Requesting the United States Department of Energy and the United States Congress to support the Bonneville Power Administration in providing cleaner, more affordable and reliable energy in the Pacific Northwest.
House Joint Memorial 10 is a nonbinding request from the Oregon Legislative Assembly to the President, the U.S. Department of Energy, Congress, and the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA). It asks federal officials to support BPA in delivering cleaner, more affordable, and more reliable electricity across the Pacific Northwest. The memorial frames BPA as a regional public asset created to serve the entire Northwest and emphasizes its role in transmission, hydropower from federal dams, and regional grid reliability.
The memorial specifically urges BPA to join any day-ahead electricity market only if it can be shown to produce net economic benefits for the region and if market governance is sufficiently independent. It also encourages BPA to continue using low-cost federal borrowing to expand transmission infrastructure, deploy grid-enhancing technologies, follow Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Order No. 1920 on long-term transmission planning, increase transparency in construction costs, use competitive contracting practices, and seek federal authority for competitive compensation so it can recruit and retain needed technical staff.
Because HJM 10 is a joint memorial, it does not change Oregon statutes or create enforceable state law. Its practical effect is to express the Legislature’s policy preferences and to communicate Oregon’s position to federal decision-makers and BPA. The measure is aimed at federal energy policy, BPA operations, transmission planning, market participation, procurement practices, and workforce compensation authority, with potential implications for utilities, ratepayers, and energy consumers across the Pacific Northwest.
The bill’s tone is strongly supportive of BPA’s mission and of expanding regional energy reliability, affordability, and clean power access. The memorial presents these goals as broadly beneficial to the public, the economy, and the electrical grid, and there is no recorded committee or floor opposition in the provided materials. Overall, the available context suggests a favorable and consensus-oriented posture toward the measure.
The main points of contention embedded in the memorial concern how BPA should participate in regional electricity markets and how it should finance and build transmission. The measure conditions support for a day-ahead market on demonstrable net benefits and independent governance, reflecting caution about market design and regional control. It also emphasizes transparency, competitive contracting, and workforce compensation authority, which suggests concern about cost overruns, procurement practices, and BPA’s ability to hire specialized staff. No specific opposing arguments or recorded dissent appear in the provided history.