NEWS UPDATE FROM STATE REPRESENTATAIVE DAVID GOMBERG: The Legislative Routine

1/27/2025

By Representative David Gomberg, House District 10

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

I’m beginning to settle into the legislative session routine now.

I wake at 5 a.m. and am on the road to Salem by 6:30. Monday through Thursday, I have 90-minute budget committee meetings at 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. My House Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee meets at 1 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Democratic and Republican caucuses gather separately at 10 a.m. each day and floor sessions commence at 11 a.m.

On Monday nights, I’m part of the Joint Legislative Audits Committee at 5 p.m. and on Fridays, Ways and Means meets at 9:30 a.m.

The Coastal Caucus meets weekly and I have House Leadership at noon every Monday and Wednesday. And at least once a week, we have dinners, functions, or meetings in the calendar.

In between, we sandwich meetings with visitors and advocates. For example, Tuesday this week is “City Day” in Salem. I will be meeting with mayors and councilors from Yachats, Lincoln City, Depoe Bay, Newport and Philomath.

I read the hundreds of emails I’m pleased you send me each week and work with my excellent staff to help answer your questions and respond to your concerns. And of course, I also write this weekly newsletter myself.

We’re working now to organize monthly virtual legislative updates together with Senator Anderson that you can join from home.

My staff knows that if someone from the district comes to Salem, they can have me step out of committee for a few moments to say hello. But the session schedule leaves little opportunity for the events, occasions, and meetings I enjoy so much in the district when your legislature is not in session.

The commute from my home in Otis to my parking spot in the Capitol is roughly one hour. Unless the weather becomes extreme, I try to come home at night for dinner and some quiet decompression time with Susan before I fall into bed. If the weather does become extreme, I get a hotel in Salem.

People often ask how things are at the coast. “Dark,” I tell them. It is dark when I leave and dark when I come home. As the seasons change, I find myself driving into the sunrise and home into the sunset.

As the legislative routine is taking shape, so is the outline of this six-month session.

Both parties agree that we need to find a new way to pay for our roads and bridges, improve education outcomes, address Oregon’s needs for healthcare and mental health, and prepare for another possibly devastating wildfire season. But both parties do not yet agree on how to accomplish all that.

Democrats have a supermajority in both the House and the Senate. They could, if they wish pass any bill, budget, or tax without a single republican vote. And if they did that, it would be wrong.

Republicans, on the other hand, could leave it to the Democrats to sort out these difficult and politically fraught decisions, criticizing us each step of the way, and then poke at us next election season for the hard votes we needed to take. That would be wrong too.

The right way for Oregon will be if we find the will and courage to work together, negotiate, compromise, and lead – together. That cooperation will produce the best results for all of Oregon.

I recommend four recent opinion pieces for more insight into relations and possible results for the session.

Randy Stapilus, Capital Chronicle: “But as the legislators and governor put together their game plan for the next session, they should maintain some discipline and not push their advantage too far because it could backfire. To prevent that, the governor and legislators should ask themselves three questions as they prepare to decide how ambitious to be in the upcoming legislative session and beyond.”

Dick Hughes, Capital Chatter: “The 2025 Oregon Legislature got off to a glorious start this week, full of promise for collaboration, productivity and bipartisanship. Then, as always happens, reality began to sink in.”

Editorial Board, Oregonian: “In 2025, Oregonians should see that goals are set and met. They need realistic plans funded responsibly and executed competently. By the end of this year, Oregonians should be given definitive and objective evidence that ‘crisis’ has not become a new word for “‘status quo’.”

Steve Duin, Oregonian: “Do Oregon Democrats have the skills or fresh ideas to convince a voting majority in this country that a Democrat-dominated state is preferable to a Trump-controlled nation?”

Earlier I wrote that the session schedule leaves little opportunity for the events, occasions, and meetings I enjoy so much in the district when your legislature is not in session. I cherish a bit of downtime on the weekends. But the happy fact is that HD 10 never rests!

Last week I answered questions and tried to explain how government works for Leadership Lincoln. This program engages individuals from diverse backgrounds by providing them with the knowledge, experiences, skills, and leadership tools that prepare them to become effective leaders within the community.

Friday I attended the opening of the Big Blue Film Festival at Hatfield showcasing ocean-themed films at the confluence of marine sciences, humanities and the arts.

Saturday I spoke at the opening of the Green Energy symposium in Depoe Bay with a focus on resilience and how individual households can prepare for consequential disasters or temporary power outages. The event included a demonstration of a hydrogen fuel cell and I previewed my legislative proposal to waive property taxes on home or business power back-up systems.

Next weekend I’ll take part in two town halls with Senator Jeff Merkley and Congresswoman Val Hoyle – one in Newport and one in Philomath.

So much for my cherished downtime… 😉

Let’s take a session time-out for some non-legislative news.

The first thing you do after you get comfortable on an airplane flight is to know where the exits are and where to find a lifejacket in the extremely unlikely event of a water landing. Those of us living or visiting anywhere near the coast need to know escape routes for the eventuality that we will experience a major earthquake and tsunami.

