Dear Friends,
This week, we had morning and afternoon sessions to vote on the remaining policy and budget bills.  We have a deadline of June 29^th because of the schedule we passed at the beginning of session under Senate Concurrent Resolution 1.  The "sine die" (the last day of the session) is approaching and not too soon.  On Wednesday evening the staff has the traditional "sine die" party which takes some humorist hits at the Legislators.  It's always important to be able to laugh at ourselves and keep some humor in this process.
Best, Gene

Compulsory School Attendance Bill Fails
On Tuesday, I led the efforts to defeat Senate Bill 392 which would have reduced the mandatory age to enter public school from 7 to 6 years old.  I opposed the bill because it does not allow the parents to have the final say.  When researching the bill, I was surprised to find out that Washington - a state that we often compare ourselves to - has a mandatory attendance age of 8 years old.  I was joined by other Republicans and Democrats to defeat the bill by 22 "yes" votes to 33 "no" votes.  After the failure, a procedural motion sent the bill back to the Elections, Ethics and Rules Committee for possible further work.  However, based on the lack of support on the first vote, I doubt we will see this bill again.

Let's Pull Together Event
Josie and I enjoyed helping with the SOLV "Let's Pull Together" noxious weed eradication day last Saturday at the Redmond Valley View park with Redmond IB school students and City Council President George Endicott, Redmond Parks Director Jeff Powers and Dan Sherwin, Deschutes County Weed Manager. After lunch at Eagle Crest with the students and volunteers from Eagle Crest, Josie and I joined the large celebration at Drake Park.  Cheryl Howard the event coordinator did a great job organizing the Annual event with groups participating at over 10 locations throughout Central Oregon.

Budget Bills Pass the House
You know the Session is winding down when the House begins voting on budget bills.  This week we passed the budgets for the Department of Corrections, Public Defense Services Commission, the Real Estate Agency, the Teachers Standards and Practices Commission, and the Oregon Youth Authority.  Tuesday was K-12 budget day.  We passed House Bill 5020, the State School Fund Budget and House Bill 5021, the School Improvement Fund budget. These two budgets give K-12 over $6 billion.  House Bill 5019 is the Department of Education Budget and it provides OED almost $2 billion.  On Wednesday, the big budget was the Connect Oregon II bill.  The project is an extension of last session's ConnectOregon which funded important Deschutes County projects like the Redmond Airport upgrade and money for the mass transportation in Bend.   ConnectOregon II will use up to $100 million to pay for bond-related costs for transportation projects funded from Multimodal Transportation Fund.  I am disappointed that each transportation regions will receive a maximum of $10 million compared to last session's package which provided $15 million per region.

Deschutes County Bill Update
On Wednesday, the House re-passed House Bill 3537 after the Senate made a small but important change.  The bill exempts Habitat for Humanity ReStores from paying property taxes.  The Senate amendment changes the effective date on the bill to July 1, 2007 in order to grant the exemption this tax year. The bill passed unanimously and now goes to the Governor for his signature.
The La Pine funding bill, to allow Oregon's newest city to borrow against its anticipated  State Revenue was finally passed out of the Senate Committee on Finance and Revenue.  It will be voted on in the Senate next week.