In the end, Oregon lawmakers did grapple with the biggest questions before them this year. All it took was six months of grinding work weeks.

The 2025 legislative session ended Friday evening at 11:15 p.m. after a marathon day packed with more drama and uncertainty than any session in recent memory.

With the final gavels, lawmakers bid farewell to a session that included some notable accomplishments – and one dizzying failure.

They found some money to address the growing threat of wildfire, though not the robust funding many hoped for. And they made contentious, long-sought changes for how the state interacts with mental illness.

But after waiting until the very end of session to roll out a massive road funding plan, Democrats suffered a stinging defeat.

Scrambling to sell major new taxes to skeptical lawmakers in just a few weeks, legislative leaders came up short in the session’s final days. That leaves major questions about how to pay for the state’s crumbling roads to another day.

“We came close, but as we all know democracy is messy,” House Speaker Julie Fahey, D-Eugene, said shortly before adjournment. “Sometimes the timing doesn’t line up with the urgency of the need.”

Sen. Bruce Starr, R-Dundee, said he was not happy with how the session ended. Starr, who was involved in transportation talks throughout much of the session, said the parties must come together. “We are where we are. There’s work left to do.”

Starr said he was committed to a collaborative and bipartisan process. “A partisan solution is no solution at all.”

The bill’s failure was an exclamation point in a session sometimes criticized as rudderless and lacking leadership by lawmakers and lobbyists alike. But it wasn’t the only notable issue to languish until the session’s final days.

Lawmakers were still working out answers to a striking number of high-profile questions down to the last minute.

There were also other failures: a promise to hold state agencies more accountable didn’t gain enough traction and an effort to rein in the number of bills that lawmakers can introduce stalled. A bill to ban cellphones in schools statewide also died.

Despite its hiccups, the session played out with little of the drama that has typified the Capitol in many recent years. Republicans occasionally used delayed tactics to make a point, but never walked away.

Here’s a look at what lawmakers were up to for the past six months.

Transportation

Perhaps the most important bill lawmakers considered this year also brought the most drama.

Roadways in the state are languishing without enough money to pay for upkeep, major highway projects sit unfinished, and the gas taxes that constitute a major source of road money go less far than they used to.

All of that was well known when a bipartisan group of lawmakers toured the state in 2024 to hear Oregonians’ wish lists for road funding. Yet in a move that bewildered members of both parties, top Democrats didn’t introduce their road-funding bill, House Bill 2025, until June 9, less than three weeks before mandatory adjournment.

The lack of adequate time to massage the bill proved fatal.

Republicans who had been engaged early in the session swiftly turned against the proposal. And when Democratic holdouts emerged, leaders were forced to rejigger HB 2025 again and again – jettisoning one lawmaker from a crucial committee when he wouldn’t sign on.

When it finally became clear the bill could not clear one or both chambers, Democrats were forced to scramble.

A last-minute attempt to pass a funding package that would have raised the existing gas tax by 3 cents dominated the session’s final day. Gov. Tina Kotek, absent from the transportation debate for much of session, warned lawmakers that she planned to layoff hundreds of transportation workers without new money.

But after hours of haggling in closed-door meetings the proposal fizzled.

The collapse after more than a year of work leaves big questions about how the state will fund road priorities for another session.

Wildfire funding

With wildfires already burning across the state, figuring out how to pay to fight them and prevent them was arguably one of the most pressing to-dos for lawmakers this legislative session.

In December, lawmakers were forced to hold a special session to find money to pay $218 million in fire costs from 2024.

“Next year, we’re probably going to need some additional help for the fire season that’s coming up,” state Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Athena, said at the time. “If we don’t pay our bills now why would anyone want to come and help us and be part of what we need next year?”

Lawmakers evoked images of smoky skies and kids stuck inside during recess as they approved a measure earlier this week they hope will help the state prevent future wildfires.

The measure, House Bill 3940, would tax oral nicotine products and tap the interest on Oregon’s rainy day savings account and put the money toward wildfire mitigation. Most lawmakers agreed the bill wasn’t enough.

“This isn’t going to fix everything, but it gets us part of the way there through some very simple, reliable streams of revenue,” said Sen. Anthony Broadman, D-Bend, adding, “Wildfire is a statewide threat to our health, to our economy, to our way of life.”

Although the measure is not expected to raise as much money as the state will likely need, supporters noted it’s the first time the state will have a permanent source of funding specifically for wildfire mitigation and prevention efforts.

Starting in January 2026, there would be a 65-cent tax on oral nicotine packages, such as ZYN pouches. The tax would be higher on packages with more than 20 pouches. The combined $43 million or so would come from the nicotine tax and by redirecting a portion of that interest generated from the state’s rainy day fund.

