Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello, Oregonians, and welcome to Life and Legislation with Lucetta. If you've ever wanted to get to know your politicians personally or understand what it is they are actually doing, then you're in the right place. I'm your podcast host, Jessica Campbell.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: I'm your state representative for House District 24, Lucetta Elmer.
[00:00:21] Speaker A: This podcast is a place for you to get to know Representative Elmer both personally and professionally.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: We want Oregonians to feel connected with and educated politics. So we're so glad you've joined us on a fresh new podcast adventure as we cover all things about life and legislation.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Hi, Oregonians. Welcome back to Life and Legislation with Lucetta. As you know, we are in the middle of the short session and it just started yesterday and clearly I am not sitting with Representative Elmer. She's very busy right now. Gosh. Her day started at 6:45 this morning and it's going to go until.
[00:00:59] Speaker C: Been going. It's been going.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:01] Speaker C: She barely has any breaks.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: No, not much. You might get a quick hello, but it just goes to show how much your representatives are working for you. I do have a special guest here and I'm going to let him introduce himself to you all and explain his role here at the Capitol and then we get to pick his brain about what happened yesterday.
[00:01:17] Speaker C: Oh, exciting. My name is Ty Visner. I am a legislative coordinator here in the House Republican office, which, to put it simply, Lucetta Elmer, Representative Elmer. She's also the leader obviously of the House Republicans, which means she has additional staff. So not just normally, normally people have maybe a legislative assistant or chief of staff. She also has policy analysts and I am one of them. And I handle revenue issues, which is all like taxation. Whenever we're bringing in new money, it goes to revenue, the Revenue Committee.
I also have Judiciary, housing and homelessness. So some super important issues that I cover. And I'm trying to kind of help her and help the caucus, so help all of our members deal with.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: Right. I mean, because you imagine somebody who's a representative, a legislator in any part of the Capitol, they need all this. They need a team to do a ton of this work. Tons of research, trying to understand where the facts are, where is the money, Especially when it's.
[00:02:14] Speaker C: We don't have a lot of time because it is short session and short session, it's only like about a month. Otherwise it would generally be much longer. And so it's, the whole timeline is shrunk.
And so we really do, our representatives on the other side, senators really do have to lean on their Staff.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a sprint.
[00:02:31] Speaker C: Oh, my gosh, yes, absolutely. And we noticed that yesterday. Which we can get into.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: Exactly. So I walked into the Capitol yesterday and it was. It really. Everyone kept saying, it's like the first day of school. And it really felt like that. It was everyone saying hello to each other again. They hadn't seen each other in a bit. There's this energy in the building and a lot happening all at once. If nobody. I mean, most of our listeners have never been in the Capitol at all, let alone on the first day of a session.
[00:02:57] Speaker C: So I would suggest people who haven't to come in. Yeah. Because we're welcoming and we're always here and you can hear always. Or we try to be always on, on most days, if not every day, because we want to be open. People can come in and talk to us and meet us and, and, and we would love that. And we'd love to go give you a tour and help you out.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: Well, now, as we left off with our last update with Representative Elmer, we reminded listeners that every legislator can bring forth two bills during this short session. And you like spreadsheets? I love spreadsheets.
[00:03:30] Speaker C: I love it. Well, when you have all of this going on, it's helpful to put in a spreadsheet.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Exactly. And some of this would be really obvious. So the sheet that I'm seeing right here is a list of all of the bills that were introduced. Right. Which is per person.
[00:03:44] Speaker C: It's a smaller list. Yes. Because in the short session, this would have potentially been thousands. It's just around 160 only, which is, I mean, when you're talking, you know, 160 versus 5,000. I mean. Yes. I mean, it's a lot easier for us.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Sure. Now, some of this is really obvious. There are bills that are introduced by Republicans. There are bills that are introduced by Democrats. But then there are bills on here that say committee.
[00:04:10] Speaker C: Yes, we have committee bills. So each committee, I don't remember the exact number. I think it depends on the committee. But each committee gets a certain amount of bills they can introduce as a committee, and they vote on it. And they say, hey, we want to introduce this on behalf of the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness or the House Committee on Judiciary Committee.
