On April 1st, House Minority Leader Christine Drazan and House Speaker Tina Kotek struck a deal that would start to move the growing number of bills that have backed up on the House floor. According to OPB news: “Republicans agreed to waive the rules requiring each bill be read word by word to allow lawmakers to more speedily consider a package of budget rebalancing bills...Republicans have also agreed to waive bill-reading requirements for another largely technical bill that has 75 pages and would take several hours to read.”
While this agreement won’t return the House to fully normal function, it will ensure that critical budget related bills move over to the Senate for consideration before the rapidly approaching Second Chamber Work Session Posting deadline on May 14th. At the moment, it’s hard to tell what this means for other policy related bills awaiting full House consideration. We’ll do our best to keep you updated as both sides continue to negotiate – hopefully finding a way to move House bills to the Senate and free up the calendar in time to consider bills that have already started coming over from the Senate side.