Oregon remains the lone state in the country where the Legislature doesn’t have the power to impeach. The only recourse to removing statewide officials is a recall. And that’s a burdensome and slow process.
But voters will get a chance to change that next year. The Legislature has referred a constitutional amendment that would require a two-thirds majority in the House to impeach a state official and a two-thirds majority in the Senate to convict.
As a reminder, Oregon’s top leaders have had more than their share of scandals:
- Governor John Kitzber resigned in 2015 over his fiancée’s consulting contracts and his influence on them. (He and Cylvia Hayes never married.)
- Secretary of State Shemia Fagan resigned this year over her six-figure-a-year contract with a cannabis company. The owners of La Mota were campaign donors to her and other officials.
In each of these cases, public pressure led to resignations, but particularly in the case of Kitzhaber, there was a moment of wondering whether public pressure would be enough without the threat of impeachment. A two-thirds majority makes such an impeachment unlikely in anything but the most serious cases. And likely the impact would be to ensure that scandal-plagued politicians leave without a fight when they’ve lost public confidence.
