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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 30, 2004)
Newsroom: (541) 346-5511 Suite 300, Erb Memorial Union P.O. Box 3159, Eugene, OR 97403 E-mail: editor@dailyemerald.com Online: www.dailyemerald.com Friday, January 30, 2004 Oregon Daily Emerald COMMENTARY Editor in Chief: Brad Schmidt Managing Editor: Jan Tobias Montry Editorial Editor: Travis Willse Wrong turn: How to lose a license using bad choices Editor's note: This commentary is part of the Emerald's and ASUO Legal Services' ongoing efforts to assist students through edu cation as well as representation. ASUO Legal Services' attorneys are licensed to practice in the state of Oregon. Information disseminated in this article does not constitute legal advice and does not create an attorney/client relationship. For legal advice, contact an attorney li censed in your slate. You should not make legal hiring decisions based upon brochures, advertising or other promotional materials. Many people consider driving to be a right to which they are entitled, when in fact, it is a privilege which can be sus pended or revoked by the state. Your license will be suspended in Oregon if you violate any number of laws. The length of suspension varies with the crime of convic tion. Repeated convictions can enhance the suspension length. If you drive while your license is suspended, you can be charged with a misdemeanor or felony crime of Driving While Suspended and receive fines and significant jail time. Driving under the influence of intoxicants carries a host of different suspensions. A first conviction for DUII results in a sus pension for a period of one year. For a second conviction within five years, the suspension is for three years. Under a new law which went into effect Jan. 1,2004, a third DUII conviction can result in a permanent license suspension. This new law is cur rently being challenged in court. Unless or until it is ruled un constitutional, however, the law is in effect and licenses will be permanently revoked upon a third DUII conviction. Additionally, if you are arrested for DUII and refuse to blow in the lntoxilyzer machine, you'will receive a one-year suspen sion. If you blow and your result is 0.08 percent blood alco hol or higher, you automatically receive a 90-day suspension. Other driving-related offenses carry various suspensions. A first conviction for Reckless Driving, Reckless Endangering or for Hit and Run with property damage nets a 90-day suspen sion. The second conviction of any of these crimes results in a one-year conviction. A conviction for Hit and Run with per sonal injury requires a one-year suspension. Other criminal convictions which are not obviously related to driving also car ry a mandatory license suspension. For example, the crimes of Menacing and Criminal Mischief connected to operating a motor vehicle result in a license suspension of 90 days for a first conviction and one year for a second such conviction. The suspension is six months for convictions of Unlawful Posses sion or Delivery of a Controlled Substance. Even a violation charge of possession of less than one ounce of marijuana can carry a suspension if the court is so inclined. The suspension is one year for convictions ofUnlawfiil Use of a Motor Vehicle, False Information to a Police Officer, Using the ID of Another, or Misdemeanor Assault. Most suspensions allow you to obtain a hardship permit to drive to and from work, school and medical appoint ments. However, there is often a requirement to serve part of the suspension before obtaining the hardship permit. Hard ship permits are not available if your license is revoked or suspended for Hit and Run with personal injury, Driving While Suspended or Revoked, for failure to pay child sup port or for most drug offenses. Each case differs in its unique facts. To discuss how the law applies to your facts, see a lawyer immediately after your police contact. Schedule an appointment with your ASUO Legal Ser vices lawyer by calling 346-4273. Laura Fine is an attorney with ASUO Legal Services. LETTER TO THE EDITOR Pitiful sidewalks near Greek houses need help It's a joke that one of the cornerstones of Greek organiza tions is to uphold a "responsibility to the community" when they can't even maintain their sidewalks. As anyone who has ever walked on Alder Street or 15th Avenue knows, well, the sidewalks are some of the campus area's worst. Why do people have to walk through wet puddles of de composed leaves for six months outside of Lambda Chi, or walk through a mixture of mud, gravel and cracked sidewalks outside the horrible, ugly driveway at Sigma Alpha Epsilon? Even if the City of Eugene will only replace them along with new road construction, why don't