By BRYCE DOLE/Oregon Public Broadcasting

SALEM — A bill that would require large tech companies to compensate newsrooms for the local journalism on platforms like Google and Facebook is advancing to the floor of the Oregon Senate.

Democrats on the Senate Committee on Rules on Monday advanced Senate Bill 686 to the floor over Republican opposition.

The bill would have tech companies pay at least $122 million annually to access the media produced by journalists across Oregon. It would also allow companies to determine a different payment through arbitration and fund a consortium at the University of Oregon that supports journalism statewide through grants.

Money under the bill would be distributed to newsrooms based on how many journalists they employ in the state.

The bill was introduced by Sen. Khanh Pham, D-Portland. It’s sponsored by 14 Democrats and one Republican, Sen. Dick Anderson, R-Lincoln City.

As Oregon newsrooms struggle and local reporting jobs plummet, supporters say the bill would provide a much-needed boost that could encourage civic engagement and accountability. Backers include many journalism leaders throughout Oregon and organizations advocating for sustainable local news. (Oregon Public Broadcasting is among the supporters.)

Critics — big tech lobbyists among them — contend that the bill would result in the companies pulling Oregon journalism from their platforms, harming online local news engagement and deepening the problems facing newsrooms.

The bill faced additional challenges during a work session with lawmakers Monday. Christopher Allnatt, an attorney from the Office of Legislative Counsel, testified that the bill could violate constitutional law barring the government from taking private property for public use.

Allnat said a legal challenge to SB 686 would “likely” find it violates “certain provisions to the federal and state constitutions.”

Senate Minority Leader Daniel Bonham, R-The Dalles, opposed the bill, saying he was concerned it would result in legal challenges that could cost taxpayers money.

“It absolutely violates the Constitution, in my opinion,” Bonham said. “I am no constitutional scholar, but I’ve read the document and I’ve read our oath of office. And I don’t see how we could put this forward with the explanation that we’ll let the courts decide with the evidence that we have from our own paid attorneys.”

If passed, the bill would continue Oregon’s tradition of passing relatively novel legislation. Proposals like this bill have yet to face substantial court challenges, so it’s unclear whether it would stand up to scrutiny.

Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, argued that the bill addresses how big tech companies use their influence to extract “much more wealth than the creators of the product that they’re selling.”

“There’s been awareness for this problem for a long time,” Golden said. “We’ve watched a lot of local journalism disappear without knowing what to do about it. Some very well-informed people from across the nation came together to start on a path that this bill represents.”

Bonham isn’t pleased with the prospect of Oregon once again leading the way into such uncharted legal waters.

“One of the fundamental things that we’ve done in the United States is to say that we’re not going to tax the internet,” Bonham said. “And yet here we are in the state of Oregon, the tip of the spear. We’re going to wage this war. This is going to cost significant amounts of money.”

A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, issued a statement in response to Monday’s vote.

“If faced with legislation that requires us to pay for news content that publishers voluntarily post and is not the reason most people come to Facebook and Instagram, we will be forced to make the same business decision in Oregon as we did in Canada and end news availability on these services,” the statement said.

Dan Sachs, Meta’s senior national director for state and local policy, sent a letter to lawmakers in April, saying the bill is “based on a false premise that social media companies are unjustly benefiting from news content on their platforms.” He said outlets voluntarily post their content to social media to bolster readership, adding the company does “not proactively pull news links from the internet and place them in users’ Facebook or Instagram feeds.”

Similar laws have passed in California and Canada. The Canadian bill prompted Meta to block news on their platforms, causing problems for some local publications.

Sen. James Manning, D-Eugene, said during Monday’s work session he was recently visited by “Meta and a few others, and they came in threatening. I don’t like to be threatened.”

He said the visitors warned they’d cut Oregonians off from news content if the bill passed, similar to actions taken in Canada.

“That’s not how a successful corporation does business,” Manning said. “A successful corporation tries to gather and expand their business. They try to get more people onto their platforms. And you do that by doing the right thing by the people that you are profiting off of.”

A Canadian news nonprofit announced last week that 108 news businesses received more than $22 million in the first payment made under Canada’s new policy.