Floor Speeches

Floor Speeches

Rep. Bailey speaks on the House floor in favor of Senate Bill 1045, the Job Applicant Fairness Act, which bans most employers from using pre-employment credit checks. Pre-employment credit checks unfairly punish people for economic circumstances that are often out of their control.

Read Jules' Floor Speech on HB 2001, the Jobs and Transportation Package:

"Colleagues, I rise today to support HB 2001, and I want to tell you why I support this bill, why it is a balanced and smart investment, and where I think we can, and must, go in the future.

We've learned from over 50 years of experience that in most communities, we can't simply build our way out of our transportation problems. This was the great sea change of the middle 20th century: when a community organizer named Jane Jacobs stood up to Robert Moses, the most powerful man in New York, and stopped the construction of a freeway through the heart of Greenwich Village.

In doing so she rewrote the rules of urban planning and transportation, and revolutionized how we think about public safety, healthy communities, and quality of life.

We've seen what happens when we don't plan well. The housing projects of that era, hemmed in by freeways in Chicago, New York, and L.A., crippled a generation of families with poverty, violence, and decay. The belief that we could engineer a better society through broad boulevards and isolation stunted our growth as a nation and created a debt we are still paying today. Le Corbusier was an architect of bricks and mortar, not of society and community."

We've seen what happens when we don't plan well. The housing projects of that era, hemmed in by freeways in Chicago, New York, and L.A., crippled a generation of families with poverty, violence, and decay.

The belief that we could engineer a better society through broad boulevards and isolation stunted our growth as a nation and created a debt we are still paying today. Le Corbusier was an architect of bricks and mortar, not of society and community.

And as we rediscover the value of connectivity, of choice, of freedom, of the smile from a front porch next to the grocery store or a wave from a balcony above the bakery, the monument to Robert Moses might as well have the inscription of Ozymandias: "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."

So, Colleagues, let us not look for those projects that are shovel ready, but for those that are shovel worthy. And how might we do that? HB 2001 gives us a roadmap.

We have for the first time a framework that requires the Metro area to plan to meet the most stringent greenhouse gas goals in the nation, and a toe in the door to bring that planning to cities across Oregon.

We have a congestion pricing pilot program that takes a critical step towards correctly pricing travel.

And perhaps most importantly we have a revolutionary least cost planning model that includes in the definition of cost not only the cost of the road but the cost to our health, our environment, and our society, and a model that looks at how we can influence demand for roads, and not just how many we build.

Coupled with the transit bill we just passed, the flexible funds the OTC designated last week for planning and multimodal transportation, and HB 2186, this is fair bill that brings funding for bicycle and pedestrian trails and will help us build a system for everyone, not just cars. It is supported by the city of Portland, Multnomah County, and Metro. It is the right bill for our urban areas.

Efficient use of our public dollars means investments that meet a rigorous benefit-cost analysis, with a broad definition of both benefits and costs. It’s not more roads or fewer roads, it’s roads in the right places for the right reasons.

HB 2001 starts us down the path. But it is not the destination. It can't get us there all the way, because it is constrained by our constitution.

In a world without the Highway Trust Fund, we could raise the money we need, and spend it most efficiently to move people and goods in the way that makes sense for each community. But the trust fund limits us only to roads, and only to a 20th Century paradigm.

We can neither achieve our transportation goals, nor our climate goals, with the Highway Trust Fund constraints. In California 75% of transportation dollars go to MPOs and 23% goes to the state department of transportation, allowing regions to pursue integrated, multimodal transportation planning.

With proper planning and proper pricing of pollution, congestion, and wear and tear, we can have a system that pays for itself, invests wisely, and promotes sustainability. It could be a system that makes the gas tax obsolete. It could be a system that does for efficiency and conservation in the transportation sector what utility planning has done in the energy sector.

This isn't just about jobs now or the environment tomorrow. There is a real benefit in quality of life. It is a second paycheck that we all cash. And in a competitive global economy we have what Omaha or Orlando would kill for: a sense of place that draws, fosters, and nurtures innovation and creativity.

Transportation is not just about planes, trains, and automobiles. It is about people; and how people live.

HB 2001 moves us in the right direction. It may not be everything any of us wants, but it is a good bill. It is another step forward from a state known for stepping out in front of the nation. And it is the first of many steps, colleagues, that I hope will one day result in the transformation of how we fund and plan transportation.

Cement crumbles, and places change. The structures we build with our hands do not last but those that we build with our policies endure. And on this monument we inscribe not what we build, but how we do it. HB 2001 turns the tide, and I hope you will give it your aye vote."

ShareThis