Oregon lawmakers closed the 2025 legislative period with an ill-fated race to finish a gutted major transportation package, bringing an unsatisfactory end to a session that has strained lawmakers’ political capital and dashed their hopes to compromise with one another.
As the clock ran out for adjournment Friday night, Democrats were dealt a whopping high-profile loss after they failed to secure enough House floor votes to fund a dramatically watered-down transportation funding package that would at least keep the state’s imperiled Department of Transportation solvent. Republicans celebrated defeating the larger $14.6 billion package and a later $11.7 billion package, with all but one of them vowing not to support any Democrat-led effort.
Lawmakers introduced more than 3,400 bills — the highest number in at least two decades — during the session, prompting an ultimately unsuccessful effort led by Democrats to pass a law limiting the number of bills each legislator could introduce.
The heightened tension among lawmakers Friday underscored the uphill battle they’ve faced this year in both chambers to pass ambitious policies, such as unemployment benefits for all striking workers, reforms of civil commitment laws and funding for more homeless shelters, all with limited resources and against the backdrop of rocky federal politics.
“We did all of that work in the context of a very tough budget environment. You saw declining revenues from what we were expecting in the February forecast for the first time in about 14 years,” House Speaker Julie Fahey, D-Eugene told reporters after the session ended. “And it was all in the face of the economic uncertainty and chaos from the federal government.”
Declining revenue sets the tone
After several years of higher-than-expected revenues and boosts from federal COVID-relief funds that have since expired, lawmakers had less money to spend this year.
Some of Gov. Tina Kotek’s housing priorities and investments in early childhood education took haircuts, leading to dire warnings from advocates. Still, the Legislature passed record K-12 school funding — $11.36 billion over the next two years — and, for the first time in Oregon history, they secured consistent funding from the state for summer school programs.
Kotek never got the $150 million per year for wildfire funding she wanted, but she will get $45 million for wildfires every two years from a tax on Zyn and oral nicotine products. Oregonians fed up with skyrocketing electricity and gas rates should get some relief from several bills that reign in the ability of utilities to ask for rate hikes, and clarify who gets charged when utilities spend on additional infrastructure needed for their industrial energy users, such as data centers.
The Legislature this session operated under the shadow of a second Trump presidency, though lawmakers didn’t do as much to respond to him as they did in his first term in 2017.
After strengthening the state’s sanctuary state laws and protections for abortion and gender-affirming care in recent years, there wasn’t much left to address. Senate Republicans killed a late-in-session effort led by Rep. Paul Evans, D-Monmouth, an Air National Guard veteran, to prevent Trump or future presidents from mobilizing the Oregon National Guard.
In a change from prior sessions, relationships between the two parties soured in the House but appeared to improve in the Senate. After enduring the longest walkout in state history during his first term as Senate president in 2023, Rob Wagner, D-Lake Oswego, spent the interim traveling the state visiting senators, meeting their families and collecting baseball hats from each district.
“Maybe you didn’t get your way, but your voice was heard in a way that felt different this session,” said Senate Minority Leader Daniel Bonham, R-The Dalles, on the Senate floor Friday evening. “I’m hoping that we’re building momentum.”
Emotions running high
The House was a different story. Lawmakers disagreed openly and bitterly, with tensions reaching a fever pitch by mid-June, when Democrats invited two drag queens to perform ahead of a resolution honoring the history of Black drag in Oregon. Republicans walked out en masse, though one stayed to watch.
A smaller group of Republicans also boycotted the House chamber on Monday, saying they were protesting Democratic Gresham Sen. Chris Gorsek’s “wholly inappropriate” treatment of Rep. Shelly Boshart Davis, R-Albany, during a heated transportation committee hearing in which he raised his voice at her. Still, others skipped floor sessions to protest votes on a gun bill and taxes, though enough members stayed to maintain a quorum.
Tears were also shed on the Senate floor as lawmakers mourned first late Senate President Peter Courtney, the longest-serving lawmaker in Oregon history, and then Sen. Aaron Woods, a Wilsonville Democrat in his first term who died of cancer in April at age 75.
State Sen. Courtney Neron Misslin, D-Wilsonville, was appointed to his seat representing the 13th Senate District, and former school superintendent and nurse Sue Rieke Smith, of King City, was appointed by local commissioners to take over Neron Misslin’s House seat in early June.
The House, meanwhile, celebrated the June return of state Rep. Hòa Nguyễn, D-Portland, who missed most of the session while undergoing treatment for stage 4 cancer. Staff encouraged those in the chamber during her attendance to wear face masks as a courtesy.
“There are so many of us that have suffered loss,” Sen. James Manning Jr., D-Eugene, reminded his colleagues Friday night in a courtesy for Woods. “And yet we continue to come here.”
Editor-in-chief Julia Shumway contributed reporting.