How a bargain comes together

On September 23, 2013 the governor called a special session, and the proclamation described the package he expected the legislature to pass: pension savings, revenue, appropriations for schools and services, and a change to how local governments could regulate agriculture. The legislature convened on September 30. A single joint committee took up all five bills on October 1 and reported each of them with twenty aye votes and no nays. On October 2 the two chambers passed all five, and on October 8 the governor signed them.[1][2]

Five bills, one package

Read the five together. HB 5101 added money for the State School Fund, universities and community colleges, senior services, transit, and mental health. SB 861 cut the cost-of-living adjustment on public pensions; SB 862 changed how certain salary increases counted toward pensions. HB 3601 raised corporate excise tax rates on income between one and ten million dollars and made other tax changes. SB 863 declared seed regulation a matter of statewide concern and preempted local rules, with an exception for a Jackson County measure already on its way to the ballot. Each carried an emergency clause except the tax bill, which the constitution forbids from having one.[2][4]

The staff summaries and the enrolled chapters, all preserved, describe what each bill did. What they do not describe is why the five needed each other. For that the record offers three kinds of evidence: the governor's proclamation, which named the parts of the package before the session began; the unanimous committee vote, which shows that the members appointed to the committee had agreed to move everything; and the floor votes, which show that no single coalition passed all five.[1]

Different coalitions passed different parts

The appropriations bill passed the House 54 to 1 and the Senate 27 to 1. The pension cut, SB 861, passed the Senate 22 to 7 and the House 31 to 24, with House Democrats split fifteen for and sixteen against and Republicans sixteen for and eight against; it passed with exactly the thirty-one votes the constitution requires. The seed preemption, SB 863, passed the Senate 17 to 12 with fourteen Republicans and three Democrats, and the House 32 to 22 with twenty-four Republicans and eight Democrats. The tax bill, HB 3601, needed three-fifths and got 36 to 19 in the House and 18 to 10 in the Senate, the minimum in both.[2]

That is the structure of a package: each part carried by a coalition that would not have carried the others, held together by the expectation that the parts would move together. The record establishes the sequence and the votes. It does not establish what any member privately demanded, and this site does not guess. The Atlas session account collects what the journals, the committee recording log, and the staff analyses show, and lists the correspondence and testimony still needed to say more.[1] (interpretation)

What each part obtained, and what it kept

A bargain's terms can be read from the alternatives it rejected. The session account records three: considering each policy in the next regular session rather than in a three-day sitting; funding services without cutting accrued pension adjustments; and allowing local seed regulation until the state adopted a comprehensive standard. Each was available and each was declined, and the enacted text shows the choice. The exception for Jackson County's pending measure is visible in SB 863's own words, and voters there approved that measure on May 20, 2014.[1][2]

The afterlives differed. The appropriations were spent in the 2013–15 biennium. The tax changes took effect January 1, 2014. The pension savings were largely undone on April 30, 2015, when the Supreme Court in Moro v. State held that cost-of-living adjustments already earned were contractual and could not be reduced, while leaving the legislature free to change future accruals. A bargain struck across a table in September can be reopened in a courtroom eighteen months later by a party that was never at the table.[3][2]

How to read the next bargain you meet

Ask four questions of the record. Who called the sitting and what did the call say? Which committee was appointed to receive the package, and how did it vote? Did the same members carry every part on the floor, or did the coalition change bill by bill? And what happened to each part afterward, in court, at the ballot, or in the next session? The 2017 transportation package answers the same questions with a different shape: one bill, one committee, months of hearings, and a single amendment carrying the whole settlement.[1][5] (interpretation)