Eye on the Legislature

Tony Corcoran, Eugene Weekly:

No more “Insider Baseball.” I’m not an insider any more, and my knees don’t allow for softball, much less baseball. But I continue to watch the Salem political game from afar; shoveling horse pucky here in the south hills of Lane County and reflecting on the days when horse pucky was my day job in the Legislature.

I still visit Eugene occasionally just to observe its downtown’s glacial recovery toward normalcy, or to gaze at Civic Stadium dying like a nine-acre beached whale while Pat Kilkenny and the Ducks await their NCAA football fate. Or, sometimes I go to Springfield if I need to feel culturally uplifted. Coburg I only go to if I want a speeding ticket.

So I’m still keeping a close eye on the Legislature for you. The current Salem version of the Hot Air Society began in earnest on Feb. 4. Amid all the posturing over PERS and guns, I noticed my friend Brad Witt, a good labor Democrat from Clatskanie, introduced the first stunner of the session. House Bill 2783, pushed by a coalition of “nanny state” humane treatment groups, would make it a violation for a lobbyist to tether a legislator with a short leash or a choke collar or to keep a legislator tied up outside for an extended time. It would become a misdemeanor if tethering a legislator leads to injury or death. (It’s just a matter of time, folks.)

Read the full article here. Discuss below.