Capitol Update
Legislature given authority to draw lines, bills limiting police power move forward, and a "new" holiday is on the horizon.
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The Oregon Supreme Court issued a ruling Friday morning, which decreed that the Oregon Legislature would retain the power to draw redistricted maps for itself and the state’s congressional delegation.
Legislators had been in a dispute for months with the state’s Democratic Secretary of State, Shemia Fagan, over which entity would get the first chance to try the new lines.
The state Constitution advises that the Secretary of State should draw the map if the Legislature fails to do so — giving July 1 of the redistricting year as the deadline for legislative action.
Due to difficulties presented by COVID-19, however, the US Census Bureau will not be able to deliver Oregon’s population data until after that date.
The Court issued a writ giving the Legislature until September 27 to draw the state’s 90 legislative seats and likely six congressional districts. The state is likely to receive an extra seat in the US House due to its rapid population growth over the last decade.
Currently, 10 police reform bills lie before the Legislature, including many drafted in response to last summer’s protests over the killing of George Floyd. For instance, there are bills lifting special legal protections for officers doing crowd control, and banning the use of tear gas and impact munitions without first issuing a declaration of riot; strobe lights would be banned altogether.
Other bills would remake the system for arbitrating disciplinary disputes between officers and their departments, create a public database of officer misconduct complaints (common across the United States), and ban officers from covering their name plates and badge numbers while on duty — an issue which is the subject of a lawsuit filed last month by the Civil Liberties Defense Center of Eugene. The lawsuit alleges that some police in Springfield did so during Black Lives Matter protests last year.
Also this week, the State House unanimously passed HB 2168, which would officially make Juneteenth a state holiday in Oregon, if it passes the Senate. Juneteenth, celebrated on June 19, commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.
June 19 is the anniversary of General Grover Granger’s declaration in 1865, which finally gave effect to the Emancipation Proclamation and effectively ended chattel slavery in the state of Texas. The bill seems likely to pass the Senate with broad, bipartisan support.
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