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Monday, December 26, 2016

Article III of the Oregon State Constitution.

Article III of the Oregon State Constitution defines the separation of powers.  This is well illustrated in an organizational chart.

The three branches are the Legislative, Executive and Judicial, the same as the federal government.  Section 1 lays out the fundamental principle where a person is, unless specifically mentioned in the constitution, a member of only one of the branches.

Section 2 allows the Legislative branch to establish an agency to control the budgets which the legislature approves.  This agency is Legislative Fiscal Office.

Section 3 establishes a committee that can modify/reallocate budgets (but not initiate new taxes) during the time that the legislature is not in session.  This is important since, as we shall see in Article IV, the legislature is mandated to sit for only 30 days in odd numbered year.  Strangely, you can remain on this committee even if you don't succeed in running for office in the next even numbered year.  A lot of the items mention that an emergency must exist.

Section 4 allows the legislature to require confirmation of appointments made by the Governor.  I think that this section is too broadly written and potentially abusive of the Executive branch.  There may be good reasons to require certain appointments, but as written, this could be extended to large numbers of positions.  Compared to the US constitution, which specifies which positions require confirmation, this probably gives the legislative branch too much capability to interfere with effective administration of the government.

The constitution now goes into the details authorities and responsibilities of the different branches of government, up first in Article IV is the legislative branch.

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