SALEM — Senate Republican Leader Ted Ferrioli said he felt gratified when he saw the issues the majority Democrats were cooking up for February’s “test drive” of annual legislative sessions.

Among them: providing more Oregon State Police funding, imposing tougher driver’s license requirements, getting more irrigation water to northeast Oregon farmers and restoring funding for the “Big Look” task force on ways to improve Oregon’s land-use laws.

“It’s nice that Democrats have swung around to issues the Republicans have been talking about for years,” Ferrioli said.

It’s safe to say that House and Senate Democrats want to be able to run on those issues in the 2008 election, as well as pre-empt Republicans from saying Democrats have ignored rural needs.

But for Senate President Peter Courtney, one-upping the Republicans isn’t the top priority as he prepares for the Feb. 4 session. Rather, the Salem Democrat is determined that the monthlong session will turn out to be a productive affair that persuades voters that annual sessions are a good idea.

“We’re trying to find as much common ground as we can,” Courtney said. “It’s very important if you’re going to get the public to say ‘yes’ to annual sessions.”

The session will take place in what no doubt will be a politically charged election-year environment. At least a half-dozen lawmakers are running for statewide offices, including House Speaker Jeff Merkley, who’s seeking the Democratic nomination to take on Republican U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith.

That will create an atmosphere ripe for political posturing and theatrics, as will the Democrats’ narrow margin of control of the House, which is expected to spark some heated House races as the GOP tries to reclaim seats in the November 2008 election.

However, most of the Democratic and Republican leaders are backers of the move to annual sessions and want to avoid having the February session dissolve into partisan chaos.

House Majority Leader Dave Hunt said Oregon’s every-other-year Legislature no longer effectively serves a state that has experienced major growth in recent years. And, with a biennial Legislature, lawmakers have a hard time responding effectively to urgent problems or issues that crop up between sessions, Hunt said.

A good example is the subprime loan mess, he said.

Though interest groups have yet to agree on mortgage reform legislation in response to a growing number of foreclosures, the issue is expected to be addressed in some form in the February session, the Gladstone Democrat  said.

“It’s issues like that one that have come up since the end of the 2007 session that really show the benefit of annual sessions,” Hunt said.

Now that the Legislature seems headed toward having a session every election year as well as in odd-numbered years, legislators also are going to be more willing to respond to initiatives that are clearly headed to the ballot.

One of the most contentious issues of the February session will revolve around efforts by the Democrats to craft a ballot measure to trump Republican activist Kevin Mannix’s proposed crackdown on property crime. Democrats, Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s office and several district attorneys are working on a measure they say would toughen sentences for property crimes but at far less cost to the state than Mannix’s initiative.

The outcome of the property crimes issue is in doubt. Republicans have made it clear they won’t support anything that appears to be an end-run around the Mannix plan.

That dispute aside, Kulongoski believes the February session will be productive and pave the way for voters to change the state constitution so that the Oregon can join the 44 states that have annual sessions.

“I don’t see a great deal of disagreement on most of the things we’re talking about,” the Democratic governor said. “I actually think it’s going to be a successful session.”