2023 CCC Legislative Agenda
The Coalition of Communities of Color engages at the Oregon state legislative session to pass bills that increase opportunity and advance racial justice for communities of color. We are proud to support action on the following legislation during the 2023 legislative session. Our issues areas include economic justice, housing, strengthening our democracy, criminal legal reform, education, and environmental justice.
Learn more about CCC’s endorsement process and what it means here. The positions on our agenda represent only the position of CCC as a coalition and not individual members.
View a PDF of our legislative agenda here.
PRIORITY ISSUE AREAS:
Economic Justice
Food for All Oregonians
Senate Bill 610
When everyone has access to food, we’re all better off. But right now, more than 62,000 Oregonians are excluded from federal food assistance programs based simply on their immigration status. This legislation would create an inclusive state-funded program to help all Oregonians put food on the table, no matter where they were born or their immigration status.
TAKE ACTION: Food for All Oregonians
OREGON KIDS’ CREDIT
House Bill 3235
The Oregon Kids’ Credit will help families make ends meet by providing a $1,200 refundable state tax credit per child. The credit is based off of the expanded federal Child Tax Credit, which was a highly effective tool to reduce poverty for Black, Latine, Native American/Alaska Native, and Asian children. Increasing financial resources for families will reduce economic disparities and to build financial stability.
TAKE ACTION: PASS THE OREGON KIDS’ CREDIT
Oregon INDividual development accounts
Budget request
We can advance economic opportunity for BIPOC Oregonians by investing $35 million in the Oregon IDA Initiative, a matched savings program geared towards helping Oregonians gain financial security and work towards a specific savings goal. IDAs are a powerful tool for financial development and asset building in communities of color.
Child Care
To support working families, Oregon must continue its investment in child care infrastructure. Oregon continues to experience a childcare crisis that disproportionately affects the Black, Indigenous, and women of color who make up the childcare workforce, low-income and families of color who struggle to access the quality care they need, and children, whose developing brains make early childhood a critical window for eliminating inequity.
CCC is proud to support Childcare for Oregon’s comprehensive package to help every family have quality, affordable childcare. These bills will:
Increase affordability and access by funding quality and accessible learning and childcare and resourcing trusted community-based organizations to provide navigation services (House Bill 3027)
Support workforce development by removing unnecessary barriers to professional credentials for child care workers to help create more pathways for those interested in entering this field (House Bill 2991) and creating an incentive and assistance program for those entering the field (House Bill 3029)
Create childcare infrastructure by establishing an Early Learning and Care Facilities Fund (House Bill 3005), protecting child care facilities operating in rental homes (Senate Bill 599), and examining and addressing how state and local zoning, permitting, and building codes inhibit or support childcare facilities (House Bill 2727).
TAKE ACTION: Child Care for Oregon
RACE & ETHNICITY DATA COLLECTION ON INCOME TAX FORMS
SENATE BILL 1
Disaggregated racial and ethnic data on our income tax forms will enable us to better understand the racial equity—and racial injustices—in our revenue system, including policies such as tax breaks. This legislation would allow taxpayers to voluntarily self-identify on their income tax form and provide this critical information.
Housing
Eviction Reform & Reduction
Senate Bill 799 and HB 2001
The legislation would amend fast-track eviction timelines so residents have time to access services that will help prevent them from losing their homes, including a safe harbor provision for tenants who have applied for rent assistance, and giving tenants ten days instead of 72 hours to pay their rent when facing eviction.
Reasonable Rent
Senate Bill 611 and House Bill 2733
Oregonians are experiencing the impact of high inflation and spiking rents. This legislation will help families stay in their rental homes by limiting rent increases to 3% plus inflation or 8%, whichever is lower; close loopholes reducing the amount of time that newer buildings are exempt from rent stabilization laws; and increase the amount of relocation assistance required in no-fault evictions.
Rental Market Data COLLECTION
House Bill 3169
To stabilize our rental market, we need to know how many rentals are available in local communities, and how to reach owners and landlords when needed. This legislation will help local communities know more about local housing needs by developing a statewide central registry of rental units.
Rent Assistance Budget Resources
This budget request would allocate $100 million in funding for culturally specific programs and community action agencies across the state to provide emergency rent assistance and prevent evictions.
TAKE ACTION: STABLE HOMES FOR OREGON FAMILIES
Advancing Democracy
Ranked Choice Voting
House Bill 2004
Our current electoral method needs a fix. Ranked choice voting is a simple improvement to our elections that gives voters more meaningful choices by allowing them to rank candidates in their order of preference on their ballot. This legislation would adopt ranked choice voting for all statewide and federal elections, provide a local option for cities and counties to use ranked choice voting, and support multilingual and culturally responsive voter education.
Take Action: Oregon Ranked Choice Voting
Guaranteeing the Right to Vote
Senate Bill 579
All Oregonians should have a say in what happens in their community, and a voice in our government. But 12,000 people incarcerated in Oregon are currently denied their right to vote, leading to more low-income, Black, Indigenous, and communities of color being disproportionately disenfranchised. This legislation would guarantee the right to vote for people impacted by the criminal legal system and fulfill Oregon’s promise of an inclusive democracy.
