By PETER WONG/Oregon Capital Bureau
SALEM — Oregon will join 33 other states in requiring visitors, elected officials and staff to pass through metal detectors and submit to bag checks when they enter the Capitol.
The enhanced security in Salem will start Jan. 27. Senate President Peter Courtney and House Speaker Tina Kotek said in a statement that it will be similar to the procedure for entry into court buildings. State employees staff trial courts, but Oregon’s 36 counties provide the courtrooms and maintain security.
The Legislature is responsible for management of the Capitol under a 1969 law. The secretary of state was the previous legal custodian of the Capitol and its grounds.
The enhanced security will apply at the two public entrances currently open and two other entrances for employees and others with special identification cards. The State Street entry, facing Willamette University to the south, and the main entry with its iconic revolving doors are closed because of construction.
The Capitol was reopened to the public on July 12, 2021, after the close of the regular session. It had been closed for 16 months after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
The added security follows a recent law barring firearms, even those carried by people with concealed-handgun licenses, from the Capitol.
During the 2021 session, lawmakers barred firearms from the Capitol and the passenger terminal at Portland International Airport as part of broader legislation to require safe storage of firearms by their owners. Schools, community colleges and universities have the option to do so by action of their governing boards. Opponents failed to submit signatures for an attempt to refer the legislation to a statewide election, so the new law took effect Sept. 25. Signs are posted at the public entrances.
Lawmakers acted after anti-lockdown demonstrators, some of them armed, attempted to force their way into the Capitol during a special session on Dec. 21, 2020, when the Capitol was still closed to the public. Some of them got into a vestibule before police ejected them; police blocked their second attempt at a different entry later in the day.
Oregon was one of the few remaining states with relatively open access to its capitol building, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The Legislative Administration Committee, the joint House-Senate panel that oversees the building and legislative staff, obtained surplus metal detectors from the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. But they were used only once, during the opening day of the 2003 Legislature.