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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 13, 1997)
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Sizemore pushes new tax bills But the Oregon Public Employees Union argues that the tax hills are anti worker and anti-union By Kari Thorene Higher Education Reporter The Oregon Public Employees Union and the Portland-based Oregon Taxpayers United are preparing early for the 1998 battle overOTU initiatives. “Our goal for 1998 is to educate people and the members of our union so they know the true na ture of these bills,” said Sue Bet tin, president of the University’s local chapter of the OPEU. The bills are essentially anti-worker and anti-union, she said. Bill Sizemore, president and founder of OTU, said its goals are to empower Oregon taxpayers. “We want to limit the growth of government spending and give taxpayers the highest quality for the lowest price by injecting com petition into the equation,” he said. The initiatives are wide-reach ing and disparate. They include a freeze on state and local govern ment spending, elimination of government payroll deductions for campaign and political pur poses and compulsory opening of government contracts. The “Measure to Limit Govern ment Spending” would tie in creases in spending by state and local governments to increases in inflation and population only and would compel governments to re duce income taxes if there is a pro jected surplus. The two goals of the bill are to lower state income tax rates and to “discourage gov ernments from finding new ways to extract money from citizens be cause if politicians can’t spend the money, then there will be no moti vation for them to find ways to in crease revenues,” according to an OTU statement. “The bill imposes tight spend ing limits, locking in the already inadequate levels of funding for public services," Bettin said. Without the option to increase funding, money for public ser vices will become increasingly scarce, forcing people to chose be tween public services because of limited resources, she said. But Sizemore said the initiative has a safety valve in case of fund ing emergencies. “Voters have the option to override the limits,” he said. “But it probably won’t hap pen. The trend in America is to ward less government, lower tax es. more individual responsibility. That precludes an increase in spending.” Bettin said a likely scenario for the impacts of a budget crunch un der the initiative is that students would have to “take up the slack" for increasing education costs. The “Measure to Prohibit Gov ernments from Collecting Political Funds” would eliminate payroll deductions used for political pur poses from government employ ees' paychecks. According to the OTU statement, “This measure will force our opponents to collect their campaign funds the same way we do ours, from individual citizens who are willing to con tribute.” Both Sizemore and OPEII offi cials agree that this is a direct at tack on the OPEU’s funding mech anism. “They collect funds used for politics at the taxpayers’ expense, and it’s an unfairadvantage,” Size more said. “We don’t think you can have fair elections if govern ments collect political funds for one side and not the other.” But Bettin said it’s a legitimate form of fund raising. “Payroll de ductions are used for everything — insurance payments, car pay ments, United Way — those can all be deductions.” Singling out union dues amounts to content based discrimination because all other reasons for fund raising would remain legal and legiti mate, Bettin said. Bettin added that joining the union and contributing to the po litical campaign are voluntary acts, and that OPEU members should be allowed to do whatever they want with their paychecks, whether it’s through a payroll de duction or not. The initiative titled "Measure to Require Giving Voters the Option of Contracting Out Government Services When Private Sector Bid ding Would Save More Than 20 Percent Over Public Sector Provider" would open public ser vices to private-sector bidding. If private companies can prove they will providea 20 percent sav ings over the public agency doing the service, the government will have to contract the service out or refer it to the voters if the initiative passes. For example, Sizemore said he believes the state could save substantially if it privatizes prisons. “We believe that state costs are 30 to 50 percent higher,” Sizemore said. “If they aren’t, the public sec tor has nothing to worry about. But with state prisons, we could rou tinely get bids 28 to 29 percent less if they were private.” But Bettin said the way the pri vate companies would get savings is by reducing wages and benefits, and by proxy the quality of ser vices rendered. “It would turn these jobs into minimum wage, no-benefit jobs. People will care less about the quality of work they’re doing,” she said. 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