon Musk is stomping on the constitution … [DOGE activities at the Social Security Administration are] a warmup for a privatization of social security … [On the cutting of foreign health assistance] I think this is a four-alarm fire.”

It may have been an online town hall, but it was very much of a piece with those Wyden and other Oregon elected officials, and some officials elsewhere, have been holding in recent weeks.

It may have suggested some of the terms of conversation to come.

 

Two years ago, Oregon lawmakers faced several dozen proposed constitutional amendments that reflected a range of frustrations with the state’s governing document.

Even more of that is back in this year’s session.

Lawmakers and committees have introduced 50 proposed constitutional amendments, with about twice as many in the Senate than the House. Any that pass — and the odds are few will — would be referred to the ballot November ballot in 2026 for a final decision.

Some of these proposals are new this session, but others have been tried and failed before. Many would involve a reduction or expansion of one side’s governing leverage.

Some of the proposals are from Democrats, who hold a supermajority in both chambers, giving them the authority to raise taxes without Republican support. But most are from Republicans The new Senate Republican leader, Daniel Bonham of The Dalles, is one of the most prolific amendment sponsors, fielding a dozen.

As in past sessions, one of the most overtly political of topics — redistricting — is proposed for constitutional amendment. Two Senate Joint resolutions, 8 and 21, address legislative reapportionment by proposing a redistricting commission, an idea that has failed in the Legislature before. SJR 14 has another twist: It would increase Senate membership from 30 to 36, with each county electing a senator.

You might expect that Republicans, long in the minority, would look for ways to impede the majority’s ability to act, and you would be right. At least a half-dozen constitutional proposals seek to do just that by changing the rules for passing a measure.

Under current rules, bills pass with a simple majority except revenue raising bills, which require a three-fifths supermajority in favor.

Senate Joint Resolution 7, sponsored by Republican Sens. Bonham and Kim Thatcher of Keizer and Rep. E. Werner Reschke of Malin, would require a two-thirds majority in favor in each chamber to pass bills with an emergency clause to enact them sooner than normal. Now, such bills pass with a simple majority.

SJR 12 would mandate a two-thirds majority to pass bills in even-numbered sessions. SJR 26 would end even-year regular sessions completely.

Another amendment that could have unpredictable effects if passed, SJR 9 by Republican Sen. Fred Girod of Stayton, would “prohibit members of the legislative assembly from voting on legislative measures when faced with a conflict of interest. Permits a vote to occur if the legislative entity is otherwise unable to muster sufficient votes to pass or defeat the measure.”

Three more Republican-backed proposed amendments (SJRs 10, 11 and 23) would constrain legislative budget-writing.

Others with Republican backing would limit the Democratic-controlled executive branch. SJR 18 would limit the time spans of emergency declarations by the governor, and SJR 31 would block a governor or agency from mandating use of a vaccine. Under other SJRs, legislative approval would be needed for some pardons and other actions (19 and 20), or for new or increased fees assessed by agencies (HJR 1).

Approaching the question of control differently, a group of four Democrats  — Sens.  Khanh Pham of Portland and Jeff Golden of Ashland and Reps. David Gomberg of Otis and Nathan Sosa of Hillsboro — propose reducing the quorum needed to conduct business from two-thirds to one-half plus one. Republicans in recent years occasionally have used the high quorum requirement to block legislation.

Still others would affect voters, or ballot status for ballot issues, directly. Three — SJR 30 and HJRs 3 and 11 — would change the rules for petitions for initiatives, raising the bar for petitioners. Another, HJR 5 by Republican Rep. Greg Smith of Heppner, would add a new qualification for running for state office: a maximum age of 72 as of election day. (That would mean that current Republican President Donald Trump would be disqualified from running for Oregon office.)

Apart from the relatively partisan amendments, a number of substantive topics — generally with clear partisan appeal on their own — also have been proposed. Many were framed as “constitutional rights,” including:

• A right to fish and hunt (SJR 13)
• An end to the death penalty in Oregon (SJR 16)
• A parental right to choose a school for their children (SJR 24)
• A right to carry a concealed firearm (SJR 27)
• A right to a “clean, safe and healthy environment’ (SJR 28)

Few of all these measures are likely to pass the Legislature and reach the ballot.

