Senator Tony Corcoran wrote a "Guest Column" in the Eugene Register Guard that I forwarded to list members on May 10th. You may find his perspective interesting, especially as he now puts the onus for assisting in solutions to the "revenue problem" squarely in the hands of the business community who said they wouldn't be part of any effort to reform the revenue-generating system in the state until PERS reform was addressed. You can read Senator Corcoran's opinion piece here. While I agree with Senator Corcoran's challenge to the business community, it is naive to think that business will take the bait. I believe more strongly in the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus than to think that groups like AOI, OBL, and others will jump at the opportunity to help put together a credible package to raise revenue. I expect that they will say "... hey, PERS reform isn't complete until it has run its legal course, and the Legislature wins in the Supreme Court." And they won't lift a finger for the next several years waiting for this chapter to play itself out in the Courts. In the meantime, the Legislature has run out of fingers to stick in various parts of the hemorrhaging dike. Service levels are declining, we've become the nation's laughing stock and fodder for late night comedians, the object of Doonesbury's derision, our schools are falling into ruin, and valuable public employees - teachers, professors, secretaries, researchers, forensic technicians, administrators, police, fire, corrections workers, nurses, and many others - are leaving the system in droves via retirement (11,000 retirements now anticipated by June 30, 2003), or will leave the State to find better paying jobs elsewhere. The University system is already feeling the pain of losing valuable employees and the difficulty of recruiting faculty willing to work at deeply discounted wages, abusive teaching loads, and (coming soon!) a substandard (actually awful) retirement system.
The Legislature borrowed a spine long enough to harm public employees - the public's favorite bad guys for at least a two dozen years - because they expected they would enjoy broad public support for doing so. Not surprisingly, there was widespread public support for PERS reform because the large newspapers in Oregon fed a gullible public a near daily diet of half-truths and misinformation. Many of these newspapers seem to be competing not only with each other but with the tabloids to see who could out do one another in the PERS-bashing and misinformation department. Since gullibility is a well known and practically genetic human frailty "...people would rather believe than know", the public bought the media's story hook, line, and sinker. (I mean, come on. How many times do you have to tell the public about retirements at more than 100% of final average salary before the public believes that everyone in PERS retires at more than 100% of FAS? Do you know how many times I was ACCUSED of earning more than 100% of FAS? I don't get 100% of FAS in retirement and I confess that I don't know ONE person who earns more than 100% of FAS in retirement; surely these folks exist - all 243 of them in 2001 - but I haven't met one yet.) This daily ration of sensational but only partial truths (or less) gave the Legislature and Governor the political cover to cut huge chunks from the budget directly out of the hides of public employees, all in the name of a patronizingly familiar refrain "... it's best for all of Oregon". Sadly, many union-friendly legislators voted for PERS reform because they don't need the union-vote in their district - there isn't anyone to challenge them and so they are in "safe districts" - or because they know that the Unions will hold their noses and still support them against worse alternatives in future elections. While receiving their "courage transplant" on PERS reform, the Legislature has been spineless, gutless, and clueless when it comes to any reform to the Revenue side of the system. They've sold out to or pimp for the business community and its lobbyists (c'mon folks. How much courage does it take to raise taxes on beer and wine? How much intelligence does it require to know something is seriously wrong when PGE brags about paying $10 in corporate income tax on revenues of $680 million. My wife and I paid more than $10,000 in Oregon Income Taxes *and* we voted for Measure 28). Legislators have been bullied, intimidated, and held hostage by the initiative process, various Oregon business groups, and a few monomaniacal, self-appointed "tax vigilantes." The legislature is a prisoner of Oregon history, yet with that expansive scope, it is anything but visionary; it is completely myopic. In fact, most Legislators are more worried about being reelected to a job paying $15,000 per year than they are for the public's welfare. Talk about dumb. They've succumbed to the baseless argument that raising taxes in a down economy is a bad thing. There isn't any evidence to support this. There isn't any evidence to support "trickle-down" or "supply-side economics" either. I believe it was David Stockman or George H.W. Bush (Bush 41) who described it as "...voodoo economics."
