Earlier this week, Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade announced that Republican state senators who staged a six-week-long walkout during this year’s legislative session will not be eligible to run for reelection as a consequence of Measure 113. Ten conservative lawmakers — including six who face reelection next year — ran afoul of the voter-backed measure, which bars a lawmaker from running for reelection after accumulating 10 or more unexcused absences in a single legislative session. Republican lawmakers contend the measure was sloppily worded and vowed to challenge Griffin-Valade’s interpretation of Measure 113, with the dispute likely to be settled in court. OPB political reporter Dirk VanderHart joins us to talk about the ruling and other recent political news, including the spiraling cost of a massive renovation project at the state Capitol.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The conservative lawmakers who took part in the longest legislative walkout in Oregon history cannot run for reelection next year. That is according to Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade. The lawmakers accumulated more than 10 unexcused absences during this past session which disqualified them under a recent voter pass constitutional amendment. But this is not the end of a year’s long saga. The Republican state senators are challenging the decision saying that the wording of the amendment is on their side. Dirk VanderHart is one of OPB’s political reporters. He joins us now to talk about this news and other recent developments. Welcome back.
Dirk VanderHart: Hey, Dave.
Miller: So, this announcement from the Secretary of State is just the latest development in a partisan conflict that goes back three or four years. Can you just remind us first what the context is?
VanderHart: Sure, legislative walkouts are far older than three or four years. They’ve happened for decades. House Democrats famously walked away in 2001 in a fight over new political maps, but since about 2018, when Democrats won super majorities in both chambers of the legislature, walkouts have become more common by minority Republicans. We saw a big walk out in 2019, another big one in 2020 that helped scuttle some very high profile climate change legislation that Dems were teeing up. We saw another brief one in 2021, and so this increased frequency of walkouts has made it a real target for Democrats increasingly.
Miller: Ok. And then in response to that, last year Oregon voters overwhelmingly supported a measure intended to prevent walkouts. What was the mechanism that Oregonians put into the state constitution?
VanderHart: Yeah, it was an interesting one because it didn’t actually stop walkouts. This was Measure 113, which some people might remember. What the measure did was say that, if a lawmaker accrues 10 or more unexcused absences in the legislative session, they would be blocked from running for reelection either in their current chamber or in the opposite chamber. The thinking was that this would be too great a penalty for Republicans to walk out so they just avoid it altogether. But like I say, it didn’t actually stop their ability to walk out.
Miller: No, they were not deterred at all. They mounted, as I noted in my intro, the longest legislative walkout in Oregon history. What did those lawmakers say about the constitutional amendment at the time?
VanderHart: I think they said a couple of things. One was that the constitutional amendment did not stop them from walking out and they felt really strongly, as you’ve discussed on this show before, about a number of things Democrats were teeing up. There was an abortion bill, there was a gun control bill. Things that they said were so objectionable that they had to walk out and they made the point that they weren’t forestalled from that. The other thing they argued though is that the actual substance of Measure 113,
the language that voters inserted into the constitution, was unclear. It didn’t really have enough sideboards about how it would work to let us know for sure and they definitely hinted that there were legal challenges on the horizon.
Miller: Can you just remind us what the legal muddiness here stems from?
VanderHart: Yeah, this gets complicated.
Miller: So get out your pencils right now before we start. [Laughter]
VanderHart: So, there was some very ambiguous wording that was inserted into the constitution, and it was something that people didn’t catch partly because there was no organized opposition to Measure 113, meaning it just didn’t get the kind of scrutiny that a really hotly contested measure typically gets. So, the sticking point here is that the measure says that – let me see if I can get it right – a lawmaker may not run for election in the election after their term ends if they have these certain number of unexcused absences. The sticking point is that when lawmakers run for reelection, those elections don’t happen after their terms are completed, they happen before. So, we will hold an election in November of next year, their terms will expire the following January. That created this speculation from some Republicans that the measure unintentionally granted them another term in office before these penalties kick in.
Miller: Am I right that this is going to boil down to this question of the intent of the voters, the intent of the language that voters put into the constitution, and the strict reading of the text of the constitution.
VanderHart: That is how it seems. So, the public sector unions that pushed Measure 113 say voter intent is the guiding star here. Voters had all this literature before them. They were voting to block lawmakers from running for reelection. The senators who walked out say intent only gets you so far. If it’s contradicted by the actual words in the actual constitution, that needs to be what we go by. And so that will be this fight before a judge coming soon, it sounds like.