Voters, of course, can choose to gather enough signature to get them on the ballot themselves by petition. That could transform some of these ideas into political battles ranging far outside the statehouse.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

Oregon was one of the founders of the ballot issue as a means for citizens to sei8ze control of how they are governed. But how much effective use has been made of it?

The elections web site Ballotpedia put some specific numbers to that question this week, releasing a mass of statistical studies of ballot issues. One of those studies focused on Oregon, and it raises some useful questions.

It points out, for example, that since the initiative and referendum were begun in the state just past the turn of the 20th century, "Oregonians decided on 881 ballot measures, approving 411 and defeating 470 – a 46.7% approval rate. The average approval rate of the six states we've published summary content on so far is 59%."

The first full decade after the ballot issues began, the 1910s, was the high point both for the raw number of issues on the ballot - they'd has more than half a century to percolate by then - but also a high water mark for the number defeated. Few people probably knew then just how popular or unpopular a measure would be, so they may have thrown everything at the wall. Only some of it stuck.

Not only that. Legislatures can place issue on the ballot too, and at least in the early days those proposals were a lot more successful than the citizen-generated kind.

After the early 20th century, the numbers of ballot issues sank in the mid-century, but then rose again. This may may correlated with the contemporaneous rise of a genuinely competitive two-party system (Republicans were heavily dominant most of the time until the mid-century) and a growing distinctiveness between the parties after the 1970s or so. Both parties, at various times, may have felt just shut out enough to want to resort to the ballot issues - and may also have wanted to use them as organizing devices.

All of which makes the more recent falloff in numbers of ballot issues, in the new century, the most curious part of the statistics. As this new century has gone on, Democrats have become more dominant, and as the shut-out party you'd expect Republicans to take to the ballot issue quite a lot. Occasionally they have, but no more than people from the other side of the spectrum, and overall a lot less than simple politics logic would seem to indicate. Might that be out of concern that much of what they would put on the ballot would fail (as many of the Republican-backed issues in fact have failed)? If so, that could be a real indicator of the party's problems in Oregon.

The whole study, linked above, is worth a review. It constitutes a profile of much more than simply items which made the ballot.

 

 

Just a few words on a remarkable town hall meeting.

Not so remarkable for the presentation or the nature of the questions, given the tenor of the times. Or for the fact that it happened, since the senator who hosted it has held more than 500 previously over the years.

But Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley's town hall Sunday afternoon at McMinnville was striking in several ways.

For the size of the audience, for one ting. It likely will not be the largest period, since Yamhill County, the site of this one, is only about a 10th largest county in the state. But it drew enough people that the choice of meeting venue was notable by itself. A few weeks ago, fellow Oregon Senator Ron Wyden (now well past town hall 1,100) held his McMinnville event at a meeting  room at Chemeketa College, and the crowd at that meeting, while larger than the norm for the county at maybe 100 people, fit comfortably into the room. That one was held jut around the time of the Donald Trump inauguration. The crowd at the Merkley event was at least four times as large, and a middle school basketball court was packed to standing room only.

Ordinarily, most of the people at the senators' town halls are repeat attendees. Clearly, this event drew a whole lot of newcomers.

It's not that Merkley is more popular or a bigger draw than Wyden. The difference is in the headlines coming from Washington, and the damage already done to services around the state. Unusually for these kind of events, people were carrying signs. Examples included "Impeach Trump"  and "family of ex-federal employee." (The employee got a chance to tell his story, which told about how he and half of his research team just lost their jobs conducting research vital to Oregon's natural resource industry.)

The crowd had a fierce energy about it.

For his part, Merkley, who had sometimes seemed a little less energetic in his last couple of local town halls, was pumped up, organized, frequently eloquent and ready to roll. He and the audience meshed.

Merkley made the point that if, a decade ago, someone had predicted our country would be in the pickle it's now in, no one would have believed it - it would not have seemed credible. But here we are, and he advised the audience to push back.

The audience seemed fully on board with that.

