Bill Would Create Unnecessary Liability, OBI Testifies
What happened: On Feb. 19, OBI Executive Vice President and General Counsel Paloma Sparks testified in opposition to HB 3187, a redundant anti-discrimination bill that would harm both employers and employees.
What the bill would do: The bill would make several changes to age-discrimination statutes, including the adoption of various factors as “proxies” for age. These include salary, length of employment and pension eligibility status. The bill also would prohibit employers from asking job applicants for graduation dates or birth dates before completing an initial interview or making a job offer.
Problems with the bill: Oregon already provides expansive protections against age-related discrimination, defined as any adverse action related to age over 18. The bill’s creation of proxies for age would expose employers to liability for essential and quite normal hiring decisions. The bill would force employers to make hiring decisions without adequate, relevant information. The bill also would make it difficult for employers to navigate overlapping requirements within Oregon’s pay equity law.
Why it matters: HB 3187 would expand risk for employers in order to discourage a form of discrimination that, to be clear, violates existing law. In pursuing this redundant goal, the law would make it more difficult for employers to make adequately informed hiring decisions. The law would give businesses an additional incentive to invest outside of Oregon, which CNBC deemed the third least business-friendly state in the country in its most recent America’s Top States for Business ranking. Oregon needs continued business investment to create jobs and tax revenue.
For more: Go here to watch Paloma’s testimony before the House Committee on Labor and Workplace Standards. Go here to read her written testimony.
OBI Warns Legislative Panel about Anti-Development Bill
What happened: On Feb. 20, OBI Senior Policy Director Duke Shepard testified before the House Committee on Emergency Management, General Government and Veterans in opposition to HB 3062.
What the bill would do: The bill would increase the difficulty of developing industrial land within urban growth boundaries by requiring applicants to conduct public health impacts analyses for development within 1,000 feet of “sensitive uses” and submit to mitigating measures. Sensitive uses include residential areas, parks and schools. The requirements would apply to a range of defined industrial uses, including light manufacturing and recycling facilities.
The problem with the bill: Oregon suffers from a shortage of readily developable industrial land, in part because expanding urban growth boundaries is a slow, heavily bureaucratic and contentious process. HB 3062 would compound the problem by making industrial land within urban growth boundaries even more difficult and expensive to develop.
Why it matters: Oregon needs thriving businesses to provide jobs and generate tax revenue. Creating conditions that make it difficult and expensive for businesses to operate will encourage them to invest in other states.
For more: Watch Duke’s testimony here and read his submitted testimony here.
Governor Requires Agencies to Take Some Transparency Measures
The governor’s letter: On Feb. 19, Gov. Tina Kotek released a letter instructing all executive branch agencies to update rulemaking protocols to increase transparency and accountability. By May 1, for example, agencies must place proposed, temporary and permanent rules in a central location on their websites. All rulemaking documents must contain summaries, FAQs and statements of potential fiscal impacts. Agencies also must publish public comments submitted during the rulemaking process. Go here to read the letter, which includes several additional requirements.
Background: Since Gov. Kotek’s election, OBI has discussed with her the importance of adequate and consistent transparency in state agency rulemaking. Her Feb. 19 letter is a good start, but more is needed. OBI’s Oregon Competitiveness Agenda contains more than a dozen recommendations for modernizing state rulemaking.
What’s next: OBI appreciates the governor’s attention to this problem and will continue to advocate for legislation supporting the Oregon Competitiveness Agenda, including HB 2692 and HB 3382, upon which OBI testified on Feb. 12.
State of Economy Report Should Worry Policymakers
What happened: Led by the Portland Metro Chamber, the Value of Jobs Coalition on Feb. 20 released its 2025 State of the Economy report, which focuses on population and employment changes in the Portland metropolitan area. It says what most business leaders have been warning about for years: The region is losing people, jobs and the tax revenue both provide. Despite some competitive advantages, including Oregon’s quality of life (6th in CNBC’s latest America’s Top States for Business rankings) and its reputation for technology and innovation (9th), the Portland area – the heart of Oregon’s economic engine – is struggling and policymakers need to take action.
The full report, which you can find here, is worth reading, but four charts (links below) tell much of the story.
Population change (chart here): The populations of the three counties in on the Oregon side of the Columbia continue to either shrink (Multnomah and Washington counties) or stagnate (Clackamas County). The effects of outmigration are particularly notable for the former two counties. Across the river in Clark County, meanwhile, the population continues to increase, fueled by in-migration.
