New Oregon Laws 2021 Affecting Real Estate and Rentals

Full Video Transcript Below

[00:00:00] Alice Lema: Well, hi guys. I'm Alice Lema here again with my weekly podcast. And today I am so excited. I have Greg Addington, who was on our radio show and I just didn't get enough to chat with him about, so he agreed to come on the podcast today. He's the governmental affairs director for the rogue valley association realtors, and he's going to bring them up to speed on all the stuff that happened the state of Oregon legislative session that just finished. Welcome Greg.

[00:00:29] Greg Addington: Hi, Alice. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:30] Alice Lema: Yeah. This is so fun. We get to like, talk about anything we want. Right. So so the, the session just finished. What do you want to tell us? Kind of like what happened this year? What a weird year.

[00:00:41] Greg Addington: Yeah, very weird year. You know, as I talked about yesterday a little bit, you, you go back to the special session in 2020 there's three special sessions. You know, you had the COVID pandemic. You had the wildfires particularly in Southern Oregon. You had rioting at the Capitol. So that was the backdrop and into the 20 21 legislative the regular session as they call it.

[00:01:04] And it was very odd. It was completely virtual. So nobody in the building except for legislators and staff. And, and I actually worked that last session for six months for a representative Vicki Breeze Iverson. She's out of central Oregon Prineville, but her district actually covers parts of oh, lake county, Deschutes county, Crook county, Jackson, klamath.

[00:01:30] So she covers a lot of the, the valley and some of, some of the area here. So I've known her for many years, so it was fun to, to go to work and help her as a chief of staff. But I'm not doing that anymore. I'm back doing this. It did though provide me some insight in though how things work or maybe how they don't work.

[00:01:49] Very weird, not having people in the building. It's just an odd, you know, if you've ever been to the state Capitol, particularly during the session. It's just, there's people everywhere when decisions are made people, look, other people in the eye and, and justify their decisions. And really there was just none of that going on.

[00:02:06] Alice Lema: So do you think that they kind of ran, ran unfettered, so to speak with because they didn't have an audience?

[00:02:13] Greg Addington: No. There was, there was opportunity for public input virtually, but it's just so different. Really on every bill that I watched anything significant, people were limited to yeah. In some cases one minute to give testimony sometimes two.

[00:02:30] Oh no. I mean, you can hardly introduce yourself in a minute and . And whereas if people are sitting there in the building, they've traveled from Medford or Ashland or wherever to come testify, they're much more generous with, you know, giving you some time and you drove a long way to make a point.

[00:02:48] And so it was just odd that way and they really rolled through things. And I do, you know, lobbyists get a bad name, but the fact that matter is lobby in Salem, you know, they represent people and they help hold people accountable. And so when, when decisions are made and you're just sitting in your living room on a zoom, it's just easy to make those decisions without having to

[00:03:11] Alice Lema: They kind of steam roll don't they?

[00:03:13] Yep. Yep. Yep. Cause they didn't have any, any controls. Well, and, and they did do that a lot of respects.

[00:03:19] Greg Addington: Well, in a lot of respects. Yeah. .I mean, the you know, the leadership in Salem is controlled by the Democrat party. It has been for quite a while. In the Senate there's 18 Democrats, 10 Republicans, two independence.

[00:03:35] The two independents or Republicans who ran as Republicans, but formed their own independent party. So, and then the house 37 Democrats, 23 Republicans. So really the leadership the Democrat party could do what they wanted to do. They didn't really need to work across the aisle. I will say, I think they did.

[00:03:54] And I think they tried. Their agenda was, was pretty obvious and they were pretty clear about it. And when they were going to deal with COVID, you know, the Oregonians most hurt by COVID. The wildfires were on everybody's mind and trying to recover and deal with that. Equity and social justice were a big theme. That was, I would say, woven into a lot of different legislation. Police reform and climate change. And the one, you know, we kind of touched on yesterday, affordable housing. Wasn't a stated goal of leadership, but it was a big topic during the session.

[00:04:32] But as we discussed, affordable housing means so much. It means different things to different people. I really, I think from a legislative perspective, it was you know, sort of, you can call it workforce housing making sure disadvantaged folks have housing, which is completely good and worthwhile, and we should be doing those things. You know, we need housing at every level.

[00:04:54] I mean, the demand for housing, you know this right. It's, it's crazy. And we just, we're not building enough period. Let alone specific types of housing.

