Déjà Vu: Republican Legislators Flee From Capitol to Stall Climate Bill — News

Inside the Salem state­house Mon­day morn­ing, the desks on one side of the Sen­ate cham­ber were emp­ty.…For the sec­ond time in eight months, Ore­gon Repub­li­cans walked out of the capi­tol, deny­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic super­ma­jor­i­ty a chance to pass a bill  would lim­it green­house gas emis­sions,” reports Reis The­bault for The Wash­ing­ton on Mon­day, Feb. 24. “By abscond­ing, the 11 GOP law­mak­ers pre­vent­ed the quo­rum nec­es­sary to vote on the leg­is­la­tion and forced to adjourn for the day.”

NPR report­ed on Tues­day that House Repub­li­cans also fled the Capi­tol. [Listen/read the two-minute report by OPB’s Dirk Van­der­Hart.]

SB 1530 would cap the green­house gas emis­sions allowed by the trans­porta­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing and util­i­ty sec­tors, and low­er the cap over time,” report­ed Van­der­Hart and Lau­ren Dake for OPB on Tues­day. “Large emit­ters would be required to obtain cred­its for each met­ric ton of emis­sions and could trade those cred­its among them­selves.”

A symptom of the urban-rural divide?

While the walk­out is entire­ly par­ti­san, it is also large­ly geo­graph­ic and demo­graph­ic.

“The stale­mate illus­trates the deep divide between the state’s dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed, ultra­l­ib­er­al urban enclaves — such as Port­land and Eugene — and its sprawl­ing rur­al coun­ties with proud lib­er­tar­i­an streaks, where mili­tia occu­pa­tions and seces­sion move­ments have found boost­ers,” con­tin­ues The­bault. 

To observers, the stand­offs por­tend a grim future for state pol­i­tics. Also this month, a Repub­li­can-led group, Move Ore­gon’s Bor­der for a Greater Ida­ho, cir­cu­lat­ed a peti­tion to move Ida­ho’s bor­der to the west, sub­sum­ing Ore­gon’s rur­al east­ern coun­ties. The effort is unlike­ly to suc­ceed, but it plain­ly exem­pli­fies the state’s widen­ing gulf.

Ore­gon has been a Demo­c­ra­t­ic tri­fec­ta, mean­ing one par­ty holds both hous­es of the state leg­is­la­ture and the gov­er­nor’s office, unlike divid­ed gov­ern­ment, since 2013, accord­ing to Bal­lot­pe­dia. In the 2018 elec­tion, Democ­rats gained the three-fifths super­ma­jori­ties in the state’s House and Sen­ate need­ed to hike tax­es, and Gov. Kate Brown, also a , was nar­row­ly re-elect­ed to her first full term with 50 per­cent of the vote, report­ed Van­der­Hart and Dake on Nov. 6, 2018.

She won a spe­cial elec­tion in 2016 to fill the remain­ing two years of for­mer Gov. Kitzhaber’s term. 

How­ev­er, one look at the large­ly red coun­ty map of the state show­ing the 2018 guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion results fur­ther illus­trates the urban-rur­al divide. Only sev­en of the state’s 36 coun­ties, less than 20 per­cent, are col­ored blue.

‘Quorum politics’ shuts down the government

“With­out at least two Repub­li­cans show­ing up in each cham­ber, Democ­rats can’t achieve the two-thirds quo­rum nec­es­sary to con­duct ,” reports Van­er­Hart on Feb. 26. Two Repub­li­cans remain, one sen­a­tor and one rep­re­sen­ta­tive, both from “Bend dis­tricts where reg­is­tered Democ­rats out­num­ber reg­is­tered Repub­li­cans.”

Many oth­er impor­tant bills in addi­tion to cli­mate leg­is­la­tion have stalled as a result, includ­ing “budget adjust­ments for trou­bled state agen­cies, mak­ing it eas­i­er to site home­less shel­ters,” and wild­fire and forestry leg­is­la­tion.

2020 legislative season

The 35-day leg­isla­tive ses­sion that began on Feb. 3 ends on March 8, and only three bills have passed both cham­bers, not­ed Van­der­Hart on Wednes­day. Van­der­Hart and Dake report­ed on Jan. 31 on the spe­cial ses­sion (audio avail­able) that fore­shad­owed trou­ble with the car­bon bill.

While the over­all frame­work of the new cli­mate bill, Sen­ate Bill 1530, is sim­i­lar to last year’s, the new leg­is­la­tion also con­tains tweaks that ease reg­u­la­tions on man­u­fac­tur­ers and rur­al areas of the state. Under the lat­est con­cep­tion, for instance, most of the east­ern 60% of the state would see no reg­u­la­tion on auto fuels.

But Repub­li­cans are still adamant that the cap-and-trade sys­tem would be too cost­ly for Ore­go­ni­ans, and are show­ing no signs they’ll be will­ing to stay in the build­ing to vote “no” on the bill.

The Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors have indi­cat­ed that they would return if the Democ­rats were will­ing to the cap-and-trade leg­is­la­tion a state bal­lot mea­sure, sim­i­lar to the car­bon tax and car­bon fee defeat­ed by Wash­ing­ton vot­ers in 2016 and 2018, respec­tive­ly. 

“For the Democ­rats, at least so far, that appears to be a non­starter,” report­ed Van­der­Hart and Dake on Feb. 25.

Relat­ed in Plan­e­ti­zen:

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