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No big surprises in state budget numbers, local lawmaker says By Sean Wolfe Ashland Daily Tidings Ashland legislators are greeting new state budget proposals with mixed emotions - part relief, and part dread. The relief comes because the weeks of waiting for a budget to emerge is now over. The dread derives from the new budgets' implications for education, health care, and to a lesser degree, law enforcement. "The budget is no big surprise," noted Rep. Alan Bates, D-Ashland, during a telephone call as he drove home from Salem on Friday. "We know that K-12 education will be decimated by this thing. We're looking at a $4.7 billion budget for schools, but to maintain the schools we probably need $5.4 to $5.5 billion to do it," Bates said. At issue was the recent arrival of a $10.6 billion budget proposed by the co-chairmen of the Joint Ways & Means Committee, Sen. Kurt Schrader, D-Canby, and Rep. Randy Miller, R-West Linn. On Friday, Gov. Ted Kulongoski countered with an $11 billion budget blueprint, one which sets aside about $4.9 billion for public education. According to Bates and Sen. Lenn Hannon, R-Ashland, a co-chair's budget is typically released far earlier in the year, and for the past several weeks, both legislators have expressed deep frustration with playing a waiting game. Now that frustration has found a new outlet - namely, the effects of the co-chair's and governor's budgets on a variety of state programs. "If you do this to education, you're looking at shorter years and bigger classrooms. Oregon currently spends about the national average on its education, and we're consistently in the top four states in terms of results. This will drop us below the national average, and that's going to hurt a lot of students," Bates said. Bates went on to describe proposed cuts to health and human services, including dropping 150,000 working Oregonians from the rolls of the Oregon Health Plan, as well as numerous cuts to judicial services, ranging from adoption services to small claims court. "People (in the House) don't see this as a crisis, but it really is," Bates said. "What we've got to do is move the conversation to the people now - show them the budget, show what it means, tell them to put pressure on their representatives, especially Republican representatives, and say we need new revenue." Both Bates and Hannon have favored new revenue measures in the past, and said they would support a sales tax earlier this year. But both backed off of tax talk when it became clear that such proposals were unlikely to clear the Republican-dominated House. That led to both legislators favoring a review of curtailing tax breaks and special incentives, which secured a little momentum in Salem, but has yet to produce results. In recent weeks, the frustration with waiting on the new budget transformed the weekly conversations between local officials and the legislators into a series of grim reports that left little discussion and many awkward silences. "It's frustrating trying to deal with people who don't understand how the system works. Rep. Bates and I are frustrated with the direction this is going, because there is no direction," Hannon said at the last legislative hotline Wednesday. Citing what he called a failure of leadership, Bates expressed a similar mood. "These budgets should have come out a month ago, and what I'm afraid of is having the budget wait on the (mid-April) revenue forecasts. It really truncates any ability to have a discussion about the budget, and I'm sorry, I'm dang ready to have that discussion now," Bates said. Now that the discussion can begin between legislators and voters, Bates said he believes that the governor is likely to stay out of new tax talk, and let the voters come to him. "I think the governor's position is that if people come to him, and say we want this, then he's on board. It's not appropriate for him as a governor to say first thing that he'd raise taxes. I think he thinks it wouldn't make it. Otherwise, I believe his position to be is to let the cuts stand, and see what happens. I disagree with that position, because during the time the conversation takes place, people will get hurt - kids still need education, and people still need healthcare," Bates said. LINKS: DAILY TIDINGS: Main | News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Opinion | Columnists | AP News | Subscribe | Archives | Weather | Classifieds | Contact Us | Privacy REVELS: Main | Calendar | Dining | Movies | T.V. OTHER: Road Cams Copyright 2003 Ashland Daily Tidings 541.482.3456. 1661 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520. Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. - Advertisers -