Final Report

1993 lEOISLATIVE SESSION Oregon Coastal Zone Management Association Oregon State Sea Grant College Program Legislative Fellowship FINAL REPORT by Sean Brennan, Legislative Fellow October 1993 Salem, Oregon The Oregon State Legislative Fellowship was sponsored by the Oregon Sea Grant College Program and by the Oregon Coastal Zone Management Association, Inc. (OCZMA) TABLE OF CONTENTS Fellowship Background II. Committee Hearings and Oregon Coastal Notes 7 III. Preparation and Mechanics 8 IV. Recommendations 9 V. Issue Summary 10 VI. Excerpts from Oregon Coastal Notes 15 A. Shellfish programs 16 B. Fisheries 20 C. Coastal Caucus Meetings 27 D. Water Issues 32 E. Forest Issues 45 F. Miscellaneous 50 VII. Minutes and Proceedings of the Coastal Caucus 53 1993 Oregon Legislative Fellowship Final Report 1993 Oregon Legislative Fellowship — Final Report 4 Oregon Coastal Zone Management Association Oregon State Sea Grant College Program 1993 Legislative Fellowship FINAL REPORT Background The OCZMA/Sea Grant Legislative fellowship began in 1987 primarily to provide students from the Oregon State University Marine Resource Management Program (MRM) with a means with which to apply the academic knowledge gained in science or public policy to the real-world arena of legislative politics. The program followed on the heels of the established and successful Knauss National Sea Grant Fellowship program, which places Sea Grant students in policymaking capacities in the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government in Washington, D.C. As conceived, the OCZMA/Sea Grant fellowship would mirror this national program at the state government level, and in doing so, provide the Fellow with valuable educational and professional experience and OCZMA and Sea Grant with a liaison in the Oregon Legislative Assembly. In practice, the educational component of the Fellowship is inseparable from the role the Fellow assumes as a reliable source of information on a range of coastal issues for constituents both inside and outside the legislature. It is the attainment of the necessary expertise in coastal issues that presents the Fellow with his or her greatest challenge and greatest opportunity. The legislative session is often crisis-driven: fast-paced, fluid and responsive to shifts in public sentiment, work during session demands a self-reinforcing and often ad hoc approach to the Fellow's duties. At the same time, legislators, agencies, lobbyists and citizen activists can demonstrate a remarkable amount of foresight — or just simple perseverance — which requires the Fellow to have a familiarity with the basics of a long-standing issue or an acquaintance with someone with a long "institutional memory" in order to be able to keep up. The Fellow of necessity must cultivate his or her own "tactical" body of knowledge — what the issues of greatest currency are and what events drive them, the people and groups who seek one or another course of action, the agencies, institutions or other mechanisms capable of implementing those actions. Each session brings its own set of "players" and issues of concern to the table; quite often the Fellow's single biggest task is to wade into the midst of them and try to quickly make sense of what he or she sees and hears. But almost as often the issues are receiving an airing for their second, third or fourth time and many of the advocates in- volved have met each other before and sparred over many of the same questions. In these instances the Fellow has places to turn to for guidance and help. The first of these, and the one from which the Fellow will receive the majority of his or her day-to-day direction, background and — occasionally — commiseration is the Oregon Coastal Zone Management Associa- tion. Both Executive Director Jay Rasmussen and Executive Assistant Georgia York function as the fellowship program's unofficial historians — keepers of the institutional flame, as it were — and can be counted on to provide timely and valuable information drawn from their close and constant contact with coastal residents and their concerns. On more than one occasion this past session, the debate over the mass-marking of hatchery salmon serves as a notable example, I told Jay Rasmussen about a hot and somewhat controversial new idea making the rounds in the House Natural Resources Committee only to hear that not only had the issue been discussed several years earlier at OCZMA prompting but that I could expect to receive by mail later that week copies of records for the meetings held and of the conclusions reached. The OCZMA also has the principle hand in selecting and placing the Fellow with his or her second major support system: the host legislator. The host legislator provides the Fellow with not only the physical space from which he or she operates, but also something of a home-away-from-home and, not inconsiderably, a sort of instantaneous legislative legitimacy without which the Fellow's duties become difficult, if not impossible, to