[00:05:04] Alice Lema: Well, and then the landlord laws. Make it so hard, people just don't want to own rentals anymore. And then the rents are really high and it's, I think it's just exasperating the whole situation and we need housing for everybody.

[00:05:19] And yes, there's people that have been hurt by the fires and yes, there's people that are handicapped and yes, yes, yes. But we need to fix this for everybody. And that's the part that just kind of leaves some of us with our jaw open because we just don't feel like it's getting addressed for everyone.

[00:05:39] Greg Addington: In the eviction you know, the eviction moratorium, which has been ongoing for over a year now that, you know, there has been luckily, finally a landlord compensation fund set up.

[00:05:54] But from what I hear, anecdotally, it's very difficult to, I don't know that those funds have got to, to any landlords yet. There's an application process that people are going through. Meanwhile, I mean, you know, these are. Landlord's another one that gives a dirty name. Right. But these are people's retirements in many cases. It's what they've invested their money in.

[00:06:16] Alice Lema: It's working, working people.

[00:06:18] Greg Addington: Right. It's not all big, huge apartment complexes and some, some rich guy from out of state. It's it's mom and pop type stuff, and they don't get that income. They still have to pay their bills. They still, yeah.

[00:06:29] Alice Lema: And that's a really scary place to be. Right.

[00:06:33] Greg Addington: Right. Absolutely. So there is a compensation fund. It is funded. You know, I think it's going to, money will get out there. But it's, it's sure been a slow uphill process. Whereas the ability to you know, evict people for, for not paying that's gone away. And will for at least through the end of the year, probably.

[00:06:52] Alice Lema: Yeah. And going back to the affordable housing because Oregon has a program or a sub program. There's something called affordable housing, but it's really specific. And, and that term kind of gets thrown around, like you said, without being defined. And it's unfortunate that they didn't stop during the session and really specify what they meant by that.

[00:07:16] Greg Addington: Well you're right. I think in a lot of cases, it refers to homeless, homelessness. And so we need affordable housing so we can get people off the streets. And again, a laudable effort, good reason to do this stuff. But I mean, I'll just speak personally, I think that the homeless stuff, there are people with mental health issues that need to be taken care of.

[00:07:38] And that's a real thing. And there are people that are making a lifestyle choice to not have a house to be homeless.

[00:07:47] Alice Lema: And we used to call that like back in the day, you're probably not old enough to remember, but, you know, I had a lot of relatives down in the agricultural parts of California and that was a lifestyle.

[00:07:57] Yeah. And they chose that. And so I think there, there are the mentally ill that can't help themselves. They need help. Then we've got the lifestyle choosers and then we have people that have drug problems and that's, that's a different issue to resolve, I think Entirely. Right.

[00:08:13] Greg Addington: Right. So we can create all the affordable housing we want. I don't know that didn't necessarily cleans up, you know the homeless population there. There's some big problems out there and we've made it really I don't know, friendly to be, you know, it's, it's easy to be homeless in this state. You know, their sanctuary and their people need a place to rest people, you know, places to put their heads down.

[00:08:31] We get that. But I think we've just drifted away from sort of the getting people to help. They need people need to work. You know, you work, you buy a house, you buy them. Now that affordable housing is something we can get behind.

[00:08:43] Yeah, doing those kinds of things, but there was a ton of money, a ton of money thrown at housing, homeless tenant issues. The state's coffers are pretty full much to their surprise this year. I mean their revenue forecast came back much better than the expected.

[00:08:58] Alice Lema: They were all worried about it. How did that happen?

[00:09:01] Greg Addington: Well, I think, I don't know. I mean, COVID phenomenon and, and, and stimulus payments. I dunno how that affected all, all of it, but there, I think I read yesterday, I think the kicker, you know, which is when there's excess revenue comes back to the tax payers, was the largest they've ever had. It'll be the largest they've ever had.

[00:09:22] Alice Lema: So how much, how much are we getting?

[00:09:24] Greg Addington: I saw something that said the average Oregonian will get between two and $800. I think it comes as a credit on your taxes as a tax credit.

[00:09:33] Alice Lema: Oh, well, okay.

[00:09:35] Greg Addington: You might not get some crisp, a hundred dollar bills.

