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The halfway point of a long legislative session in Salem often brings clarity.

Not this year.

A recent informal survey of lobbyists and lawmakers hanging around the Capitol halls turned up plenty of adjectives to describe the session’s opening salvo.

“Meandering” and “chaotic” were mentioned. “Slow” and “rudderless” came up more than once. Not mentioned: “Clear” or “purposeful.”

“To a certain extent we are adrift, we are at sea and we’re even rudderless at times,” said Senate Minority Leader Daniel Bonham, R-The Dalles. “In the past, I always felt like we all knew — collectively as a body of 90 — what we were doing.”

State Rep. Rob Nosse, D-Portland, had a more charitable take. “It’s less like the session is boring,” he said. “I just think the more controversial things are still looming.”

There’s no denying lawmakers face plenty of challenges: crises in housing, public defense, mental health care; roads and bridges hurting for attention; an increasing inability to pay for worsening wildfires.

But as this year’s session crosses the halfway point, it’s not clear how the Legislature will respond to any one of those. Bills on some topics seem to have momentum, and others have yet to take shape.

Hanging over it all: a deep uncertainty over how President Donald Trump’s actions will impact the state’s finances.

Here’s what to know midway through this year’s 160-day session.

The session kicked off on a relatively friendly note, and it remains mostly cordial.

The Republican and Democratic leaders in the Senate revealed they’ve hit the pickleball courts together. They’ve suggested a game of cornhole was in their future. They spent a Friday evening chatting on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation.

“The last few years of my tenure in the Senate it’s been a little more dramatic,” Senate President Rob Wagner, D-Lake Oswego, said this week.

During the 2023 legislative session, Republicans staged the longest walkout in state history.

Wagner credits the change in tenor partially to his effort to get to know his colleagues on a more human level.

“It’s jeans and T-shirt and going around the state getting to know people,” he said. “First question, I always ask, ‘tell me about your grandparents and how are your kids doing.‘”

But in Salem, peace is often tenuous.

Republicans in the House have already offered signs of mounting displeasure, forcing Democrats to read all or part of some bills out loud before a floor vote. It’s a tried-and-true delay tactic — and one of the few remaining tools the minority has at its disposal.

House Minority Leader Christine Drazan, R-Canby, said the GOP was registering concern because some Democratic ideas are moving forward, and also because some bills with bipartisan support aren’t. The former group includes bills that Republicans see as giveaways to Democratic allies, such as a proposal that would grant weekly unemployment checks to striking workers. The latter group includes a bill to delay mandatory sales of electric trucks, and to make it easier for cities to regulate homeless camps.

“Reading is a way to slow things down and, frankly, give members of their own party the opportunity to rethink whether or not they want to [vote yes] when they see what we see,” Drazan said.

Even in the comparably placid Senate, clashes loom. Democrats have made clear in recent weeks they plan to press laws further regulating access to firearms, always a source of controversy in the Capitol.

“There’s some disastrous stuff that’s still out there,” said Bonham. “You say, OK, we’re halfway done.’ And I say, ‘It’s a marathon and I’m ready for my cup of water. We still have a lot of running to do.‘”

Where will lawmakers find billions of dollars Democrats say is necessary to pay for routine road and bridge upkeep?

How will they solve the worsening problem of people sitting in jail, or awaiting their legal fate outside it, without attorneys?

Will Oregon make necessary strides to curb the housing crisis?

Can the state figure a way to pay its wildfire bills in a timely manner after stiffing private firefighting crews for months last year?

All of these were leading questions when lawmakers convened on Jan. 21. Two and a half months later, they’re as pressing as ever.

Some of that is the nature of the beast. Weighty matters like approving major new taxes for roads tend to take awhile. And lawmakers’ primary responsibility for the session — passing a new two-year budget — is always among the last tasks.

“A lot of what we’re going to do at the end of the day will be reflected in the budget,” Wagner said this week.

But this year, it is the sheer number of outstanding to-dos that stand out. To date, the Legislature’s signature accomplishment is passing a relatively benign extension of taxes that will help bring in billions in federal Medicaid funding. That passed with bipartisan support.

Here’s a look at some other items on the docket:

To-do: Transportation funding

Last week, after months of work, Democrats unveiled their first suggestion for raising more than $1 billion a year to fund road and bridge upkeep. It’s a package of roughly a dozen tax and fee increases — including an eventual 20-cent hike in the state’s gas tax — that Republicans and business interests have lampooned as tone-deaf.

“It is a massive amount of taxes that I think will be completely unacceptable to taxpayers,” said Bonham. “But it’s a framework. We finally know what we’re talking about.”

