JOHN DAY – Pundits have called it the “Sunday school” of legislatures – not a bad description, concedes state Sen. Ted Ferrioli.

The John Day Republican recalls a 2011 Legislature that was largely devoid of the acrimonious turf wars of past sessions, a factor largely due to the split between the parties in both houses.

“It changes the tenor in the building,” Ferrioli said in a recent interview.

He said that with a 30-30 split in the House and 14-16 in the Senate, just one vote could change the outcome on close issues. As a result, the more extreme partisan proposals “got stranded” in committee and didn’t get to a vote at all, he said.

On the positive side, he said legislators accomplished needed education reform, approved some key health care measures and managed to balance the budget.

He said the Legislature started this session facing a $3.5 billion budget gap, against a backdrop of tremendous financial volatility and predictions of severe cuts in state government. He said legislators did the right thing in moving first to forge agreement on funding for K-12 education – at $5.6 billion – and not allowing it to become “a football” for negotiation throughout the session.

Legislators also implemented what Ferrioli called a form of flat budgeting – using the last legislatively approved figures as a starting point, rather than building in projected cost increases.

Ferrioli said the education reforms should boost choice and competitiveness in the school system. Bills passed in the session will let students enroll in the school district of their choice, expand options for virtual charter schools, and allow community colleges and universities to create charter schools.

Another major change for education is shifting the duties of Superintendent of Public Instruction into the governor’s office, which will tap an expert board to examine spending options for education, from kindergarten to graduate school. The goal, he said, is to make decisions that truly improve education.

“We’re not sending any more kids to college now than we did in the 1970s,” Ferrioli said. “The same number of kids fail to matriculate … We are doing the same things, and producing the same result.” 

That realization called for a change in thinking about education, he said.

Ferrioli gave mixed marks to new health care measures. He saw a positive in the creation of a health care exchange, which will be sort of a one-stop resource for individuals and employers to compare all of the health services offered by the various plans in the state.

He believes the result will be better informed consumers.

He’s skeptical, however, of the benefits anticipated from what he called a “very complicated” restructuring of the Oregon Health Plan.

“It raises a lot of questions, and I’m not satisfied they were answered in this session,” he said.

The reforms would expand health services to more residents, including kids not covered by any program, he said, and would enable the state to negotiate new waivers for Medicaid coverage. It also would create a system of health care “navigators” to and coordinated care organizations to improve patient care.

The funding calls for a provider tax to be used as a match for federal funding. Ferrioli said legislators exempted the certain types of hospitals – including the one in Grant County – from the new tax.

Ferrioli said the revamped OHA is supposed to produce nearly $300 million in savings over the next two years. “I don’t know of a single new program of state government that’s saved money in its first two years,” he said.

Ferrioli also said expanded health services and reforms should be accompanied by tort reform, and that didn’t happen.

Overall, Ferrioli said the Legislature didn’t do much about the state’s economic malaise.

“We didn’t do anything to create jobs,” he said. He added that while government’s role really isn’t to create jobs, it can create a regulatory climate and incentives to encourage job and business growth.

“We have a terrible tax structure, a terribly regulatory framework for business, and our land-use system is screwy,” he said.

He and fellow Republicans worked on several bills to improve that climate, but were unable to move them.

Examples include a Senate bill that would have increased the share of water Oregon draws from the Columbia River. Some 7 percent of the river’s water is removed, the bulk of it for use in Washington state. Oregon accounts for about 4 percent of the water removed, and that limits the agricultural potential on this side of the river.

“Washington state is miles ahead of Oregon in terms of developing eastside agriculture,” he said. The GOP estimated that SB190 would have led to creation of more than 16,000 jobs.

Also left behind were bills to increase timber harvests and to give more authority to regional governments over land use.

Ferrioli also pushed a bill to secure the privacy rights of concealed weapons permit holders, but Democratic opponents killed it.