The Oregon legislature has just passed “a slew of bills” to be able to end their session by the mandated July 13. Among them are budgets for the states biggest
agencies including education, the Department of Human Services, the Oregon
Health Authority and the prison system. I
hope it has been a respectful interval.
After the knuckle bumps, the high fives, the smoke clearing, etc. a
sober discussion must continue. We are
not done – not by a long shot.
As mentioned here previously the
k-12 budget misses the mark by a wide margin.
The legislature created a method for defining an adequate k-12 budget;
it is called the QEM Model. According to
that formulation, the legislature is funding education at 75% adequacy. The new budget will not prevent further teacher lay-offs nor substantially reduce class sizes. It is the fiscal equivalent of treading water.
DHS and OHA will realize increases in their budgets which will make it possible to enroll more people in the
Oregon Health Plan and make “modest additions” to services for children,
families and older people. There are
voices in the legislature that question the wisdom of DHS and OHA appearing in
the state budget at all. The Statesman
Journal reports, “Rep. Tim Freeman, R-Roseburg, questioned whether the billions
contained in the two budgets could be better spent in the private-sector
economy to fight poverty.
‘You are taking $24 billion out of the economy and saying we
as a state know how to spend that money better,’ he said.”
Those vulnerable populations who rely on
these services have no safe haven. DHS
and OHA remain ripe targets for cuts or termination.
The
legislature and the Governor have been scrambling to contain burgeoning costs
of Oregon
prisons. This is an alligator born of
the Measure 11 sentencing guidelines of 1994.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, this is an alligator that must be fed. A ballot initiative (Measure 94) to lighten
some of the provisions of Measure 11 was defeated 3-to-1 in 2000. The people of Oregon
have defined the correct level of incarceration in Oregon .
Any tinkering around the edges of this one will have to be careful and
creative. And prisons – even on the
cheap – imply a certain minimum of care to feed and bunk prisoners and keep
them from dying in ways that would cause a political scandal.
Oregonians
have a responsibility to fund the functions of government to which they have
assigned a clear priority. That means
additional revenue and that probably means taxes.
Fair, equitable and effective taxes are not regressive; they don’t
target less-privileged populations. Oregon needs to revise its income tax or develop other non-regressive sources of revenue to adequately fund its services.
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