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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us April 22, 2005 Buckley goes back to school Freshman legislator heads to Bellview in show of support for public education By Jennifer Squires Ashland Daily Tidings Rep. Peter Buckley, D-Ashland, looked as if he welcomed the chance to talk about government with children rather than budgets with legislators today. Rep. Peter Buckley , D-Ashland, spent this morning at Bellview Elementary School playing with 7-year-old Madeline Jim and talking to fourth graders about how a bill becomes a law. Orville Hector | Ashland Daily Tidings The freshman legislator visited classes at Bellview Elementary School this morning before stops at Ashland Middle and High schools as part of the sixth-annual America’s Legislators Back to School Week. Sen. Alan Bates, D-Ashland, visited Hedrick Middle School in Medford. At Bellview, Buckley read stories with first-graders and told fourth-graders how an idea for a law transforms into a bill in the legislator and, eventually, a law in the Oregon Revised Statutes. The fourth-graders in Ingrid Hansen’s class also shared a recent class project to road-trip around the state with Buckley. “They know what he does and they want to show him they know about Oregon,” Bellview principal Juanita Fagen said. The school tour follows Thursday evening’s town hall meeting in the Rogue River Room in Southern Oregon University’s Stevenson Union. Although the focus of the meeting with Buckley and Bates was education, the community discussion drifted from school funding to health care, civil rights, patriotism and tax systems during the 90-minute event that attracted more than 100 people. “We’ve got to think of a budget as a finite pie at $12.393 billion,” Bates said Thursday, explaining funding for education can’t be talked about without touching on all other state programs because a bump in the education budget affects all other state-funded programs. The current budget being kicked around in the capitol is set at $12.393 billion, with more than $5 billion of that dedicated to K-12 education. School supporters, such as Stand for Children regional organizer Amy Amrhein, are asking for that figure to increase to $5.4 billion. That dollar amount, school supporters say, would give school districts around the state a “no cuts” budget over the next biennium. Currently, Republicans in the legislature are offering a $5.175 billion education budget; democrats have come down to a $5.325 billion target amount. “It’s pitting programs against each other that people care about ... instead of saying ‘How can we actually fund these programs?’” Buckley said, after a Rogue Community College student asked if funding the community college system at its full need ($440 million) would cause cuts to other programs. When Amrhein asked the legislative duo to push for the $5.4 billion amount, Bate reminded her he can’t “focus on just one issue,” and reeled off a list of needs within the state. “I have elderly people who need medical care in their homes,” Bates said. “I’ve got abused children who need to be taken care of. We have a criminal justice system that I think is off the tracks.” While the proposed state budget isn’t large enough to fully fund all of the programs that look to the state for support — education would need a $7.1 billion budget to perform at the levels outlined in the Oregon Quality Education Model — the state is still about $200 million shy of the $12.393 billion total it will allocate this session. “We don’t have a significant spending problem in this state, we have a revenue problem,” Bates said, explaining that 15 years ago Oregon ranked No. 25 in the nation for dollars collected. Now Oregon hovers around No. 45 or 46, heading toward 50th and becoming “the Appalachia of the West.” Bates is playing with changes to the entire tax system that would benefit low and middle income citizens. Buckley told the audience that eliminating tax credits and deductions, such as a tax credit for businesses that purchase life insurance for their employees, would beef up state funding without increased taxes. “We have to make the case that this is their government, this is their state and they have to take ownership of it,” Buckley said. Both legislators encouraged the audience to share their concerns and ideas with other state representatives and senators in Southern Oregon who are not on board with increasing state revenues and finding more funds for education, health care and children’s services. 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