Committee hears bill directing HEC to inventory and reduce duplicative university reporting

House Committee on Higher Education and Workforce Development members held a public hearing March 11 on House Bill 2458, which would require the Higher Education Coordinating Commission (HEC) to inventory reporting requirements for public universities and develop a plan to eliminate unnecessary or duplicative reports, to be delivered to the legislative assembly by Sept. 15, 2026.

Kathy Martin Willis, staff for Representative Paul Evans, said universities face more mandates now than they did more than a decade ago and noted HEChas grown from roughly 40 to over 185 employees in recent years. Mark Overbeck, director of government relations at Southern Oregon University, testified that public universities currently respond to more than 150 state reporting requirements, plus several hundred federal mandates, and that some reports may be outdated or duplicative. "Please don't ask us to do more with so much less if it's not making a difference for the students we're committed to serving," Overbeck said, describing staff reductions at his university in recent years.

HEC legislative affairs director Kyle Thomas told the committee the bill is limited to analyzing reporting mandates on public universities and that HEC does not expect a substantial fiscal impact from the bill itself. Thomas suggested the agency could reallocate reporting frequency (for example, moving some annual reports to biennial schedules) to free capacity for more useful research and policy analysis.

Committee members asked whether HEC would need additional staff to complete the inventory and plan; witnesses and HEC testimony described the proposed timeline through 2026 as reasonable and suggested any additional workload could be offset by subsequent reductions in redundant reporting. The committee concluded the public hearing without taking action during the session.