Preparing for round two.

Byline: The Register-Guard

After the 74th Legislative Assembly adjourned last week amid generally high marks for productivity and efficiency, more than a few lawmakers must be tempted to quit while they're ahead. But the Legislature will reconvene in February as part of an experiment with annual sessions. Such an experiment is overdue - but as with any such test, success cannot be guaranteed. Lawmakers will have to return to Salem with a clear agenda and a commitment to brevity.

The strongest argument for annual sessions has long been that Oregon's two-year budget cycle forces the state to forecast economic conditions and population changes more than two years into the future. The reliability of the forecasts is often shaky to begin with and erodes badly during the second year. Annual sessions would allow the Legislature to make midcourse adjustments, and perhaps to avoid an increasingly recurring need for special sessions.

That's what House Speaker Jeff Merkley and Senate President Peter Courtney had in mind when, in the early days of the regular session, they persuaded their colleagues to commit to the February experiment. The prospect of a February session helps account for the brevity of the one just concluded, which was the first in a decade to adjourn before July.

Yet how much budgetary fine-tuning will be required in seven months' time is an open question. Minor adjustments can be made by the Legislative Emergency Board, as in the past. The February session could become an invitation to fight this year's battles over budgetary priorities all over again. If regular-session victories and defeats stood a chance of being reversed, the result would be less budgetary stability for state government.

What's more, legislators' ideas of what they'll be doing in February extend far beyond budgetary matters. Twelve legislators representing portions of Lane County provided 12 different answers when The Register-Guard's David Steves asked what the Legislature should do early next year. Most mentioned fine-tuning the budget, but many went on to speak of the need to address issues ranging from health care to transportation. The other 78 lawmakers from other parts of the state undoubtedly have ideas of their own.

Merkley and Courtney kept the regular session on schedule this year and might be able to do the same in February. By then, however, all 60 representatives and half of the senators will be gearing up for the primary election in May. A few, including Merkley and Sen. Vicki Walker, D-Eugene, will be in the midst of campaigns for higher office - Merkley is running for the U.S. Senate, and Walker hopes to be elected Oregon secretary of state. Electoral politics will suffuse the February session to a far greater degree than the one just concluded.

Still, the experiment will be worthwhile. Oregon has changed and grown since 1859, when the state Constitution mandated biennial sessions. That mandate remains intact - the resolution approved by the Legislature set a June 29 adjournment deadline, with the understanding that a shorter session would follow next year. If annual sessions prove beneficial, the Legislature could ask the voters to approve a constitutional amendment requiring them. It will be helpful to have the results of next year's experiment in hand before making that decision.