From West by Northwest.org Voices of the Northwest Sadler's Sense: Development and Belief --Who Pays? By Russell Sadler Jan 20, 2006 Population growth doesn’t pay -- it costs. Oregon’s population doubled between 1960 and 1990. A report in 2000 from Portland State University’s Center for Population Research and Census predicted Oregon’s population will double again by 2025. But tax limitation initiatives in the 1990s stripped Oregon’s state, city and county governments of the flexibility and autonomy to cope with the costs of growth they had 45 years ago. The conservatives who governed Oregon during the post-World War II housing boom proudly ignored the costs of growth. Growth meant prosperity in a state that had been an economic backwater on the West Coast prior to World War II. Good government meant the least government and the lowest taxes. By the early 1960s the predictable result of this neo-Victorian economic philosophy was an epidemic of overcrowded schools, congested highways, polluted rivers, dirty air, inadequate parks and a growing public concern with the consequences of growth and urban sprawl. A backlash against this laissez-fare attitude was inevitable. In the early 60s under Gov. Mark Hatfield and State Highway Commission Chairman Glenn Jackson, the state began building hundreds of miles of Interstate freeway replacing aging Highway 99 north and south through Western Oregon and Highway 30 east and west through Eastern Oregon. The freeways relieved, at least for a time, the perceived traffic congestion. Television commentator Tom McCall’s early 60s documentary “Pollution In Paradise” heightened public awareness of the delayed costs of growth. McCall won the race for governor in 1966 promising to clean up the Willamette River. He called it an “open sewer.” Pulp mills dumped untreated pulp liquor directly into the river. Cities pumped untreated sewage into the Willamette. Suburban septic tanks polluted the water table. McCall persuaded the Legislature to pass laws requiring all Oregon cities to have complete sewage systems, prohibited construction of high density subdivisions on septic tanks and created tax credits to help finance pulp mill pollution control. In 1969, growing public concern with urban sprawl and what McCall colorfully labeled “sagebrush subdivisions” and “coastal condomania” prompted the Legislature to enact land use laws requiring all Oregon cities and counties to adopt zoning and comprehensive plans to control growth. When this token effort proved inadequate, the 1973 Legislature approved Senate Bill 100 creating urban growth boundaries and restricting uses outside them that conflicted with agriculture and forestry. Local school districts were controlled by locally elected school boards with as much as 80 of their budgets coming from locally raised property taxes prior to 1990. School boards reduced overcrowding with large scale, voter-approved building programs and hired more teachers to educate the “Baby Boomers.” Individual cities and school districts reacted differently to the growth issue because each community had so much autonomy. Local voters decided exactly how much money would be spent because they approved -- or disapprove -- local property taxes to pay for it. Much of the construction of sewer and water systems, schools and other local improvements was financed with 30 year bonds. Many of those bond issues are now paid off, just as the infrastructure has reached its capacity by the doubling of Oregon’s population. As Oregon’s population doubles again in the next 20 years, state and local governments face the prospect of financing the infrastructure to accommodate the new growth. But Oregon government no longer has the flexibility and autonomy that allowed it to deal with the delayed costs of growth in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. The federal government paid $90 for every $10 Oregon put up to build its interstate highways. That money is no more. The 1973 Clean Water Act paid state and local governments $75 for every $25 Oregon put up to build sewer and water systems. That money is no more. But the costs of growth do not stop accumulating simply because politicians refuse to raise the money to pay for them. During the last decade and a half, the Republicans who controlled the Legislature ignored the costs of growth as their counterparts did more than 50 years ago, The Republicans cut taxes for their campaign contributors and borrowed the money to run state government. They borrowed about $2.5 billion to repair Oregon’s deteriorating road and bridges. They borrowed nearly another $1 billion to pay to build and operate the prisons required by Measure 11. They opposed Measure 30 to raise a surtax to pay government operating costs during the recession. Their “secret plan” was to borrow another $450 million to pay government operating expenses. Now State Treasurer Randall Edwards warns the Legislature the state’s credit is tapped out. Edwards says the New York bond markets will not lend Oregon anymore money without new tax revenues to back up new bonds. It’s a grim picture of fiscal irresponsibility as Oregon faces the costs of doubling its population over the next two decades. And no candidate running for governor or the Legislature is talking about it. Copyright © 2006 by Russell Sadler As the debate over Darwin and Genesis deteriorates into the predictable rhetoric that began