After many years in the Legislature I can say this is without a doubt one of the most challenging sessions I have ever been a part of.  A number of difficult decisions face communities across Oregon and certainly the most difficult of these issues are related to our state's financial health.

Right now, the Legislature is working on balancing our next 2-year budget. Balancing the budget is just that, a balancing act to ensure important services are funded while keeping in mind the realities of limited resources we have to work with. Having served many terms as a state legislator, I know that even while we deal with an extremely difficult estimated revenue shortfall of almost $4.4 billion, we must ensure our families are secure by supporting the following services Oregonians rely on:
           
Education
As a life-long educator, I know the importance of a quality education. As co-chair of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Education, I worked tirelessly alongside my colleagues to acquire additional federal stimulus funding to keep our children in school for the remainder of this year.  Thankfully, our hard work has paid off and most Oregon students will be attending school fulltime for the rest of this school year.  

For the future, I am looking at our education budget line-by-line for areas in which our dollars can be better spent and our children better served. Be assured that early childhood programs, such as Head Start, have and will remain a priority of mine - I have seen the long term benefits that come from early education and will be working to make sure it remains a part of our future budgets.

Public Safety
Protecting public safety is a key function of government. As the author of several pieces of traffic safety legislation, including Oregon's drunk driving law, I am now working to make sure our roads stay safe by keeping the needed number of state troopers on our highways.

Health Care
This issue has been discussed at length in Washington D.C., in Salem, and around dinner tables across Oregon. It is undeniable that with skyrocketing health care premiums and thousands of Oregonians without benefits, we must do something to address the health care crisis. During this session I have heard many emotional stories about the human cost of families struggling to keep their loved ones insured. These stories reaffirm the need to both expand access to health care and control escalating costs so Oregon families can spend less time worrying about health care coverage and more time on the things that matter.

HB 2009, a key piece of legislation from the Oregon Health Fund Board, is a bill that many lawmakers have spent countless hours crafting. Our hope is that with the right approach, we can provide better health services to people across the state, especially the over 100,000 Oregon children without health insurance. Oregon has a history of providing care to its most vulnerable citizens. In that vein, I am working with my colleagues in Salem to make sure that we can continue to provide and improve upon our state's health care coverage. HB 2009 is still being negotiated, so stay tuned to these e-mails for more information as the legislation develops.

*Note: You can track these and any other important bills by clicking here.*

On Tuesday, April 14, I was honored to commemorate Paul Young, a constituent of mine from Happy Valley. Mr. Young is the author of The Shack, a novel that has taken the world by storm, selling over 6.5 million copies in at least 12 languages and topping the best-selling novel list for over 46 weeks.

It was an honor to expresses the state's gratitude for Mr. Young's remarkable accomplishment with Senate Concurrent Resolution 7. We were also lucky enough to host a discussion of the book, where Mr. Young explained the significant impact The Shack has made on the lives of people from Happy Valley to every corner of the globe.