Committees

Standing Committees

Joint Committee on Ways and Means, Vice-Chair.

This committee, sometimes called “the budget-writing committee” of the Legislature, is comprised of 9 members from the House of Representatives and 10 from the Senate. “The Joint Committee on Ways and Means, created under ORS 171.555, is the legislative entity charged with the responsibility of making recommendations to the Legislative Assembly with regard to its constitutional requirement to adopt a balanced budget.” –Oregon Blue Book

Joint Committee on Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Human Services

Joint Committee on Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Public Safety

During the Interim, I also serve on the Emergency Board, commonly known as E-Board.  This body is responsible for handling budget adjustments during the interim while the full legislative body is absent.  They handle any emergency requests and pressing budget adjustments.

Other committees

Courts

I co-chair two committees related to the court system: The Joint (House and Senate) Interim Committee on Court Facilities, reviewing a framework for a statewide study of Oregon’s court facilities, and the Joint Interim Committee on Court Technology reviewing plans to update technology in the State’s courthouses.

Education

The Education System Design Team was formed to "design a new legislative process that will be used to review and make decisions on issues regarding state agency budgets relating to pre-kindergarten through higher education." We are reviewing fundamental structural problems with our current method of evaluating and budgeting for education.  K-12, community colleges, and higher ed (universities) are administered through separate agencies. Programs and budgets are not coordinated. The Legislature officially reviews only the "state school fund" and not the entire complement of resources, which includes local property taxes and federal funds. To look at system design, or re-design, I have asked for a list of administrative rules, practices, and statutes that get in the way of a more coordinated approach, so that we can consider how to remove legal and administrative barriers to improving the state's system of education.

Public Safety communications

The OWIN (Oregon Wireless Interoperability Network) project is an effort to give Oregon a modern wireless communication network that will allow police officers, firefighters, and other public safety and transportation officials to effectively communicate with each other.  As a member of the OWIN work group, I am working on developing a solution for Oregon that will improve safety for Oregonians and for the people charged with protecting the public, enable emergency responders to easily communicate with other, and take technological trends into consideration and build a system for the future. The group has studied technology alternatives, initial results from survey data collected on cost of the program, and federal mandates that have spurred the need for OWIN. Click here to read more about OWIN.