It was quite a contrast to recent reports of town halls held by Republican members of Congress, as in the case of Oregon's House Republican Cliff Bentz. In LaGrande, in the middle of a large region heavily supportive of Trump up to now, as Betz tried defending the administration, "A vocal majority of the audience expressed frustration and anger with President Donald Trump’s executive orders, the firing of thousands of federal workers and the actions of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency."

Members of Congress from both parties will be bringing some clear memories back to D.C. as they return from recess.

 

The Northwest Power Planning Council was formed in 1981 in response to concerns in the area about the future availability of energy and the potential impact on power production on various business sectors and on the environment, especially fish runs.

Formed by Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana, the Portland-based commission was high-profile and even controversial for a while, but it fell off the public radar eventually its regional energy and environmental plans were completed. Now called the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, its mission in recent years often has focused more heavily on fish runs than on energy production.

And that’s brought criticism.

In 2013,one of its original members, Chris Carlson from Idaho, called for its dissolution.

“It has been a gargantuan waste and its shortcoming in and producing a viable plan to restore the wild salmon and steelhead fishery runs decimated by the four lower Snake River dams is prime reason to put the council out of its misery,” he said in an essay.

He’s not alone in questioning the council’s ongoing role. Since the period four decades ago when planners expected the region to run far short of electricity, conservation has taken hold, new power sources have been developed, grid lines have been strengthened and renewable energy such as wind and solar have been installed.

Lately, however, the Northwest seems on the verge of something approaching a 1980-style regional shortage. In a report in December, Sarah Smith, research scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, said: “The electricity use had somewhat stabilized for a few years [in the 2010s]. We are in that growth phase again and climbing up what’s hopefully an s-curve and not an ‘exponential-forever’ curve.”

That brings in the council. It could serve the region in a big way by adjusting its mission to what could become the largest resource crisis the region has seen since the organization’s early days, with new mass power users pouring into the region. Data centers may be among the largest. The Northwest and especially the Columbia River area have become highly popular locations for data centers, which companies such as Amazon and Google use to handle their online traffic. They use an immense amount of electricity, and in some cases water as well, throwing a curve into the region’s power picture.

This has had a massive effect on electricity rates for Oregon customers. Portland General Electric, for example, has exacted large rate increases two years in a row.

This year’s Oregon legislative session is likely to see measures intended to block these tech companies’ power demands from boosting at least residential rates even higher. Two placeholder bills on studying utilities have been filed, Senate Bill 128 and House Bill 3158, and Rep. Pam Marsh, D-Ashland, is working on another one.

“People who are our largest energy users should be paying for the cost of their energy. That’s just a basic consumer protection issue here,” she told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

The Citizens Utility Board, a Portland-based watchdog group established by voters in 1984 to represent consumer interests, also has made energy affordability its top priority for the 2025 session. The group said it is “working to find long-term solutions to address the energy affordability crisis too many in Oregon are facing. We will also be focusing on adding more consumer protections for utility customers.”

The problem stretches beyond Oregon, however, and the Legislature’s ability to contain it may be limited. If electric utilities are obliged to add more expensive power sources in coming years, someone will have to pay for them.

Much the same can be said for cryptocurrency, management hubs of which also use immense amounts of juice and likely will be seeking out low-cost areas such as the Northwest, especially if the new Trump administration carries through with fostering crypto.

A third new source of pressure on electric supply concerns electric vehicles, both passenger units and commercial large trucks.

Electric vehicles have become notably popular in Oregon, and the number of charging stations around the state — by late 2023 there were 2,960 in 1,182 places — has exploded. As of November 2023, electric vehicles registered in Oregon totalled 83,047.

The number of large electric trucks in Oregon is likely to grow. On Jan. 1, a new state Department of Environmental Quality requirement says that at least 7% of all Class 8 heavy trucks sold in Oregon must be electric, with the percentage rising annually. That triggered Daimler, an international truck manufacturer with North American headquarters in Portland, to stop selling electric trucks in Oregon for a month. Still, the rule change reflects a shifting motor vehicle marketplace and a massive new user of electric power.

The council appears to be looking at some of these issues.