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Central Point measures may be strictest in the nation Even anti-tax activist Bill Sizemore finds fault with the standards the initiatives would set for city fee increases By BUFFY POLLOCK for the Mail Tribune CENTRAL POINT - With ballots set to be mailed Friday, city officials are bracing themselves for the outcome of what could be two of the most restrictive initiative measures in the state - and perhaps the nation. If passed, Measures 15-25 and 15-26 would require that 50 percent of all registered voters approve any new fees or increases to existing fees. That means that if just 50 percent of the voters turned out, every one of them would have to vote yes for the fee to pass. The measures are so restrictive that groups as diverse as the National League of Cities and Bill Sizemore's Oregon Taxpayers United agree they go too far. "If that law passes, there probably won't be any more fee increases in Central Point," said Sizemore, whose group sponsored 1996's successful Measure 47, which cut property taxes 10 percent and limited growth to 3 percent a year. Sizemore said the Central Point measures' requirements were strict even by his standards, adding he would have allowed for inflation increases. "It's not necessarily a good permanent solution," he said. "What you are seeing is citizens frustrated with runaway government. I don't blame the taxpayers for revolting, but they need to understand that the threshold they are creating is an impossible one for government to cross." Petitioner Charles Olsen, of the Citizens to Protect Voter Rights, said the measures were written exactly how the members intended because they felt that "if half the people don't come out and vote for something, it shouldn't pass." "Our biggest concern is that they keep talking about (new fees) all the time. We need to convince them that they don't have an open checkbook," Olsen said last week. Jackson County Clerk Kathy Beckett said she had yet to see such a restrictive measure pass in her 20 years with the Elections Office. "It's very unusual for Oregon and for Jackson County," she said. And for other parts of the country as well, according to the National League of Cities in Washington, D.C. Doug Peterson, the league's senior policy analyst, said the measure was as restrictive as any he'd seen. "Often they will allow a cost of living increase or will say 'can pay for costs of the services,' " he said. "If you could get 50 percent of those voting that wouldn't be uncommon, but to get 50 percent of the registered voters, that's a real challenge. "The easiest way to beat something would be to stay home in that case. The city would have to eliminate services." Peterson said another problem with gauging an accurate voter response was that voter rolls were frequently outdated. The only similar measure he could recall was Oregon Measure 93, which would have prohibited most new or increased taxes or fees without voter approval. Even that measure, which failed to gain voter approval in November 2000, allowed for inflation increases. In Josephine County, a similar measure passed in 1986, but it was limited to new fees and required a so-called "double majority" for them to pass - in other words, more than 50 percent of voters must turn out for the election and a majority of them must vote yes. Josephine County Clerk Georgette Brown said the measure had resulted in several new fees not being passed but was not nearly as strict as the Central Point measures. "This is even worse than double majority," she said. Don Laws, a professor of political science at Southern Oregon University and Ashland City Council member since 1975, called the measures "patently ridiculous" despite their "obvious appeal to a large number of voters." "If you want to go down to City Hall and get copies of an ordinance, the city charges so much for pages. As the cost goes up, voters would have to vote on it. What would happen would be that the city would have to put a whole bunch of things on the ballot and hope voters would vote for them. That's not the type of thing voters have any interest in, which doesn't make for a good turnout." Aside from making it difficult to pass new fees, the measures would also force the city to refund at least $100,000 in business license and planning and building fees that have been raised since the petition's May filing date, said City Administrator Jim Bennett. The increases were the first in decades, necessary to cover operating costs, and they affect mainly developers, he said. Bennett said the only increase recently that has affected homeowners was in water rates passed on from the Medford Water Commission. Buffy Pollock is a free-lance writer living in Medford. E-mail her at [email protected] . Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.