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This week the 2011 legislative session gets under way, beginning with the governor's budget recommendations. We'll take this opportunity to head back to Salem and broadcast live from the basement of the Capitol — something we hope to do every other week for the rest of the session.
In his recommendations, the governor calls for cuts to education and healthcare funding. Kitzhaber calls for beefing up early childhood education, even while making cuts elsewhere. Overall, the two-year plan proposes an increase in spending by more than $1 billion above the current budget. Lawmakers have the final say on what the budget will look like, and it's likely to be a long process. The governor's proposal does seem to be gaining some traction with House Republicans, who put out a statement calling it a "sound budget blueprint," while calling for more investments in the private sector among other changes.
Another big issue that's bound to dominate this session is the tricky politics of redistricting. The legislative district lines are redrawn every ten years to reflect population changes measured in the census. Some say the legislature shouldn't be in charge of this delicate, politically-charged process and that its in the legislators' interest to make their districts less politically diverse. However, a measure that would have taken redistricting responsibilities away from the legislature failed to make it onto the 2010 ballot. So, again, this year it's up to the legislature to draw the district lines.
On this show we'll talk with legislators and others about budget negotiations and redistricting, and we'll kick off a new feature. Have you ever wondered who works behind the scenes to make the Capital tick? Who guards the door? Who cooks the food? Who actually writes the laws? Over the next few months, we'll get to know the people who work with elected officials in one way or another.
What do you think about the governor's proposed budget? How would the cuts he's called for affect you? Are you engaged in the redistricting process? Which unelected Capital employees would you like to hear from?
GUESTS:
- Bruce Hanna: Republican Co-Speaker of the Oregon House and state representative from district 7
- Arnie Roblan: Democratic Co-Speaker of the Oregon House and state representative from district 9
- Suzanne Bonamici: Democratice state senator from district 17 and chair of the redistricting committee
- Justin Leavitt: Associate professor at Loyola Law School and author of A Citizen's Guide to Redistricting
- Steve Lindsley: Communications director for the Oregon House Co-Speakers
Tagged as: 2011 session · budget · legislature · politics · redistricting
Photo credit: gmeador / Creative Commons
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Page B-13 of the Governor's budget says the consolidation of school districts and schools will be encouraged, arguing that larger schools and districts provide a greater variety of services and are cheaper to operate when they are at full capacity.
What schools are not operating at full capacity? Seems to me they are already pretty crowded in our district, even in the most rural areas, but I admit I am not familiar with every school in the state.
We have 30 kids in each classroom at the grade school level in our district.
I would hope the Governor is not just wishfully thinking there are districts out there which can be consolidated and has actual districts in mind for consolidation. If so, I'm sure every parent would like to know as far in advance as possible which of our schools are going to be shut down. That is a major impact on our lives.
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Where is that additional billion in new spending coming from? Payrolls are down and state income tax revenues must also be affected. More bond debt? With everything tanking and no jobs for the kids graduating, spending yet more money on early childhood education (Sesame (sp) Street and Big Bird???) looks like more minority appeasement. Does that have anything to do with redistricting?
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The bottom line is the public employee unions run this government, and they will never accept a cut in their pay and benefits.
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I don't disagree, but isn't this simply going to result in large layoffs? There definitely will be less money to go around, so it seems like they can all agree to share in a cut, or hold the line and let go of the most recently hired. I don't see any other options since there is not going to be any large increases in revenue.
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Many states' pensions funds took a huge loss when Wall Street crashed. The Governor's budget says PERS lost $17.28 billion. And many states' pension funds assume a return of 8 percent on their investments, and during the real estate boom they were get even higher returns, and all of this led to promising generous retirement benefits to state employees.
Now they are finding their obligations they promised far exceed the reality of the returns on their investments. There is a huge gap between obligations and income.
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That 8% guarantee has to go down as one of the worst contractual obligations ever agreed upon.
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Education is the single largest budget expenditure exceeding 50%. And despite spending among the highest in the world, we are getting a lousy product.
Kids can't add or subtract fractions, cannot identify Egypt on a map, cannot write a paragraph let alone an essay on WW2. For some if you ask who won the war, they are literally guessing or flipping a coin in their mind. They can't explain the significance of Sputnik or Watergate. They spell teribley and take pride in it. Grammar is not where it at.
