Lawmakers got frothy over one bill in the special session: Senate Bill 1702.

Was it worth fighting about?

Yes. Its complexities made it perhaps a bill too far for a one-day session. And the bill also was another example of the secrecy legislators frequently bake into bills. Transparency can be low on the legislative agenda. Especially so in the rush of a special session.

Start by looking at the bill. Nobody is identified as a sponsor. That’s a symptom something is wrong.

Oregonians need to be able to hold their legislators accountable. If the public can’t easily find out who is behind a bill, how are people supposed to figure out if their legislator is worth supporting?

SB 1702 was what’s called a committee bill. That’s permitted under the rules. It’s a way of moving legislation along without an individual legislator or group of legislators having to directly tie their name to it. Some Republican legislators have tried in the past to ban committee bills through rule changes. As you can tell, that didn’t work.

The justification for committee bills are as numerous as they are shaky.

It’s been said committee bills can be a way to discuss the merits of a bill without partisanship. That’s no excuse for concealing the origins of a bill from the public.

Some bills are also introduced by legislators on behalf of constituents or associates. A legislator may not completely agree with what’s in those bills. A legislator can always explain that. He or she doesn’t have to hide their name. They should be able to be held accountable for their actions.

Another justification is that if pressed, legislators will usually identify who is really behind a bill. But why shouldn’t it be a requirement that originators of bills are clearly identified?

And here’s one more. It was a special session. Legislators were in a hurry to get a lot done in a short time. That was more important than disclosing who was behind a bill. That’s baloney, too. It’s easy to accurately disclose who is behind a bill.

Let’s talk about the particulars of SB 1702. It would basically allow more people to receive unemployment benefits when they would otherwise be denied. It applies to people who work in education who work in roles other than instruction, research, or principal administration. Those workers are usually denied unemployment between academic terms or summer recess, because they are expected to return to work when the period is over. What happens now is the employment department does research to determine if an individual is likely to return to work. If they are, they don’t get benefits.

SB 1702 would have allowed workers who are not instructors, researchers, or principal administrators to receive unemployment insurance during school breaks and holidays — even if they have a reasonable assurance of returning to work.

One way to look at it the bill is that it would give the overworked state employment department less work, perhaps. The department would have an easier time approving payments for those individuals, rather than having to research if they are eligible.

Another way to look at SB 1702 is there are thousands of Oregonians still waiting on the state employment department to pay their uninsurance claims. State Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose, said the bill could give the impression the Legislature has decided people working in education get to skip to the head of the line and get benefits.

“I still cannot get past the notion that this creates an added benefit for a certain class and gets them passed through faster,” Johnson said.

SB 1702 also has a cost. The Legislative Fiscal Office estimated the benefits would apply to about 50,000 people with about $9 million in benefits paid. And it would be an ongoing cost for the state to bear. School districts and higher education institutions would also face additional costs because they are responsible for increased costs when their unemployment insurance claims go up.

In short, there was no shortage of issues to debate about the bill. With more time in a regular session, it may have passed.

The fact that it was a committee bill may be less important than the particulars of what the bill would do. But the way legislators routinely shadow bills in secrecy is just the kind of issue legislators would love to avoid. Committee bills have been debated for years. Legislators could have acted to end them. They have not. That’s the Legislature sending Oregonians a clear signal that they think secrecy is more important than the public’s right to know. Who in the Legislature is going to stand up and make the change? We’d like to know.