Oregon's Legislative session takes shape

Oregon Senate photo by Jimmy Everson (CC 2.0)

Oregon's 82nd legislative assembly kicks off January 17th. Legislators elected to serve in the 2023-24 legislative session will be sworn in this January 9th in inaugural ceremonies at the State Capitol.

In the last few weeks, the house and senate leaders have announced the key committee assignments which provide some insight into priorities for the 2023 legislative session.

In the House, Speaker Dan Rayfield made several substantive changes to the previous committee structure. reducing the number of committees from 20 to 14, combining several policy areas, including housing and homelessness; behavioral health and health care; early childhood and human services; emergency management, general government and veterans into single committees and creating new committees for gambling regulation.

In the Senate, President Rob Wagner made fewer changes to the committee structures, but there have been significant changes in who is chairing each committee that could have a significant influence on what policies move forward and in what format. One noteworthy decision is that Senator Steiner-Hayward, a co-chair of Ways and Means, will sit on the Rules committee, which becomes the de facto policy committee at the end of the legislative session.