THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD?
By Russell Sadler
The Oregon legislature’s traditional six month session is half over. This has led to a number of stories about the “Legislature at midterm.” This, in turn, has led to questions like, “They’ve been in session three months. Why don’t we have a budget yet?”
This is the wrong question. Here’s what’s really going on:
The legislature’s Democratic leadership has restored the time-honored committee process and abandoned by the Republican leadership in the 1990s. Traditionally the Oregon legislature has relied on its committees to do the serious work of evaluating and drafting the legislation assigned to them -- especially the business of budgets. The work of committees was then sent to the floor to pass or fail on its merits.
This doesn’t mean the Democrat leadership doesn’t kill bills. It does. For example, the Republicans’ particularly nasty anti-immigration legislation has been sent to committees where there are not enough votes to send it to the floor of either house. The Democratic leadership sees little chance such legislation has enough votes to pass, and its consideration unproductively inflames political passions. So the bills are buried in committee. That is the function of committees in the Oregon legislature. To avoid abuse, there is a procedure that allows a majority vote of members of either house to demand a bill be discharged from committee for a floor vote.
The budget process traditionally determines the length of the legislative session and that process takes a full six months to develop. Oregon’s budget process is the work of a rather unique Joint Ways and Means Committee that combines the tasks of authorization and appropriation that are usually the province of two separate committees in Congress and many state legislatures.
As soon as the Oregon legislature convenes in January, the Ways and Means Committee begins hearings on state agency budgets. Beginning with the least controversial budgets, there is a small but steady flow to the floor while other committees are evaluating and passing out their substantive legislation. That’s why, early in the session, other lawmakers have time to indulge in resolutions declaring the state flower, the state motto, the state insect and the state animal. While this sort of legislation is considered, the serious work on the state budget grinds on in the background.
The big ticket items -- appropriations for public schools, community colleges and the state universities -- are traditionally not considered until after April 15. Then the Department of Revenue and the Legislative Revenue staff “get a look at the mailbags” and make a reliable estimate of the actual tax take for 2006 and a reliable estimate for revenue in 2007. This sum becomes the estimated revenue for the next biennial budget period.
By early May,the Ways and Means Committee decides how much money to appropriate to public schools, community colleges and state universities. The word goes out to the other committees that “the train is leaving the station,” the legislature is “on the road to adjournment,” and if their substantive legislation is not on the way to the floor and the other house, it is likely to die in committee on adjournment. Traditionally this is where the horse trading, compromising and game-playing gets most intense.
That does not mean politics won’t be involved. Gov. Ted Kulongoski wants more money to hire state police, for example, and offered an increased tax on auto insurance premiums to pay for it. The Republican minority agrees to increase the number of state police, but wants to pay for it out the the state’s General Fund of income tax revenues which means there will be less income tax money available for public schools, colleges and universities. The Republicans like that because it means less money for their dreaded “teachers’ union” and other ideological devils.
The legislature’s Democratic leadership believes “politics is the art of the possible.” If it decides to increase the number of state police, it will try to pass Gov. Kulongoski’s insurance tax to pay for it. If they do not have the votes because of arbitrary, initiative-imposed supermajorities, they will consider financing the state police with income tax revenues.
What the Democrats will not do is imitate House Minority Leader Wayne Scott, R-Canby, when he was in the majority and petulantly refuse to appropriate sufficient money to the state police. Scott displays the adolescent petulance that encouraged Oregon’s crossover voters to make Oregon Republicans the minority party last November. Oregon Democrats have absorbed that lesson. And that’s the real news from the Oregon legislature’s mid-session mark.
Editor's Note: The main difference in this session in addition to the Ds being in charge is that the leadership has agreed to June 29th as the sine die date. It's now early April and many bills on both the Senate and House side have not moved out of committees to the other house and its committees, let alone floor debates.
And aside from K-12 funding and the rainy day fund, the big ticket budget items still have to be considered not the least of which is the Kids Health Care bill and the big health care initiative sponsored by former Governor Kitzhaber and Senators Ben Westlund and Alan Bates. The clock is ticking. Is anyone paying attention?
We all know who is running this railroad, but will they be on time? Or will they arrive at an appropriate destination?
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