carry out effectively. Previous Fellows had operated out of the offices of Rep. Paul Hanneman, Sen. John Brenneman and then-majority leader Sen. Bill Bradbury. This session Jay Rasmussen placed me with Sen. Joan Dukes (D-Svensen) who, along with staff members Teresa Bakke and Mary Gautreaux, made me feel instantly welcome and very much a part of the office staff. Sen. Dukes, who as chair of the Senate Transportation Committee and member of four other standing committees had one of the busiest schedules of any legislator this past session, allowed me the freedom necessary to attend to the concerns of other legislators and of the Coastal Caucus while re- maining completely open and accessible — almost upon demand — in those instances where I sought her knowledge, considerable expertise or counsel. The importance of this balance — and of the working relation- ship between the Fellow, his or her host legislator and the legislator's staff — cannot be overestimated. With several competing priorities calling for the Fellow's attention at any given moment, the ability of the Fellow to rely on the aid and camaraderie of the host legislator and the staff, and their ability in turn to rely on the theirFellow, can mean the difference between keeping atop the crest of breaking issues or sinking without a trace in 1993 Oregon Legislative Fellowship — Final Report This session was unique in several ways. It holds the record as the longest session in Oregon history and was, in the eyes of many observers, the most bitter and acrimonious as well. Control over the legislature was split, as in the 1991 session, between the House, which had a Republican majority, and the Senate, which held a razor-thin Democratic majority. This partisan split had numerous repercussions all during the session and played a major role in determining how long legislators stayed in Salem this year. The Senate's bare majority, in turn, had its own consequences. Organizing and leading the Democratic Caucus proved difficult right from the beginning of session when maverick Sen. Mae Yih (D-Albany) refused for a week to supply the crucial 16th vote necessary to elect the majority leadership before settling for membership on the Joint Ways and Means Com- mittee and election to the post of Senate President Pro Tem. Sen. Yih would later join minority Republicans on several controversial votes, including a last critical vote to determine the composition of the interim Emergency Board, the appointment of which signaled adjournment sine die. The most visible initial consequence of the bicameral split between parties was the dissolution, follow- ing the Senate rejection of a K-12 education budget passed by the House, of the Joint Ways and Means Commit- tee. A long-standing legislative tradition, the joint committee ensured that both chambers came to early agree- ments about appropriations and priorities in the state budget. The necessity for two sets of hearings for agency budgets, requests for lottery proceeds and other fiscal matters probably contributed a significant amount of time to the session and to the infighting that characterized budget decisions in progressively leaner, post- Measure 5 times. The split also resulted in some fast-paced, last-minute parliamentary maneuvering between chambers as each party jockeyed to put its imprimatur on the Oregon Health Plan, the disbursement of lottery funds, the components of the sales tax measure, and other less visible issues. Removed as I was from the worst of the partisan fray, I thought little of its consequences until the very end of session, when several issues of critical interest to coastal legislators and their constituents suddenly seemed to hang in a very precarious balance. Although cheered by the outcome on most of these measures, many of the coastal legislators, agency members, lobbyists and constituents with whom I kept company spent several long hours in hearing rooms and halls alternately cooling their heels and biting their nails. The contrast between the battles that raged on the floor of the House and the Senate and the collegial, non-political nature of most proceedings of the Coastal Caucus could not be starker. The Caucus — this session made up of two Senate Democrats, Sens. Bill Bradbury and Joan Dukes; one Senate Republican, Sen. Stan Bunn; four House Democrats, Reps. Tony Federici, Tim Josi, Hedy Rijken and Jim Whitty; and one House Republican, Rep. Veral Tarno — invariably showed exemplary cooperation and recognition of its common interest. With no serious dissent, the Caucus united around such issues as the U.S. Commerce Department's overturning the Pacific Fishery Management Council's decisions on coastal coho and Pacific whiting allocations; on the need to begin an offshore kelp leasing program; on the need to preserve the state's shellfish testing program; and on a program to begin habitat recovery for salmon originating on the south coast and in the Grande Ronde area.

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