The Philomath City Council unanimously approved five legislative priorities Monday night to submit to the League of Oregon Cities after weighing in on a list of 27 potential issues that will help shape the statewide advocacy group’s lobbying agenda for the 2027-28 legislative session.
After a 38-minute discussion, councilors settled on Administrative Procedures Act reform, full funding and streamlining for housing production, investment in community energy resilience and disaster planning, infrastructure funding, and public meetings law clarity.
“This is something the LOC asks cities to engage in before every legislative session to kind of guide their team of lobbyists during the session,” Mayor Christopher McMorran told the council. “It’s a great resource that we have in the LOC.”
McMorran said the League employs six or seven lobbyists who “will spend all day every day trying to advocate for cities and they need us to tell them what to do along with every other city in Oregon.”
The League of Oregon Cities, which represents nearly all incorporated cities in the state, asks each member city to submit one ballot ranking its top five issues out of the 27 priorities developed by seven League policy committees. City Manager Chris Workman brought the item to the council after the Philomath’s management team narrowed the full list down to 10 priorities most relevant to the city’s operations.
The League’s board of directors will use the results, along with its own evaluation, to formally adopt the 2027-28 legislative agenda at its October meeting. That agenda will then guide the League’s Intergovernmental Relations Department for the next two years.
Here’s a closer look at Philomath’s five selections:
- Administrative Procedures Act reform — The League is pushing to modernize the 1971 law governing how state agencies write regulations, arguing that inconsistent rulemaking across agencies and recent court decisions favoring agency discretion have made compliance difficult and unpredictable for cities.
- Full funding and streamlining for housing production — With housing production still lagging behind the state’s needs despite recent land-use policy changes, the League wants the state to prioritize funding and coordination of existing housing programs before adopting new ones, along with more accurate tracking of units actually built rather than merely approved.
- Community energy resilience and disaster planning — The League is seeking planning resources, technical assistance and funding to help cities maintain and restore energy service during emergencies such as floods, wildfires, earthquakes and drought-driven power shortages, including support for local generation, microgrids and energy storage.
- Infrastructure funding — Citing a 2024 League survey that identified roughly $6.4 billion in water infrastructure needs statewide, the League will advocate for sustained investment in drinking water, wastewater, stormwater and water reuse systems, along with continued funding for programs such as the state’s Special Public Works Fund.
- Public meetings law clarity — The League wants a statutory overhaul of Oregon’s public meetings law after a bipartisan legislative fix stalled last session — Gov. Tina Kotek vetoed the bill and sent negotiators back to the table for 2027. Proposed changes include limiting serial-meeting violations to intentional conduct, allowing minor complaints to be dismissed, shifting liability for administrative errors away from individual officials, and scaling back annual compliance training to once per term.
The remaining 22 priorities under consideration by the League cover topics ranging from homeless shelter funding to broadband policy and prevailing wage requirements. According to League materials, issues that don’t make the League’s final list remain part of its broader legislative portfolio.