Legislative Highlights

Even though Oregon has a part-time Legislature, it’s a year-around job. As soon as one session ends, legislators start positioning issues for the next one. That effect is particularly pronounced... Read More

The Legislature officially adjourned Friday, March 6, ending a 33-day legislative session that felt like both a marathon and a sprint (or most accurately, like sprinting a marathon). Of 304... Read More

OSBA focuses on legislation that affects schools, but sometimes unrelated debates in the next hearing room or on the chamber floors ripple through our work. With just a little over... Read More

Protecting public education funding, this session and into the future, is at the top of OSBA’s priorities. Sometimes a bill comes along that tries to pull away school funding for... Read More

The Oregon Capitol is full of dissenting opinions. Such is the nature of democracy. Sometimes, those opinions are expressed through more than just “no” votes. Parliamentary tactics, such as denying... Read More

The short session is beginning to wind down with a little over two weeks left until constitutional sine die, and that means the bills with a real chance are starting... Read More

HR 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, broke Oregon’s budget. With limited time available in the short session, Oregon lawmakers are working quickly to put back together the pieces... Read More

Oregon has robust public meeting laws. From requiring that all public meetings of the governing body are recorded and posted on the governing body’s website to allowing journalists into executive sessions, Oregon... Read More

New initiatives frequently come and go in Oregon’s education policy landscape, sometimes at a pace that makes it difficult to track current requirements or to assess outcomes. After 25 years,... Read More

Oregonians voted to have short sessions in even years so that the Legislature could address any budget issues mid-biennium, but that initial framing doesn’t keep legislators from trying to move... Read More

I started my career as a legislative staffer in 2009 in the wake of the Great Recession. The devastating impacts on the state budget led advocates to fill the Capitol... Read More

The short legislative session is a sprint, so it’s only fitting that this year’s session will start with a bang. The 83rd Oregon Legislative Assembly will convene Monday, Feb. 2,... Read More

This short session we will see, yet again, another bill to make class size a mandatory subject of bargaining, as has been the case in seven of the last nine... Read More

The 2025 legislative session ended in a flurry of last-minute activity and shifting political dynamics, culminating in adjournment shortly after 11 p.m. Friday, June 27. The Oregon Education Department budget... Read More

The Legislature adjourned late Friday, June 27, but the work isn’t done. Now comes the task of implementation where some of those pesky details need to be worked out. The... Read More

As hinted at in last week’s column, Senate Bill 916 gets one more week of coverage. Things evolved quickly – sometimes hour-to-hour – since my last update. After passing the... Read More

Although K-12 advocates have had to fight hard in recent years for gains to the State School Fund, all things considered, the years since the Student Success Act passed in... Read More

The advocates working the Capitol halls keep a sharp eye out this time of year for any signs the session might end soon. A sure indication is the closing of... Read More