Sen. Fred Girod, R-Lyons, whose home burned down during the 2020 wildfires that ravaged the state, said he would support the bill but believed a lot more could have been done. For example, Girod said, the state could use part of the money raised from lottery ticket sales.

“I think everyone here knows I really want to increase the amount of spending we have available for us for fire suppression,” Girod said. “We set a base level for about $300 million and this bill doesn’t come close. It’s a small step.”

Back in May, Kotek floated the idea of diverting a slice of the personal income tax kicker to fund wildfires. Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, took that issue a bit further, noting the kicker could be diverted only from higher-income Oregonians. Those ideas went nowhere.

Public defense

This legislative session, as state lawmakers worked to put a bandage on the hemorrhaging public defense crisis, the problems deepened.

For several years now, Oregon has been violating people’s constitutional rights to counsel. But recently, the number of people without counsel reached an all-time high.

Legislators from both parties feel optimistic their recent actions will help stem the crisis.

There were two big undertakings this session when it came to public defense; passing a $707 million budget that represents a 14.8% budget increase from the previous biennium. That bill also funds a total of 180 positions. The money will help realize a plan put in place in June by the interim director of the Oregon Public Defense Commission. It will allow some lawmakers to take on more cases and earn more money for doing so.

The budget bill, House Bill 5031, also carves out more than $2 million to pay attorneys in the counties facing the largest crisis — Coos, Douglas, Jackson, Marion, Multnomah and Washington — to take on more cases. Money for training and recruiting at certain law schools and to allow some law students to start taking on misdemeanor cases is also included.

The other significant measure, House Bill 2614, will slightly reorganize the structure of the public defense commission. The commission was recently moved from the judicial branch to the executive. The measure allows the governor to appoint the executive director in consultation with the commission and allow the governor to remove the commissioner for cause during their term.

Lawmakers want the Oregon Public Defense Commission to report back to state lawmakers in 2026 on their progress implementing the new plans. They left the door open to spend millions more on addressing the issue.

Housing

Since Oregon’s housing crisis worsened in the COVID-19 pandemic’s wake, state lawmakers have passed a number of bills with billions of dollars toward housing and homelessness. Still, housing remains a top problem statewide, with rising homelessness, thousands facing eviction and stagnant housing production.

This year, Kotek requested more money to stave off the homelessness crisis and build housing faster, but a lower-than-expected revenue forecast made it harder for lawmakers to fulfill her vision.

Lawmakers passed a budget bill that allocates more than $2.6 billion for the state Housing and Community Services Department. That’s a more than $1 billion cut compared to the current budget.

While the bill continues to funnel nearly $205 million toward homeless shelters throughout the state, lawmakers scaled back funding for eviction prevention — like rental assistance and legal aid — cutting more than $100 million from such programs. Advocates fear that will leave many Oregonians struggling with the high cost of living without a way to stay off the streets.

One of the governor’s priority housing bills this session was to make it easier to build more duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, cottage clusters and townhomes built throughout the state. One of her priority bills, House Bill 2138, passed both chambers and should make it easier to build more dense housing or what’s known as “middle housing.”

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of lawmakers passed a bill that aims to cut red tape to speed up housing production at a time when local governments are issuing fewer and fewer housing permits. Senate Bill 974 seeks to hasten the building timeline for single-family detached homes and middle housing developments inside the urban growth boundary.

To speed up the home building process on raw land from more than two years to less than one, the bill cuts regulations in the review process for home design, planning and engineering. Kotek has signed the bill into law.

And while a growing number of elderly Oregonians face homelessness, lawmakers passed a bill that aims to speed up housing development for older adults and people with disabilities.

House Bill 3589, which passed through both chambers on a nearly unanimous vote, creates a state program that aims to allocate $24 million toward building these homes, including studio and one-bedroom units. The funds would come from the State Senior Property Tax Deferral Fund, a program that allows seniors to defer paying their property taxes until someone sells a property or moves out.

Lawmakers also passed a bill with $3 million that would go toward upgrading homes with ramps, grab bars, or other improvements to make homes more accessible for seniors and people with disabilities.

Rep. Pam Marsh, who is the chair of the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness, says the bills are needed to support seniors who now make up about one-fifth of the state’s unhoused population.

“This is a quiet crisis that’s growing fast,” Marsh, D-Ashland, the bill’s sponsor, said in a statement. “We have more older adults on fixed incomes, more people aging without family nearby, and too few housing options that truly meet their needs.”

Guns

Oregon continues to outpace other West Coast states on a grim metric: fatal shootings. The rate of gun deaths statewide in 2023 was 7% higher than the national average, 22% higher than Washington and 74% higher than California.

