By Ken Ballweg



A recent editorial in The Oregonian argued that the Legislature created a difficult choice on Measures 66 and 67, but voters, in effect, should choose business interests over services. This, the editorial argued, would force the Legislature to come back and adopt tax increases that businesses would support, but it adds that that probably won't happen. Unspoken is the fact that all state services have already implemented cuts, and human service agencies have lists of the next round of very deep cuts if these measures fail.



Opponents of the measures claim thousands of jobs will be lost and that prices will go up to cover the tax increases. They say state spending is out of control due to liberal legislators who would not compromise with big business interests, and that the whole reason we pay so much in taxes is greedy public employees.



Can you really believe that thousands of jobs will be lost and prices will go up to offset the increases? Wouldn't it be one or the other, not both? Can you really believe that a Tillamook dairy farmer is going to lay people off because her taxes go up $140 a year? Would Nike, Intel or a large trucking firm in Medford pay the cost of moving to avoid a slight increase in Oregon taxes? Nationwide the average tax rate is 4.9 percent of gross state product, and these measures take Oregon to only 3.8 percent. It doesn't make sense to assume that these taxes will crash the Oregon economy the way opponents say.



In the past 30 years the top 20 percent of Oregon households have seen their average real adjusted gross income increase by 47 percent while the rest of Oregonians have stagnated or lost ground financially. The bottom 20 percent, the families most dependent on state services, have actually seen a loss of 14 percent. That's a 61 percent gap as a result of years of shifting taxes to the poor. From 1980 to 2006, C-corporations' profits went from roughly $2 billion to $12 billion annually. Yes, the recession has changed this, but it's not acceptable that the vulnerable give up services to sustain such gains. And the vast majority of state employees are not part of that top 20 percent of wealthy Oregonians, so why are they a fairer target than the top fifth? Local small businesses depend much more on the public employees living in their communities than on the few families who make more than $250,000 a year in adjusted gross income.



The campaign against these measures cannot identify one person who will actually lose a job if these measures pass, but I can name some 10,000 people with autism, Downs syndrome and other special needs who will lose their jobs and day programs if these measure fail. Real people. Real numbers.



Let me offer some more real numbers. Since 1980, Oregon's general fund budget has increased from $4,128,063,000 to $14,100,000,000. That's a whopping 472.5 percent increase. This proves out-of-control government spending, right? Trouble is, Oregon's population also increased by 44 percent since 1980. To keep up with that and the fact that inflation requires $2.66 to buy what a dollar bought in 1980, proportionally, the 2009 budget should be $15,812,132,515. Rather than being out of control, we are under-spending previous generations by $1,712,000,000. Shame on us.



The reason for most of Oregon's spending increases since the '80s has been voter initiatives, not the Legislature. In 1990, Measure 5 made the state responsible for 75 percent of public school funding, up from 25 percent in 1980. In 1995, Measure 11 tripled the cost of the prison system but left the means of funding that to the Legislature. Our initiative measures are the real out-of-control "legislature," and the responsible thing would be to pay the cost of the laws we passed and stop forcing the real Legislature to make cuts in services for the vulnerable.



Prisons and schools are controlling the state budget -- so much so that funds for programs responsible for the care and safety of vulnerable people are proportionally shrinking, not experiencing out-of-control growth. A chilling example is that Child Protective Service caseloads have grown from an average of 60 kids in the early '80s to a range of 120 to 200 now, and every case has seen a five-fold increase in paperwork to withstand increased legal scrutiny. Whether it is Jeanette Maples in 2009 or Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis in 2002, their child welfare caseworkers get blamed for their deaths, but nothing is being done about the impossible caseloads that are really responsible. And further cuts are pending.



Oregon's kids, disabled, seniors and all those families who depend on state services ask you to question if they really are the most appropriate ones to pay if these measures fail. Looking at real numbers, I personally can't see the logic.



Ken Ballweg is vice president of The Arc of Tillamook and president of The Arc of Oregon.