[00:09:38] Alice Lema: Yeah. Okay. Well, they tried. All right, well, let's talk about like, are there any other new bills?

[00:09:47] Greg Addington: Well, so I thought I would just touch on a couple and again, just for, for everybody's reference, I focus really with the rogue valley association and, and work locally and help them with anything from elections to candidates, to issues throughout Southern Oregon.

[00:10:04] But I have a history of working on state issues and yeah. Like I said, I was up there this session and I work really closely with the Oregon association of realtors and their lobby team. And so that's why I'm able to go through some of this stuff. I, I just steal it from the Oregon association and well.

[00:10:24] Alice Lema: And it helps that you were there.

[00:10:25] Greg Addington: Yeah, it did. So Senate bill 765, if you remember this in when COVID first came out, there was a concern. Remember we went through the whole essential worker. Who's essential.

[00:10:36] Alice Lema: Yes. Oh my gosh. And they took time to write that down. So that was scary.

[00:10:41] Greg Addington: We went through quite an effort to make sure the realtors and the industry was essential. That happened, but what we didn't have was the ability to do remote online notary, notarization. Right. And so there was a temporary rule in 2020 that just became permanent in the legislative session. So now you can do notarization Remotely.

[00:11:01] Alice Lema: That's awesome. How did you verify that?

[00:11:03] Greg Addington: You know, I don't know so much about the details, right?

[00:11:05] Alice Lema: That's okay. We'll, we'll ask some of our Title people, sorry.

[00:11:09] Greg Addington: Obviously identification and verification that has to happen, but I'm not sure exactly how that is.

[00:11:15] Alice Lema: Great. Digital. That's good.

[00:11:20] Greg Addington: I talked, we touched on already, but Senate bill 278 was the, one of the extensions of the eviction moratorium. But the realtors were able to get an amendment in that, that fully funded the landlord compensation.

[00:11:34] So it was funded 80% up to that point. They amended that and said, Hey, if you're going to keep extending this, get them up to a hundred percent. So people don't get hurt. So we've talked about that. Yeah. Senate bill 391 allows now accessory dwelling units in the rural areas eventually. Yeah. It's a big one.

[00:11:56] Alice Lema: Yeah. So is that something we can start doing right now?

[00:11:58] Greg Addington: I think that's effective. Yeah. It's either been signed or the amount of time has passed. So I think that's effective now. I mean, I think some of the planning departments may take a little while.

[00:12:10] Alice Lema: Yeah, that's right. I forgot they get time to adopt don't they? Yeah. Did they say how big.

[00:12:15] Greg Addington: No, I think there's some I wanted to say it was tied to the size of the initial dwelling, but it seems like 900 square feet.

[00:12:22] Alice Lema: Well that 's how it is in, in the municipality and towns. Yeah. Okay. Well, I can do a lot with 900 square feet.

[00:12:30] Greg Addington: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[00:12:31] Alice Lema: Right. Yay. Oh, that's fabulous.

[00:12:37] Greg Addington: So they've streamlined development a couple sessions ago where it was a bill that said you have to allow for multi-family housing within single family.

[00:12:46] Alice Lema: Yep. See, we've been talking about this ever since governor Brown did that executive order taking single family zoning into defacto multi-family zoning.

[00:12:57] Greg Addington: Yup. Yeah. And so, you know, there, there's a lot of mixed views about this. This is part of, we need to develop more housing. So that's allow for duplexes or triplexes where we have open spaces you know, in, in city limits and things like that. So how it rolls out and, you know, there are certain cities like Medford, I don't think Ashland meets the size requirement. Medford does that, that has to allow this kind of thing.

[00:13:22] But. You know, we worked with habitat for humanity. They obviously build houses. They wanted to be able to do these partitions in a streamlined fashion and, and provide home ownership opportunities, whether it's a duplex or whatever. So some good that comes with that. We want to make those things happen.

[00:13:41] Alice Lema: And so are you saying that they shortened the time it takes to do a partition?

[00:13:48] Greg Addington: I don't know, again, I'm a little, I'm a little shady on the details, but what I know, what I know is that the they wanted to streamline the process to make sure.

[00:13:56] Alice Lema: Well, that's great because it can be really long, really, really long and very, very expensive.

[00:14:02] Greg Addington: Yeah. And any of these people can go, it's called the Oregon legislative information system. You can look up any of these bill numbers, bolus OLIS and then look at some of the details on legislators, information system. Okay, good. Yeah. It's a good resource. Use ways to look up all kinds of things, but you can look up any of these bills.

