Month: June 2019

At about 10 am today, June 29, 2019, our MH Coalition bill (SB 586-C) was addressed by the Senate!

Senator Fagan carried it, saying only, “Good bill, should pass.”

There was no further discussion or questions.

It passed, on a 25 to 2 vote, with three Republicans absent. The two no votes were Senators Olsen (Clackamas County) and Thomsen (Hood River).

The next steps are for the bill to be signed by the Senate President, then the House Speaker, and finally the Governor. We expect no issues with these final steps.

Our bill is scheduled to become law on January 1, 2020.

I’ll provide a more in-dept update later, but I wanted to get this out to you right away.

Thank you to everyone for their support.

A press conference was just held.  Enough Republican Senators are coming back so that voting on bills can resume on Saturday.  

The budget bills are their priority – our bill not a budget bill.  It is unclear at this early time (their press conference just ended) as to whether or not our bill SB 586 will be heard for a vote.  They may be too backed up to get to it – ours was scheduled for Sunday.  We will see!

Fingers crossed again!!

https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2019/06/oregon-senate-republicans-will-return-to-work-on-saturday-leader-says.html

Our state Senate activities have made national and global news appearing on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Below are links to a brief summary article from the Wall Street Journal that summarizes some highlights of the HB 2020 story and where we are today.

• Link to WSJ Article on the WSJ Website (for WSJ subscribers)
• PDF Version of WSJ Article (2 pages)

NOTE: FloatingHomeOwners.com (FHO) remains neutral on the topic of climate bill HB 2020. Anything we post regarding the events surrounding the HB 2020 walk-out are shared for the sole purpose of keeping you factually informed about what is happening with our Coalition / Floating Home bill SB-586. Further, any creative interpretations of FHO’s ‘leanings’ regarding political affiliation or our opinions on HB 2020 which one might theorize from this article or any other FHO post are merely guesswork and should be considered a reader’s opinion, not based on fact.

It’s hard to write this today.

I’ve been providing regular email updates over the course of the last 2 weeks to those in our FHO email group because the walk-out at the Oregon Senate have made national news and I wanted to offer direct commentary to help our group better understand how the unfolding news is impacting our Coalition bill.

Here is the good news since my last posting here:

• Our bill, SB 586-C, passed the Oregon House today (Monday, June 24, 2019), on a 57 to 1 vote. Representative Bill Post (Keizer, St. Paul and Newberg district) was the sole “no” vote. He did not give a reason; but we’ve been told by our people at the Capitol that he frequently votes ‘no’.

• The bill now goes to the Oregon Senate for concurrence with the amendments made in the House. That vote is now scheduled for this Sunday, June 30th at a session that is scheduled to start at 10 am.

• If the Senate votes ‘yes’ on our bill (and, remember, Oregon Senators voted UNANIMOUSLY YES on the unamended version of our bill a few months ago, on April 17th), then our bill would be signed my the Governor and become law. We expect no real opposition to our bill on the Senate side this time as well. We are THAT close!!!

(Cue sinister music…and now for the bad news…)

• Unfortunately, as of June 20th, the Oregon Senate is not meeting, because it lacks a quorum (quorum is the presence of the minimum number of members in order for the group to be able to conduct business – this number is set by our state constitution).

• This is because the Senate Republicans have walked out in protest of a big environmental bill, HB 2020 (known as the cap and trade bill), which passed the House last week on a largely party-line vote.

• Most of the Republican Senators have publicly stated they have left the state and do no intend on returning to vote on HB 2020, nor any bill remaining in 2019.

• With all of the Senate Democrats present, the Senate is 2 members short of achieving quorum. We need 2 Republican Senators to return to the Senate floor in order for our bill to be heard on Sunday, June 30, 2019.

• The Oregon Constitution requires that the 2019 Legislative Session end on Sunday, June 30, 2019.

• If at least 2 of the Senate Republicans do not return by Sunday, June 30, then our bill – and hundreds of others – will die.

• We could bring our bill back in a special session, which the Governor indicates she may call to address several large agencies which do not yet have approved 2019-2021 budgets. Or in the 2020 session, which starts on February 3, 2020. But, in either case, we would have to start over, with a new sponsor and bill number and hearings.

NEXT STEPS

Unfortunately, as well, there seems to be nothing we can personally do to try to get the Republican Senators to return to the Senate floor to vote on our Floating Home bill.

Our best hope now for SB 586 to pass in this legislative session is for this to occur:

• A deal is struck regarding HB 2020 and the Republican Senators come back to vote on our bill on Sunday.
• AND, that there is time in the day for our bill (remember now hundreds of others are waiting in the queue along with ours) to be heard and voted upon.

My fingers are crossed!…but it doesn’t look promising that the missing Senators will return in time to vote on SB 586.

Hey, Everyone!

Much progress has been made but things are down to the wire to get our bill passed before this legislative session wraps up on June 30, 2019. We need all fingers crossed that we can get everything done before this legislative session ends on June 30, 2019.