Democrats say they’re serious — and they have the supermajority status to back up their ideas. If the party can stick together, it can pass new taxes through each chamber without a single Republican vote.

“The price of inaction in transportation is going to increase costs in the long run,” said Wagner.

To-do: Public defense

For years, Oregon has been violating people’s constitutional right to counsel. And the crisis is deepening.

Not everyone agrees why the system isn’t working. But they largely agree it’s broken.

Some see it as a simple math equation: Paying public defenders more and lowering their caseloads could encourage more people to do the work. Others, like Multnomah County District Attorney Nathan Vasquez, have called it a “work stoppage” and believe public defenders aren’t taking on as many cases as they should be.

In Marion County, a judge is expected to begin so-called forced appointments next week. If an attorney feels they could not take on the appointment ethically, they will have a chance to withdraw.

The governor’s budget recommends directing $720 million in the 2025-27 budget cycle to the state’s public defense commission, representing a nearly 20% increase.

To-do: Housing

Since she was elected governor in 2022, Gov. Tina Kotek has made it clear housing would be one of her top priorities. Each session, she has pushed a few marquee housing bills.

Kotek’s top priority this session piggybacks on previous work to create thousands more duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, cottage clusters and townhomes throughout the state. The measure, House Bill 2138, builds on a bill from 2019 that the governor pushed for when she was speaker of the statehouse.

The governor is also pushing lawmakers to create a statewide homeless shelter system, urging them to put more than $200 million toward the effort.

Many of the housing efforts underway build on legislation from previous sessions. Lawmakers continue to push for bills that would streamline construction and expedite the permitting process in an effort to build more housing units, faster. Others are hoping for a more targeted approach. There is legislation to specifically help unhoused veterans and another bill aimed at helping seniors facing housing uncertainty.

To-do: Wildfire funding

When it comes to paying for Oregon’s growing wildfire costs, lawmakers have a lot of ideas but little clarity on what can pass. Will they add 5-cents to the state’s 10-cent bottle deposit? Pull money from Oregon Lottery proceeds? Forego a payment to the state’s emergency fund? Withhold the anticipated $1.7 billion kicker refund?

All those ideas have been proposed. None are clearly leading the way.

One apparent certainty this year: Lawmakers look likely to repeal a set of wildfire hazard maps that were despised by property owners whose homes were deemed most likely to burn. A bill to scrap the maps passed out of a Senate committee on Tuesday with a unanimous vote.

To-do: Accountability

Oregon lawmakers have promised to exert more oversight over state agencies and ensure taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely. The effort comes at a time when state agencies have had high-profile problems.

Lawmakers said they plan to hold more oversight hearings; including delving into what’s happening at the Oregon Youth Authority, the Department of Corrections and the Department of Human Services.

They are also considering a measure that would appoint a legislative audit officer. This person would review activities of and oversight of executive branch agencies and conduct performance audits of agencies.

To-do: Civil commitment

Again and again in recent years, lawmakers have considered making it easier to force people with serious mental illness into treatment. It’s a highly emotional debate, with compelling arguments on both sides.

This year, action seems likely. After months of meetings among interested groups, lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee unveiled a bill last week that would broaden what information judges can take into account when deciding whether to order people into civil commitment.

The bill has backing from top lawmakers and Kotek, and is expected to pass. But its ultimate success will hinge on whether Oregon can create more beds for people who have been committed into the state’s care.

Lawmakers tend to build budgets strategically, figuring out where they can best spend state money to attract far more in federal cash. It’s one reason why money flowing from Washington D.C. accounts for about a third of the state’s spending plan.

This year, though, state budget writers are looking east with more dread than hope. A push by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to slash spending has led to widespread worry that the money Oregon typically counts on won’t be there.

A budget framework unveiled by the chairs of the budget-writing Ways and Means Committee offered a bleak picture: even a 10% cut to federal funding for education and health care could blow a more than $2.5 billion hole in the budget.

Trump’s actions on trade in recent days have prompted more concerns.

“What are these tariffs and all the things that the Trump administration is doing to our economy going to mean for a state that is so dependent on exports?” said Nosse, co-chair of an influential budget subcommittee. “That looms over us as well.” (A day after Nosse’s comment, Trump announced he was suspending many tariffs for 90 days.)

The most important signal of what the federal tumult means for Oregon’s finances will come May 14. That’s when the state’s chief economist is scheduled to unveil the revenue forecast lawmakers will use to build their budget.

If that forecast is in line with previous estimates, lawmakers say they’ll have money to pay for many existing services and top priorities like housing and behavioral health. If it’s well under what lawmakers were expecting, the remainder of this year’s session may be a painful exercise in budget cutting.