76th Oregon Legislative Session Begins Today

Capitol of OregonIt’s January 10th and today marks the beginning of the 76th Oregon Legislative Session. This is a great time to brush up on our civics lessons either by tuning into the streaming audio of the session (available from the Legislature Home Page) or by taking a peek at the citizen resources posted on the Legislature’s web site.

Some of my favorite resources are How an Idea Becomes a Law (pdf) and the Citizen’s Guide to the Oregon Legislative Process.

This session will be interesting.  It is the first session after Oregon voters approved Measure 71, to require the legislature to meet annually.  The demographics of the legislature have also changed slightly. The Oregon State House of Representatives now has 30 Democrats and 30 Republican representatives a majority loss for the Democrats. The landscape of the Senate
also changed. It now has 16 Democrats and 14 Republicans serving legislative terms. We’ll soon see what this session has in store for Oregon.

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