Oregon Senate Republicans to resume floor work after walkout protest

(The Center Square) – Oregon Senate Republicans will be returning to work in Salem after staging a short-lived walkout protest over the state of public schools and vaccinations.

The news came straight from Oregon Senate Minority Leader Fred Girod, R-Lyons, who said on Tuesday that the walkout accomplished its primary purpose of highlighting the party’s demands to reopen Oregon schools and speed up the vaccine rollout for seniors.

“We plan on being there,” Girod told Oregon Public Broadcasting on Tuesday. “Let’s just leave it at that.”

Girod dismissed Democratic concerns that the walkout damaged any pending bills early into the six month long session, which ends in June. Senate Republicans did upend a Senate floor vote on a bill allowing local governments to ban guns in public buildings, however.

The walkout, which began last Wednesday when Senate Republicans failed to show up for a regularly scheduled floor session, marked the third year in a row that Senate Republicans delayed legislative business.

A resolution introduced in the Senate this session would aim to curb future walkouts from jamming up the legislative process by allowing floor business to be conducted with a simple majority of state lawmakers rather than the two-thirds currently required. Alternatively, Girod has reintroduced a long-standing Republican-backed resolution to abolish legislative sessions in even-numbered years. Neither resolutions have been scheduled for hearings.

The Oregon Legislature is conducting the bulk of its work this session online from caucus meetings to committee hearings as it has for the past year since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In-person floor sessions are reserved for such critical business as introducing and voting on bills.

Last fall, Gov. Kate Brown delegated the choice to reopen school districts to local school boards after downgrading the state’s health metrics to a set of advisory guidelines.

The Oregon Health reported last Friday that about one out of two seniors ages 80 and up in Oregon have received their first shot of a COVID-19 vaccine.

According to the CDC’s COVID Tracker, about 8.8% of the state received both shots of a COVID-19 vaccine while 15.6% have received their first as of Friday.

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