STATE WORKERS

Oregon Legislature hires top researcher

Gordon Friedman
Statesman Journal

Christopher Reinhart has been hired as the first director of a new legislative agency in Oregon, the Office of Legislative Policy and Research. He currently is chief attorney at the Connecticut General Assembly's Office of Legislative Research.

Reinhart agreed to take the position Monday, and was selected from a pool of 70 applicants and five finalists.

His job will be to lead the new office, hire its analysts and form protocols for producing nonpartisan research. He'll begin Aug. 29.

Reached by phone, Reinhart said his goal is to provide lawmakers with research produced away from the influence of politics and lobbyists, and ingrain an attitude of neutrality in his staff.

"This is the kind of work I've been doing my entire career," he said.

In a joint interview Wednesday at the Oregon Capitol, Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, and Sen. Brian Boquist, R-Dallas, stressed the importance of the new office.

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Lawmakers recognize that they're outmatched by the research capabilities of the executive branch, they said.

Often forced to rely on executive branch data, legislators have been in a bind when trying to get all the information needed to make policy decisions. Talks began some four years ago about forming a research office, Boquist said.

"We are not prepared to go toe-to-toe on an everyday basis with the executive branch," Boquist said. "We get hoodwinked by the executive branch."

Courtney said the legislative branch is stressed for information, and ought to be on equal footing with other branches of government.

"We have to know what we're talking about. ... It all starts with good, objective research," he said.

Oregon's neighbor states already have their own nonpartisan research agencies.

Boquist used the debate about corporate tax measure Initiative Petition 28, on the November ballot as Measure 97, as one example of where more nonpartisan research would be useful. Private organizations for and against the measure have paid for their own research, and one even tried to influence researcher's conclusions.

The result is that lawmakers, much like the public, may have trouble getting the facts.

"I don't know what to think about who's objective," Courtney said about outside research on the tax.

Courtney and Boquist are two of several lawmakers who have worked for years with their staffs to form a research arm for the Legislature. This year, lawmakers passed a bill that made it possible.

The research office has yet to find space in the Capitol, but has been allocated 13 full-time, year-round positions.

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In looking for a director, the Legislature required candidates to have a degree in public policy and about 10 years of experience managing public policy research programs. Reinhart has been at the Connecticut research office for 18 years, Courtney said.

"He blew everybody away" during interviews, Boquist said. "He gets it."

Connecticut's research office publishes more than 1,500 reports each year and has been called a "gem" for the clarity of its work and usefulness to the public.

More information for Oregon lawmakers would certainly influence policy. Boquist said that if lawmakers had more nonpartisan research on, for example, the minimum wage or the state's low-carbon fuel standard, the laws might have been written differently.

Though not all lawmakers will agree on what to do, they can at least be better informed, Boquist said. He added: "We need to be working off the same set of facts."

The office is expected to be up and running by July 2017. Reinhart's hire will need approval by the joint legislative committee overseeing the research office, which meets in September.

Send questions, comments or news tips togfriedman2@statesmanjournal.com or 503-399-6653. Follow on Twitter@GordonRFriedman.

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