While Democrats traded away one proposal to bolster firearm regulations statewide, one major gun bill crossed the finish line.

Lawmakers passed Senate Bill 243, which bans rapid-fire devices, such as bump stocks, that essentially turn semi-automatic weapons into machine guns.

The bill also gives local governments — cities, counties, school districts — new authority to pass policies prohibiting people from carrying guns into buildings where public meetings occur, even if they have a concealed handgun license.

And it sets the implementation date for Measure 114. The law, which voters passed in 2022, bans the purchase of magazines with more than 10 rounds of ammunition. It also requires Oregonians to obtain a permit and pass a criminal background check before buying a gun. The bill sparked a heated gun control debate in both chambers.

“Gun violence harms our communities daily, and that is not a status quo we accept,” Rep. Jason Kropf, D-Bend, said in a statement.

At the same time, Democrats appear to have dropped House Bill 3076, which sought to fill gaps in firearm regulations by creating a state licensing program for gun dealers within the Oregon Department of Justice. Kropf declined to explain why the bill died, but said he planned to bring it back in the future.

Mental health

For years, debates have raged in the Capitol over whether Oregon makes it too difficult to force mental health treatment on people with severe mental illness.

Mental health experts, law enforcement groups and others have urged lawmakers to clarify state statutes to make it easier for judges to send patients into forced care, a step known as civil commitment. People with mental illness and their advocates have fought such changes.

Lawmakers acted this year. In a sweeping omnibus bill, House Bill 2005, the Legislature approved changes that lowered the state’s standard for forcing people into treatment.

But the bill did far more. As the state faces federal contempt findings over its inability to accept criminal defendants with mental illness into the Oregon State Hospital, HB 2005 set limits for how long defendants could be held for treatment before release.

Paired with $65 million approved by lawmakers for residential treatment centers, the bill also reduces cities’ ability to block such facilities because of zoning laws.

Human services

The governor threw her weight behind a controversial bill that would have allowed the state to send children in foster care to facilities in other states and changed the definitions around restraints and seclusions. The bill failed.

The measure, House Bill 3835, was politically divisive regardless of political affiliations. While the Democratic governor supported the bill, both Democratic chairs in the House and Senate Human Services committees opposed the measure. Proponents were hoping the measure would help create more desperately-needed housing for children with complex behavioral health needs. Opponents worried it would result in more kids being harmed.

The governor ended up vetoing another bill related to child welfare issues. The bill would have, in part, ensured siblings placed in different foster care placements were able to visit one another, barring a court order prohibiting them from doing so. In her veto, Kotek said she was vetoing the measure, in part, because she felt unclear why “this level of prescriptiveness” was needed in statute, according to her veto memo. She also said it added to the regulatory framework that exemplified fragmented policymaking. Her priority bill, which died, she noted in the veto memo, would have been a more systemic approach.

In a rare legislative move, the state Senate voted to override the governor’s veto and re-passed the bill. But ultimately, it didn’t make it through the House to become law.

Education

Most legislative sessions are partly dominated by a heated debate surrounding how much money public K-12 schools should receive. This one was no different.

But the tone was arguably more pressing, after a global pandemic and unprecedented teacher strike in Portland, coupled with low test scores and graduation rates and high chronic absenteeism that exceeds the national average.

Kotek, along with House and Senate leadership, successfully pushed for Senate Bill 141 this session, which aims to create a new accountability system for Oregon schools.

But for the third year, advocates couldn’t convince state lawmakers to pump more funding into aid that helps students pay for housing, food, textbooks and other college-related costs. The Student Basic Needs and Workforce Stabilization Act — HB 3182 and HB 3183 — asked lawmakers to set aside $18.5 million to support students. Preschool for All came under fire and a push to eliminate Oregon’s special education funding cap stalled in committee.

Labor issues

Public-sector labor unions allied with majority Democrats came to the session in January with a slate of ambitious requests.

None got more attention than Senate Bill 916. The bill makes Oregon the first state in the nation to grant unemployment benefits to striking workers in both the public and private sectors.

Three other states with similar policies, New York, New Jersey and Washington, do not recognize a right to strike for public-sector employees.

SB 916 was loathed by school districts, local governments and business interests. And it wasn’t a slam dunk with Democrats – after failing initially on the Senate floor, it was scaled back to only provide 10 weeks of benefits.

Lawmakers also passed a bill that aims to combat wage theft among construction workers. Senate Bill 426 allows workers to sue property owners and contractors for unpaid work — not just the subcontractor who pays them directly.

Proponents say the bill will curb a rising number of complaints from workers — many of whom are immigrants — claiming they were stiffed out of their pay. Critics say it will slow construction and increase the cost of business, worsening Oregon’s housing crisis.

