Legislative Update: At Long Last, It’s Over! by Rhett Lawrence, Conservation Director
Well, it was just about the most bizarre legislative session I’ve ever been a part of, but as of about 5.30pm on Sunday, June 30, the Oregon Legislature adjourned sine die. Anyone paying even the least bit of attention to the news could not have missed what became a national and international story when the Senate Republican caucus decided to stage a 9-day walkout in protest over House Bill 2020, the “Clean Energy Jobs” cap-and-invest bill. These last few weeks were not among the finest hours for the Oregon Legislature or for democracy in our state. Nevertheless, notwithstanding all of that drama, there were some notable accomplishments in this session, even if those were also partially overshadowed by one colossal failure in the inability to pass comprehensive climate legislation.
As discussed in detail in previous legislative updates, the Clean Energy Jobsbill (HB 2020) - the cap and trade bill which would have put a price on greenhouse gas emissions - was the Sierra Club’s top priority this session. After passing out of the House on June 17, the bill faced just one more hurdle: getting through the Oregon Senate, which we knew was likely to be more challenging. However, no one expected that the Senate Republican leadership would go back on their promise from earlier in the session and stage yet another walkout to prevent a vote on HB 2020. But that is exactly what they did, returning only on the day before the constitutionally-mandated adjournment date and with assurances that the Senate would not vote on the bill. Regardless of what you thought about this complicated policy (see below), the way the process played out in the end to kill the bill was a perversion of the democratic process and a sad statement on the way we legislate in Oregon.
The Sierra Club position on the bill itself was slightly nuanced from the start. While we recognized the urgent need to pass comprehensive climate legislation and believed HB 2020 was a good start, we also believed that there were major ways in which it should be improved, as I testified in February. The Sierra Club worked this session to limit giveaways to corporate polluters in the bill and to ensure equitable reinvestments to vulnerable communities already affected by climate change in Oregon. The bill that developed was not as strong as we advocated for it to be, but we still believed that it was a step in the right direction, though not a panacea to our state’s climate crisis by a long shot. As Chapter Director Trevor Kaul noted in a recent Oregonian OpEd with our partners at Verde, much more would still have been needed to be done to both make sure the implementation of the bill was rigorous, and to make sure we were developing the next round of even more visionary climate policy for Oregon. And now that House Bill 2020 failed to pass, that latter point is even more true.
Another one of our top priorities was to implement stronger regulations for oil trains coming through Oregon, since our state has the weakest oil-by-rail laws on the West. HB 2209 passed out of the House on June 17, and while it did not have everything we needed in it, we still supported it as a substantial step forward in catching Oregon up to California and Washington in planning for and responding to inevitable future oil train derailments, spills, and fires. But then the Senate Republicans walked out and cast doubt on whether the bill would actually be able to pass the Senate before the session ended. Luckily, it did pass 26-1 on the next-to-last day of the session and will soon be signed by the Governor.
Similarly, HB 2007, the “Diesel Bill,” nearly got caught up in late-session shenanigans. Continuing the theme of environmental legislation in the 2019 session, the final version of the bill was pretty dramatically scaled back from its early incarnation. However, the version of HB 2007 that did pass will still help to phase out old on-road engines, stop the addition of old trucks to fleets, clean up construction equipment, use the VW settlement funds to clean up diesel engines, and create a task force to develop new funding strategies to support businesses in upgrading their fleets. And while it is limited to just the Portland metro area for now, it still appears to be the second strongest (after California) diesel legislation in the country and sets the stage for broader statewide action moving forward.
One of our other priorities was to pass HB 2623, which imposes a moratorium on all hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” for oil and gas in Oregon. Fracking has been shown to have disastrous impacts in other states on surface water, ground water, and public health. Again, while we would have liked to see a 10-year moratorium or a full-on ban on fracking pass the legislature, the 5-year moratorium in the bill is a great start. The bill was signed into law by the Governor on June 17 and we should consider this a major victory to pass this policy and get out ahead of future problems in our state.
In another bit of good news from the end of the session, SB 451, which would have awarded renewable energy credits to municipal waste incineration at the Covanta Marion incinerator, died in the House. That legislation would have set a terrible precedent in attempting to classify trash incineration as clean energy, creating implications for the awarding of those energy credits to true renewables. The bill passed the Senate in mid-June, but luckily the House had no interest in moving this garbage fire of a bill and it went nowhere in that chamber.
As noted in last month’s newsletter, another victory of the session was passing HB 2250, the Oregon Environmental Protection Act. I was proud to stand with Governor Kate Brown on May 24 as she signed in a public ceremony at OMSI in Portland. This bill pushes back against the Trump Administration’s attempts to gut our national environmental laws and roll back our climate protections. It will require Oregon’s environmental agencies to determine whether federal rollbacks will result in less protection for public health, the environment, or natural resources than was in place when Trump took office. If so, then we’ll hold the line and keep those pre-Trump protections in place.
Another accomplishment of the session was the passage of HB 2618, the “Solar for All” bill. It creates a rebate for solar projects on homes and non-profits, helping Oregonians statewide reduce their energy bills and provide clean home-grown energy. In addition, the bill sets aside 15% of the program for projects that benefit low-income ratepayers in order to make solar more accessible for all Oregonians. And it will create jobs, as solar installation is not something that can be outsourced! After the Residential Energy Tax Credit was allowed to expire several years ago, it’s nice to again have a program to help expand residential solar energy in our state.
In less happy news, one of the other failures of the 2019 session was the inability of the legislature to pass any of the bills relating to protecting Oregonians and the natural environment from harmful pesticides. We worked on a number of bills to ban the toxic pesticide chlorpyrifos in Oregon and to make pollinator-killing neonicotinoids a restricted-use pesticide, but in the end, we came away with nothing. Clearly there is still much work to be done to protect our state from toxic pesticides in the future.
Finally, I want to relay two other pieces of late-session good news on what may seem at first to be non-traditional Sierra Club issues. First, we were pleased to support our friends at Causa in their work on HB 2015, the Driver’s Licenses for All bill, which cleared its final hurdle in passing the Senate on June 29. Now 100,000 immigrant Oregonians will be able to apply for a driver’s license for the first time in over a decade and take their kids to school, commute to work, and take care of family and neighbors in need without the fear of being separated from their family. Second, with the passage of SJR 18 on the last day of session, Oregon took a major step forward on campaign finance reform. This bill will refer to voters a 2020 ballot measure to give the state constitutional authority to enact laws on money in the political process; without it, many of the most basic tools necessary to limit Big Money in Politics remain unconstitutional. The Sierra Club is excited about both of these last-minute victories!
The Sierra Club continues to evaluate what its next steps will be on many of these fronts, including where we go now as a community now that we have failed to move comprehensive climate legislation. We’ll also likely be sharing a deeper debrief on the Club’s position on the cap and trade legislation and our experiences working in that space over the last few years. In the meantime, let’s savor what we did get out of the 2019 session of the Oregon Legislature and come back in future sessions to get even more done!