Miller: So this takes us to the recent announcement by the still new Secretary of State. She took the side of Democrats and their union supporters arguing that the voters’ intent should trump the specific language. What did she rely on for her reasoning?
VanderHart: So, the secretary issued this statement this week saying she was going to institute a new administrative rule offering guidance for candidates. She said she crafted that rule with the advice of the Oregon Department of Justice and had also looked into some Supreme Court precedent to decide that the intent is truly what matters here, these lawmakers are blocked from running. One thing to note here is it’s no surprise that the DOJ would say that the lawmakers are blocked because they are the ones and the attorneys there are the ones who crafted these explanatory statements that went to voters that said if you vote yes on this, lawmakers with these unexcused absences will be blocked without seemingly any real consideration of this ambiguous language that we’ve talked about. It’s just something that didn’t seem to come up in this debate.
Miller: I have to say that there’s a lot of, I guess blame is the right word in some ways, for sloppy language, but it goes around. We had a debate about this and before voters voted on it and I didn’t look carefully enough at the language either to say, wait a minute, wait, what about the timing of the calendar?
VanderHart: Yep, same.
Miller: So, it’s something I still think about, it’s worth saying. All right. So what did conservative lawmakers say? What have they said about their intentions to run?
VanderHart: They say they plan to. So there were 10 lawmakers who ran afoul of Measure 113 this year. Six of those face reelection next year if they want to stay in the legislature. Four have told me that they are planning on running. A fifth is still weighing his options. Now, this state in the game posturing does come into play, but this is at least what they’ve been saying publicly. They want to run.
Miller: The earliest candidates can file for the 2024 election is September 14th, which is now just a little more than a month away. What’s the timing in terms of legal challenges?
VanderHart: We expect it soon, probably within weeks. And one interesting thing about this is this challenge is very quickly going to go to very influential judges. That’s because the secretary issued an administrative rule on this and because she did that, that’s going to open the door for Republicans to file a challenge before the court of appeals. So they will not have to meddle around in the circuit court level. They go directly to the upper court to sort of have this answered.
Miller: Do public employee unions, which successfully pushed for this sloppily written constitution amendment, have any plans to repeal it or just to put in a simple quorum requirement instead? And I should note that is something that we and reporters did ask them about back then.
VanderHart: That’s right.
Miller: Have they publicly said we plan to fix this?
VanderHart: No. And they have been pretty adamant that they think Measure 113, once these questions are answered about what it actually does, will ultimately be effective at dissuading walkouts. But the public employee unions have not really indicated that they’re sorry that they did what they did. We do know that some Democrats, though, are second guessing this. Toward the end of this year’s session, a couple lawmakers put forward a last minute bill that had no chance, but that would have put a question before voters to amend the constitution to change the quorum requirements. That would end walkouts.
Miller: Potentially, although there’s still the question if you are in the minority and you see that the only power you have is by walking out, what’s to stop you from running, walking out and not running again and having somebody else run and then not run again the next time? That’s another way to think about the potential future. If this constitutional amendment does prevent people from running in the subsequent election, maybe other people will run instead.
VanderHart: No, but … Yes, the real change here is changing the quorum requirement to a simple majority…
Miller: Exactly.
VanderHart: … which if the Democrats hold it or the Republicans hold it, they can just conduct business absent a minority party.
Miller: Right. Let’s turn to some other political news that you’ve been covering starting with the governor’s vetoes. One of the bills she said no to which would have created a task force to look into the creation of a state bank. It seems like the kind of sort of incremental bureaucratic maneuver that’s hard to either get super excited about or super upset about. Why did the governor object to it?
VanderHart: State banks … I think low level is probably right … don’t get a lot of interest. It is a real push that a lot of progressives have made over the years. North Dakota has a state bank. It’s the only state that’s taken that step, but there is this movement. It’s a low key movement for this. So Kotek, in this instance, rankled some of her more progressive lawmakers by killing this bill. What she said is not that she opposes this idea, but that she just thought the state agency that would have been tasked with this task force is too busy. The timeline is too rushed and she just didn’t think it was time right now. And we should note a state bank is actually illegal under the constitution right now as well.
Miller: The governor also did line item vetoes to remove more than half a million dollars from a budget bill to block state money from going to studies that looked into different aspects of sex work. What would studies have done?
