NEWS UPDATE FROM STATE REPRESENTATIVE DAVID GOMBERG: It’s a Session Wrap!

6/30/2025
Dear Friends and Neighbors,

Late Friday night, the 2025 legislative session adjourned, and legislators limped home.

The six-month session was overshadowed by partisan posturing, the uncertainty of policies and funding from the federal government, and a tepid revenue forecast that required most state budgets to be reduced.

We took care of schools. We sorta took care of wildfires. We failed to take care of roads. We worked to address Oregonians’ concerns about the cost of living. And most legislation with unique opportunity or consequence for the Coast ultimately went nowhere.

Here are some broad observations.

The struggles of Oregon’s public schools competed for attention in the 2025 legislative session, as lawmakers debated a range of challenges, from wildfire and transportation funding to affordable housing to tensions with the Trump administration. School budgets in Oregon are under intense pressure. Student outcomes remain stagnant and frequently below national averages.

Lawmakers this session approved a record $11.4 billion for the State School Fund through Senate Bill 5516. School districts throughout the state rely on money from this fund to cover operational expenses, including everything from books and utility bills to teachers’ salaries. The budget package represents a more than 11% increase from the last biennium, and it meets the “current service level,” meaning it should be enough money to at least maintain schools’ operations in spite of rising costs.

Many lawmakers, including myself, advocated to remove the state’s special education funding cap that limits how much money districts can get to pay for these students’ needs.

The state currently caps its additional funding for special education when the portion of students with disabilities in a district reaches 11% of total enrollment. However, the portion of students receiving special education services statewide is nearly 15% — more than 82,000 children in the 2023-24 school year. For some districts, the share of students with disabilities is even greater.

The main bill that discussed this during session was House Bill 2953, which would have removed the cap entirely. Despite momentum at the start of the session, other funding priorities won out. The bill got stuck in the House Revenue Committee and died there.

While lawmakers passed a historically high K-12 funding package, they also considered systemic changes to how the state funds education and created a new accountability system for Oregon schools. State officials will lay out the metrics that every school district will be evaluated on. Districts will then set individual goals within those metrics — they are supposed to work with ODE to set “ambitious but realistic” growth targets. Then, the state will monitor districts’ progress. Lastly, the state will step in with a range of interventions as needed.

Some familiar patterns returned. In a time of uncertain state funding, higher education didn’t get the money that college and university advocates say is needed. And repeatedly, legislators found themselves debating the boundaries between what state officials should do and what should be left to local school leaders.

You can read more in the Oregonian with additional details on proposals to address book bans, cell phone use, and tuition for qualified asylum seekers.

It was my honor, and sometimes daunting responsibility, to preside over the Oregon House most session days. That required managing the floor agenda, listening to every word, responding to motions and maneuvers, and treating everyone with respect and courtesy.

Environmentalists, foresters, landowners, and firefighters worked for months leading up to the session to find long-term funding for wildfire prevention and mitigation.

A range of ideas were floated to find policies and money to fight an increasingly prevalent, dangerous, and expensive fire season. At one point, Governor Tina Kotek threw her support behind an idea to withhold parts of next year’s expected personal income “kicker” tax refund. Instead of sending the money back to taxpayers, she suggested using it to cover wildfire costs. But that idea failed to gain momentum.

Ultimately, we passed House Bill 3940 to tax oral nicotine products and divert 20% of the interest on Oregon’s rainy day savings account to pay for fire prevention. Starting in January of 2026, there will be a 65-cent tax on oral nicotine packages, such as ZYN pouches. The tax would be higher on packages with more than 20 pouches.

Typically, measures that raise revenue have a nexus between the product being taxed and the program being funded. The connection between oral nicotine and wildfire eludes me. And the combined $43 million or so generated isn’t enough. But it’s a start. This is the first time the state will establish a permanent source of funding specifically for wildfire mitigation and prevention efforts. Read more here.

Throughout the session, I voted repeatedly with Republicans who wanted to bring forward a bill to repeal the state’s contentious wildfire hazard map, subjecting homeowners in certain areas at high risk of wildfires to stricter building codes and requirements to reduce vegetation on their properties. Ultimately, that bill did come to the floor and pass with nearly unanimous support. Read more here.

And finally, again on the wildfire front, one of my greatest disappointments this session was the failure to act on behalf of wildfire survivors who are still in litigation five years after the 2020 fires. The federal government has agreed to waive taxes on wildfire settlements, but that tax break expires at the end of 2025. Fire victims would then begin paying federal income tax on any wildfire compensation. On a million-dollar payout, for example, a third of the money would go to Uncle Sam. Another third or so typically goes to the victim’s attorney.