[00:14:26] So again, that was, what did I say? That was Senate bill 458 , you know, the one we didn't talk about yesterday was house bill 25 50. This is the love letter bill that we've now said that that's.

[00:14:40] Alice Lema: Well, tell people what that is because not everybody knows that that's like our term, the love letter.

[00:14:45] Greg Addington: Yeah. And so you should help me out as the real estate professional here, but yeah. A lot of times, you know, you would make an offer on a house and you've worked with your realtor and you might write a letter saying, this is exactly the location we want to be. My kids love it here. We're looking forward to being part of the community.

[00:15:04] Here's a picture of our family, you know, and just kind of things to be, make the transaction more personal. And I that's happened for years on and off. And the problem is with the fair housing laws, it's just gets really, really tricky. And almost all those things, you know, my wife and I, that's a violation of the fair housing law, my, you know, my kids, my three kids. And, and so it just got to a point where and I think there was some, a few bad examples from up in the Portland area .Where yeah people were rejected. They were rejected because of who they were. Yeah. That was bad. That was bad. And so now we get a law saying you can't do that. And the only state in the union, we're the only one.

[00:15:51] But, but I can tell you that NAR is national associations looking at it. And infact the Oregon association has been talking to a lot of the other states about, you know, how and why and what. So I, I think you're going to see more of it.

[00:16:04] Alice Lema: I'm really glad personally, because it just, it has to be about the offer and the money and not because you're going to love it and take care of it. Or you have kids or don't have kids or whatever. It just, it creates a, it skews the decision-making and you just don't know why you lost the bid. Yeah. And that's not, that's not okay in 2021.

[00:16:32] Greg Addington: We were kind of torn at first on this, but just what you just said right there, the more you think about it and looking well.

[00:16:38] Alice Lema: Cause then they ask you, it's like, if you're their agent and they're looking at you going well, is it because we're this kind of a person? And it's like, no, because that's against the law and not human. Right. But yeah. So now, now they can't do it. Right. That's good.

[00:16:56] Greg Addington: Oh, what else? House bill 30 90. We, we talked about this is the septic system replacement funding, so there's $2 million. You know, what was happening was transactions were happening and then there was inspections, bad septic systems. There was a recognition that these are expensive to fix. They have a impact on the environment. So the state has created a fund it's through the department of environmental quality, and you can access that for assistance in replacing septics.

[00:17:25] Alice Lema: Do you think that's going to encourage people to continue to not take care of it?

[00:17:30] Greg Addington: Yeah, I think what I mean it can, and I think there, in some cases, people don't even know they've got these failing septics until the point until the transaction occurs.

[00:17:39] Right. Because they don't do inspections periodically. Right. So. You know, the ideas, let's get these things fixed and not have it hold up the transaction.

[00:17:49] Alice Lema: Yeah. And it does cause environmental issues and health and safety issues. I get it. And I don't want to sound harsh. I'm sorry. But I just, you know, I would just like people to take care of their stuff.

[00:18:02] Greg Addington: Yup. Yup. It's the same with the old underground heat tanks. Right. It's like, you know, you've got those, you know, they don't last forever and yeah, yeah.

[00:18:12] You know, the other big things were really around the fire recovery and there was a lot of one of the really controversial bills was Senate bill 7 62, which was really a massive package of funding. Policy to deal with wildfire. And it's, there's a lot of good things in it. You know, money for fire suppression.

[00:18:36] I think some thinning projects, some proactive stuff. The controversial piece came when Senator golden suggested that we adopt he didn't suggest he put it in the bill, that we adopt standards that were developed in Europe for this wild land, urban interface. And so basically if you think of it as a, you know, an overlay, so they'll do this mapping and they'll say, well, you can't build or do anything in these areas because it's because of fire.

[00:19:01] Well, when you use this method in Oregon, it covers everything, really. It would really hinder development around the whole state, particularly Southern Oregon, and some of these areas that aren't downtown, you know, you get out and I'm not even talking like out in the boonies I'm talking like, right around the edge of town.

[00:19:23] Alice Lema: So I didn't realize Europe had a wildfire problem like we do.