these Greek houses take it upon themselves to clean up this crap? Aaron Reddick senior landscape architecture State spending outpaces growth 1 have been trying to wade through the panic and get my arms around the num bers of Measure 30.1 was particularly in terested in Oregon's spending, adjusted for inflation and population growth. dex and population increased. Anything beyond that would be growth in excess of our economy and potentially beyond our ability to pay for that growth. Using the 1995-97 biennium as the base, the state's spending was 18 percent COMMENTARY GUEST You would expect that the state's spending would increase as the Con sumer Price In above inflation and population growth over the six years from 1995 to 2001, and 5 percent above the eight years from 1995 to 2003. If Measure 30 passes, the 2003-05 budg et will be a whopping 45 percent higher than it was 10 years ago. That's 11 percent above the growth in inflation and popula tion since 1995! Voting no on Measure 30 will set a budget that has increased 35 percent from 1995 but it will bring state spending back in line to only 0.3 percent above inflation and population growth. Reference calculations, charts and a sim ilar analysis of total statewide education spending showing that statewide spending on education increased 26 percent over the past 8 years and exceeded inflation and population growth by 5 percent over the past 8 years are available at http://www.Oregon30.org. Don't let the fear talk about cuts scare you. The money is there to provide all of the same services we have today. If larger amounts of money each year don't seem „ to go as far, I can only assume that it is not being spent as efficiently. We cannot con tinue to outspend our economy. Many in Oregon are complaining about the feder al deficit — don't let that kind of spending imbalance happen here! Dean Suhr lives in West Linn. No on 30 will force needed reforms It seems like every time people talk about taxes, they use the word "fair." Re cently, a letter to the editor from Janet Calvert, president of the League of Women Voters of Lane County, ("Measure 30's sur charge is pro gressive, fair," ODE, Jan. 23) stated that a new tax is pro gressive, and therefore fair. What is fair about taking more taxpayer money? I have read a lot of articles lately about the budget cuts that would take place if Measure 30 does not pass. If you look at the facts, you will real ize that these are merely scare tactics. How many of you realize that with the tax increase, the current budget grows by $2.5 billion? Even without the proposed tax, the budget will still grow by $1.7 bil lion. Defeat of this tax increase won't cut the budget; it only slows down an exces sively large growth rate. During the 1990s' economic boom, the GUEST COMMENTARY state's budget nearly doubled. If spending growth since 1993 had been limited to off set inflation and population growth, the 2003-05 budget would be $8 billion less than $37.1 billion, the current 2003-05 budget. The Legislature spent every dime of that new revenue. Now when times are slow, our Legislature has no savings, no fis cal discipline, wants new taxes, and won't listen to the people Our tax system doesn't need fixing. The Legislature's spending practices need major reform. The state's spending habits can be com pared to purchasing a single object at a store. If you are purchasing an object for yourself, and you are using your own money, you look at the quality and the cost of the object. If you are buying the object for someone you don't know, you probably are looking at cost and not quality. If you were spending someone else's money on an object for yourself, you would look mainly at quali ty, but not cost. But if you are like our gov ernment and spend someone else's money on an object for someone you don't know, you don't pay attention to cost or quality. Let's just pretend for a second that this "temporary" tax increase (yeah, right) is truly needed. I ran the figures and be tween the income tax surcharge, the prop erty tax discount being eliminated, and the fact that this is prorated back to Janu ary 1, 2003,1 will pay an estimated $800 by the end of 2004. You must be saying to yourself, but by those figures, you are part of the wealthy upper-class. Now for the kicker, I am only 25 years old and a recent college graduate. 1 am married and have an average sized house. 1 am not rich! Don't fool yourself, this is going to cost everyone money and the fact is, we already pay enough. There is nothing fair about taking more money from hard-working individuals, like myself. Vote no on measure 30 and force the Legislature to look at its spend ing habits, instead of increasing taxes in a state with an already slumping economy. Mark Butler lives in Salem.
