Stripped of their strongest weapon as the minority party in a Legislature dominated by Democrats, Republicans in the Oregon Senate are leveraging what little they have left — time.
For the second time in about three decades, Republicans in the Senate are demanding that every bill that gets to the chamber be read out loud in full. The process, which can take hours, has led to canceled committee hearings, late hours at the Capitol and rumblings among Democrats that this year’s session could ultimately prove less effective because of the delays.
Republicans say they have refused to waive the state Constitution’s bill reading requirement because they believe Democrats are pushing through an “extreme” agenda and all but ignoring their own proposals.
But Republicans appear to have failed to slow down the Senate’s work. The Senate had passed 261 bills as of Monday, compared to 198 by the same time in the last long session in 2021, according to the Secretary of the Senate. On Monday, the Senate passed 22 bills during approximately six hours on the floor.
However, it remains unclear how the delays will ultimately impact the bills that pass the Legislature this session or Democrats’ ability to achieve their legislative priorities. Senate Democrats are insisting they will “get the work done,” even if it means ever-more frequent late-night or even weekend sessions at the Capitol. But beyond the effect on the actual work product, Republicans’ delay tactics signal a new tone to the relationship between the opposing parties.
Insisting on full bill readings from the first day the Legislature convened was not a tactic either party used for decades, until a short session in 2016, when Republicans strongly objected to Democrats’ agenda and the majority party didn’t have the 20 votes necessary to waive the requirement.
Democrats say the minority party is “wasting everybody’s time.” But Republicans, meanwhile, say insisting on full bill readings is a natural response to what they claim is Democrats’ insistence on pushing through an “extreme” liberal agenda while ignoring theirs.
“We are reading bills because of their behavior,” Senate Minority Leader Tim Knopp, R-Bend, said of Senate Democrats, who outnumber Republicans 18 to 12. “We are demanding to be heard, and we will be heard.”
That behavior, Knopp said, boils down to Democrats in both the House and Senate overlooking Republicans’ policy proposals and pursuing an “extreme” agenda, in part by pushing forward a bill that would protect and expand gender-affirming and reproductive care and several gun bills that, among other things, would institute a permitting system for firearms purchases.
“There’s more, but I think those are the most extreme and egregious examples of extreme partisanship,” Knopp said.
Historically, lawmakers from both parties had gummed up the works by simply not appearing, depriving the other party of the quorum necessary to get bills to the floor. Republicans used the tactic in 2019 and 2020 to kill Democrats’ greenhouse gas cap-and-trade plans and gun regulation bills.
This session, however, walking out is not a realistic option, after Oregonians voted to disallow lawmakers with 10 or more unexcused absences from serving their subsequent term. With few other tools left at their disposal in a Democrat-dominated Legislature, Senate Republicans have now turned to insisting on full bill readings as their primary weapon.
While open about their frustration with the delay tactic, Democratic leaders continue to claim that it won’t impact their work.
“We aren’t going to lose a bill based on not having enough time,” Senate Majority Leader Rob Wagner, D-Lake Oswego, said at a recent press conference. “That’s our intention.”
But legislating involves more than voting, ‘yay’ or ‘nay,’ and it’s the work done between floor sessions that could ultimately be affected, said Sen. Elizabeth Steiner, D-Portland. Some floor sessions lasted so long in recent weeks that committee meetings had to be canceled, Steiner said, giving senators less time to discuss the House bills that had been up for debate in committee.
“Will we get them in? Probably,” Steiner said of the bills. “But maybe not as in-depth as we might have liked.”
Steiner said it’s “possible, but unlikely” that Republican delay tactics will impact legislation, given the extra hours now devoted to floor sessions. And she objected to characterizations of her and her colleagues’ work as partisan, pointing out that 95% of bills that have passed in the Senate received votes from members of both parties.
Knopp had no qualms about the impact his party’s tactics could have on lawmakers’ work.
“I agree, and it is their fault,” Knopp said of the possibility that the delay tactics will impact legislation. “They are in charge, and they’ve decided not to include Republicans in the Oregon agenda.”
In lamenting the current state of political affairs, Knopp recalled the famously bipartisan approach of outgoing Sen. Peter Courtney, D-Salem, who served as Senate President for two decades.
“One of the biggest problems we have in the Legislature today is most of the Democrats have never served in the minority,” Knopp said. “They have no idea what it’s like.”
— Fedor Zarkhin