[00:19:28] Greg Addington: You know, I did not, I don't know. I think it was I don't know. I really don't know this, but I think it was developed in Finland. I think they have a lot of you know, and I think it's part scientific and part, you know, on the ground type type stuff. But I know nothing really honestly, about the development in, in Europe and you know, how much is it?

[00:19:49] Is it more focused in clusters in towns or is it spread out when we're done?

[00:19:53] Alice Lema: I'm really curious. And I don't, again, I don't mean to be flip about anything. I just didn't know. And it just sounded kind of funny cause it seems like we're the ones that have all the fires. We should be giving them an overlay.

[00:20:05] Greg Addington: Yeah. Well, and it's. There's a people need to be really aware. And we talked about this yesterday as well. You know, there's the insurance impacts of all these fires. What's going to happen with people trying to rebuild and trying to get insurance. The premiums are going through the roof. I mean, those things are having an effect.

[00:20:27] You certainly ought to be able to rebuild where you need to rebuild where if you lost a home, you should be able at a minimum to go in the same footprint you were in. The other thing that was dealt with this year and representative marsh was at the forefront of some of these things was allowing flexibility on that rebuild.

[00:20:44] And so if you had a, an older home. You got an insurance payment, you rebuild. If you have to rebuild it to 2021 code, you didn't get paid enough in your insurance settlement. Right? It, it costs, it goes way overboard. And so the legislation, I think, went to 2008 to bring it up to which is a fair, makes it very safe, makes all the electrical and plumbing.

[00:21:09] Alice Lema: And, and was that Pam marsh I'm involved in that? She's got some great ideas.

[00:21:14] Greg Addington: It was she was really involved in a lot of the session around, around the fire issues and, and particularly obviously the Talent , Phoenix area and trying to help wherever they could with with what happened. So those were some of the, I mean, okay things that pass some of the things that people might be interested in.

[00:21:33] I just take a second and talk about a couple of things that didn't pass and thankfully one of them and if you're a realtor or in any other many other lines of work There was a, an effort to do away with independent contractors, so independent contractor status.

[00:21:48] So you would have, yeah. So like as a, as a realtor you do your own thing, right? And, and I'm an independent contractor myself. I hire out and do this kind of stuff.

[00:22:01] Alice Lema: How did they think they could, they could do that.

[00:22:05] Greg Addington: What it is, is it's always this they're all thereafter, Uber and Lyft drivers. This is what it always comes down to.

[00:22:10] They want, they, they hate that they got all these folks that they're not collecting, probably what some people feel is enough taxes on. So those guys, they want Uber and Lyft to make those people, employees instead of independent contractors. And so what happens is everybody. Yeah, exactly. Right. Everybody else gets swept up in it, like realtors, truckers, you know, I mean, you can go on and on theres hairstylist barbers.

[00:22:36] Alice Lema: Well, and you know, that would really squish the entrepreneurial small business startup thing. It's like, I remember cause I am incorporated, which is unusual for. An a, a, a commission only person, but once your new business, regardless of what industry you're in, once your new business has some legs and you're sustainable, then you can afford to incorporate and, and be a W2 or hire employees.

[00:23:02] But if you don't have that startup space where you're just funding yourself, I don't know what would happen to all of our creativity and our new technology. That all starts with 1099 people.

[00:23:17] Greg Addington: I mean, I was exactly the same thing. I made the transition from an employee to going out on my own and doing contract work.

[00:23:24] I can do it if I had to.

[00:23:27] Alice Lema: It's really expensive to incorporate. Yeah, but then you do get some tax benefits. Yeah. There you go. I encourage you to look into it. Sorry.

[00:23:40] Greg Addington: The big one, I'll just I'll end with this one. As far as the legislation is the other big one was the mortgage interest deduction, we all are familiar with the MID, they call it more, you know, you deduct your mortgage from your taxes.

[00:23:54] And this has been an ongoing effort by leadership and, and in many in Portland and Salem to remove that, get rid of it, which would obviously increase revenue to the state because you wouldn't be deducting that from your taxes. But you know, for us, it's just it's just a foundational element of homeownership. It's what helps build communities and get people, you know from renting to owning, to building some wealth. I mean, it's just a foundational piece.

[00:24:21] And so the realtors put a full court press on this one. They you know and here's the advantage of being part of a big association. The national association helped the state helped locally.