And so they can introduce their own. And then you also see on there that there are what I have labeled as executive bills. So the governor has a few bills that she can put in the system, which then the committees will introduce as well.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: And there's one on here that says.
[00:04:42] Speaker C: Agency yeah, there is an agency one. I didn't know exactly how to describe that one, but it's an Oregon Judicial Department bill. So there's. And in, in long session, there's a bunch of all these types of bills. This is just more truncated, but yes, these. There are bills introduced by Democrat members, Republican members, committees, the governor, and then in long session, even more people. So. Yeah, exciting.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: And for anybody who is wondering, how does that even go through a process? We covered that on an earlier episode of Life and Legislation with Lucetta. So you can go back and listen to that whole process of how an idea becomes a bill becomes a law, all the steps it has to go through.
[00:05:17] Speaker C: And there are a lot of them.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: Yes. And yesterday. Yes, some of those steps began.
So what can you give us just a quick overview of what happened on day one?
[00:05:26] Speaker C: Well, day one was very exciting, and day one was also packed. I think more packed than people were expecting.
We started off with everyone gathered in the chamber, at least on this side. I don't really know what happened in the Senate. And they voted yes on the rules. The chamber voted yes.
So that meant that people. We had these reapproved rules for the. For. Because we have to. Every chamber has to have rules, whether that's the House, the Senate, or even Congress, Everybody's got to have rules. And so the House representatives of Oregon approved those rules and brought in new members, because we have some new members. We have. We have a member representative bunch who replaced Representative drays in District 51. And then there's another member on the other side, Representative wise. So we introduced the new members, brought them in. They're now officially ready to go.
And then we also. They approved the rules. And then we got into the committees after that. And so after all the reps go off, it is very much like school. It gives me the same.
Maybe a little traumatic for me, but, like, it gives me that little throwback of like, oh, my gosh, this feels like school. Everyone's going off to their individual classes.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:06:31] Speaker C: And that's exactly what happened.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: It's almost like a big welcome assembly. Let's make sure we all have the ground rules. We're all in agreement. This is the way that the school as a whole functions. Everyone sings their school song, everyone off.
[00:06:43] Speaker C: To fifth period or whatever it is, you know, first period or second period. But yeah, so that's. That was the, that was the start of the day. Then we got to committees, and some of these bills started to get hearings. And so what would happen day one, right in. We're right in with public hearings on some of these bills.
And so they also have to adopt rules, which is very interesting. Maybe, maybe not super interesting, but I think it's kind of interesting.
But then they get into the public hearings and that's where the public steps in and participates and can show up and speak about a bill. They can submit written testimony and bills have to have these public hearings. So some bills that had public hearings yesterday that might be of interest to representative Elmer's constituents. 4145, I believe. Yeah, 4145 was trying to fix measure 114. So dealing with the gun ballot measure, which dealt with large capacity magazines.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: So they're jumping in with controversial topics on day one.
[00:07:37] Speaker C: Day one, we're on it. People are mad. And, and yeah, so that was the, that was one of them. They also did another one, 4,088 in Judiciary, which was about, you know, abortion services and stuff like that. Very, I mean, not, not boring, not non controversial.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: Right. They're diving right in day one with things that bring strong controversy and strong opinions.
[00:08:02] Speaker C: And then also on top of that, we had a disconnect bill drop last yesterday evening or yesterday afternoon.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: And I'm going to pause you right there because if anyone listening, like me included, just a couple days ago I heard that word and went, okay, hold on, what does that mean?
I mean, I know what disconnect means, but I feel like it has another explanation within this legislative world.
[00:08:27] Speaker C: Yes, Oregon is a state. There's, there's many states that do this, but Oregon is one state where we are connected to the federal taxable income definitions. And so what happened with the one big beautiful bill in Congress that was signed by the president is they change some of those definitions. I think most people would have heard about the no tax on tips, no tax on overtime.
And those are examples of things that now no longer can be a part of the, you know, you can't tax that.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:08:53] Speaker C: Well, we being attached to that, connected to that, connected.
We, that means that we can't tax that anymore as a state. Even our state personal income, corporate income.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: Taxes, we can't tax that because you have to match. Because when everyone does their taxes, there are the, there's the federal taxes, but then there are state taxes, even the state taxes.