Overall employment (chart here): Job growth mirrors population trends. Clark County is adding jobs, Multnomah County is losing jobs and Washington and Clackamas counties remain near pre-pandemic levels. In 2024, nationwide employment grew by 1.34%. Employment in the Portland region declined by 0.59%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Industry sector employment (chart here): Health services and private education jobs have increased in the Portland area, as have government jobs. Jobs in other sectors have declined, including information, financial activities and manufacturing. The trend indicates a rise in local sector employment and a decline in traded sector employment. Traded sector jobs, which bring money into the area from outside, tend to pay more than local sector jobs, which recirculate money in the economy.
Investor interest (chart here): Unfortunately, Portland’s appeal for outside investment has reached a historic low. According to the Urban Land Institute’s latest survey, which measures the attractiveness of cities for outside investment, Oregon ranked 80th out of 81 cities. Only Hartford, Conn., held less appeal. Local and state leaders need to recognize this problem and work to reverse it.
Why it matters: The health of the Portland area and the rest of the state requires continued growth, which allows people to thrive and businesses of all sizes to prosper. Growth also generates tax revenue to fund important state and local services. Oregon cannot take that growth for granted. In the absence of growth, opportunities for Oregonians will dwindle and tax revenue will fail to keep pace with the needs of effective, high-quality programs.
What policymakers can do: Creating conditions that encourage business investment and increase affordability will produce jobs, discourage flight and ultimately lead to growth in our economy. OBI’s Oregon Competitiveness Agenda contains dozens of policy proposals that would improve the state’s business climate, and the Portland Metro Chamber has policy proposals specific to strengthening the Portland area.
Where can I learn more: Read the State of the Economy report here, OBI’s Oregon Competitiveness Agenda here, and the Portland Metro Chamber’s public policy focus areas here.
Corporate Transparency Act Reporting Deadline March 21
What happened: On Feb. 18, a U.S. district court based in Texas lifted an injunction preventing the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) from enforcing ownership reporting requirements under the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA). See FinCEN’s announcement here and a notification from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce here.
What is the CTA? Enacted by Congress in early 2021, the law is intended to help prevent money laundering, terrorist financing and tax fraud. To that end, it requires small businesses to file beneficial ownership information reports.
What’s the deadline? The initial reporting deadline, delayed by court rulings, was Jan. 1, 2025. The new deadline is March 21, 2025.
What else is going on? A bill that would delay beneficial reporting for one year passed the U.S. House of Representatives in February 2025. HR 736 has been sent to the Senate.
Learn more: Download a guide produced by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce here. Visit FinCEN’s website here.
Legislative and Rulemaking Updates
Medical Marijuana: Buried in SB 176, a bill updating various elements of medical marijuana registry requirements, is a significant policy change. The change would prohibit the use of positive marijuana drug tests to screen applicants or take employment actions against certain employees (namely medical registry cardholders). Even when an employer suspected impairment, a positive drug test for marijuana could not be used as evidence. The bill is scheduled for a hearing Feb. 24, and OBI is talking with coalition partners and legislators about significant safety and legal concerns. The goal is to amend these sections out of the bill.
Utility Rates: On Feb. 20, the House Committee on Commerce and Consumer Protection held a hearing on HB 3179, which would make it more difficult to increase utility rates more than 2.5%. No one likes rate increases, but such a cap ignores recent trends, including the rising cost of key energy infrastructure components. For example, the cost of transformers and electric panels has increased by 50%, and the cost of substation transformers has increased by 100% since 2020. This topic was carried over to Feb. 25, and OBI will testify in opposition.
Private Security Bill: OBI has been working on a fix to HB 2527 (2021), which placed heightened regulations on the use of private security. While well intentioned, the bill was badly written and resulted in increased compliance burdens for retailers, schools, restaurants and other businesses using private security.
Washing Machines: SB 526 would make Oregon the only state requiring microfiber filtration on new clothes washers. Oregon is simply not large enough to require significant changes to products built for global supply chains. Unfortunately, it looks like this bill is going to advance in the Senate.
Recycling Expansions: On Feb. 18, the House Committee on Climate, Energy and Environment considered HB 2062, which would layer on yet another extended producer responsibility (EPR) program, this time for producers of batteries and battery-containing products. This bill is being considered despite the fact that Oregon has not fully implemented other EPR programs and made substantial changes to its E-cycles program in 2023. The changes to the E-cycles program are not even close to being implemented as rules for them were just adopted in January.
Composting Regulations: On Feb. 18, the House Committee on Climate, Energy and Environment held a public hearing on HB 3018, which would impose new composting regulations and labeling standards on businesses selling food in Oregon. Not only would that policy increase costs for businesses and consumers, but it assumes without adequate analysis that composting is the most efficient way to dispose of food waste.