[00:24:33] Really the focus was on Portland legislators, Salem, legislators, Eugene, that area. And it was a huge, you know, there was a direct mail pieces. There was radio, there was phone calls and we had a virtual realtor day at the Capitol. So people got tons of cards and letters sent to them. And then because of that effort, I have no doubt, I mean, those, those bills to get rid of the mortgage interest deduction never got any traction.

[00:25:03] Alice Lema: Oh, I was so shocked that that is on the chopping block every single time. Crazy. Yeah, it really is. Cause that's buckets of money, even in a low interest rate environment. It's a lot of money, lot, lot, lot tens of thousands of dollars.

[00:25:18] Yeah. So it was anything discussed about water, farming? Well, it's,

[00:25:25] Greg Addington: that's always a big deal. And in fact Vicki, who I worked for was was on the ag and water committees. And so we paid a lot attention to those issues. Water is always talked about there's a lot of efforts for more regulation and more measurement, which are all good.

[00:25:42] We need to be careful with it. We need to use it according to water rights, all that kind of stuff. The frustration I think a lot of that I have and others have is that we, we never, we never sort of addressed the big problem, which is we don't have enough. We do not have enough water. We're growing.

[00:26:01] We're getting bigger where our population is growing. That that same old water supply gets spread thinner and thinner and thinner. And you run into conflicts, environmental conflicts with fish issues, well issues. Homeowners you know, having problems with their Wells and then even municipal water supplies.

[00:26:20] And when you look at the Rogue Valley and the water coming out of you know, big, big Butte Creek is where the supply for, for most of the valley comes from. You know, a drought like we were having here has an impact.

[00:26:32] I mean, so. I want to see more, you know, I guess, vision about how do we develop more water supplies? How do we, how do we build storage in an environmentally friendly way? You know, we haven't built storage in 40 years. So they didn't really have any discussions about that. Oh, there's always discussions about it, but You know, again, not to just point fingers at Democrats or Portland or Salem or, or Republicans for that matter.

[00:27:06] I mean, you can point them anywhere. I just don't think people in Portland and legislators that come from the Portland urban area, it's just, it's not that they're against Southern Oregon or Eastern Oregon. It's it's not really that way. It's just, their focus is on so many different things, homeless, drug problems.

[00:27:26] Alice Lema: Oh, because that's what they live with. Yeah.

[00:27:28] Greg Addington: Right. Totally fair. But it's just so hard to get, I think their attention on some of these, because building storage or some of these other long-term ideas with water are very expensive. I mean, they're going to be very expensive. And so it's just, we just kind of keep kicking that can down the road.

[00:27:47] And so that's going to be, it's going to be challenging. I'm trying to think of what, you know, I mean, there's a lot of a lot of ag issues. You know, always issues with predator control and what to do with that. I mean, these are things that are difficult, you know, predators. And predators aren't just, you know, wolves or bears or mountain lions.

[00:28:11] It could be. They destroy crops, right? They destroy trees.

[00:28:15] Alice Lema: You don't think of it that way though. I know.

[00:28:19] Greg Addington: And so people think that beavers are nice and friendly and so that we shouldn't, we shouldn't, you know, trap or reduce their populations. That's hard in the ag and forestry world. You know, how do we, how do we do that?

[00:28:31] So those kind of conflicts, again people that live in the more urban areas. You know, they're not thinking about crops being destroyed. They're thinking about beavers or the state, you know, the state animal.

[00:28:43] Alice Lema: It really is perspective. And it'd be nice if we all kept each other in mind. So cause we probably forget about the problems that Portland has, although they remind you.

[00:28:52] Greg Addington: I agree with you. I actually work with a lot of agriculture people and farm forestry folks, and we get very mad that you know, Portland doesn't understand our issues. And I always say, make sure you understand theirs, you know?

[00:29:08] Alice Lema: Yeah. Yeah. Because it does go both ways. But yeah, I don't know. I just always feel like Southern Oregon is the, you know, the little brother or the little sister that kind of gets dumped on.

[00:29:20] I don't know if anybody else grew up in a family like that, but it's just like, we don't seem to get our voices heard quite, quite to the volume that the bigger cities do. But but it's so good that you got to be there and got to document all this for us.

[00:29:36] Greg Addington: Well, like I say, it was it was eye opening. I've been around the process a lot. I've lobbied in Salem. I've worked on, you know, government issues for a long time. But I never worked in the building as a staff person. And I, I loved, I loved my boss. I loved who I worked for, but boy, that's just a, it's a grueling process.

