LAWMAKERS FILL A NOT-TO-DO LIST

Short on Time and Money, Members of the House and Senate Find Their
Requests Won't See Action

SALEM -- Will businesses get tax breaks for taking extra steps to cut
pollution? Is Silver Falls State Park on its way to becoming a
national park? Will Gresham get money to patrol MAX trains?

No. No. And probably not.

The Oregon Legislature, which normally convenes every two years, is
meeting this year in a historic experiment with annual sessions.

As lawmakers rush through their monthlong meeting with few dollars to
spend, some proposals meet a quick death. Others barely cling to life
at the halfway point.

Ideas that sounded good -- at least to someone -- are being pushed to
the side of the road in this test-drive of annual sessions for one of
three reasons: They've drawn too many critics. They have a price tag
attached. Or they're too complicated for lawmakers to take on and
still hit the Feb. 29 adjournment deadline.

Sen. Fred Girod's memorial urging the federal government to designate
Silver Falls a national park ran into trouble so quickly that it
didn't even get a courtesy hearing.

People were worried about the clean air standards protecting national
parks. There were questions about guns and the loss of control of one
of Oregon's most popular parks.

"In this rush-through session, I just didn't have the time," said
Girod, R-Stayton.

Strong opinions accompany any attempt to rewrite Oregon's
voter-approved medical marijuana law. But Rep. Peter Buckley thought
he had struck a deal everyone could live with.

House Bill 3635 would have allowed employers to fire workers in
dangerous jobs who test positive for marijuana, even if they have a
marijuana card.

Buckley, D-Ashland, said he started working on the bill last summer
and kept working through the first day of the session.

"We even worked Super Bowl Sunday," he said. "We had a deal. And then
the editorial in The Oregonian blew it up."

For those who don't remember, the headline read: "Don't make a bad
marijuana law worse."

Despite support from the Chalkboard Project, a nonpartisan education
group, a bill requiring statewide standards for teacher training and
development got a committee hearing but no vote.

Senate Minority Leader Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day, blames the Oregon
Education Association for quashing the idea.

"The OEA did everything they could do to keep this bill from seeing
the light of day," Ferrioli said.

OEA spokeswoman Becca Uherbelau said the teachers union raised
concerns "that the bill was premature" because the governor has
assembled a task force to look at teacher professional development.
That group will issue its recommendations ahead of the 2009 session.

Fears that Oregon may follow the nation into recession have doomed
other proposals.

TriMet General Manager Fred Hansen heard loud and clear from
metro-area senators unhappy that the MAX light-rail system has become
a zone for crime and intimidation.

The Senate Transportation Committee unanimously approved a bill that
would give Gresham a one-time grant to patrol the MAX line.

But the next day, state economists broke the bad news: Oregon's
revenues are $170 million short of what legislators expected.

Now the money for the MAX is in jeopardy, along with every other bill
with a price tag attached -- even relatively small items such as
$95,000 for a farm-to-school program intended to teach children about
food, nutrition and the environment.

"Things are going to fall off the table that we thought were going to
go," Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, said in an interview
Thursday. "We don't have the money that we had a week ago."

As much as Democrats would like to find it, there might not be money
to expand health insurance coverage for poor children. House Bill
3614 would insure about 5,000 more children by increasing the Oregon
Health Plan enrollment period from six months to a year.

Legislators aren't so worried about the expansion's $4 million cost
in the 2007-09 budget. But future cost estimates -- as much as $20
million in 2009-11 -- have raised some eyebrows.

"I have not been in a conversation where it was declared dead," said
House Speaker Jeff Merkley, D-Portland. "But I have been in
conversations where people are very worried."

Another health measure -- a proposed constitutional amendment making
health care a fundamental right -- also has a questionable future.

The measure, House Joint Resolution 100, passed Wednesday on a 31-29
party-line vote in the House, with Democrats in favor and Republicans
against. Another version passed the House last year but died in a
Senate committee.

Some are privately calling the proposed amendment dead again.

Some think it's a bad idea to put another health proposal before
voters so soon after they turned down a tobacco tax increase to pay
for children's health insurance. Others worry that a voter defeat on
the amendment would doom health reforms headed for the 2009 Legislature.

But the amendment's sponsor, Rep. Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland, is not
giving up.

"I don't understand what's making people nervous. I really don't," he
said. "It would make me unhappy if it got buried in an undemocratic way."

There also are issues that never even became a bill this session.
Topping the list: raising the $200,000 limit on damages paid by
government agencies.

The issue emerged late last year when the state Supreme Court
effectively threw out the cap when it gave the family of Jordaan
Michael Clarke permission to pursue his $17 million medical
malpractice lawsuit against Oregon Health & Science University.

The Oregon Trial Lawyers Association has long wanted to eliminate
damages caps. OHSU, Portland's largest employer and a public teaching
and research university, says it needs caps in order to continue its
public mission. Both groups have staunch allies among the Democrats,
who control the Legislature.

But Republicans also are wary about moving too fast on something that
could have a significant budget impact.

"Tort reform is going to have to be addressed," said House Minority
Leader Bruce Hanna, R-Roseburg. "But there's no bill ready to go to
fix it. And no time to vet it."