when “The Origin of Species” was published in 1859, it drowns out any discussion of two significant questions. What happens when children raised on this religious dogma learn they are unqualified for lucrative jobs in science and technology unless they take remedial course work in college? What are the consequences when a country freely rejects modern science and freely embraces rigid religious dogma? I’ve had some first hand experience with students who suddenly discover that people who reject Darwin as a “mere theory” are simply not hired in the lucrative scientific and technology jobs. I’ve taught journalism and environmental studies in public and private universities in Oregon for 30 years. Part of the job requires advising students in those fields and freshman trying to decide on a major. The trouble usually begins when a student, raised to doubt Darwin and seriously believe the earth is only 6,000 years old, is told by a science professor that she cannot graduate as a science major without remedial courses in biology because the principle of evolution is intrinsic to that field and one of the foundations of the modern science and technology professions. Students came to me for advice on how to rearrange their academic schedules to accommodate the extra course work. Their reaction to this news comes in phases. The first is incredulity, then resignation, and in a few cases, anger -- often at their parents and pastor. Significantly, the students who encounter this problem have almost always been raised as fundamentalist Protestants. I do not remember encountering a mainline Protestant or Roman Catholic student with this problem. Roman Catholic schools deftly compartmentalize this debate. They teach science in science classes and Genesis in religion classes. Mainline Protestants read the Bible as a series of metaphors with timeless moral value for the time they were written and continuing moral value in the present day. Belief in science and belief in religion are compatible and not mutually exclusive. It is the fundamentalist Protestants who insist their believers must take the Bible literally and choose sides. Between Darwin or Genesis there is only one correct side. Adults make that choice for their children and the children often have no idea what consequences that choice will have on their adult lives until they reach that difficult transition from childhood to adulthood. College is a life-changing experience for most students, and the realization that there are so many different ways of looking at the world is often daunting to those raised with with a black and white dogmatism. I offer no solution to this problem. In this country, parents are free to choose any religion for their children and the children are free to accept or reject that religion as they become adults. As an observer of many young people making that transition, I only offer the caution that the choice of religion for your child carries with it seeds that can enrich or poison a relationship for a long time, if not the rest of your lives. Recent polls -- there have been several -- suggest a significant minority of Americans doubt Darwin. This has shocked the scientific community, which is deeply invested in the idea that scientific advancement is the root of progress. The Idea of Progress -- the notion that today is better than yesterday and tomorrow will be better than today -- is deeply rooted in what some historians call the American Character. Yet progress is not automatic or inevitable. The fall of the Roman Empire ushered in what historians once called the Dark Ages. The standard of living in the known world declined rapidly because of the accompanying disruption of commerce and the collapse of urban economies. The Great Depression of the 1930s drove down living standards for an entire generation. The economy did not really recover until the 1950s. Progress is not inevitable. Americans like to boast we have the highest living standard in the world. But developments over the last 25 years makes that a debatable premise, and the perpetuation of the our present standard of living is not inevitable. In America, the gap between the poor and the well-to-do has not been this great since the 1920s. We have sent so many manufacturing jobs offshore, our country now consumes more than we produce. When manufacturing jobs leave the country, research and development, engineering and scientific innovation follow the work. America’s economic growth depends entirely on the rest of the world absorbing our debt and financing our consumption. In the past, other countries have been willing to do that because America was a beacon of scientific advancement, innovation and progress. The unanswered question is what happens if enough Americans substitute rigid religious dogma for science and our country cannot produce enough scientists, engineers and innovators to sustain our reputation for innovation in the rest of the scientific world. Copyright ©2006 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: Time Out of Mind Sadler's Sense: Draining America First Oil Policy Inadequate to the Energy Challenge Sadler's Sense: Holly, Folly and Why Its Ok to Cut Christmas Trees Sadler's Sense: We Need the Constitutional Limits of the Initiative Process Sadler's Sense: Learning from the Katrina Moment Sadler's Sense: A Right to Die? 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