Oregon's 2024 legislative session adjourned on March 7, passing bills in housing, drug policy and more. The Source Weekly spoke with Rep. Jason Kropf, Rep. Emerson Levy and Sen. Tim Knopp, all who represent areas of Central Oregon, to hear their thoughts on the short session and highlight bills and issued they found important.
Source Weekly: What were some highlights for you during the session?
Jason Kropf: It was an incredibly focused session. We said we had to continue to take steps forward when it came to housing and building affordable housing and maintaining our shelter capacity. I think you saw that in the housing package that we put together.
We said we were going to take steps forward on the addiction crisis and I feel like we took significant steps forward, both from a policy standpoint and from an investment standpoint –investing in shovel-ready projects locally, increased funding treatment here in town, increased funding for the Stabilization Center.
I think the policy decisions that we made on HB 4002 are both immediate steps forward, but also building on this long-term vision and commitment to the treatment infrastructure that we need. I think we are giving law enforcement tools they need but also providing resources and to create partnerships between public health and law enforcement.
We also increased funding for summer learning programs. I think campaign finance reform was really important. I thought it was an incredibly focused session.
Emerson Levy: I feel like it was a really great bipartisan session. We worked really well together and did a lot of work in a short period of time, and I'm really proud of that. For me, my two bills got through which was really exciting, and I'm really proud of both of those – the e-bike bill and co-pay fairness.
My constituent got back billed for $12,700 because of this kind of obscure insurance code. It's kind of an obscure area, but it was really affecting a lot of people in Oregon that couldn't afford their medication anymore.
After [teen e-biker] Trenton [Burger] passed, his parents came to me and asked me to work on this. [City Councilor] Megan Perkins and I had already started working on it and we didn't know the right direction to go, we just knew we needed to start talking about it. We have learned so much and the bill really just clarifies the law by class system.
I think education is the key. The most powerful thing that families can do is to really understand the risk and to make an informed choice. These are not your regular bikes. They're very fast.
And then, obviously, building investments, safe routes to school and always working on infrastructure, but that is the 2025 transportation package. ODOT was very clear to us that we had to clean up the definition to ask for things in the transportation package. So again, it's like, you have to walk before you run.
Tim Knopp: I don't think there's any doubt that passing a substantial, some would say historic, housing package that deals with homelessness and housing affordability was a huge piece of legislation that passed the session. Then I think reforming ballot Measure 110, and re-criminalizing hard drugs, I think, would be another highlight.
SW: Are there any lesser-known bills that you think deserve more attention?
JK: One under-the-radar thing is a bill that I worked on was HB 4140. We provide a level of state funding to our child advocacy centers, like the KIDS Center and toward domestic violence service providers like Saving Grace. It always, sort of, one-time funding. They have to come ask for the state funding and it's a new process every single time. I worked on HB 4140 to ensure stability in that funding. That funding for those services will be part of our basic budget process. It's not the biggest bill in the world, but I think it's going to mean a lot to these organizations to know, on a state level, that we value the work that they're doing.
Emerson's bill that she did, the pharmaceutical co-pays, I was really grateful for the work that she did on that. I think that was an important piece of legislation and she just deserves a lot of credit for all the work she put it on that.
EL: We passed campaign finance reform, which is really significant.
I think this one is really important – HB 4146. It defends victims' rights by improving access to restraining orders. If I'm correct, it deals with revenge porn and things like that while modernizing it to match the real world. We also passed the Family Financial Protection Act, which modernized the garnishment laws. So that's another big one. We also funded summer learning programs, which is big. One that didn't pass, that was a big deal, was HB 4130. It says that private equity can only own 49% of a health care facility. Bend kind of became the epicenter of testimony about this issue because we have a couple of practices that have been bought by private equity.
TK: SB 1579 passed unanimously. It's a bill that provides better access to child advocacy centers for kids that have been abused and neglected and it provides funding grants for the child advocacy centers to provide better access and services to kids being traumatized by abuse and neglect.
The grants are to improve access for kids either geographically or within a certain region and to help kids that are historically marginalized, disadvantaged or low income and kids who have been drug-endangered or are drug-endangered.
SW: Were than any bills that you think should've passed or issues that you think should've been included in the session?
JK: I think we did the business that needed to be done. In the longer session we'll have some more time, but school funding continues to be an issue. Transportation is going to be a critical issue moving forward. We're going to continue to have more work to do in the housing area, more work to do on the addiction front. Those need long-term commitment to solve those issues.
EL: I would say we came in there really focused on housing and Measure 110 reforms. I think because that was our focus, we did stick to that focus. In the long session, I would really like to focus on prevention stuff. We're playing a lot of catch-up with housing and Measure 110 and the addiction crisis and I really think we need to now get into the weeds of prevention, so that we're not always responding but preventing.
TK: We've had annual sessions for a little over a decade now. I think the first one was 2011, if I remember right, and they were sold to the voters, to the public, that they were for budget issues, technical fixes and emergencies. Unfortunately, they've been anything but.
The governor declared a housing emergency, so I would say that certainly fits within what voters were told annual sessions were going to be about. And then, of course, the drug addiction crisis in Oregon I think qualifies as an emergency when you have four Oregonians dying every day from mostly fentanyl overdoses. That to me is an emergency.
I think it was important that we focused on those two issues and everything else took a backseat. And of course, my priority Bill was SB 1579 and had great bipartisan support. Other stuff that was introduced, if it didn't make it, it's probably because it wasn't an emergency. It wasn't high enough on the budget docket to warrant being funded in 2024.
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