Hansell says session was one of the worst

By Terry Murry on Wednesday, March 9th, 2022 in Columbia Basin News Featured Stories

ATHENA – Oregon Sen. Bill Hansell (R-Athena) said he was never so glad to see Salem in his rear-view mirror on Friday when the 2022 short session adjourned. Hansell said that he began the session with a feeling of great optimism, but saw that the super-majority Democrats had no intention of compromising.

He said the short session was originally intended to make corrections in the budget and tweaks to fix unanticipated problems from measures passed in the longer sessions of odd-numbered years. Instead, the majority party introduced major policy measures.

“Things were just being crammed down the system and I don’t think the people of Oregon are well served by that at all,” he said.

There’s only one way to fix it so that lawmakers from both parties need to sit down and work on compromises, and that comes at the ballot box.

“This one-party rule just continues to go,” he said. “We’ve got to reverse that. If we can get more of a balance in the legislature that would rearrange and refocus what we’re about.”