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Voices of the Northwest
Sadler's Sense: Who Is in Charge of the State's Purse?
The Oregon state budget process is hampered by a legacy of ill-conceived measures and lack of traditional, bipartisan cooperation.
By Russell Sadler
Posted on Apr 14, 2005 |
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What are we to make of Oregon House Speaker Karen Minnis’ $150 million meltdown over the Joint Ways and Means Committee? Senate Democrats want to spend $5.325 billion over the next two years for public schools, K-12. House Republicans refuse to spend any more than $5.175 billion. Republicans want to spend the $150 million difference to keep seniors in their homes instead of nursing homes, open a prison in Madras and maintain a fatter cash reserve, despite the fact that teachers are still being laid off and classes are growing in size in many school districts. Unable to get the Democrats to agree with Republican priorities, Minnis instructed House Ways and Means co-chair Rep. Wayne Scott, R-Canby, to stop meeting with his Senate counterparts.
The Legislature’s Joint Ways and Means Committee is an Oregon innovation that has stood the test of time. Oregon’s budget-writing committee combines the constitutional appropriations authority of the House and the Senate conducted separately in bicameral legislatures and in Congress.
Joint subcommittees hammer out their differences, reach compromises, then recommend agency budgets to the full Ways and Means Committee. The appropriation bill is then sent to the originating chamber. Once it’s approved, the bill comes back to the full Ways and Means Committee for referral to the remaining chamber, where approval is usually a formality because the differences between houses are worked out in advance.
This eliminates the “budget reconciliation” process where most of the scheming goes on and the pork gets passed out in Congress and states that imitate the federal Congress.
It’s tempting to dismiss Speaker Minnis’ adolescent silliness as the product of a generation that was absent when the “Works well with others” gene was passed out. Talk radio, in particular, cultivates a culture in which Americans can listen only to the views they agree with and the views of those they disagree with are denigrated and demonized. As a result, the products of this culture have little tolerance for anyone whose opinions differ from their own. Such people are disadvantaged in government institutions like legislatures, city councils and county commissions that foster consensus and compromise and require respect for and acknowledgment of the opinions of others.
But legislative veterans see something larger in the budget-making controversy -- anxiety over the fact that legislators no longer really control the state’s budget.
“There is no question in my mind that the real evil was in the passage of Ballot Measure 5 to solve property tax problems,” wrote former State Sen. Lynn Newbry, R-Talent, who co-chaired Ways and Means in the late 1960s and early 70s.
“This action by the people of Oregon in reality changed Oregon from a Republic to an uninformed democracy. It effectively took the appropriation function out of the Legislature by insisting that a fixed portion of the general fund had to be dedicated to K -12. Since this has been in effect the percent of the general fund going to Higher Ed has diminished. Not only Higher Education but State Police, State Parks and a variety of other essential General Fund responsibilities have been severely damaged,” Newbry wrote me in an e-mail. Newbry was widely regarded as a conservative Republican.
1990’s Ballot Measure 5, sponsored by lobbyist Don McIntire, shifted billions of dollars in school costs from locally raised property taxes to the Legislature’s General Fund income tax revenues, requiring the Legislature to make up the lost property tax dollars with income tax dollars but providing no revenue to pay for it.
In 1993, State Rep. Kevin Mannix was unable to convince his more sensible colleagues to pass a mandatory minimum sentence bill and build more prisons. More responsible lawmakers couldn’t figure out where the money would come from because Republicans who controlled the Legislature were all taking “No New Taxes” pledges. In 1994, Mannix sponsored Ballot Measure 11 (the mandatory sentencing law) to do what more responsible lawmakers would not. Voters, of course, thought it was a good idea at the time and like less responsible legislators, did not worry about where the money was coming from.
Squeezed between a Republican promise not to raise taxes, a constitution that prohibits deficit spending and initiatives that significantly raises state operating costs, the Legislature has been reeling for the last 15 years. Lawmakers have balanced the budget for a decade by borrowing nearly a billion dollars to pay operating costs rather than raise taxes to pay for what the voters approved.
You can search the record of Oregon initiatives back to the beginning in 1902 and find no precedent for Measures 5 and 11 that impose huge costs on the state budget without providing the income to pay for them. That’s a good reason for lawmakers to be anxious.
Unless Oregon courts step in and check this growing abuse of the initiative process, the Legislature’s control over its budget will continue to deteriorate.)
Copyright ©2005 by Russell Sadler
Russell Sadler is a journalist and a lecturer at Southern Oregon University. You may write him c/o publisher at westbynorthwest.org. Visit Sadler's Sense column's at West By Northwest.org:
Sadler's Sense: The Risks of Shifting Higher Ed.'s Costs and Who Pays
Sadler's Sense: The Good Ship School Finance Is Sinking
Sadler's Sense: Infrastructure Renewal Needed
Sadler's Sense: The Unlikely Poster Child for Measure 37
Sadler's Sense: Of Myths, Money and Machines, Why We Blame the Owl
Sadler's Sense: Not Window Dressing
Sadler's Sense: From Constantine to George, God's Will and Secular Power
Sadler's Sense: Credibility or State of Our State
Sadler's Sense: Look in the Mirror, Oregon
Sadler's Sense: Why We Must Pay the Piper Now
Sadler's Sense: A Short History of Measure 30
© Copyright 2000-2004 by West By Northwest.org
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