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2005-06-21 Alert
SB887 Concurrence fails in Senate!
We just received word from Senator Walker's office that the Senate has failed to concur with the House amendments to SB 887B. Hopefully this means the bill will return to committee for some much-needed rework (as we have requested), including first and foremost a rewording of the Section 3 provisions as we've been discussing.
Thanks to all of you for all the contacts you've made. This action is a positive step toward protecting our voter annexation charter amendments which has always been OCVA's prime directive. But it's going to make some other people very unhappy. Unfortunately, this was the situation that was forced upon us by the flawed language in Section 3 that threatened our voter annexation charter amendments.
The Section 3 amendment actually came out of the Senate in the first round of that chamber's consideration - so it's not exactly clear to me right now how the foregoing decision affects it. We will try to get more details ASAP.
The plan of our opponents for the past couple months has been to substitute SB 887 in place of HB 2484. The reason is obvious: the latter really doesn't help anybody or change anything long-term except for a few big companies. Plus it buys city governments in our member communities 2 years' time to circumvent their voter annexation charter amendments if they use ORS-195 as the preferred annexation tool. Some of our legislative contacts have expressed concern that our opposition to 887 will endanger HB 2484, now awaiting the Governor's consideration. I think the opposite is true: if 887 were to pass in its current form, does anyone think the opponents would NOT continue on their quest to substitute it for HB 2484?
When we learn the details of the vote count, we'll let you know so you can thank your senators. For now, the focus needs to shift back to Governor Kulongoski to convince him to sign HB 2484.
Jerry Ritter
Secretary, OCVA
This page last modified on 2005-11-16 08:29.
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