China spends 90% less per pupil. And it is our 'Sputnik moment' when recent international testing found the AVERAGE Chinese Student(Shanghai) scored above 90% percentile compared to US students in Math and Science. Of course they lead the world, and this Sputnik msg also goes to Europe and Asia.
Education can be improved without simply throwing money at the problem. Education districts will have to do more with less. Cut back on nonessentials, like cross state football games, soccer games traveling hundreds of miles, and model UN conferences in Washington DC. We have huge sports budgets, but our youth are the fattest generation that ever tread the earth.
Despite international transportation costs, ironically we could export our children to be educated in China, save the school district over 70% of budget, come out ahead with smarter children with bilingual skills, world class critical math and science skills, more fitness with less obesity, and a diligent, ambitious attitude. Have you ever met an ambitious and focused teenager lately? They are mesmerizing.
The problem of education is it is solely dependent on government finances. And these are in the toilet. They must diversify their income base or else make do with a lot less.
If our students spent as much time doing math and science problems as they did playing video games, we would be world leaders. IF the spent their Facebook time instead reading books, these kids would be college professors. And does skateboarding and tattoos really help a youth's job prospects and skills?--maybe that's why they are unemployable.
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We may not always agree, but (IMO) you're dead-on here...
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A great reference book for this topic is "Bushmanders and Bullwinkles" by Mark Monmonier. As a grad student at Syracuse University I worked on a project where I tried to create a "minority-majority" Latino voting district in the central valley near Salem/Woodburn/Mt. Angel. The population density wasn't quite high enough to achieve this in 2000 but it will only be a matter of time.
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I'd like to wake up President Ronald "Amiable Dunce" Reagan and show him what thirty years of tax cuts for the wealthy have brought down on us. All his promises that Voodoo "Trickle Down" Economics would bring us all a into a Conservative Utopia where everyone gets rich and lives a higher standard of living has resulted in our not even being able to properly fund our schools because we gave huge "pay raises" to the already wealthy.
Conservatives demanded and got tax cuts for the wealthy and now they are demanding that we cut the honestly negotiated, voted, and contracted wages and pensions of working class Union members to fund those gifts to the wealthy.
Rotten Ronnie Reagan was one of our worst presidents ever!
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Now the legislature has an opportunity to spend money intelligently instead of just paying off political debts.
Education in Oregon has plenty of money if we look at what is spent in other parts of the country per student to produce better results. As schools are closed and teachers are cut we should look where the real unnecessary money is being spent. Look at how many administrators are being eliminated. I was visiting San Diego a few years ago and one high school district had just refused to increase teacher salaries but then granted the administrators a 20 % increase. These administrators were making the equivalent of 7 teacher salaries and had $300,000 public relation people on their staff. Look at how the diocese of New York runs the parochial schools in New York City with far fewer administrators than the public schools less cost better education should be the goal.
Redistricting. reject racial and ethnic based districts or make a white district state wide, a black district state wide etc. Sounds pretty racist to have a "Hispanic" district. Let people live together and have the same goals opportunities and educational excellence.
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In the short term taxes should be raised across the board 15% to give the government the ability to fund education, health and social welfare programs.
When I was younger there always seemed to be enough money to keep state parks open, roads and bridges were repaired, services were provided to the public effectively, and students received good public education. What happened? There were even bureaus to prop up starving artists and musicians.
Instead of cutting taxes and gutting government we would increase government and school spending so that public entities would attract better candidates to run things competently.
We would make progress if we reduced the complexity of the tax code. Get rid of credits and loopholes. How about a 15% sales tax in which we ditch the income and corporate taxes? This would provide incentive to limit consumption which would be a good thing overall.
No toll roads or bridges in Oregon forever. Rather than build the Columbia River Crossing with debt. Let's save the money before we build it. While we're saving we can come up with a plan that will actually mitigate traffic jams in Vancouver and Portland. (Yeah, right.)
The CRC should be a series of three tunnels side by side: southbound, northbound, pedestrians and bikes.
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hbkcdd? Don't hold your breath for that 15% sales tax. I'll also assume your commute doesn't include the Vancouver-Portland traffic flow. When you were younger was also before the government grew out to an unsustainable level.
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Comments are now closed.
On page C-14 of the Governor's proposed budget, it states that OHP provider payments "are reduced by 16 to 19 percent from the 2011 rate levels." That is a significant reduction.
I am curious to know whether providers will be willing to accept lower payments, or whether they will instead choose to no longer accept OHP patients.