Oregon Republicans flee Salem again, forcing the State House and Senate to shut down

Repub­li­can mem­bers of the Ore­gon State Leg­is­la­ture have once again exe­cut­ed a Trumpian maneu­ver and fled the state­house in Salem to deny Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship the abil­i­ty to con­duct busi­ness in both the House and Senate.

By weaponiz­ing the Ore­gon Con­sti­tu­tion’s quo­rum require­ments, in a move straight out of the play­book of Mitch McConnell, Repub­li­cans have brought the Beaver State’s leg­isla­tive branch to a halt at a time when it is sup­posed to be tack­ling press­ing issues fac­ing the state… like cli­mate damage:

The state’s under­staffed child wel­fare pro­gram, over­bur­dened psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal, near­ly broke forestry depart­ment and oth­er pro­grams all bad­ly need the mon­ey, law­mak­ers said. House Speak­er Tina Kotek wants $120 mil­lion to pay for shel­ters and oth­er ser­vices to address the state’s home­less­ness cri­sis, includ­ing using debt to pay for afford­able hous­ing preser­va­tion and construction.

Now it looks increas­ing­ly unlike­ly those pri­or­i­ties will receive funds, because near­ly all the Repub­li­cans in the Sen­ate and House walked out of the Capi­tol this week to halt a green­house gas cap-and-trade bill. In doing so, they are pre­vent­ing Democ­rats and the two Repub­li­cans who stuck around — Rep. Cheri Helt and Sen. Tim Knopp, both of Bend — from pass­ing bills to appro­pri­ate the mon­ey, because they can­not reach the state’s con­sti­tu­tion­al two-thirds quo­rum require­ment nec­es­sary to con­duct business.

As the excerpt above alludes, Democ­rats have super­ma­jori­ties in both cham­bers, but need at least a few of Repub­li­cans around in order to con­duct busi­ness, because of the fol­low­ing pro­vi­sion in the Ore­gon Con­sti­tu­tion:

Arti­cle IV, Sec­tion 12. Quo­rum; fail­ure to effect orga­ni­za­tion. Two thirds of each house shall con­sti­tute a quo­rum to do busi­ness, but a small­er num­ber may meet; adjourn from day to day, and com­pel the atten­dance of absent mem­bers. A quo­rum being in atten­dance, if either house fail to effect an orga­ni­za­tion with­in the first five days there­after, the mem­bers of the house so fail­ing shall be enti­tled to no com­pen­sa­tion from the end of the said five days until an orga­ni­za­tion shall have been effected.

By play­ing hooky en masse, Repub­li­cans are effec­tive­ly shut­ting down the part of state gov­ern­ment that is respon­si­ble for mak­ing laws and set­ting budgets.

It’s a hostage-tak­ing move that they first pulled last year, and it was suc­cess­ful in killing off cli­mate action leg­is­la­tion cham­pi­oned by Gov­er­nor Kate Brown.

Now the Repub­li­cans are back at it.

In even num­bered years, the Ore­gon Leg­is­la­ture only meets for about a month, so the clock is tick­ing to get bud­gets and bills passed. Repub­li­cans know this, and are using Mitch McConnell/Donald Trump/Ted Cruz hostage tak­ing style tac­tics to sab­o­tage the work of the peo­ple’s elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Salem.

“I’m dis­ap­point­ed that Repub­li­cans in both the House and Sen­ate have walked off the job,” Gov­er­nor Kate Brown said in a state­ment. “Good law­mak­ing comes from con­sen­sus and com­pro­mise. If you don’t like a bill, then show up and work to make it bet­ter. Or show up and cast your vote against it.”

If you are a Wash­ing­ton­ian, you might be won­der­ing why Repub­li­cans in the Ever­green State have nev­er tried this hostage-tak­ing maneu­ver themselves.

The answer is that Wash­ing­ton’s Con­sti­tu­tion states that a quo­rum of the Leg­is­la­ture is just a major­i­ty. So if the Repub­li­cans fled Olympia and refused to do their jobs, the Democ­rats could sim­ply shrug and car­ry on with­out them, pass­ing bills and bud­gets. Repub­li­cans out of pow­er in Wash­ing­ton State can­not shut down the Leg­is­la­ture by run­ning away and duck­ing their obligations.

But in Ore­gon, the Repub­li­cans can weaponize the quo­rum requirement.

The Ore­gon Con­sti­tu­tion should be amend­ed to stip­u­late that a quo­rum of the Leg­is­la­ture is a major­i­ty like it is north of the Colum­bia Riv­er and in Congress.

It makes no sense that the state’s plan of gov­ern­ment gives a frac­tion of its law­mak­ers the abil­i­ty to bring the peo­ple’s busi­ness to a com­plete halt by refus­ing to show up for work. Since a major­i­ty is suf­fi­cient to pass bills; a major­i­ty should be suf­fi­cient for the pur­pos­es of con­ven­ing floor ses­sions and hold­ing debates.

In Ore­gon, con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments can be intro­duced and adopt­ed via bal­lot mea­sure, some­thing else Wash­ing­ton’s Con­sti­tu­tion does­n’t allow.

That would seem to be the eas­i­est path to poten­tial­ly fix­ing this huge­ly prob­lem­at­ic and struc­tur­al flaw in the Ore­gon Constitution.