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Lawmakers limp toward session end Voters won't be asked what state should do with tobacco money BY PETER WONG SALEM -- The 1999 session of the Oregon Legislature appears headed toward an end, but Tuesday, the march to adjournment became a stumble. Consider these developments on the session's 191st day: The House unexpectedly rejected a plan to ask voters in the 2000 general election to put the state's initial share of $180 million from the national tobacco settlement in a trust fund. Only the fund's earnings could be spent on social programs. But even though five Republicans and the lone Independent joined Democrats on the 30-29 vote, some Republicans say they still resist using any of the tobacco money to add to $4.81 billion in state aid to public schools in the next two years. The Senate passed a human resources budget of $2.2 billion, about 20 percent of the state's general fund. But Gov. John Kitzhaber is prepared to follow through on his promise to veto it because it omits $2.8 million for state-funded abortions and money for doctor-assisted suicide. The Legislature will have to work up a substitute quickly or risk leaving the largest agency of state government without a budget. Temporary spending authority for all agencies without a budget ends July 31. The day's biggest surprise was the House's rejection of House Bill 2007, which Republican leaders wanted to lock up the state's initial $180 million from the tobacco settlement. Kitzhaber and other Democrats want to spend some of that money now for schools and other programs, though they have retreated from proposals that would have claimed most of the money. Both houses have cleared a two-year, $4.81-billion budget for aid to schools, but withheld sending it to Kitzhaber pending Tuesday's vote. Kitzhaber said last week he may be forced to accept that budget if Republicans were unwilling to increase it by using some of the tobacco money. "This is the national tobacco settlement; it is not the national kindergarten-12th grade budget enhancement fund," said House Majority Whip Mark Simmons, R-Elgin. "If people take part of it, a small portion here and a small portion there for this need or that need, then shortly, the entire fund would be gone." But House Minority Leader Kitty Piercy, D-Eugene, said passage of the trust fund would lock out the last possibility for some of the money going to schools. "What a lack of leadership," she said. "What a lack of bipartisan cooperation to do what we should have done for Oregon." Southern Oregon legislators voted along party lines, five Republicans for and two Democrats against the trust fund. What happens next is unclear. Senate President Brady Adams, R-Grants Pass, said he is not inclined to yield. But House Speaker Lynn Snodgrass, R-Boring, said lawmakers must look harder for a compromise. Sen. Lenn Hannon of Ashland, the Senate's senior Republican, said afterward that leaders from both parties should have been doing that all along during the on-again, off-again budget negotiations. "You have inexperienced people in leadership positions who do not know how the system works," said Hannon, whose 13 sessions nearly match the combined total of 14 by the presiding officers and minority-party leaders in both houses. "Republicans and Democrats alike have locked themselves into a corner on budget issues, rather than remaining flexible, keeping all their options open, and putting everything on the table for negotiation." A spokesman for Kitzhaber said he's puzzled by the Legislature's passage of a human resources budget that, though it restores many of the cuts Republican leaders threatened to make in it, omits money for state-funded abortions and doctor-assisted suicide under the Oregon Health Plan. The Senate passed it Tuesday, 16-13, largely along party lines. The Senate also passed, 18-11, a measure that refers an increased state deduction for federal income taxes to voters in the 2000 general election. Senate Bill 535, originally a capital-gains tax cut, was converted in the House to a ballot measure that is not subject to Kitzhaber's veto. Its effects on reducing state income will occur in the 2001-03 budget. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA