Our 2026 legislative agenda

Last year was challenging in Oregon, marked by a combination of environmental, economic, and social/political issues. Our state faced punishing and politically motivated immigration raids, attacks from the federal government, and severe weather events — including unprecedented wildfires and flooding that have devastated local communities and natural habitat. We were deeply disappointed the Oregon Legislature didn’t fund crucial programs for rental heat pumps and support local community resilience projects in the 2025 session to protect our communities in worsening heat, wildfires, and economic hardship.

With the state facing an estimated $63 million budget deficit, OJTA and its members are pushing radical solutions to continue moving the money to the communities who are most impacted by climate change as a means to solve Oregon’s climate and affordability crises. Climate change continues to hit frontline communities hard with extreme heat, high energy bills, and dirty air.

But not everyone faces the same burden. People with disabilities, rural families, people of color, and folks struggling to make ends meet are getting hit the hardest. If we don’t put these communities first in our solutions, they'll fall even further behind.

The solutions OJTA and its members will be fighting for are  progressive, long-term revenue generating policies that take from the top, to fund climate adaptation and resilience programs for our state’s most vulnerable communities, fighting false promises to the state’s energy crisis, and defending our immigrant communities. 

OJTA’s main priority

We are co-leading the Make Polluters Pay campaign to pass HB 1541, which would require large fossil fuel companies like Shell and Chevron to compensate the state and our communities for past climate change damages that occurred between 1995 and 2024.

HB 1541 would establish a Climate Resilience Superfund funded by those payments. Thirty percent of funds support statewide wildfire resilience and recovery. The remaining 70 percent funds other climate resilience projects, with 40 percent of those dollars prioritized for environmental justice communities.

OJTA also endorses these policy solutions for resilient communities:

Transportation

The Move Oregon Forward Coalition is proposing two policy solutions this year. 

SB 1542 - Guardrails For Good Governance: would draw on what states like Minnesota, Virginia, Maryland are already doing to ensure their DOTs can use bonds to get projects done while still protecting future flexible funding for the fundamentals the whole state relies on.

SB 1543 - Measure What We Drive: Oregon should adopt a "Measure What We Drive" policy to incorporate best practices from DOTs across the country to require major projects to demonstrate they'll measure up on safety, climate, accessibility, and cost effectiveness before we spend a dime.

Immigrant Justice Package

Immigrant communities are under attack. When they are targeted, families are harmed, local economies suffer, and public systems are pushed to the breaking point. State leaders must act to protect children, stabilize health care, ensure equal access to justice, and defend against federal abuses of power.

Without Immigrant Justice, we cannot have climate and environmental justice. That is why we are endorsing the Immigrant Justice Package.

This package advances common-sense protections, including requiring federal agents operating in Oregon to identify themselves and present credentials upon request, and preventing immigrants from being forced to disclose their immigration status in civil court.

The Immigrant Justice Package includes:

  • HB 4114 - Protect Your Door

  • HB 4138 - Law Enforcement Visibility and Accountability Act (LEVAA)

  • SJR 203 - No Secret Police

  • HB 4079 - Safeguarding Students and Families 

  • HB 4111 - Anti-Discrimination Protections

  • SB 1587 - Stop Data Brokers from sharing our info 

  • HB 4150 - Public Contracts Protections

  • HB 4123 - Landlord Tenant Confidentiality 

  • SB 1570 - Protections in Health Care Settings

HB 4025 - FAIR Act Technical Fix

HB 4025 makes a targeted technical fix to the FAIR Energy Act, which passed in the 2025 session to reduce the impact of utility rate hikes on households. The FAIR Energy Act bans winter rate increases (November through March), requires an 18-month stay-out period between major rate requests, and increases transparency for consumers.

Due to an oversight that also applied the winter rate increase ban to water utilities, the bill would have shifted water rate increases into summer months, when household budgets are already under strain. HB 4025 corrects this by ensuring that water utilities can raise rates the winter — when water use and bills are lowest — rather than in summer when they tend to be higher. 

OJTA is tracking the following bills:

HB 4010 - Don’t Privatize Pollution Permits

HB 4010 proposes to privatize the DEQ permitting process that is being supported by big tech companies, such as Intel and Amazon. By outsourcing these permits to private equity, there is concern that many of the guardrails that state agencies have to protect communities will be taken away. This will increase the environmental pollution vulnerable communities are already facing.

HB 4046 - Nuclear Study Bill

The 2025 session saw 13 pro-nuclear bills introduced. Most of these bills tried to overturn or modify Oregon’s moratorium on nuclear power that has been in place since 1980 — attempting to skirt the will of the voters.

The current iteration, HB 4046, only requires a “study” of the advantages of nuclear energy that contains biased language in favor of nuclear power. We know nuclear energy is a false solution to Oregon’s energy affordability crisis, and all benefits and risks must be weighed by the State — especially when the distraction of new nuclear reactors will keep our focus away from building a just transition to a renewable energy future.

Learn more about our wins and setbacks last year in our 2025 legislative session recap.

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