House passes veterans information‑sharing bill, rulemaking authority and revisers bill

The Oregon House on Tuesday approved three bills on third reading, including a measure allowing the Oregon Department of Veterans Affairs to coordinate veterans’ services across agencies only with veterans’ consent, a technical bill giving the department rulemaking authority for unclaimed veterans’ remains, and the Legislature’s annual revisers bill to correct errors and obsolete language in state law.

Representative Watanabe, speaking on House Bill 23 41 on the floor, said the bill "allows for the Department of Veteran Affairs to connect veterans with services provided by the Department of Transportation, the Department of Human Services, Early Learning Systems, and Oregon Health Authority" and emphasized that "their information will not be shared without their consent." She urged colleagues to vote yes; the clerk later announced that House Bill 23 41 "having received the constitutional majority is declared passed." The bill’s sponsor described it as a technical measure to make government work better for veterans by facilitating interagency coordination while requiring veteran authorization for information sharing.

Representative Graeber presented House Bill 23 86, describing it as a technical fix that "authorizes the Oregon Department of Veterans Affairs, ODVA, to adopt administrative rules to carry out the laws on unclaimed remains of veterans and their family members." Graeber said the bill implements work begun under prior legislation addressing burial of unclaimed veteran remains and does not change the scope of the original policy. He told colleagues the bill had "no fiscal" impact and came out of committee with unanimous support; the clerk announced House Bill 23 86 passed by constitutional majority.

Representative Chilton introduced House Bill 24 64 as the Legislature’s revisers bill, explaining that the Office of Legislative Counsel files a revisers bill each long session "to make nonsubstantive, corrective, and technical changes to Oregon law." Chilton said the measure standardizes terminology, corrects punctuation and grammatical errors, removes obsolete references, and otherwise maintains statutory accuracy. The bill passed by constitutional majority.

Earlier on the floor Representative Osborne moved to suspend the requirement in Article IV, Section 19 of the Oregon Constitution that bills be read section by section on final passage, so the three bills could be read by title only. The motion was adopted by voice vote before the third‑reading proceedings.

All three measures were announced as having received the constitutional majority and were declared passed by the clerk; the transcript did not include roll‑call tallies or named individual votes on final passage.

House action on the three bills followed routine procedures for third reading and final passage. The session then moved on to other business and adjourned until 11 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025.