Auto Insurance: On Feb. 18, the House Committee on Commerce and Consumer Protection held a public hearing on HB 3423, which would disrupt Oregon’s auto insurance market by prohibiting insurers from considering relevant risk-based data – like credit scores and marital status – when setting a customer’s insurance rates. OBI opposes this bill. In every place it has passed, it has raised auto insurance rates significantly by prohibiting insurers from considering information correlated to safe driving. For example, over 60% of Washington consumers saw their premiums rise when this policy was enacted in that state in 2021. Fortunately, the bill does not seem poised to move this session thanks to a potential agreement requiring Oregon’s regulators to study this issue first.
Firefighting Foam: Last week, we wrote about SB 91, which would ban firefighting foam containing PFAS. As anticipated, there is now a -1 amendment, which brought OBI’s position to neutral since it both narrows the ban specifically to fire departments and pushes the effective date to July 1, 2026, providing time to use current inventories.
Notable News
Ashland Gas Fee: The Ashland City Council on Feb. 18 voted unanimously to charge developers a carbon pollution fee for installing natural gas heating systems in new residential buildings (The Oregonian).
Wildfire Map: Amid mounting criticism from the public and lawmakers from both parties, Gov. Tina Kotek has paused any further agency action on the state’s new Wildfire Hazard Map until the Legislature decides what to do with it. Kotek on Feb. 17 directed the Oregon Department of Forestry to continue accepting appeals from Oregonians who disagree with their designation on the map, which was released in January by the department and researchers at Oregon State University (Oregon Public Broadcasting).
Wildfire Fund: Gov. Tina Kotek has urged lawmakers to buckle down and make “hard decisions” about how to increase state funding for wildfire mitigation and fire fighting. She highlighted a wide ranging proposal by a work group of lawmakers, timber industry representatives, environmentalists and others to divert existing state money streams or come up with new ones, or both, to add nearly $150 million a year to wildfire efforts (The Oregonian).
State Budget: Oregon is facing potential funding cuts amid the Trump administration’s efforts to dramatically downsize federal spending. More than 31% of the state’s budget comes from the federal government. At the same time, lawmakers are weighing an expensive transportation package — with the potential for new taxes or fees — and proposals from Gov. Tina Kotek to ramp up funds for schools, housing and behavioral health. Taken together, some lawmakers concede the financial pressures could make it a difficult year to pass legislation that affects the state revenue (Oregon Public Broadcasting).
School Enrollment: Oregon public schools are educating about 2,300 fewer students now than in the 2023-24 school year, according to newly released data from the Oregon Department of Education. That’s a tiny 0.4% drop from the previous year, which is less precipitous than the enrollment drops of the past few years, suggesting that the pandemic era’s exodus from public schools is moderating but not bouncing back (The Oregonian).
School Spending Report: Oregon needs to drastically revamp its decades-old funding formula and spend far more per pupil to come close to meeting its stated goals for student success, particularly in schools that serve a concentration of students from low-income families, according to a prominent national research institute (The Oregonian).
Home Construction Loans: Oregon will soon begin issuing loans to help developers finance construction of middle-income housing, an increasingly common strategy in other states tackling the nation’s home affordability crisis (The Oregonian).
PGE Profit: Portland General Electric posted a $313 million profit in 2024, an $85 million increase over 2023 as the utility benefited from higher rates, growing industrial demand and power costs that were lower than expected (Portland Business Journal).
Central Oregon Chargers: The Oregon Department of Transportation expects to begin construction of seven electric vehicle charging stations along the U.S. Highway 97 corridor in 2025 despite a federal funding freeze that nixed billions for EV infrastructure across the country (The Bulletin).
Portland Offices: In downtown Portland, business and professional services companies are expanding into top-notch spaces as some tech firms embrace remote work or relocate to the suburbs (The Oregonian).
Prosper Portland: This month, the city’s economic development agency approved a $7 million loan to an ambitious athletic apparel incubator in Old Town that its principals say will bring economic gains to a troubled neighborhood. But in approving the loan, Prosper Portland flouted its own guidelines for commercial loans, written just 11 months before. The loan is bigger, for a longer duration, and at a lower interest rate than the agency’s guidelines would suggest is prudent (Willamette Week).
Check Out OBI’s Member Benefits
OBI offers members a range of programs that can save money or help small businesses offer benefits normally available only to much larger companies. Benefit programs include:
- HealthChoice: Helps businesses with fewer than 100 employees offer comprehensive health-care benefits through our partnership with Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon.
- CompSAFE: Helps eligible companies enjoy workers’ compensation discounts through SAIF Corporation.
- Fuel Program: Helps members save fuel costs through our partnership with Ed Staub & Sons.
- ODP Business Solutions: Helps OBI members save money on office furniture, supplies and other services.
- LegalPLUS: OBI members receive 15 minutes of free legal consulting per month from Innova Legal Advisors.
Go here to learn about all of OBI’s member benefits.