- ILLUSTRATION BY DAVE KIERSH
Last we checked in on the Portland Business Alliance’s legislative attempt for looser sidewalk rules—maybe something like Portland’s unconstitutional sit-lie rules, which disproportionately affected the homeless—HB 2963 had been placed on today’s Senate Judiciary Committee agenda for a vote that would send it to the Senate floor.
But the bill was removed from the agenda yesterday, and now legislative sources say the bill is likely dead. Tomorrow is the last day for bills to move out of policy committees, and it’s “unlikely” the bill will be restored to Judiciary’s agenda later today or if there will even be a meeting tomorrow.
Judiciary Chairman Floyd Prozanski had been notably skeptical of the bill. And now it seems there were enough concerns the bill would fail on the Senate floor—despite passing with all but two “no” votes in the House—that HB 2963 will be quietly put out to pasture.
“It appears to not be moving,” says Tom Powers, communications director for Senate Democrats. “it may not be able to receive further action. There were a few no votes on the floor. It wasn’t clear it had the votes to pass.”
Update 11 AM: Mercury news intern Virginia Alvino, in Salem today, caught up with Prozanski outside today’s Senate floor session, and he confirmed the bill will die this session. “We didn’t have the votes to move the bill forward,” Prozanski told her, also adding, however, “I’ve agreed to do a work group in the interim to hash this thing out.” (For more from Prozanski, hit the jump!)
Update 11:20 AM: Where were those potential “no” votes coming from? The office of Senator Chip Shields, D-Portland, says they’d have been on the list. “I don’t think he’d have anything else to add about the votes,” a staffer says, “except that his would be a no.”
Powers says the PBA met with Senate Majority Leader Diane Rosenbaum a couple of days ago. By then, the writing was likely on the wall. Senate Democrats paid keen attention to the fact that the bill didn’t pass unanimously in the House. Representatives Michael Dembrow and Sara Gelser, two Democrats, both said no.
Dembrow wrote in a statement posted by Right 2 Survive, a homelessness advocacy group, that he often worked with the PBA but that “I am concerned about potential discrimination against the homeless. I want to make sure that any local ordinances are fair and balanced to the greatest extent possible. HB 2963 does not guarantee this.”
“People here noticed, once it passed, that two Democrats voted no,” Powers says. “That brought the bill some closer scrutiny.”
He also said the House Judiciary panel—which I’ll note has many suburban and rural members and is chaired by Jeff Barker, a retired Portland cop—has a “different” makeup than the Senate panel, which is led by Prozanski, from Eugene, and has other Portland-area senators.
“That’s another reason that it ran into some bigger resistance over here,” Powers says of the Senate.
As for concerns of spurning the PBA, he pointed out: “It was really just one group’s bill. The larger business community is focused on other issues.”
Update 11 AM continued: Prozanski touched on the notion that this was a Portland-focused bill with statewide ramifications.
During a hearing earlier this month on HB 2963, former Corvallis State Representative Barbara Ross drove home that message in testimony that contrasted Portland’s general awareness and willingness to discuss free-speech issues with the lack of that kind of willingness or resources in rural communities whose cops would be unleashed by the ability to pass loose sidewalk rules.
In passing state legislation the objective, Prozanski says, the goal is to “not have unintended consequences in the rest of the state.”
He wouldn’t directly answer if pulling the bill was his idea. It’s also not exactly clear what a working group will look like or discuss. But he did say this:
“I have the authority to run the committee agenda, just like any other committee chair.”
Update 11:23 AM: What about Portland? While the Portland City Council never formally took a stance on the bill, the Mercury first reported back on May 1 that Mayor Charlie Hales, in his state of the city speech, was ready to pivot to sidewalks and panhandling after the budget.
He told me directly, after his speech, that he favored a balanced approach that included greater local control of sidewalks alongside social services programs.
From my Hall Monitor column almost a month ago:
• The mayor is listening closely to the Portland Business Alliance (PBA) and its beefs over the city’s sidewalks. Hales used the unfortunate word “epidemic” to link two separate-but-related concepts: “homelessness” and “panhandling.” He’s not outwardly supporting a bill that would lift away state limits currently keeping the city from resurrecting “sit-lie” laws. But he is in favor of wresting local control from the state and has echoed the PBA’s call for “civility” on the sidewalks.
Hales told me after his speech that the city needs “reasonable authority” over its sidewalks and that he’ll “put attention” into the issue after the budget.
“And not just the enforcement side,” he says. “But the social services side.”
(This was much more worrisome until he backed that statement up with his budget plan—actually funding safety net programs otherwise targeted for deep cuts.)
In the meantime, Commissioner Amanda Fritz wrote a “private citizen” letter to Senator Richard Devlin, D-Tualatin, opposing the bill. The Oregonian‘s editorial board first reported that letter. Fritz, through her office, has declined to share it—even though it’s dubious that a sitting commissioner still gets to write letters, as a “private citizen,” to elected senators on issues she might have to deal with on council.
PBA reminds me of the guy that gets caught in the Scooby Doo episodes… always out of touch with reality and foiled by “those meddling kids”
Yay! Because being “tolerant” means doing nothing about anything!
Vagrants and passers-though who contribute nothing to the community have the right to flop down anywhere and harass people, but none of us who contribute thousands of dollars a year in property taxes have the right to ask for even a moderately presentable community.