All I can say at this point is that there are about 160,000 active PERS members in the State of Oregon. There are about 90,000 PERS retirees. There are about 50,000 inactive PERS members. It's hard to know exactly how many of these 300,000+ ADULTS live in Oregon; certainly at least 200,000 still remain. This reveals an obvious, but extremely important fact. The public employees of Oregon represent a huge voting constituency (perhaps 1 in every 4 voting adults in Oregon; more if you include family members who vote), whose every vote has been taken for granted by all politicians who run for public office, and by every organization sponsoring ballot initiatives. We've been treated as a monolithic bloc of votes that can be counted on either for or against any issue or politician on the ballot. Public employees as a political force are as predictible as Ex-Lax. After the steamrolling we've just been subjected to, politicians, pollsters and the media need to be deprived of that predictibility. Nothing is sacred any more. Become unpredictible. Put every legislative district up for political grabs. Think the unthinkable. Think outside the box. Don't vote for every local tax increase just because it is the "right thing." While it may be both "right", "virtuous", and "sensible" to vote for local tax increases, in my opinion, the success of these measures sends the wrong message to the Legislature. Instead of saying: "We're willing to tax ourselves to fund public services. This should convince you that the time is ripe for a 'statewide solution'", it seems to me that all it says to the Legislature is: "You don't have to do anything to solve the problem; we've taken it into our own hands." Unfortunately, not every community is equally enlightened, and the public services are a PUBLIC GOOD, not limited to a particular group of citizens who are more willing than others to fund them. Furthermore, Measure 5, for better or for (mostly) ill, made school funding a STATE problem, not a local problem, and I don't think it is right or fair to force local communities to do what the drafters of Measure 5 PROMISED and ASSURED us the State would and should do. (Adolf Hitler asserted that it was easier to get people to believe a "big lie" than a small one; the drafters of Measure 5 certainly perpetrated the "big lie", but they've been aided and abetted by the Legislature). Still further, I don't buy the specious argument that by taxing ourselves locally we're buying the Legislature time to find a more permanent solution. We've repeatedly voted to tax ourselves and the Legislature hasn't acted. Why would anyone with two firing neurons expect that the Legislature would suddenly acquire intelligence now? The only way Oregon will see change is by forcing the Legislature to do the job it was elected to do and keeping excruciating and unrelenting pressure (I think "cilice"* here) on each and every Legislator until they do it. Apply the pressure 24/7 and never let them off the hook. It won't happen until we go to the abyss and let everyone see what the abyss looks like. Yes, it will be unpleasant. Yes it will be ugly. Yes people will be harmed, discomfited, discomforted, inconvenienced (or worse), and yes it will make Oregon an even worse place than it is right now -- for awhile. But patching holes in a sinking ship doesn't actually prevent the ship from sinking; it only prolongs the agony of everyone topside. I no longer have faith that our Legislature or our Governor have the intellect, insight, or courage to see the light unless we all see the dark side first. Only then will it be possible to CUT THE GORDIAN KNOT that binds us, and constrains us in so many ways. Our current system of raising revenue is broken irreparably; our system of funding social services and schools just sucks and there isn't any alternative except to change it dramatically. Frankly, I don't want to see Oregon go into the toilet, but a bad economy, the Legislature's myopia, lack of creativity, bad choices, lack of will, and sheer lack of intelligence, coupled with public selfishness, greed, and mean-spiritedness have already taken us there. We are precisely where Measure 5 was destined to take us; we just took longer than most expected for us to get there. Barbara Roberts and Matthew Prophet were ridiculed and derided in 1990 for pointing out that Measure 5 would have dire consequences. They pointed out that the emperor had no clothes. No one listened, no one took heed, and nothing bad happened .... until now. No one anticipated that the free lunch wouldn't last forever; no one had the foresight to think about actually saving some money when we had it to save. No the weak-willed Legislature either spent the money or simply gave it back to the people as though it might never be needed. Well folks, not only does the emperor have no clothes, we're all stark naked and we're starving right now. We've now gone from the nation's bellwether to "...Mississippi with trees" - not a place in which I take any pride. I'm embarrassed to tell people I live in Oregon any more and am seriously contemplating moving when my youngest daughter graduates from the private school I've been forced to put her in. As we're about to discover, "doom" is NOT the name of a computer game; it is Oregon's future if the Legislature doesn't develop collective cajones to simply say: "enough is enough. We're mad as hell and we're (finally) going to do something meaningful to solve Oregon's revenue crisis once and for all." The Legislature would do well to remember the legend of the foobird, which flew in ever tightening circles until .... (well, we all know the end of the story).
*An interesting word with several definitions. A quick search using Google will turn up some helpful pointers. You might find the definition associated with the group Opus Dei useful in this context.