Eastern Oregon lawmakers ready for 2025 session

Published 6:00 am Monday, January 20, 2025

SALEM — State Rep. Greg Smith of Heppner is proposing adding two commissioners to the Port of Morrow Commission. Rep. Mark Owens of Crane wants rangeland fire protection associations to get more help from the state. And Rep. Bobby Levy of Echo is pushing for ranchers to receive the fair market value of livestock they lose to wolves.

That’s only a tiny fraction of the bills Eastern Oregon lawmakers are proposing as the state’s 83rd Legislature gets underway starting Tuesday, Jan. 21.

Smith’s House Bill 2797 would expand the port from five commissioners to seven. But local voters would not decide who the two newest commissioners are — the governor would.

The proposal is among 21 placeholder bills Smith filed ahead of the 2025 legislative session.

“The reason I introduce placeholder bills is because there are deadlines to getting bills drafted, but if you have them already drafted you can amend them,” Smith said.

He said the Port of Morrow Commission bill is about modernizing the governing body of the second-largest port in Oregon, which has an annual budget approaching half a billion dollars.

“This is big industry, and we need to make sure that the folks who are serving as executive director of the port have the knowledge, experience and ability to run a major corporation,” Smith said. “Right now, if you are willing to serve in enough parades, you can get elected to the port commission. But we need expertise.”

HB 2797 calls for the governor to appoint two new commissioners who “have knowledge or experience in the trade sector.” The change has precedent in Oregon. The governor appoints the commissioners to the Port of Portland, the state’s largest port. Smith said the Port of Morrow is no longer a “little port,” so it needs a more professional commission.

Owens, an alfalfa farmer and haying business owner, is beginning his third term in the state House for District 60, which covers all of Baker, Grant, Lake, Harney and Malheur counties and part of Deschutes County. He said rangeland fire protection associations — which are often the first responders to a forest fire and are made up of volunteers who are farmers, ranchers and other community members — need more help from the state.

He said he’d like to see RFPAs have access to surplus firefighting equipment and receive funding for fuel and equipment maintenance.

“These men and women, all that I’ve met, don’t want to be firefighters,” Owens said. “They want to go back to their job, go back to their home, but they are out there being their first responders to fire.”

Owens said there already is a legislative concept for a bill to do this, but the details still need to be worked out.

He said the most pertinent piece of legislation he’d like passed this session isn’t glamorous but would affect rural Oregonians in a big way. Consumer-owned utilities — electric companies whose owners are also the customers they serve — have massive liabilities in the event of a fire caused by downed power lines. But they often have no insurance and can’t rely on shareholders to shore up costs associated with those liabilities.

Owens wants to change that dynamic as many rural communities within House District 60 are powered by consumer-owned utilities, but he said doing so will be challenging.

“It’s going to be tough — tough because (it’s) getting my colleagues to understand consumer-owned utilities and getting utilities’ trial lawyers to understand that we need this help,” he said.

Mike McLane, a former state representative and circuit judge from Powell Butte, is entering his first term representing Senate District 30, which includes the entirety of Baker, Crook, Grant, Lake, Harney and Malheur counties as well as parts of Jefferson and Deschutes.

McLane said he felt it would be premature to highlight specific bills he’d like to champion but reiterated an earlier statement that he’d stand up for the rule of law, look for solutions to food insecurity and sound the alarm about what he believes is an impending federal budget reckoning.

McLane also expressed concern over an Oregon Supreme Court ruling that upheld a lower court’s decision to prohibit a man from possessing guns after he was convicted of harassment.

In addition, Owens is working with Levy and Todd Nash, the freshman senator from Enterprise, on a measure to raise the threshold for putting ballot initiatives before Oregon voters. He said the process can be abused by out-of-state interests to get things like legalizing drugs on the ballot.

Senate Joint Resolution 30 proposes an amendment to the Oregon Constitution to require petition signatures for initiative laws to contain at least 8% (up from the current 6%) of the total votes cast for all candidates for governor at the last general election, divided equally among the congressional districts of the state. It would also require petition signatures for initiative amendments to the Oregon Constitution to contain at least 10% (up from 8%) of the total votes cast for all candidates for governor at the last general election, divided equally among the congressional districts of the state.

“They are small steps, but they are steps in order to try to make sure that the initiative petition process is not taken advantage of,” Owens said.

Nash and Levy are collaborating on several other measures as well.

The two are co-sponsoring Senate Bill 761, which would appropriate $2.5 million from the general fund to the Water Resources Department to implement projects that benefit water demands in the Walla Walla Basin.

Nash and Levy also are among lawmakers co-sponsoring Senate Bill 788, which would allow lands zoned for exclusive farm use to be used for weddings or other events east of the summit of the Cascade Range.

And then there’s Senate Concurrent Resolution 13, of which they are chief sponsors. If passed, that measure would designate the T-bone as the official state steak.

All the Eastern Oregon lawmakers are Republicans, which are in the minority in the Legislature. Levy, who represents Wallowa and Union counties and a portion of Umatilla County in House District 58, said she is an optimist each session, even if her party has an uphill battle.

“My expectations for the session is to work with all of my colleagues and try to find common ground to move Eastern Oregon priorities forward,” she said.

Smith and Owens touched on funding for the Oregon Department of Transportation, a major focus of the session. Owens said fully funding the department should take priority over projects that are not core services. He highlighted the state’s spending of $750 million a year on free health care for undocumented immigrants as one example.

To read the text of all bills in the session and track their progress, visit the Oregon Legislative Information System at olis.oregonlegislature.gov.