[00:09:14] Speaker C: Those definitions of what's taxable and what's not taxable, they're, they need to line up. Need to line up because they're connected.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:23] Speaker C: And, but so the controversy is that we have a bit of a budget deficit right now. And the plan to fill that hole or fill that gap is to disconnect from some of these federal definitions and stay the same. So essentially, I think, I don't want to get super partisan, but from, I think the, the caucus perspective, you know, we're Oregonians are getting a tax break.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:48] Speaker C: And then we're saying, well, maybe you shouldn't get that.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: Just kidding. You just kidding.
[00:09:52] Speaker C: You shouldn't get that tax break.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: And then the other argument would be, well, we need to keep it that way because of the budget. So.
[00:09:57] Speaker C: Because of the budget. Yeah. So it's a back and forth that's going on right now, and that's the argument that's happening. And so there was a bill that dropped that did not disconnect from overtime or tips, but it did disconnect for some from some other things like the vehicle loan interest.
So they were, they were going to, the feds were going to say, well, you don't have to necessarily include that your vehicle loan interest that you put pay.
But now we're going to. But now the water just keeps getting muddied and no one really knows what's.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Happening, what it means.
[00:10:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: So now with all these committees and, you know, a handful of bills that were already heard yesterday, have any decisions been actually made? Has any new law officially passed or is this really just day one? Things have been heard.
[00:10:42] Speaker C: We, nothing has been passed. Nothing has been done. Now, of course, conversations are always happening behind the scenes. People are always having conversations.
But right now, nothing has passed. It has to go through a work session. So for something to get out of committee and to go to the chamber has to go through a work session where the committee votes on it.
[00:11:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:01] Speaker C: And we should be getting into those very soon.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:05] Speaker C: But not yet. And so when we get into those, then things will start moving to the floor and then we'll start really getting into it. And because it's such a truncated timeline, it's all going to go pretty quickly.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: And as I recently learned that if, if anybody wants to go on to the OLISS website, that you can type in a particular bill and follow it so you can sign up, you can put your email in there and say, I'm really interested in this bill. I want to know what's going on and I want to follow it in real time.
[00:11:36] Speaker C: Yeah. So, for example, so it's the Oregon Legislative Information System, olis.
You can go in and say, you know what, I really care. You know, maybe you're a gun owner and you really do care about 4,145. Because you're curious about what this permitting.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:50] Speaker C: You know, whole thing might even look like you might be really frustrated or upset with it, but you still want to track it.
You go on, you can go to Oregon Legislative Information System just you can Google that and put in under Bill 4145.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:03] Speaker C: And that will give you, send you straight to the bill. You'll be able to submit testimony on the bill. You might be able to. I think you still can submit testimony on that bill. You can submit, you can, you can read testimony. You can see any amendments that have been put on the bill and you can see the measure history down at the bottom, which is super helpful for knowing what's going on. You can look at the scheduled events so you can keep an eye on where things are with that piece of legislation. That's for every bill, House and Senate. So you know exactly what's going on.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: And I think that's the big thing because so many people are, they're busy with their lives. They maybe only hear what gets covered on the news. And so a lot of times by the time you hear it, it's already in the past. Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:42] Speaker C: There is a delay. I found that there is a delay. You're like watching Coin or if you're watching KTVZ or something, there is a bit of a, a delay where you see things a bit after. So it's awesome. It's super helpful to be able to do it on your own and see these bills on your own. And that subscribe option is fantastic. So I would really suggest maybe if there's a commit, you can also subscribe to a committee.
So you're really interested in housing. You're really interested in all the judicial stuff, judicial stuff, whether that's gun rights or whether that's abortion or whether that's just crimes and punishments in general. You can go to that committee and you can subscribe just to that committee as well. So there's a bunch of different options and I would suggest everyone explores it because it's a great website.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: Well, and I was thinking too, because I mean, for most people, they don't know what these numbers are and they might not even know what all the bills are to even look for.
[00:13:33] Speaker C: And I will tell you right now, many of us don't even know the numbers. We know it as the blank bill, you know, so some of it is. That's not uncommon even.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So if somebody is going, I want to just even know what all the different bills are. I mean, that's a lot to read through.
