SALEM — Critics blasted a decision by Oregon Democrats that killed a bill aimed at getting more children vaccinated for measles and other preventable diseases in order pass a tax on large businesses, saying it jeopardized public health.
Despite passing the House and having the necessary votes in the Senate, the measure to make it harder for families to opt out of required vaccinations was nixed as part of a deal announced Monday to end a week-long Senate Republican walkout over a multibillion school funding tax.
Under the vaccination measure children would only have been be able to forgo vaccine requirements if a doctor or other medical provider concluded the shots would prove a health risk. Otherwise, they’d be unable to attend public or private school, Head Start and before- and after-school programs.
Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, a Democrat from Beaverton and the bill’s sponsor, said the move prevents the state from protecting its citizens from a public health crisis.
"This isn't how I want our state to be known," she said. "This is a major public health issue and it's critical we address it."
In an interview on the OPB program Think Out Loud Tuesday, Steiner Hayward said Gov. Kate Brown negotiated the deal with Senate Republican Leader Herman Baertschiger Jr. of Grants Pass over the weekend. A spokeswoman for Brown did not respond to requests for comment on the governor’s role on Monday or Tuesday.
Senate Democrats had been considering strategies to force Republicans to return to Salem, including killing Republicans’ policy and budget priorities and asking the governor to send the Oregon State Police out to round up the absent lawmakers.
Steiner Hayward said she had been negotiating potential changes to the vaccine bill over the weekend, and Senate Democratic Leader Ginny Burdick of Portland had been negotiating with Republicans to modify a gun control bill that Democrats also agreed to kill on Monday.
“The governor made a different decision and cut a deal and that’s where we are today,” Steiner Hayward said.
More than 70 people, including four from Oregon, were diagnosed as part of a months-long measles outbreak in the Pacific Northwest that public health officials just recently declared over.
“As the recent measles outbreak demonstrated, vaccine-preventable illnesses pose a growing threat due to the relatively low rate of immunizations in the Northwest,” said Rob Cowie, a spokesman for the Oregon Health Authority, the state’s health care agency.
Oregon has the highest rate of unvaccinated kindergartners in the country, with at least 7.5% of their families claiming an exemption. Christian and non-traditional private schools top the list for unvaccinated children, but even some public schools see exemption rates reach near 50 percent.
The state allows parents to either talk to a doctor or watch a video on the state’s health department website to obtain an exemption and the vast majority of families qualify for exemptions using the video option. That makes Oregon uniquely susceptible to an outbreak, according to Diane Peterson associate director for Immunization Action Coalition, which receives funding from the CDC.
"Oregon in particular is a hotbed for a measles outbreak," Peterson said. "All you need is to introduce one person with the disease into the community and it will spread like wildfire."
Oregon was one of a number of states proposing to crack down on non-medical exemptions, in response to a national resurgence of measles that has now sickened over 800 people this year according to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.
The state is one of 17 to allow families to opt out of required school vaccinations for personal, philosophical or religious reasons.
Neighboring Washington state this year passed a law to end personal or philosophical exemptions for the measles vaccine, while Maine is working to remove its religious and personal exemptions for all vaccines. Some states, including Rhode Island, introduced measures to add exemptions.
The anti-vaccination movement surged in the 1990s, after a study alleged a link between the measles vaccine and the rise of autism. The study was subsequently debunked and retracted.
Mississippi, California and West Virginia are the only states that banned all non-medical exemptions. Mississippi has the highest childhood vaccination rate in the country, while the California law, passed in 2015, caused a significant boost in vaccination numbers.
In Oregon, Republican and Democratic leaders are remaining tight-lipped on why the vaccine issue in particular was targeted as part of the walkout deal.
Steiner Hayward said she wasn’t involved in the negotiations and that she personally received a call from Brown to tell her the vaccine bill would not move forward this session.
Burdick, the Senate Democratic leader, stressed that the tradeoff was worth it to coax Republicans back to the Capitol and vote on a $1 billion annual boost in school funding. It wasn’t, she said, a response to the vitriolic opposition the proposal has received from hundreds of parents opposed to vaccinating their children.
“The people opposing that bill just behaved reprehensibly around the building,” Burdick said at a news conference Monday. “And one of the things that distresses me is I’m afraid that some of them are going to feel that those tactics worked. Those tactics had nothing to do with what happened.”
This story has been updated to reflect the following correction to a story by the Associated Press: an earlier version of this story incorrectly described Washington’s new vaccine law, which only eliminated personal or philosophical exemptions to the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine — also known as MMR. Medical and religious exemptions to that vaccine remain.
— AP
— Hillary Borrud | hborrud@oregonian.com | 503-294-4034 | @hborrud
— Molly Harbarger | mharbarger@oregonian.com | 503-294-5923
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