Somehow much larger cities like New York and San Francisco can address these problems, but not us. Because being “tolerant” means smiling paternalisticly at every anti-social behavior, and mumbling something about the need for “someone” to provide “mental health services”.
I suppose it could be worse Blabby…
we could all believe that homeless people have a major impact on shopping downtown instead of the fact that there is no parking downtown, there is what, 5 shopping malls on the MAX lines that you have to pass in order to get downtown, and there is more and more shopping done online… but somehow the fact that someone driving from Gresham doesnt go downtown to wander the streets for parking, pay to much for dinner, pay to go to a theatre to see a movie that they can wait a month and get on netflix… somehow that is the homeless guy’s fault…
as for the “someone” I would agree totally, we as a community need to provide mental health services.
It doesn’t just impact shopping downtown, it impacts everything downtown, and in many other parts of the city as well.
I have higher expectations for our city then being a nationally renowned flophouse, and I don’t apologize for it. I pay (quite a lot it seems to me) to keep this place up. In return, we’re constantly told that the city is too powerless or broke to do anything about anything. And yet my rates go up twice a year for this diminishing level of service.
We are facing a $21 million dollar deficit and “crisis” of cutting services. But my taxes didn’t go down this year. They went up by 3%, just like the year before, and the year before that – plus all of the additional levies we pass each year. And everyone else’s taxes went up too. Yet, there is a “crisis”, and we must have fewer services than last year, which had fewer than the year before. Strange phenomenon that…
Maybe it’s time for Portlanders to have some expectations instead of being apologists.
maybe its time Portlanders recognize that depending on some outdated business improvement district that depends on only one answer which is to blame it on poverty no matter what the problem is, is a bit passe…
as for the tax thing, yes… if you have less home owners, and less renters, individual tax payers have to pay more… shocking, I know… maybe if more people had jobs, there would be more people to rent apartments and buy houses and then… tah dah… more people to pay taxes…
There are more of both owners and renters in Portland. Don’t know what you are talking about.
If you want more people to have jobs, they’re going to come from businesses. Like most employed Portlanders, I work for a business. The Mercury is a business. Every coffee shop, bar, restaurant, book store, bike shop, food cart etc. that you visit is a business. “Business” isn’t a bad word. It’s what almost all of us do. For those who work in government or non-profits, those are paid for by taxing the profits of the private (business) economy.
As one who works the ‘front line’ with many of the folks we are referring to, they do not want to do anything for themselves. That is the truth and reality what many of us know. No amount of ‘mental health treatment’ is going to fix it.
No doubt people who are TRULY mentally ill absolutely deserve to be taken care of, however lazy ass entitled fucks do not, and that is a large percentage of these folks. Portland absolutely invites this shit upon itself. I wish people knew how many people from other places show up here without ANY plan to care for themselves, they see this as our job.
Gloworm.
as someone who was “many of the folks we are referring to” I will have to call you our on it… your line is bull hockey…
A) you should do some reading about homelessness before you try to talk the talk… at any one point about 1/3rd of the total homeless population for the year is homeless… they find jobs, stick with them, get housing, and fall back through the cracks… mental health,a s well as education system deserve a big thank you on this one…)
B) maybe you should go back and read the article a few years ago in street roots that put that whole line of BULL S#T to rest about the masses swarming to Portland to be homeless… something over 80% of homeless in portland last had a Portland metro area address…
that old trope gets paraded out at every city hall from here to Jersey… please do come up wiht a new one, you are getting boring…
Blabby… who said I have a problem with businesses? I like businesses… I Dont like business alliances that think they have an answer and then dont bother to look in to whether the answer is correct or not…
also, you should check out how non profits are funded… not all of them are funded by the city.
@ Patrick: Do you not think (around) 20% is significant? I consider that to be a alarming percentage. Think how that adds up in only a short period of time.
The business thinks the answer to clearing the sidewalks is to clear the sidewalks. Seems like the most direct and “correct” answer to me.
You are correct that most non-profits are not funded by the city. They are funded through donations, from people who work for businesses or the businesses themselves.
A ) the large percentage of the “20%” is not from some far off foreign land… its from from as far away as Seattle and Salem…
B) Blabby, you seem really not to get that I have no problems with businesses… so I will say it again.. I have no problem with businesses… its when they start thinking that they are the only reason a society exists that is the problem.
Can we at least discriminate against panhandlers with clothes adorned with Anarchy symbols or safety pins and those with bully type dogs (I’ll give the lady with the large black lab and chihuaha a pass).
Although the bill passed in the House of Representatives with only 2 no votes, Rep. Dembrow’s and Rep. Gelser’s, more than one State Representative later said they did not realize the impact of the bill when the voted on it and would vote no today. Bravo to the people who testified and lobbied against this bill. This is a victory for human rights.
It is not clear to me from this article that this bill is actually dead. Can you share some links or something that prove that? Some people were planning on going to Salem Friday to testify. It would be really helpful to know for sure.
Thanks.
If I were a member of the PBA I’d want to know why the alliance is wasting my membership on ineffective lobbying efforts month in, month out. Seriously; When was the last time they came up with a smart legislative strategy? When was the last time they actually advanced the cause of their membership? Did they advance this bill, knowing that it would get defeated in committee? If so, who is drafting their policy agenda? From a simple “is the group being effective?” point of view, this news is just a sign that somebody needs replacing.
I am curious as to how much this ordinance actually did to solve any of these issues
I am curious as to wear you got your slick ass shades my brotherfromanothermother^