[00:13:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: Is there any thing that has. I mean, here, there's. I love what you have here. It says relating to and it puts it in layman's terms like, oh, this one's about animal rescue. This one is about cannabis. This one is about hospital staffing. I mean, there's no end to these topics.
[00:14:06] Speaker C: Yes. So the relating to clauses are kind of to keep the bill within a certain space so it doesn't get too far out. So. So when there's a relating to clause, the bill title, it's saying that this bill has to be about nuclear energy, has to be about fire protection cost, has to be about mass transit districts, as Mannix has a bill right there on mass transit districts.
So that's really. That is a great way also to search up bills. You can search bills by, like, a word.
[00:14:33] Speaker A: Okay. That's what I was curious. Like, how would people find this?
[00:14:36] Speaker C: You can search up in the relating to clause and find bills, all the bills that mention the word transit district, if you're interested. If you're somebody that lives in Salem or Kaiser and Chair, you have chariots, buses, and you want to know about transit districts, you can search up transit districts. If you care about any sort of issue, you can search up a word and then it'll pop up. All the bills relating to.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: Amazing. So whatever, whatever is whatever you're passionate about or curious about, you can search if, you know, maybe education is something. I mean, that might be a big one. They could just search education and all the bills related to education would pop up.
[00:15:08] Speaker C: Yeah. You could also just go to the committee and just search up education committee on this. You can go to the committee bar and so pull up the education committee and it'll show you every bill under that committee, which is super helpful. Like, if you do care about that, you want to see where all of them are, what's going on, and are there going to be any changes? That's a great way to figure that out.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: Because if somebody wanted to drive over to the Capitol and say, I want to show up, I want to testify, I want to see what they're saying. They actually can find out when that's going to happen.
[00:15:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: And participate.
[00:15:36] Speaker C: And also on that website, register.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:38] Speaker C: And maybe if you can't get there physically, you can also submit written testimony, which, by the way, people do look at. We look at that. I don't. I can't speak for people on the second floor, but I can tell you we on the third floor. Look at the written testimony. We care about what people write down. Just because they can't make it to the Capitol does not mean their opinions aren't valuable. Yeah, so we do read that. We do read that. So for all the people who say, oh, I don't bother reaching out to my politicians or putting, they, they don't read it. That's not true for a lot of politics, maybe for some. But there are definitely people in this building that will hear if a lot of people submit written testimony. So I would encourage anybody, if you feel passionate about a subject and that doesn't have to even agree with Representative Elmer or anything. I mean, if you feel passionate about something, please do reach out to your representative.
[00:16:21] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:16:22] Speaker C: Because how else are we. Not me, I'm not represented. But how else are the staff, the representatives, the offices going to know?
[00:16:29] Speaker A: How do you, how do you represent somebody if you don't know what their concerns are and what their big needs are?
[00:16:33] Speaker C: And we try, I think we try offices, try to do that outreach and go out to the community. But sometimes, I mean, during session, it's so crazy, so busy, we really rely on people talking to us.
[00:16:42] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:16:42] Speaker C: And again, I say this office is always open.
And also, like, I think I've been talking to people and people haven't realized this, that this whole floor, the third floor, the second floor and the fourth floor on the House wing here, if you come to the Capitol, there's two office wings that have all the offices and you can just walk into them. They're not closed. I mean, in other states, they're closed doors. Sometimes our offices are open so you can walk up and say, hey to the staff, Hey, I would like to meet with my representative.
And if they're not, I mean, generally there will be a conversation about if that's possible and if, you know, if they can do that. But there's a lot of reps in this, in this floor who have schedules where they might be able to meet with you or they might be able to go check out. You know, maybe you've got an issue in your community and you want them to see it or you want them to. Some staff to come out and see it. And sometimes they'll. And a lot of times they'll be able to accommodate that. Right.
[00:17:31] Speaker A: I mean, and I think that's how Representative Elmer ends up at all the places she goes is her busing schedule.
[00:17:36] Speaker C: Yeah. Reaching out and asking.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: They say, hey, we want to show you. We want you to see and hear and, and be here.
[00:17:42] Speaker C: And she can't make it.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: Right. And that's the part about having a team, because then you have this whole group that can go and connect with the community and. And hear the concerns, hear the ideas and. And so forth. Thank you so much for taking a minute out of your day. Was there anything else that happened on day one that would be really.
