In 2005, Governor Kulongoski agreed to support the Warm Springs Tribe's efforts to build on an industrial site in Cascade Locks in exchange for the tribe's promise to close its casino in Central Oregon and forgo developing a more sensitive site on tribal land in Hood River.
The Oregon Restaurant Association (ORA) and Oregon Association of Nurseries (OAN) have started a coalition of Oregon Business groups in order to work towards a long-term solution to the immigration issue. As of today there are more than 20 business associations participating in the Coalition for Working Oregon. The overall goal of the coalition is to develop a strategy for a comprehensive federal solution. We will start this process by contracting an economic study on the impact to Oregon's businesses and by hiring a coordinator dedicated to organizing all Oregon business groups so that the same message is being sent from every group to our congressional delegation. However, we first need to understand how we arrived in this position.
Senate Bill 10, which passed during the 2007 regular session, is now in affect and imposing strict limits on gifts to public officials and state employees from lobbyists and others with a legislative interest. The bill requires quarterly electronic ethics reporting and prohibits public officials from receiving gifts exceeding a $50 value from a source with legislative or administrative interest during a calendar year. This $50 limit includes the cost of food and refreshments. Any gift of entertainment is prohibited unless "incidental" or "ceremonial".
Senate President Peter Courtney’s supplemental legislative session will commence February 4, 2008 with an expected end date of Friday, February 29. Oregon currently stands as one of a handful of states where annual sessions are illegal. For those reasons, this special session has been deemed an emergency session by either Legislative leadership or the governor. This first-of-its-kind supplemental session will serve as a trial run for annual sessions.
In September 2007, Labor Commissioner Dan Gardner announced that there would be a 15-cent an hour consumer price adjustment to Oregon’s minimum wage. This increase will be effective as of January 1, 2008. Once this adjustment is in place, Oregon’s Minimum wage will be $7.95 an hour, making it the second highest minimum wage in the nation. Washington State will once again lead the nation on January 1 when their minimum wage increases to $8.07 an hour. Like Oregon, their increase comes from an indexing component.
November 26, 2007 – Effective today, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has issued a revised Employment Eligibility Verification Form (I-9) that must be used for all new employees hired in the United States. The revision was announced on November 7 and became effective after being published in the Federal Register on November 26.
As of January 1, 2008 employees that receive tips and report them to their employers will have the option to waive their 30-minute mandatory meal period. This new option came under an Oregon Restaurant Association sponsored bill that was passed during the 2007 legislative session. Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) has already adopted the new guidelines for the meal period waiver.
During the last legislative session, teachers unions in Oregon focused part of their agenda on gift cards issued by businesses. They fought hard in an attempt to pass legislation that would require all unredeemed gift card funds be taken away from businesses and given to schools. ORA pushed back and, in the end, their efforts were unsuccessful. However, business groups had to agree to protect consumers that paid full price for gift cards as a compromise. Though this battle was lost, the teachers unions have repeatedly raised the issue of unredeemed gift cards for several sessions now and there is no expectation that that will change during future sessions.
