Congress, Oregon Legislature can make progress on bipartisanship if they select the right issues
Paths toward compromise exist on affordable housing, wildfire prevention and election reform, among other pressing issues.
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Mark worked 20 years at The Oregonian in positions including business editor & editorial writer. He currently is a communications consultant.
With the change in presidential administrations, bipartisanship has returned to the political conversation. To this point the concept has not advanced beyond rhetoric. The only significant legislation passed by Congress this year, the American Rescue Plan, was enacted without Republican support. And at the state level in Oregon, the Legislature remains defined by walkouts and contentious exchanges, not by cooperation.
So, in today’s political climate is bipartisanship an achievable goal or mere wishful thinking?
There certainly are issues where neither party is willing to consider compromise and where political dynamics dictate negative consequences for any lawmaker who does. But, conversely, there are at least a handful of issues where the public has shown a desire for compromise. On these issues, legislators who forge bipartisan solutions are more likely to be rewarded than punished by voters. (Donors are a separate question, which is part of the problem.)
Here are three issues of high importance where bipartisan compromise not only would show that government still is capable of addressing significant issues, but also likely would create better solutions than those that would be produced by a one-party approach.
Affordable housing: Affordable housing and/or homelessness rank high in most Oregon political polls of what issues Oregonians consider important. And both municipal governments and the Legislature have shown a willingness to attempt solutions. But there are emerging signs that some of the solutions attempted are backfiring.
For example, the drop in apartment construction undoubtedly is partially due to the pandemic-driven recession, but a workable long-term plan for creating more affordable housing will require both tenant protections and provisions to ensure that developers still are willing to build rental housing. Developing such policies not only would benefit from bipartisan cooperation but probably require a bipartisan approach. Otherwise, developers simply will take their tool belts and go elsewhere.
Wildfire prevention: Support for the concept of wildfire prevention is almost universal. Destructive fires have become an almost annual occurrence, causing billions of dollars in damage and disrupting thousands of lives. Yet, attempts to address the issue mostly have fizzled in the Legislature. Why? There are two primary reasons: first, wildfire prevention gets caught up in the broader, more contentious discussion of forest policy; and second, even less-controversial measures sometimes get caught up in partisan gridlock – fire prevention measures were among the bills that died amid last year’s Senate Republican walkout.
The Legislature has another chance to find a bipartisan solution this year. Senate Bill 287 and Senate Bill 248 contain similar approaches to the bill that died in 2020. There’s clear evidence that bipartisan compromise is possible on forestry issues. Industry representatives and environmental groups last year reached agreement on a memorandum of understanding on a variety of issues, some of which are more contentious than issues in the wildfire prevention bills. However, their agreement needed enabling legislation and that legislation also died amid the walkout.
Election reform: This might be perhaps the most painful issue to watch the effects of partisan politics wreak havoc; the stakes are so high and the solutions are fairly obvious. Thankfully, Oregon has set a good example and most of the problems are at the federal level. If there’s a flaw in the most-discussed federal reform proposals it is that they are too complicated. Any absentee-voting or partial early voting system is going to produce accusations that it favors one group or the other. The better approach is Oregon’s: mail voting for everyone. While Republicans and Democrats in Oregon still argue about many things, they don’t argue about mail voting. Other states should follow our example.
Meanwhile, Oregon could show its commitment to election reform by opening primaries to all voters and instituting ranked-choice voting – two steps that give voters more choices. In this case, the parties wouldn’t be meeting in the middle, but instead responding to the reality that Motor Voter and ideological trends have resulted in more than a million voters—registered as non-affiliated or with a third party—outside of the primary process. By accepting one or more of these reforms, both sides could shift power from party insiders and special interests toward rank-and-file voters.
These are three issues where the public has shown an appetite for bipartisanship and where at least some players on each side of the issue have shown a willingness for compromise. There are others. But, whether it’s with these issues or others, it’s important that talk about bipartisanship progress leads to action before the Oregon Legislature adjourns and before Congress turns its attention to midterm elections.
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