As you read this, the Oregon Legislature has convened for its 2023 session, and lawmakers already face a heavy load: Estimates last week were that more than 2,000 bills, memorials and resolutions had been filed for consideration even before the first gavel fell.

That’s actually par for the course: In total, during the 2021 session, 2,519 measures were filed. How many of those do you suppose passed?

The number is higher than you might think: According to a summary of the session prepared by the Oregon Department of Transportation, 719 passed, about 29%. By comparison, the 2019 session saw 2,768 bills introduced, and 700 passed, about 25%. (The 160-day legislative sessions held in odd-numbered years, such as 2023, obviously generate many more bills than the 35-day sessions held in even-numbered years.)

So a legislator who files 10 bills and gets three of them passed actually is running a little bit ahead of the curve.

That illuminates something we tend to forget about the legislative process: It’s hard to get a piece of legislation through the Legislature. That’s because one of the most important functions the Legislature serves is to kill bills.

Readers of a certain age might recall “I’m Just a Bill,” that great old tune from the 1970s animated series “Schoolhouse Rock!” The process outlined by the “Schoolhouse Rock!” video is, shall we say, a little more genteel than actuality, but it does get some of the details right: At the start, the bill appears to be abandoned on the steps of the Capitol and is calling itself “a sad little scrap of paper.”

Of course, the actual legislative process is less an animated cartoon and more of a horror movie, in that it offers numerous ways for a bill to die.

The reasons are varied. Sometimes a worthy bill is buried by measures deemed more pressing by legislators. Sometimes a bill requires more than one session to get traction in the Legislature. Sometimes a bill gets killed as part of a deal involving other legislation. 

And sometimes a proposed piece of legislation is just a bad idea. The legislative gantlet, with its opportunities for public testimony and vigorous debate, can be helpful in revealing flaws and weaknesses in proposed legislation. (The public input piece of this is vital, and that’s one reason we’ve been happy to see the Capitol open again to the public as the COVID pandemic wanes — even though the online sessions necessitated by the pandemic remain important ways to involve members of the public who can’t drop everything and head to Salem for a committee hearing.)

The first days of any legislative session tend to be sunny, with plenty of well-meaning words about finding bipartisan solutions to Oregon’s pressing problems. And, as we’ve noted before, the truth is that much of the work lawmakers tackle is handled in a bipartisan way.

But it’s inevitable that tensions will rise as deadlines draw closer and the spotlight increasingly falls on the most difficult challenges that lawmakers face — which likely this session will include building a budget without the pandemic-fueled infusion of cash from the federal government. By that point, it will be a good thing that most of the nearly 3,000 measures filed this session will be, in the words of our lonely animated bill, nothing more than sad little scraps of paper.