Other union ideas didn’t materialize.

Senate Bill 1138 would have created a board to set standards around pay and staffing levels for caretakers who look after developmentally disabled people and the elderly. After intense pushback on the measure, it died.

Melissa Unger, executive director of SEIU Local 503, said the issue will still need to be addressed.

“At the end of the day, whatever is happening in this country, people are getting older,” said Unger, who leads the state’s largest unions. She added that conversations over how to lift standards for caregivers so that “employees have what they need to live vibrant lives and employers have what they need to succeed” will be ongoing.

Another contentious proposal to create a board to set workforce standards for farmworkers also failed to move. As passed by lawmakers, the bill instead mandated a study on the issue.

Budget

After years of relative plenty, lawmakers’ spending ambitions took a hit in May. In his final forecast before the Legislature set a two-year budget, Oregon Chief Economist Carl Riccadonna predicted the state would have half a billion dollars less than formerly expected.

The forecast wasn’t bad enough to warrant major cuts to services. But it immediately doomed some bills, and forced dramatic reductions in others. Kotek came away with less money for her priority issues of housing and behavioral health than hoped, though lawmakers still agreed to fund K-12 education at record levels.

While lawmakers passed a balanced budget as required, few expect that to be the end of the story. Major cuts to federal funding that could emerge in the budget bill being pushed by congressional Republicans could force lawmakers back into session to figure out how to grapple with less money than expected.

Dead bills

While they passed hundreds of bills into law, legislators left many more proposals on the table this session. Some notable examples:

• TIME CHANGES: Lawmakers declined to take a step toward eliminating twice-yearly time changes that have been a perennial topic of interest in Salem in recent years. This year’s proposal, Senate Bill 1038, would have allowed Oregon to remain on either standard or daylight saving time year-round – if California and Washington agreed to one of those options first. It passed the Senate but died in the House.
• JOURNALISM: A bill that would have required big tech companies to compensate Oregon newsrooms for the local journalism on their platforms did not pass the Senate. The bill’s chief proponent, Sen. Khanh Pham, D-Portland, said she plans to bring it back in future sessions.
• NATIONAL GUARD: A measure to clarify the limits on when and how the Oregon National Guard units can be deployed for service passed the House but failed in the Senate. House Bill 3954 would have ensured that if mobilization, for example, compromised the guard’s ability to respond to a disaster in Oregon, such as wildfires or earthquakes, that deployment would not be permitted.
• CELL PHONE BAN: A bill that would have barred students throughout Oregon from using cell phones during school hours failed to advance, after running into objections in the Senate. Kotek has said she will consider an executive order on the matter.
• BILL LIMITS: Seeking to rein in the record number of bills flooding the Legislature, lawmakers introduced legislation limiting how many bills they can introduce each session. The bill died in a legislative committee.

Other bills that passed

• UTILITY RATES: Curbing fast-rising utility rates was a key focus of this year’s session. Lawmakers passed House Bill 3179, requiring more transparency from utilities over rate increases and ensuring price increases can’t occur in the winter. They also passed a bill, House Bill 3546, that looks to ensure residential ratepayers don’t see price increases because of power use by massive data centers used by tech companies.
• INHALANT ABUSE: Lawmakers passed two bills that aim to curb the abuse of commercially available inhalants. One prohibits the sale of aerosol dusters to people under the age of 18 and introduces harsher warning labels and purchase limits. Another would require businesses that sell nitrous oxide canisters to verify that a buyer is over the age of 18. Both have been signed by Kotek.
• STADIUM MONEY: Lawmakers passed a bill to help Portland in its push for a Major League Baseball team. Senate Bill 110 authorizes $800 million in bonds to help fund the construction of a professional baseball stadium on Portland’s South Waterfront. The MLB has not granted Portland a team and the potential bonds would be paid off by income tax revenue generated by the baseball club’s roster and staff. Kotek signed the bill.
• CORPORATE MEDICINE: Senate Bill 951 looked to close loopholes in Oregon law that proponents say allows corporations to assume operating control of medical practices.
• CREMATORY TEMPERATURES: In a bill that attracted widespread support, the Legislature limited crematory temperatures at 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit, down from a mandatory 1,800 degrees. The bill is designed to save energy, and brings Oregon in line with other states.
• MARRIAGE AGE: Oregon will no longer allow minors to marry, even with a parent or guardian’s permission. Senate Bill 548 changes the legal marriage age from 17 to 18, in line with a step other states are taking.
• SENATE: Lawmakers passed a bill that would require Oregon’s governor to appoint a temporary replacement if a U.S. Senator retires or dies. Kotek signed it.

Natalie Pate contributed to this report.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/27/oregon-legislature-ends-2025-session/