Capital Bureau

SALEM — Lawmakers advanced several key pieces of legislation out of the Legislature’s main budget committee Monday, one week before the constitutionally required end of the session.

They include an elections bill, a cost containment bill, and bonding packages.

Senate Bill 229, initially a technical elections bill, generated some controversy last week because an amended version of the bill would schedule a special election in January 2018 for legislation that gets referred to the ballot.

Oregonians can petition to refer certain non-emergency legislation to voters.

A newly-amended version of the bill advanced by legislators Monday, though, specifies that the special election date only applies to House Bill 2391, the so-called “provider tax,” passed to offset state Medicaid costs.

Under the new amendment, any other legislation passed this session that gets referred to the ballot would go to the November 2018 election.

A provision that would have a bipartisan legislative committee — with more Democrat members than Republican members — write ballot titles for legislative referrals remains in the bill. Critics have said that would be a more partisan process than having the attorney general write them, as current law holds.

After some debate in committee, lawmakers also approved to move forward Senate Bill 1067, this year’s much-discussed “cost containment” bill, which outlines several ways that the state hopes to save money.

The methods of curtailing costs in the bill vary, but include trimming the costs of public employee health care and centralizing the state’s debt collection practices.

Some legislators voted to advance the bill to the floor but indicated they may vote against the legislation itself. A feature of the bill, which would tie most hospital rates under public employee health plans to a percentage of Medicare rates, became a point of contention at the committee meeting Monday evening.

While the arrangement allows the state to draw down substantial federal funds, lawmakers worried that limiting payments could put an extra financial burden on hospitals that already agreed to fork over money to the state through the provider tax.

Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose, said the provision could present a political problem in the event that the provider tax does go to the ballot.

“If there is a referral, we’re going to need those hospitals to stand shoulder to shoulder with us in the referral,” Johnson said.

The committee’s co-chair, Sen. Richard Devlin, D-Tualatin, said he believed the provision should stay in the cost containment bill and that the issue could be revisited.

Under the bill, the state wouldn’t tie hospital rates to a percentage of Medicare rates for public employees until plan years starting July 1, 2019.

“…If our standard is going to be, cut somebody else but me, we’re never going to do much cost containment,” Devlin said.

Finally, the Joint Ways and Means Committee advanced key bonding bills to finance large projects.

Among the likely winners of coveted bonding money: the Elliott State Forest, for which legislators set aside about $100 million to decouple the land from its obligations to generate revenues for K-12 education.

While the Oregon Senate was scheduled to meet Tuesday morning, the House of Representatives is not expected to convene again until Wednesday. That’s the first day that the House could vote on the above bills.