The MH Coalition leaders are hopeful that we can still accomplish the voting required, but time is of the essence and it will be challenging.

Here is what has happened since April 1:

• April 8, 2019 (rescheduled from April 1): Senate Bill 586, our MH Coalition bill, passed out of the Senate Housing Committee on Monday, April 8, unanimously. Chuck Carpenter and John Vanlandingham were present to answer questions. There were none. The only drama was whether the required fiscal impact statement (“FIS”) would be done in time, and whether it might indicate that there would be a fiscal impact (on MCRC/OHCS). The hearing started at 3 pm; the FIS was filed onto OLIS at about 4 pm. And it showed a “minimal” impact – which spared us a referral to Ways and Means.
• April 17, 2019: Sen. Prozanski carried our bill on the floor of the Senate and it was passed UNANIMOUSLY 30-0!! THIS IS THE POWER OF THE COALITION!! When you get two sides of an issue together to work through solutions agreeable to both sides, you get legislators who feel comfortable supporting your bill because they have trust in the process and know that our solution is agreeable to both sides of the arguments.
• April 29, 2019: Our bill is now referred to as SB 586A (with our amendments added) and held a hearing in the House Human Services and Housing Committee. John VanLandingham and Chuck Carpenter testified in support and there were no questions from committee members.
• May 22, 2019 (rescheduled from May 20): This was nearly the last possible date that our bill could be worked before the May 24th deadline where out bill would have died if it had not been worked. Thank you to John VanLandingham for pushing and pushing to get our bill session in time.
  • Things got very hairy in terms of meeting deadlines for this session. In the end, the amendments are as close as we could get them to the MH Coalition’s original intent, but they aren’t perfect. We are keeping track of some language we will pursue changing in the 2020-2021 legislative session.
  • At the House work session, we provided brief written testimony in support of the bill. Chuck Carpenter and John VanLandingham spoke in support of the bill. There were a few questions.
  • The bill passed unanimously, 9 to zero.
  • But about 30 minutes before the work session, we got the LFO analysis and our bill was referred to the Ways and Means Committee to sort out some funding questions around the park/marina Mandatory Mediation portion of the bill. So…delayed again.
• May 31, 2019: Finally our amendments have been incorporate and printed – our bill is now SB 586B.
  • It is now 71 pages, largely because of our marina abandoned property changes – which is a necessary component to our bill!
  • We were able to lear up some of the funding issues that had arisen.
• June 10, 2019: The Ways and Means Transportation and Economic Development Subcommittee recommended passage of our bill to the Full Ways and Means Committee, with another amendment, the Dash-B5 amendment. This amendment simply adds some additional expenditure authority to OHCS’ budget to reflect the programs in our bill. Chuck Carpenter and John VanLandingham were present. There was no discussion of the substance of our bill. The vote was unanimous.
• June 14, 2019: The Full Ways and Means Committee, after a brief presentation from Senator Manning, the co-chair of our TED (Transportation and Economic Development) Subcommittee, also passed our bill, with only two dissenters, Sens. Girod and Thompson. (The vote was 18 to 2 in favor.) There was no discussion or questions. (Keep in mind that the committee worked through more than 50 bills in two hours that day, and they had just spent 20 frustrating minutes discussing whether a bill requiring more “wing space” for chickens used by Oregon egg producers would interfere with egg buyers in Oregon cities bordering other states.) Chuck and John VanLandingham again were present. We can only guess that Sens. Girod and Thompson, two conservative Rs, voted “no” because they heard, in the summary of our bill, language about raising taxes (that would be the annual $10 special assessment) on floating homeowners. If true, what is ironic about this is that they may have voted against floating home owners having to pay $10 so that we can ACCESS services and resources far-more VALUABLE than that AND WHICH we currently cannot access! Those of you who participated in the floating home owner tenant meetings last year can attest that the perceived VALUE of what we will get in return for this $10/year is well worth the investment. In any case, we had enough votes that it passed.

NEXT STEPS:

1. The bill will now be reprinted as C-engrossed, with the addition of the Dash-B5 amendment (bill printing can cause unexpected delays so we are hoping this goes smoothly).
2. After its official reprinting to incorporate all amendments, our bill will go to the House floor for a vote were it is expected to pass.
3. Once the House passes it, the bill will go back to the Senate floor for concurrence on the House amendments where we don’t anticipate any issues, other than the clock.
4. Once the Senate passes it,, Governor Kate Brown will, hopefully, sign it into law.

FINGERS CROSSED EVERYONE – THIS TIMELINE IS TIGHT!!

Even though the legislative session does not officially end until June 30, 2019, rumor has it that the legislative leadership hopes to end the session by June 21 – and everybody is frantic about funding and bills dying without being heard. 

Our MH Coalition leadership is doing everything in their power to make sure the bill can clear these hurdles in time. They, too, have 2 years of work at stake.

There is nothing we can personally do other than send positive vibes, prayers, good juju, whatever you believe in – send rainbows and unicorn thoughts!!

I’ll keep you posted as soon as we have news to report.