Measure 93: 'nickel-and-dime' funding questions

By DON McINTOSH, Staff Reporter

Should the State of Oregon increase by $5 the annual license fee for hairdressers? Should the cost of a permit for using Xenon gas be increased? What's a reasonable grazing fee to charge eastern Oregon cattle raisers?

If Ballot Measure 93 passes in the November 2000 election, Oregon voters will find future ballots chock-full of such "nickel-and-dime" questions as the state is forced to seek approval for any increase more than the rate of inflation for all manner of minor taxes and fees.

With hundreds of such fees, those nickels and dimes could add up to a total hit on state revenues of millions of dollars, much of which would come out of the budgets of the state's regulatory agencies, which are typically funded by taxes and fees on the industries or users they oversee.

"Measure 93 is especially dangerous for me because I work for the Portland Bureau of Environ-mental Services," said Richard Beetle, wastewater treatment operator and secretary-treasurer of Municipal Employees Local 483.

"Take the jet fuel tax at the airport," Beetle said. "It's to cover expensive cleanup. Every airport has one. Most people don't even know that. They don't care. Yet they'd have to become educated on it if it appeared on the ballot."

Voters rejected a similar ballot measure in 1994. Now the proposal is back, and with several new provisions that, for opponents, make it even worse than the defeated measure: The requirement that tax and fee increases be approved by a supermajority; and retroactive provisions that could strike down and bring up for a re-vote any new taxes approved by voters in the last two years.

Under Measure 93, to approve a fee increase, it would not be enough that a majority of voters vote yes: Fee increases would have to win at least the same percentage that approved Ballot Measure 93. If Measure 93 wins 73.7 percent of the vote, for example, then ever after, increases in swimming pool admission fees and jet fuel taxes would have to get at least 73.7 percent of the vote. In effect, a minority of voters could block any tax or fee increase.

"It circumvents majority rule," Beetle said. "People expect majority rule. It's the cornerstone of democratic tradition in Oregon. Measure 93 would allow the tyranny of the minority."

Thanks to Sizemore's 1996 Measure 47, taxes must already be approved by the so-called "double majority" - a majority of votes cast, and majority turnout by the electorate. But voters that year also rejected "supermajority," and the passage of 1998's Measure 63 meant that future measures requiring supermajorities would have to pass by the same percentage themselves. Measure 63 was the brainchild of Tim Nesbitt, then executive director of the Oregon State Council of Service Employees, now president of the Oregon AFL-CIO.

The supermajority provision in Measure 93 is Sizemore's response.

"Measure 93 is a personal finger to the eye of Tim Nesbitt," says Steve Novick, a pro-union political consultant who is working against this and other measures.

Measure 93 is also retroactive, meaning that all tax and fee increases of the last two years, even those that were approved by voters, would be overturned until they could be re-approved by the new margin.

"It's an extraordinarily multi-faceted and and complicated measure," Novick said. "It's really a way to 'mess up' public services in general."

Supporters of public services agree, and they're lining up to oppose the measure. A statewide coalition known as the Committee for Our Oregon has formed, opposing Measure 93 as well as Measure 8 (which would place an arbitrary cap on state spending) and Measure 91 (which would allow corporations and the wealthy to deduct the full amount of federal income taxes from their state taxable income).

The group is endorsed by 127 organizations, as diverse as the Oregon Business Council and the Oregon AFL-CIO, the Albany Visitors Association and the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office, Fred Meyer, Intel, and the Oregon Parent-Teacher Association. Even parties that are normally foes - United Steelworkers and Wells Fargo Bank, Nike and Jobs With Justice - are united against the Sizemore taxation measures.

Statewide, voters could be asked to ratify tax increases approved by the 1999 Legislature on jet fuel, cigarettes and timber land, as well as fee increases for hunting licenses, water quality permits, building code inspections and medical licenses.

The measure could also bring hundreds of local fees and taxes to the ballot in March, including re-votes on as many as 67 recent property tax levies, totaling $247 million, for schools and other local governments.

"You'd have to be a genie to be able to predict the disruptiveness this would create," Beetle said.

The Committee for Our Oregon can be reached at 503-231-0609 or on the Web at www.ouroregon.org .

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