TAKE ACTION: Guaranteeing the Right to Vote
Opportunity to Serve
Senate Bill 786
In practice, serving in the Oregon Legislature is a full-time job, but our state lawmakers are paid only $34,000 per year. As we work to increase diverse representation in the legislature, we face a fundamental barrier: many BIPOC leaders of color, who are less likely to have access to wealth or passive sources of income, cannot support themselves or their families on this salary. This legislation would give them the opportunity to serve by tying the salary for legislators to the mean occupational employment and wage estimate for Oregon.
TAKE ACTION: OPPORTUNITY TO SERVE OREGON
Equitable Workgroups FOR EQUITABLE OUTCOMES
House Bill 2650
Legislative workgroups and task forces inform legislative decisions and capture the lived experiences of those affected by an issue. Oregon makes better policy when the voices of impacted people are centered in policy-making conversations. This legislation would establish requirements for workgroups and task forces to ensure there is more inclusive and equitable representation. Learn more. Learn more.
Take Action: Transforming JUSTICE COALITIon
Education
Standardize Student Race & Ethnicity Data Collection
House Bill 3288
Accurate racial and ethnic data for Oregon students is essential to close racial disparities in eduction. Oregon’s school districts are required by law to collect data on race and ethnicity, but there is no standard approach among the state’s 197 districts. These inconsistencies can lead to inaccurate data and can cause communities to miss out on critical funding and supports for underserved students of color. By standardizing data collection, policymakers, educators, and communities can make better decisions to advance equity in education.
PREPARE OREGON EDUCATORS TO TEACH ETHNIC STUDIES
BUDGET REQUEST
With ethnic studies, all students will be able to learn about the history and contributions of the diverse communities in our state. As Oregon implements new K–12 ethnic studies standards, our teachers need support and training to enrich all students’ learning. This legislation would allocate funding to ensure educators have access to the resources they need to successfully implement ethnic studies standards and develop an inclusive curriculum.
TAKE ACTION: Oregon Partners for Education Justice
SUCCESS FOR PACIFIC ISLANDER STUDENTS
House Bill 3144
Oregon has created successful culturally-specific statewide student success plans for Black, Latine, and Native American students who have been denied equal educational opportunities. Racial inequities in Oregon have also created educational disparities for Pacific Islanders. This legislation would create a Pacific Islander Student Success Plan to set our education system on a path toward supporting all students.
Criminal Legal Reform
Public Defense Funding – IN DEFENSE OF HUMANITY
Senate Bill 413
We are currently failing to provide people of all backgrounds with their constitutional right to legal representation. This upholds systemic racism and classism and harms our communities and families. This legislation would facilitate debt forgiveness for public defenders and create new public defender positions at the state level to support local counties in need.
Senate Bill 817
This legislation would reduce workload and eliminate backlog for trials by creating a pathway for low-level or non-violent crimes to be dealt with by alternative forms of sentencing, such as counseling or community service, as approved by judges.
TAKE ACTION: Fair Shot For All - In Defense of Humanity
ConsistenT SUPERVISION FOR SAFER COMMUNITIES
Senate Bill 581
Community safety depends on people’s success during their community supervision. This legislation would make the earned discharge eligibility requirements consistent for people who are on parole, probation, and post-prison supervision, regardless of when they were convicted. This legislation will incentivize success by providing regular progress updates to people on supervision, reduce caseloads for supervision officers so they can focus on those struggling to comply, and promote racial equity by making the system more consistent. Learn more.
Invest in Victims’ Healing and Gun Violence Prevention
This legislation would fund the Healing Hurt People program that provides immediate support to survivors of intentional trauma such as gunshot or stab wounds. This culturally specific, evidence-based approach connects survivors at the hospital with trusted advocates who work to prevent retaliation, and connect victims with a range of supports including medical care and substance use treatment. Learn more.
Take Action: Transforming JUSTICE COALITIon
Environmental Justice
Green Infrastructure Equity
House Bill 3016
As climate change worsens, green infrastructure will become increasingly important to reduce carbon in our atmosphere and meet community resilience needs, such as mitigating the heat islands that disproportionately impact communities of color. This legislation would allocate funding to support green infrastructure projects and workforce development through community-led projects, partnerships between Oregon nurseries and communities, and resources to protect our trees.
Community Benefiting Water Infrastructure Funding
Budget request
We all depend on access to clean water. However, Oregon’s sources of funding for water infrastructure are inequitable and inaccessible, especially to communities of color and small rural communities. This legislation would create readily-accessible grants for underserved communities and boost workforce development for community-benefiting infrastructure projects to improve water quality and affordability.
Renewable Energy and Transmission Siting Reform
House Bill 2989
As Oregon moves toward 100% clean energy, we will need to rapidly build new renewable energy projects and transmission lines. This will put substantial pressure on rural communities and sovereign nations, including their historic and cultural resources and trust lands. This legislation will incorporate policies that address the challenges and opportunities of Oregon’s siting system and ensure that communities and tribal governments have a strong voice in the process, while balancing the need to develop projects to quickly move Oregon off fossil fuels.
Climate Resilience Hubs
House Bill 2990
Changing climate conditions are resulting in increased wildfires, smoke events, heat waves, floods, and other disasters that are disrupting the ecological, social, physical, and economic systems that sustain Oregonians. Communities lack sufficient resources to respond to these harms. This legislation creates resource/service hubs across the state to support climate preparedness, emergency response, and disaster recovery.