Welcome to the War Room!

The Oregon Citizens Lobby (OCL) is open for business in the War Room at the Oregon Capitol Building.  2015 marks the fourth year OCL has been active at the Capitol.  It will also be a particularly critical year; this year citizen input will be vital to rein in and restrain legislative overreach.

The first day of the 2015 legislative session was Monday, February 2nd.   On Thursday the 5th, OCL was occupying the War Room.  It was mostly a day to greet friends and get a feel for the new session.  Jeff Kropf, Former State Representative from House District 17, was the OCL Coordinator for the day.  The War Room is just a conference room in the capitol building that OCL reserves for lobbying efforts.  On the 5th we hosted about eighteen citizens, mostly from the Salem area with a few from the Portland and Eugene areas, and of course Corvallis.
 
District 23’s new Representative, Mike Nearman, dropped by to discuss some of the more controversial issues (HB 2177 – Motor Voter, SB 324 – Carbon Fuel Standards) and the likelihood of stopping the many new tax bills that will be submitted.  We also got a visit from Scott Jorgensen, Senator Doug Whitsett’s Chief of Staff, who wanted some sound bites to use on a radio program he was to be on later in the week, hoping to encourage listeners to get involved.
 
Our second War Room on Wednesday the 11th was a little more productive with members ready to testify at the Ways and Means Committee on HB 2177, with others testifying on HB 2626 on school-based health centers.  A few others dropped off letters to representatives’ offices.  Once again we had one or two legislators and professional lobbyists drop by to say hello and have a chat about issues.

From our vantage point on the 2nd floor we witnessed the ‘Health Care for All Oregon ‘rally’ on the Capitol steps.  It was organized by unions, of course, who bussed in around a hundred or so people mostly from Portland.  What were they ‘rallying’ for?  Free health care among other things; there were signs everywhere proclaiming everything the unions claim is a ‘human right’.  One person even had a sign saying “Sleep is a Human Right!”  No one was sure what she was demanding from that.

What is OCL?  It is a coalition of freedom-loving organizations around Oregon.  OCL’s mission is to empower Oregon citizens by monitoring the legislative process, advising citizens of what is happening and lobbying legislators on their behalf.  The capitol is filled with lobbyists being paid by special interests; OCL is the first to lobby on behalf of the citizens of Oregon.

How does OCL work?  First, volunteers analyze bills by grading the affect each one will have on the five core principles of OCL; Personal Choice and Responsibility, Free Markets, Fiscal Responsibility, Limited Government, and Local Control.  By focusing on these principles OCL is able to objectively grade bills based solely on the merits of the bill itself.  During the 2013 session, one of the legislators said that what they are always looking for is a good reason to vote ‘No’ on a bill.  As they put it, everyone in the building is trying to get them to vote Yes; they never hear the other side of the issues.  OCL’s grading system gives positive points for aspects supporting the core principles and negative points for those that do not.  Doing the math results in either a yes or a no vote recommendation and a number, displayed as thumbs up or thumbs down, representing the severity of the grade.  Ten thumbs up or down is pretty severe.

Analyzing bills is the most labor intensive thing we do at OCL.  With thousands of bills introduced each session, analyzing them all would be impossible.  But certain bills – such as tax bills, energy and environmental bills or bills that will change the state’s Constitution – get priority.  The critical bills are submitted to analyzers, and then reviewed by other analyzers when the first is finished.  Eventually, when the reviewers and analyzers are satisfied the analysis is printed out and distributed to committees and individual legislators.  Then, if the bill is amended, which they usually are, the process has to be gone through all over again.  
 
Bills are tracked through the legislative process, which is somewhat complicated but very strictly adhered to.  A bill cannot move from one house to the next without a vote, and OCL also tracks those votes.  Every legislator’s vote on bills OCL is tracking is recorded noting whether or not they voted as OCL had suggested.  The TrackTheirVote website is what OCL uses for the coordination of all of this and viewing the results.  Tracking the votes of our legislators reveals whether or not they are working for the citizens of Oregon or for special interests.
 
It takes about 45 minutes to drive from Corvallis to the capitol which makes it hard to be there when the War Room opens at 8:30.  Understandably we seldom see people from outside the Willamette Valley.  But people with access to a computer and the internet can be involved and active from home.  The Oregon Legislative Information System (OLIS) provides detailed information on what is happening every day.  It allows access to bills that have been introduced or amended and where they are in the legislative process.  About the only thing someone cannot do is testify at hearings through OLIS.  One can, however, watch and listen, and submit testimony through email, and after the hearing is over the audio will still be available.

OLIS is an incredible asset to the work OCL is doing.
 
OCL has training videos available on its website, and questions can be submitted when specific issues must be addressed.  If you’d like to speak to someone in person, join the Benton County Republican Women on March 23rd at King Tin Restaurant at 11:00am.  Jeff Kropf will be the guest speaker to give a first person account of what OCL is all about.

There was a time when we could trust our elected officials to simply manage our government.  Those days are gone.  We now have activists who intend to ‘fundamentally transform’ (to coin a phrase) our government.  They’ve decided they need to manage us!  If we are to maintain a constitutional republic every citizen needs to be involved.

We hope to see YOU at the War Room!<>