One thousand and three hundred bills — filed long before the Oregon House of Representative convened for this year’s legislative assembly — focus on combating homelessness, housing and behavioral health care, Speaker of the House Julie Fahey says. “Those are not challenges that will be solved overnight.” 

Rep. Fahey’s chief of staff, Scott Moore, says he’s relieved the session has started as they’ve been preparing for it since the previous short session in 2024. “It’s also daunting, because there is a lot of work that is coming our way, and it’s gonna be a full five months of running around.”

The 83rd Oregon Legislative Assembly officially convened Jan. 21, a little over a week after the pomp and circumstance of the Jan. 13 organizational day — as outlined by the Oregon Constitution. Every legislator must be sworn in, every committee appointment must be filled and every officer must be selected before any work can get done. 

During the opening session, several members of the audience wore Trump paraphernalia.

Fahey says this year, she will be working to pass House Bill 2587, which removes caps on extra funding for K-12 school districts with special needs students. “If a school district has needs for extra funding because five percent of their students are special ed students, then the state has a pool of money for that,” she says. “If the percentage of students in your district is 15 percent, the extra funding is capped at 11 percent piece [of the pie].”

The funding needs to be reallocated, but Moore says there needs to be evaluation. “It’s considerably more expensive to educate those students, but concurrent with just getting the funding right is making sure that we have mechanisms in place to make sure that our outcomes are what we need them to be.”

Fahey says housing has an enormous impact on the education outcomes of students. “If students are not safely housed, it’s very challenging for them to learn. I represent the Bethel School District, and the rates of students who qualify as homeless, homeless under McKinney-Vento, have generally been in the 6 to 8 percent range.” 

The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act is the federal legislation related to the education of children and youth experiencing homelessness. 

While Fahey is focused on improving life for the most vulnerable of Oregonians, she says the state is preparing to defend itself from legal attacks as convicted felon and President Donald J. Trump took office on Monday, Jan 20. “At the statewide level, we’re making sure the statewide offices: the executive branch, the [Oregon Department of Justice] and the Legislature, are communicating and coordinating when something happens, and coordinating our response,” she says.

On the Jan. 13 organizational day, Fahey moved to adopt the House rules of order, decorum and process for the 83rd legislative assembly. Although Republican lawmakers asserted these rules were made to their disadvantage, they received enough votes to pass. Since 2006, Democrats have held the majority in the House.

Moore says these rules dictate how legislators present their arguments on the floor as well as outlining what one can or cannot say. “We have always had a list of the things that you can’t do. You can’t swear, you can’t impugn the motives of anybody else in the chamber, you have to be respectful and basically, you can’t attack anybody,” he says. “You can’t wear jeans.”

However, there are no rules requiring all lawmakers be present for the first reading of the 1,300 House bills, all filed between the previous and current legislative session. Moore said there are already more than 100 bills filed to be introduced in the near future.

As the chief clerk’s office assistants — whose job is to read the legislation aloud — began verbalizing each bill faster than an auctioneer, the legislators got up to converse amongst themselves or left the room entirely.

The bills were read to a mostly empty floor.

Fahey’s legislative assistant John Prince says this is normal and happens every year. “There is not another day during the legislative session where 1,300 bills will be introduced right in one morning,” he says. 

During the week before the long session officially convened, Moore announced the speaker’s staff assigned each bill to one of the 15 House committees. “It is a group process,” he says.

To read through all 1,300 pre-session filed bills, go to OLIS.OregonLegislature.gov.