According to scientists, at any moment, the Pacific Northwest could experience a Cascadia subduction zone earthquake registering in the high 8 and even 9 range, frequently referred to as “the really big one.”

In 2011, for example, the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan killed around 20,000 people. That event began with a 9.1 subduction zone earthquake, which caused widespread destruction, a tsunami with a maximum height of 130 feet. The massive wave caused the majority of the deaths.

For years, the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries has been creating maps of what inundation would look like in cases of different types of earthquakes and tsunamis. Now, they have a tool that allows anyone to put in an address on the Oregon coast and see exactly how they should evacuate on foot.

You can now enter your address to see tsunami risks and evacuation routes.

The maps show exactly how long it will take to get to higher ground, depending on whether you are walking, jogging or running, taking into account infrastructure that might be damaged during an earthquake.

Take a moment and check out your location(s) on the map. After an earthquake, people in the impacted area should receive ShakeAlert notifications on their phones. They may also receive tsunami warnings. But there is no guarantee that the internet will work and trying to find the map then will be wasting precious moments.

Read more here.

Each week, I look at economic and demographic information for Oregon. That gives me the big picture. But it is more important for me to understand what is going on in our own HD 10 part of Oregon.

Fortunately, the Oregon Employment Department provides information for our district and then compares it to statewide data.

Here is a snapshot of their findings:

House District 10’s population: 70,380 (2022).
Ethnicity: 9% of House District 10’s population is Hispanic or Latino (any race) (2022).
House District 10’s median household income is $62,447; 19% lower than Oregon’s (2022).
An average of 1,470 House District 10 residents were unemployed in 2024 for an unemployment rate of 4.2%; slightly higher than the statewide rate of 4.1%.
House District 10’s average annual wage in 2023 was $49,205; 28% lower than statewide.
Employment in House District 10 is more concentrated in Leisure & Hospitality compared with Oregon, and less concentrated in Professional & Business Services.

Our district tends to be fairly well educated with 70% having some college and 35% holding a college degree. That may not be reflective of our workforce however since one-in-three residents are over the age of 65 and may have moved here to retire.

Our best-paying jobs often rely on that education. But we also see that most jobs pay less here than in other parts of Oregon. Of course, most folks in Oregon don’t get to live at the beach!

Not surprisingly, the number of our jobs in leisure and hospitality is more than double the Oregon average. Government jobs are also more prevalent here – possibly fueled by the presence of Hatfield, NOAA and our research hubs.

Oregon experienced a full jobs recovery from the pandemic recession in three years. The state has been in a jobs expansion since the beginning of 2023, but growth has been slow.

Job growth has also shifted from a broad-based recovery to more concentrated gains, particularly in private health care and social assistance. Job vacancies have returned to more typical levels but have also become more concentrated in private health care and social assistance. After layoffs led unemployment surging to a record-high rate of 13.7% in early 2020, the relatively fast jobs recovery brought unemployment back down near record-low levels. Oregon’s unemployment rate has been below 4.5% since September 2021.

There is new and disturbing news about the ongoing challenge of microplastics.

I have written before about how these tiny particles seep into our land, water, and eventually into us. On average, we consume about ten grams of plastic a week – roughly the amount of plastic in a typical credit card.

A wave of new studies has come out recently, and each one seems to paint an ever more vivid picture of how microplastics, and their smaller counterparts, nanoplastics, have infiltrated the deepest corners of our anatomy.

Scientists are working hard to understand the impact of microplastic pollution in the environment and in human bodies.

Our soil, drinking water, and food supply, the air we breathe, all carry microplastics, defined as any plastic particle as small as 1 nanometer and as large as 5 millimeters. Some have built up in the environment over many years, while others arrive daily, as they shed from tires, our clothing, food packaging, personal care products, and more.

Tiny particles from clothing, packaging, and other plastic products are ending up in Oregon seafood, according to a new Portland State University study. The PSU research team conducted the study to better understand microplastic contamination in Oregon finfish and shellfish, which can make their way onto people’s plates. Overall, the researchers said microplastics in Oregon seafood are widespread and were found in a vast majority of the seafood samples in the study.

Despite the findings, the researchers note they are not advocating for people to stay away from seafood because microplastics are found everywhere from bottled water, beer, and honey, to beef, chicken, and veggie burgers.

Instead of passing through us, some particles move across the thin membrane lining our gut and eventually find their way into the bloodstream. The consequences of that are not entirely clear yet.

To address this challenge, your legislature has passed a number of bills banning single-use straws, food containers, Styrofoam, bags, and even improved filters on our washing machines.

So here’s how you can get started in reducing your own exposure: Eliminate single-use plastic as much as you can, and don’t reuse these items. Cut back on foods that come in plastic packaging or cans (which have plastic linings). Aim for shorter dishwasher cycles, with fewer plastic items.

“Never cook your food in plastic,” says Brander. “The heat will drive those particles and more of those chemicals into your food.”