If Rep. Khanh Pham of Portland and other lawmakers have their way, Oregon voters will decide Nov. 5 whether to require a simple majority of members to conduct business in the Oregon House and Senate.
House Joint Resolution 202 is pending in the House Rules Committee, which is not bound by the deadlines for the 2024 short session that is due to close by March 10.
“This is a simple constitutional change that would align Oregon with the 46 other states and the U.S. Congress so that we would need just a simple majority to do business,” Pham said in an interview.
Pham’s proposal is cosponsored by Sens. Michael Dembrow, Lew Frederick and Kayse Jama, all of Portland; Sens. Winsvey Campos of Aloha, Mark Meek of Gladstone and Aaron Woods of Wilsonville; and Reps. Farrah Chaichi of Beaverton, Mark Gamba of Milwaukie and David Gomberg of Otis. All are Democrats.
As of Feb. 12, there were no active initiative petitions on this issue.
Oregon is just one of four states whose legislatures require more than a simple majority of members to be present to conduct business. The Oregon Constitution sets a two-thirds majority requirement, which is 20 of 30 in the Senate and 40 of 60 in the House.
Although recent walkouts were by minority Republicans — and Democrats someday may be in the same minority position — Pham said she was fine with the proposal.
“This is about majority rule,” she said. “I think that everybody who believes in democracy understands that when voters elect a majority, they have the power to pass laws. The people of Oregon want to see a functioning state government. Five walkouts have shut down the Legislature and its ability to pass a budget and laws. This is a basic democratic reform that people want to see — legislators doing what they elected us to do.”
Walkout history
In recent years, walkouts by minority Republicans have thwarted votes on legislation favored by majority Democrats in 2019 and 2020.
As a result of the first walkout in the Senate in 2019, Democrats agreed to shelve some of their other legislative priorities to secure a vote on the Student Success Act, which created a new corporate activity tax whose proceeds go to specified school improvement programs. The bill passed without Republican votes.
As a result of the second walkout in the Senate in 2019 — and Republican walkouts in both chambers in 2020 — Democrats were forced to shelve a vote on climate-change legislation.
Senate Republicans also walked out for a single day in the 2021 session.
Oregon voters in 2022 approved a ballot initiative, sponsored by public employee unions, that barred legislators from seeking re-election if they amass 10 or more unexcused absences from floor sessions. Measure 113 passed with a 68% majority.
But in the 2023 session, 10 senators — nine Republicans and an independent originally elected as a Republican — walked out for six weeks to protest bills passed by the House to safeguard access to abortion and gender-affirming care, and to ban guns made with untraceable parts. Both bills ultimately passed the Senate, but only after majority Democrats removed some provisions from the bills.
Several Republican senators, including Minority Leader Tim Knopp of Bend, went to court to challenge a rule by Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade implementing the 2022 ban. But the Oregon Supreme Court, in a decision released Feb. 1, upheld the ban. The justices said in an unsigned opinion that although the language of the constitutional amendment could be read as ambiguous — the basis for the senators’ lawsuit — the explanatory materials that accompanied Measure 113 could be read only one way.
The result was that six of the senators are barred from re-election this year, and four others when their current terms end in 2026.
House Democrats, when they were the minority party in 2001, walked out for five days to stall a move by the Republican majority to approve a legislative redistricting plan via a resolution, thus bypassing Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber. But Senate leaders from both parties made it clear they would not go along, and Kitzhaber ultimately vetoed legislative and congressional redistricting bills passed by Republican majorities.
The Oregon Supreme Court declared later in 2001, when it largely upheld a legislative redistricting plan drawn by Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, that the Legislature had never passed a redistricting plan via resolution and there was no legal precedent for it to do so. In 1981, a Legislature with Democratic majorities passed and Republican Gov. Vic Atiyeh signed congressional and legislative redistricting bills.
pwong@pamplinmedia.com
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