Read more in Willamette Week.

I championed Senate Bill 926 with republican Senator Fred Girod to press utilities to resolve these lawsuits before the deadline. That bill passed the Senate but never made it through the Ways and Means Committee. The House then crafted HB 3984 to make electric companies liable for any federal income tax liability. That measure passed the House but not the Senate.

I am continuing to work to support fire survivors in Lincoln County and throughout Oregon.

Transportation funding will likely be the defining issue of the 2025 session. Democrats argued that more funding was needed to address declining revenues from the gas tax and increasing costs. Republicans responded that substantial cuts in the ODOT budget could resolve the situation. Both sides were partly right and largely wrong. Substantial new taxes would land hard on Oregonians struggling with increases in the cost of living themselves and would particularly hurt rural Oregon, where we drive more, have fewer transportation options, and use less efficient vehicles. But gutting ODOT would largely reduce safety, maintenance, and accident response. That means fewer snowplows, less fog line striping, and longer waits when accidents or landslides close roads.

The original transportation package sought to spread costs over many years and many kinds of drivers. It would have brought our gas tax in line with California and Washington, begun to charge electric vehicles for using our roads, adjusted taxes on trucks and delivery vehicles, increased fees, and added a tax on new and used car purchases.

I thought it fair to make EVs pay their fair share. I didn’t like the “sales tax” on cars. I also worked to reduce the ODOT budget by about 100 positions and $50 million.

Ultimately, the details of the plan came late in session and didn’t have enough votes among Republicans or Democrats. An adjusted plan that eliminated many of the new taxes faltered in the final week of session. And a last-minute minimal proposal to simply increase gas taxes by 3 cents failed on procedural motions around 11 pm just before adjournment.

ODOT says that with the current budget and lack of new funds, they will have to lay off about 800 workers. I’m worried about saving jobs, but more worried about saving lives. I’ve seen too many fatal accidents on our local roadways in the past few weeks.

Governor Kotek is now hinting that a special session may be called to address this looming crisis.

Nowhere was the revenue crunch more pronounced than in our efforts to address housing and homelessness.

Homelessness and the state’s lack of affordable housing is an ongoing challenge. Early in the session, the Governor asked lawmakers to find $700 million for affordable housing production and $173 million for eviction prevention services. But there simply wasn’t that much money available. We eventually approved just $468 million and $45 million for those programs, respectively.

The Oregonian wrote, “We chose to put more money into shelters and getting people off the street during dangerous conditions than helping people who had housing pay the rent,” Rep. David Gomberg, a Democrat from Otis who chaired the committee that approved those outlays, said in a statement. “There was not enough funding for both. It was a horrible decision to have to make and we made it.”

I have been successful in the past two sessions pursuing dollars for local parks, ports water, and sewer projects. This year, that effort was particularly difficult.

Leadership settles what goes into the omnibus end-of-session spending and bonding bills after they’ve sorted out funding for the state’s 85 agencies. Budget writers spent months building those agency plans this year before having to rework them in May when a state revenue forecast predicted a $500 million decline in personal income taxes, driving the state’s general fund revenue down 2% to $37.4 billion in general funds.

What that meant was cuts in agency budgets, very few new programs, less money for special projects, and a commitment to holding more dollars in reserve for emergency needs between sessions.

Senator Fred Girod, a Silverton Republican who co-chairs the Ways and Means Capital Construction Subcommittee, told his committee that the chances any individual lawmaker got their favorite projects funded this year were remarkably slim. He said he received $2 billion worth of requests for roughly $500 million in lottery funds available. After paying for what he said were obligatory projects, the committee gave out only a few million more.

I limited most of my “asks” this year to public safety.

$1.3 million to repair the dilapidated fire station in Waldport.
$3-5 million to replace the “temporary” police station built in Toledo’s tsunami zone 20 years ago.
$5-10 million to improve emergency water and fuel supplies at coastal hospitals, where the average is only three days.

As the end-of-session environment became clearer, I adjusted my strategy from competing with billions of dollars in other requests, to pursuing a more likely pathway in the short session six months from now. Lottery bond approvals usually take 18 months for dollars to appear. Waiting six months will not delay funding, but will increase the odds of being funded.

I closed the session with a letter from leadership in hand that Waldport and Toledo will be top priorities for consideration when reserve dollars are allocated in January.

Waldport Fire Station and Toledo Police Department

Lodging tax measures didn’t generate big headlines across Oregon, but certainly filled up my mailbag each day.

