SALEM — A day after their counterparts in the Senate vacated the Oregon Capitol, Republican representatives brought the House to a halt Tuesday, skipping a daily session in protest of a controversial climate bill.

Their absence blocked the House from taking votes. If all Democrats are present, the House still needs at least two Republicans to act on bills.

A spokeswoman for the House Republicans, Tayleranne Gillespie, said she didn’t know how long their boycott would last and that she didn’t know where any of them were.

House Republicans’ absence could further jam up the already-uncertain session, which is facing a March 8 deadline.

The boycott appeared to catch many in the Capitol off guard Tuesday. Many expected a House walkout over cap and trade — if it came at all — would occur once Senate Bill 1530 made it past the Senate.

It’s unclear how House Speaker Tina Kotek will respond to the move. When Republicans refused to show up to a floor session on Feb. 18, she stripped one of the absent lawmakers, Rep. Greg Smith of Heppner, of a subcommittee chairmanship.

But Smith still serves as a vice-chair on the Joint Committee on Ways and Means, and despite cultivating a reputation as a bipartisan dealmaker, he decided to join his caucus in walking out.

In an interview Tuesday, Smith said the decision “weighed heavy on my heart,” but the committee Democrats’ refusal to consider GOP amendments to the bill, including one that would send the issue to the ballot, pushed him to leave Salem.

“At that point in time, it really left me with no option but to recognize that it was probably better for me to step back and have all of us take a deep breath, and hopefully allow leadership from all parts of the Legislature and the executive branch to come together and find a more reasonable solution,” he said. “That meant that I needed to step out of the building.”

Rep. Greg Barreto, R-Cove, said he was participating in the walkout to stop bad legislation.

“One of the few tools we have left to fend off this bad legislation is to deny a quorum. The Republicans have asked to allow the good people of this state to have a right to vote on this life changing bill. The majority party has denied you that option with the emergency clauses which prevent a referral to the ballot,” he said in an emailed statement. “The short session was never intended to undertake massive legislation like SB 1530 and HB 4167.”

On Monday, Republicans in the state Senate left the Capitol, rather than debate the so-called cap-and-trade bill that calls for the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to at least 45% below 1990 emissions levels by 2035 and to at least 80% below by 2050. The bill would force big greenhouse gas emitters to obtain credits for each metric ton of carbon dioxide they emit. The Senate Republicans repeated their no-show Tuesday. One Republican, Tim Knopp of Bend, has attended the Monday and Tuesday floor sessions.

Bills that lawmakers are considering — everything from flood relief money for the Umatilla Basin to money for more homeless shelters — could be delayed or scrapped entirely.

Republicans are pushing to refer the legislation to voters. The proposal aims to cut the state’s greenhouse gas emissions through a mechanism known as cap and trade. It would impose new regulations that would make carbon-intensive energy sources more expensive.

“Oregon House Republicans are taking a stand, with working families, in opposing cap and trade and this rigged process,” House Republican Leader Christine Drazan said in a statement. “We will continue to keep all lines of communication open. I call on Governor Brown and the majority party to refer cap and trade to the people.”

Despite a slew of modifications to the climate change program, which was initially proposed last year, Republicans say that Democrats refuse to accept their amendments. They now insist the plan be put before Oregon voters.

“Ultimately, if the Salem elitists believe so strongly in how wonderful and necessary their so-called emergency cap-and-trade legislation is, they should enthusiastically permit the voters of Oregon to decide its fate,” said Bill Currier, chairman of the Oregon Republican Party. “Nothing speaks more powerfully for the legislative boycott than that they refused to let this happen.”

In the House, one Republican did show up Tuesday morning: Rep. Cheri Helt, R-Bend, a self-described moderate.

In a statement, Helt said she wanted to vote for “common ground climate legislation” and would stay behind “in hopes we can dig deeper, try harder and reach further to find a policy that works for all Oregonians.”

“I believe in moderate, bipartisan policy making, as do the people I serve in Bend,” Helt said. “The current cap-and-trade plan … isn’t balanced: going too far in raising the cost of living for working families while doing little for our environment. I am a no vote. Sadly, partisan polarization has pushed the Capitol to this moment once again.”

Kotek, D-Portland, said in a written statement that she had “routinely reached out to Republicans in a genuine effort to hear their ideas and compromise where we can.”

“My door is always open,” Kotek said. “For now, they have chosen to walk off the job. We may disagree on policy, but one thing is for sure — we can’t reach consensus if the Republicans don’t show up for work.”

Although Democrats have lamented that walkouts represent a breakdown of the legislative process, Drazan lobbed the same criticism back at them, saying they “have not had an interest in respecting the legislative process and have repeatedly refused to compromise.”

“Each and every amendment we offered on cap and trade in committee has been rejected,” Drazan said in a statement. “I had remained optimistic up until yesterday that a compromise could be reached. Unfortunately, our attempts to achieve a bipartisan consensus that would take into account the views of all Oregonians were denied.”

The House has already labored under delays this session, with Republicans refusing to waive rules that require each bill to be read in full before passage. Such waivers used to be common practice in the Legislature, but Republicans have forced bill reading increasingly in recent years to delay Democratic priorities.

The absence of Republicans in both chambers is possibly unprecedented in Salem, even as walkouts have become popular in the last two years. GOP senators launched boycotts twice during the 2019 session.

After one of those walkouts, Senate President Peter Courtney asked the governor to send Oregon State Police after senators, prompting many of them across state lines to Idaho. Courtney said Monday he would not make a similar request this year.

“That’s more of a big show thing, and I’m not interested in big shows,” he said.

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Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter Dirk VanderHart and Oregon Capital Bureau Reporter Sam Stites contributed to this report.