With the recent preemption of a Eugene ordinance by Lane County back in July of this year, a conference was held by law experts to discuss the legality of the incident.
The panel took place on Oct. 23 at Knight Library to discuss the preemption of Eugene’s earned sick leave ordinance by Lane County. The county sees the rule as a violation of the home rule charter that they have with the state. To make matters even more complicated, the city of Eugene has a home rule charter as well and also sees the preemption as a violation of their charter.
“This is turf war,” said Jim Edmondson, one of the members of the panel.
Speakers at the conference explained what was meant by ‘home rule’ and ‘preemption’ and discussed the disagreement between the city and the county. The group put it into a broader context by comparing it to other cases throughout the judiciary history of the U.S and answering questions from the audience.
The act of preemption is to tell one government that they can’t make laws about a subject as they are already responsible for it. Event moderator attorney Melissa Wischerath describes it as one governmental body telling another “Hey, you can’t regulate that, we’re already doing that.”
Paul Diller, a professor at the Willamette University School of Law, describes home rule as a “bargaining chip” for local governments in negotiations with state legislators. It’s an agreement from the state with local governments to allow for self-rule as long as their ordinances don’t interfere with state regulations.
Not all cities and counties have chartered for home rule, as only nine out of 36 counties in Oregon have done so. Even still, most counties have some sort of stipulation that defines jurisdiction between cities and the county. Lane County is not one of them.
“This is pretty rare when a charter country attempts to preempt a charter city,” said Pete Sorenson, Lane County Commissioner and panel member.
Lane County is larger than Eugene and could use that as an argument for imposing their rules on the city. On the other hand, there is no specific law which states that a home rule country’s ordinances may have presidency of a home rule cities’ law and Oregon’s city home rule law is older than its country home rule law by 15 years.
The ordinance in question would require all Eugene business to provide paid sick leave and would impact around 25,000 workers, a little over half of all private sector workers in the city. This would make Eugene the second city in Oregon to have ordinance and 9th city in country
The event was sponsored by We The People, a democratic advocacy group located in Eugene, and hosted by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics.
As the ordinance goes into effect, Lane County could potentially take the City of Eugene to court over the matter.
“Now, we have conflict between home rule countries and home rule cities,” said Ken Tollenaar, former president of Association of Oregon Counties and panel member.