VanderHart: Yeah, there were a couple of different things. Part of it was looking at criminalizing sex work and what sort of outcomes that has for Communities of Color and things like that. And there was also a health aspect about what kind of health outcomes criminalized sex work has. I think these were seen as a vehicle for laying the groundwork to potentially push legalizing prostitution or decriminalizing or something. That’s something that’s been raised via bills in the legislature. There was a ballot measure, but Kotek didn’t want to go there.
Miller: How did she explain the vetoes?
VanderHart: I think she said this is not necessarily something she disagrees with, but there has been private money out there that’s been willing to push this idea and she feels like there’s a wealthy Portlander – which we know there is a wealthy Portlander named Aaron Boonshoft who has made clear he’s interested in this – she’s basically calling on him to fund studies like this. She doesn’t want to use public money.
Miller: Finally, I want to turn to an article you published earlier this week. It has to do with major cost overruns for the project to renovate the capitol. Can you just first remind us what this project is?
VanderHart: It’s a big, big project that lawmakers have had their sights on for a long time. It’s got a lot of components. This is actually the third distinct phase and it’s the most ambitious. What they are doing right now is modernizing all these systems in the capitol, replacing some things, adding some shiny new features. But more importantly, they are separating the foundation of the capital from the capitol itself in an attempt to stabilize it in case an earthquake comes. That, as you can imagine is a very, very big job.
Miller: How much was this project supposed to cost?
VanderHart: So this third phase that I mentioned was billed last year when it passed or was approved as a $375 million project. Until roughly last week, that was still the price tag that was being advertised to the public as what this would cost.
Miller: But what is the project’s current cost according to money that’s been allocated by lawmakers?
VanderHart: Yeah, and project managers, if you ask them, they will admit to you that the price currently is $465 million. That’s about 25% more than had been acknowledged.
Miller: Why has the price gone up so much?
VanderHart: A lot of reasons. So, people know that there is inflation. Roughly $27 million of this, project managers say, is that. There’s also some more ambitious pieces to this like strengthening the capitol dome. But one piece we focused on was this $20 million increase that apparently was caused because lawmakers insisted on meeting in the building in the capital this session rather than off site as had been discussed in the past. That created all sorts of logistical issues because to hold a legislative session in an active construction site creates problems. There’s drilling, there’s banging and because workers sort of had to stop and be quiet while the legislative process was ongoing, there are months of delays and we are told something like $20 million in increases.
Miller: Hmm.Your article is less about the cost increases themselves and more about the lack of public discussion about the increase. What was the process like when lawmakers approved more money for this project?
VanderHart: To the extent there was a public process, it was sort of nonexistent. So, lawmakers didn’t discuss these cost overruns in a public hearing. They were not mentioned in public documents. In fact, if you look up the budget documents this year, they were still talking about that earlier $375 million cost. There was just zero mention of this in any public forum and the only technically public action, I guess, was that lawmakers without discussion approved this increased spending in an end of session budget bill lumped in with all sorts of other things and just let that be and I think were content at that.
Miller: Why was this almost hidden?
VanderHart: That’s a great question. That is the question we’ve been asking and what we’ve mostly gotten back from the legislature, to the extent they’ve answered our questions at all, is this very lawmaker-centric reply which is that they have said they were being briefed behind the scenes, that the project managers were running all these costs up and letting them know what was happening, and they figured that that was appropriate. They thought it was an appropriate use of state funds, so they went ahead and did it. That doesn’t really account for the transparency that I think the public would expect for $100 million overrun in a public project. I think most people would say, if this is going wildly over budget, you should let us know and let us know why.
Miller: Is there any requirement that lawmakers give us the public updates about something like this, like a cost overrun where they’re going to be allocating in this case, $100 plus million more of our money?
VanderHart: No, there’s not. The legislature has power of the purse. It’s sort of up to them to decide which issues to air like this. And this is a kind of unique project because oftentimes when lawmakers are working on a budget, they have a state agency before them, they are quizzing those agencies about cost overruns, projects, things like that. This capitol renovation is a little different. It is a pet project of the legislature, right? So it’s perhaps just a bit more convenient for them not to say anything about $100 million extra dollars than lay it all out there and potentially get some public blowback.
Miller: Dirk, thanks very much.
VanderHart: My pleasure.
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