If your agency hasn't weighed in on this bill, please see if they can do so for a critical public hearing tomorrow. Here is the situation as described by the Association of Oregon Counties:
"SB 1575/duty to defend has traction this session. Like the last two times this bill was introduced, AOC and others opposed it and attached a large fiscal. (AOC testimony) While the concepts have moved out of the policy committee in past sessions, it always died in Ways and Means. This year that fiscal impact was ignored and the bill was sent straight to the Senate floor despite state estimates of $500k-$1M per occurrence and cities/counties estimating $300k-$350k per occurrence. SB 1575 actually died on the floor last Friday but upon a motion to reconsider it passed this Monday with several Senate Republicans changing their vote to yes.
SB 1575 has been scheduled for a public hearing this Thursday in the House Committee on Rules at 1pm. Our coalition has already had conversations with members of the committee and they seem sympathetic to our concerns. They have encouraged us to pack the hearing as they are getting a lot of pressure to hear the bill from the Senate and bill proponents. We are requesting that anyone who is able to please provide verbal testimony and please submit oppositional written testimony. You can register to testify and submit written testimony for the hearing here. An action alert will be going out to commissioners this morning as well requesting testimony and contacting House members.
Based on what’s in the record already, we expect the proponents to use a lot of equity arguments about how this bill helps smaller, disadvantaged firms get access to projects. In meetings so far, we haven’t disputed concerns that insurance is expensive and hard to get. What we have said is that this proposed change doesn’t fix that problem and that pushing the cost to taxpayers is unfair."