[00:29:56] Alice Lema: What was your biggest surprise?

[00:29:57] Greg Addington: You know, day to day, you know, I think everybody thinks it's so partisan, which it is when it comes down to a lot of the big issues. But there's a ton. I mean they passed thousands of bills. And they're not all by, you know, they're not all on party lines. There's a lot of bills that people work together on a collaboration.

[00:30:15] It's just these big ticket ones that you, you know, the ones that are in the headlines where you see the sort of the partisanship. So, you know, that was interesting to me. I don't know if I was surprised by it, but you know, people are very friendly up into a certain point. And then those things happen in the media about, you know, the Republicans did this or the Democrats did that. And you, you see those, but walking in the building everyday, you don't really, you don't really see that.

[00:30:41] I was, I guess, surprised at You know, it's a citizen legislature. These are very, very complicated issues that people I think in most respects are really trying to do the right thing. They have different ideas about how to do it. That really becomes clear to you when you, when you see the hearings day in and day out.

[00:31:00] And you see the I'm trying to remember. I want to say there was 5,000 bills introduced. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, I would have to look that up, but it's a big, it's a big number that was very surprising to me. And so obviously you don't get through all those. But oh surprised I'll tell you one thing, I was surprised at the kind of the, the bills that didn't get a hearing, you know, that didn't go anywhere that people thought were good ideas, like legalizing prostitution in Oregon.

[00:31:30] That was that was a piece of legislation.

[00:31:32] Alice Lema: That was, that was on that. Wow. I didn't know.

[00:31:35] Greg Addington: Using private property and if the governor declared an emergency the state can just go into any private property. That was a bill that somebody thought .

[00:31:45] Alice Lema: That's alarming.

[00:31:48] Greg Addington: Taxing the PPP loans, right? The whole point.

[00:31:51] Alice Lema: Oh gosh, no, I didn't know that. Oh, oh boy.

[00:31:57] Greg Addington: There was a bill to basically ban fairs and rodeos. Anything with animals. You know, so it's like, no, those didn't go anywhere, but somebody thought it was a good idea.

[00:32:11] Alice Lema: Wow. So did they make it to the, like, did it get talked about or did he get killed early.

[00:32:16] Greg Addington: Early, no hearings?

[00:32:20] Alice Lema: How interesting. I am surprised at that list. Greg.

[00:32:26] Greg Addington: And if I was really thorough, I bet you, I could give you a lot more. I mean, I'm going off the cuff here.

[00:32:30] Alice Lema: But we're going to talk to more often, so yeah. So go find that list. Cause because I don't, I didn't know. And I think this is so great for our our real estate fans to really start to understand what's going on in Salem. And that some of it is pretty cohesive and they are working together and then there's like this weird stuff.

[00:32:51] Greg Addington: Yeah. No. I just think that, I guess if I left anybody with anything, it's like legislators truly appreciate hearing from people. I really believe that. And I think particularly if you have some expertise or if you're part of a group or a coalition. I mean, they want input because there are so many bills.

[00:33:12] You might be an expert in water, but but now you're getting all of these real estate bills or you're getting all these bills on labor unions and, you know, I don't know, you know, or tax bills. So. You will, you need experts, you need people. So if you, I guess I would just encourage people to, you know, don't be afraid to reach out and talk to your elected officials because.

[00:33:37] Alice Lema: It's a great suggestion.

[00:33:38] Greg Addington: Yeah. They really are looking for some ideas and some help.

[00:33:43] Alice Lema: Yeah. Yeah. And we could do that. We could give them our opinion, so well.

[00:33:49] Greg Addington: Do it in a nice way.

[00:33:51] Alice Lema: Yeah. Don't be demeaning there's no reason for that. America is built on, you know, honest debate and understanding other people's points of view. And it's okay to have a point of view, right.

[00:34:04] So that's not that way. All over the world. So we're lucky that way. So Greg Addington governor governmental affairs director Roguevalley association realtors. This was amazing. Thank you so super much for doing this.

[00:34:21] Greg Addington: Thanks for having me.

[00:34:22] Alice Lema: Okay, so we're going to hit you up again. All right. Okay. Thanks.

[00:34:26] Have a beautiful day. Bye now.