[00:18:02] Speaker C: Before we close, I'm thinking. I know people will be curious about transportation.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:07] Speaker C: Such a big issue over the last year. I mean, more than just the last year.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:18:12] Speaker C: Quite the saga.
Unfortunately, there's not a lot to say on that right now. We haven't.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Not much happened on day one.
[00:18:18] Speaker C: Not much happened on day one, thank God.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: Because that's plenty of other things.
[00:18:24] Speaker C: Yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, that's gonna be one to watch as well. So also, if you're interested in that, that there will be bills. There's a Transportation Committee, and there will be bills popping up in there. So if you're interested in that, you want to follow that. I know a lot of people are really interested in that.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:18:37] Speaker C: There's a way to keep an eye.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: On that and wondering if they're going to get to vote on it in May or in November and all of that. We talked about that briefly.
[00:18:43] Speaker C: Yeah, it's going to be. That's going to be a whole conversation. And there is a bill, I believe it's in the Senate that would move the.
The date of the election.
And so I don't know the exact bill number because it's on the other side. Yeah. But I would suggest. Yeah. Going into the. You can go into the Senate committees and Senate Transportation Committee, and it should be there. And you can kind of watch that one because I know people will have a lot of very strong opinions.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:19:07] Speaker C: And we would like them to share those opinions.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
And I think the last thing. And I don't know if anything happened yesterday, but it's the. The. The revenue forecast and the budget.
[00:19:16] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: Anything done on day one, or are we waiting for that?
[00:19:19] Speaker C: The big thing was the disconnect. Yeah, the disconnect bill that dropped.
But other than that, we don't have a revenue forecast until tomorrow morning.
[00:19:26] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:19:26] Speaker C: 8:00Am tomorrow morning, we're gonna have a revenue forecast. You can watch it live.
Well, I know this is for real nerds, but also I think people should care because it will tell us. I mean, we have a slight deficit. Some would say a little bit more, some would say a little bit less. But we do have a deficit. And we will see tomorrow morning if we still will have a deficit on the other side of that or if they've changed their minds. And so you can watch that live. It's at 8am it's the Senate Finance and Revenue Committee. And then the House Revenue Committee will meet together and you can watch that live as you can watch all of the committees and chambers.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: Right. And we try and put links in everything. So, Oregonians, if you have not already signed up for Representative Elmer's newsletter, we highly recommend doing that. We're going to put out more of these newsletters during our short session so that you can be as up to date as possible with links. If you want to watch an entire conversation or just get a highlight, a little clip of an overview, some Cliff Notes versions of what's been going on, we want to keep you as connected as possible to the Capitol. And again, thank you for taking time to do this. We're going to try and do a little daily update as often as we can do it.
[00:20:27] Speaker C: I want to come back. I love this stuff. I love this stuff. But anyways, there's a little bit more to talk about.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:32] Speaker C: Right now. We did just get started.
[00:20:33] Speaker A: I'm sure it's going to build.
[00:20:34] Speaker C: Oh, it's going to build. Yeah.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: 35 days.
[00:20:36] Speaker C: It's going to build. It's going to get a little crazy here. Two weeks and I don't even know where my head will be. I know.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: I'm just. Well, my background is teaching, as our regular listeners know. And so I'm thinking I'm still in, you know, school mode. Of all the balloons that you would hang and then you'd pop as each day went down, as you're getting to the end. So I feel like we need 35 balloons in here.
[00:20:53] Speaker C: Gosh. Yeah. You got 35 balloons. Yeah, we have, I think we have a running a running countdown.
[00:21:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:00] Speaker C: Because that's how it feels. It's like, okay, and then we can breathe again. And maybe, and maybe, you know, at the end, I think, Oregonians, hopefully we'll breathe again because I hope some of the more frustrating legislation will not come to pass. Hopefully, we hope and we're doing what we can to make that happen. Yeah.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Well, thank you for all of your work. Appreciate it. Oregonians, thank you for tuning in to this episode of Life and Legislation with Lucetta. We have you got some good information and come back next time and follow what's going on during short session.
Thank you. We'll see you next time.