Currently, 70% of lodging taxes collected by cities and counties are generally required to be spent on tourism promotion. I say “generally” because there are exceptions to this rule for taxes approved before 2003.

Coastal cities have long argued that they need to support tourism but also need to address the costs of supporting surging summer populations with water, sewer, police, fire, and better roads. They believe that reserving only 30% of lodging taxes for these expenses is not sufficient. By the end of session, amendments to HB 3692 proposed changing the 70/30 split to allow local governments to spend a minimum of 40% for tourism and up to 60% for more flexible use.

In written testimony supporting the bill to change the allocation of room tax dollars, Lincoln County Sheriff Adam Shanks presented some statistics about visitor impacts on our public safety systems. Shanks said between 2019 and 2024, coastal visitors accounted for 31 percent of all bookings in the Lincoln County jail. In 2024 alone, Shanks wrote, visitors accounted for 19 percent of sheriff’s office arrests, 11 percent of sheriff’s office crime victims, and 39 percent of sheriff’s office traffic citations.

I heard loud and clear from the lodging industry that advertising and promotion are critical to sustaining our local economy. And I also heard from plenty of other residents concerned about maintaining quality of life and safety for people here year-round.

I believe we must recognize that when city populations surge, there is an effect on roads, water and sewer infrastructure, and public safety. The current 30% carve-out for “other expenses” is often not sufficient. I also think local control is meaningful and that elected leaders in our cities and counties can best decide how to balance how we encourage people to continue to come and enjoy our natural splendor, our great lodging places and restaurants, and our amazing cultural resources. We should want them to keep coming back, not reach a wistful point where they say, ‘I used to love going to the Oregon coast. But they’ve spoiled it.’

Ultimately, I supported HB 3962. The bill passed the House but died in the Senate.

We also heard HB 2977, which proposed to increase the statewide lodging tax to support wildlife conservation as well as fund anti-poaching and compensate ranchers for wolf predation. Rural Oregon hunters and the state’s urban environmentalists, who often fall on opposite sides of the political spectrum, joined together in support of the measure pursuing a tax increase that would benefit them both.

This measure also passed the House but failed to be heard in the Senate.

Of particular note to the Coast, my bills HB 3580 and 3587, did not advance this session. These bipartisan bills would have helped protect critical ocean resources, like eelgrass and our nearshore rocky habitats, but they did not receive final approval by the Ways and Means budget committee.

Photo by Timothy J. Gonzalez.

With plenty to be disappointed about this session, I believe ultimately, Oregon consumers can find victories to quietly celebrate. Here are some of the bills my committee on Commerce and Consumer Protection advanced:

HB 3179 gives the Public Utilities Commission explicit guidance to protect the interests of consumers when setting rates and prohibits new rate increases during the winter.
HB 3546 requires data centers to pay more for the large amount of electricity they use rather than passing costs along to residential customers.
HB 3792 doubles the size of the Low-Income Electric Bill Payment Assistance Fund.
HB 3156 requires each utility bill to include information on consumer services and complaints.
HB 3178 requires more financial transparency and consumer protections in vehicle sales.
HB 2563 requires an insurance company to provide a written explanation of reasons when they increase policy premiums.
SB 605 prohibits medical providers from reporting medical debt to consumer reporting agencies.
HB 3243 prohibits ambulance companies from charging patients more after insurance firms pay bills.
SB 550 expands our “right to repair” laws.
HB 3865 updates telemarketing laws to include texting and limits the time and number of solicitations that can be sent.
SB 430 eliminates hidden “junk fees” by requiring vendors to list all costs and fees in the sales price.
HB 3167 cracks down on fraud and price gouging in event ticket sales.
HB 3605 adds door-to-door sales to the Unfair Trade Practices Act.
HB 2008 limits sales of personal data and the profiling of digital data for minors under 16 years of age.
HB 3875 expands data privacy laws to include information collected by our cars.

Crowds turned out for a sunny Pride Fest in Lincoln City.

I arrived home around 4 a.m. Saturday morning from Salem. This was a disappointing, challenging, and difficult session. But the sun came up later on Saturday, and I shifted into what I call the “interim lifestyle”. Instead of the daily drive to Salem for hearings and floor debates, I’ll be driving around our sprawling legislative district for meetings, ribbon cuttings, and events.

Noon Saturday, I spoke at the Lincoln City Pride Festival. Sunday, I attended a finance update for the Sitka Center.

Susie says I should have taken at least a day off. Maybe tomorrow….

Warm Regards,