TO THE EDITOR
ROTTEN PROCESS
GUARD CAUGHT SLEEPING
Alan Pittman’s enlightening series on
Centennial’s renaming (6/26 & 7/3) solidi-
fied my feeling that while it is better that
David Kelly and Bonny Bettman are on
Eugene’s City Council rather than their oppo-
nents, I wish there were more councilors with
Betty Taylor’s independence.
Because he’d like to be mayor, Kelly tries
to make nice with the council’s conservative
bloc. Pittman points out that Kelly called
Mayor Torrey’s contact with Gang of Niner
and MLK renaming opponent Bob Myleneck
“probably inappropriate,” but since it revived
the renaming, Kelly didn’t care.
The only faction Bettman made nice with
were the very conservative local African-
American “leaders,” the same group, Pittman
notes, that had opposed anyone who ques-
tioned Hyundai/Hynix locating here. Bettman
once did, but she’s changed. Now she shuns
Taylor for having the backbone to object to a
flawed renaming. Bettman e-mailed Taylor,
saying that she’ll “never be able to reconcile”
with her. Yet Bettman’s campaign literature
said she’d be “a councilor with a track record
for collaboration across political boundaries.”
But the only boundaries she’s been crossing
have been to the right.
Remember when Kelly and Bettman, in
private negotiations, helped devise a strategy
to sacrifice six residential blocks west of
campus for Peace Health to clear-cut in a vain
attempt to keep the hospital from moving?
That would have fragmented a neighbor-
hood, just as the MLK name will now be
fragmented on separate streets in Eugene and
Springfield. Would Dr. King approve?
Taylor says it best: “The process was re-
ally rotten from beginning to end.”
Pat Wilson
Eugene
Why is The Register-Guard so reluctant to
cover the presidential candidacy of Rep.
Dennis Kucinich? When given every oppor-
tunity, many days in advance, to publicize
events where candidate Kucinich was ap-
pearing, The R-G passed. When given every
opportunity, days in advance, to show up at
events where candidate Kucinich was speak-
ing, to report local reaction, The R-G was a
no-show.
Thankfully, despite the lack of coverage,
we packed out PLC hall on Sunday (July 20).
But I have to think, if the R-G had been a part
of the political process and a part of the com-
munity, and had a deeply felt responsibility to
promote participation of the public in the
electoral process, how fast we’d had to have
the event outdoors.
Thank you EW for being there and reporting
local interests. I’m only sorry we weren’t able
to publicize the event with enough lead-time to
fit within your weekly publishing deadline.
Todd D. Woodward
Springfield
READ ME ENTIRELY!
Bush and Rice “didn’t entirely read” the
memo indicating the Niger-Iraq nuclear evi-
dence was cooked? Har, har, har! Boy, why
don’t my students come up with excuses like
that? Because they’d get laughed off campus
and clear out of the county, that’s why.
“Teach, you have to give me an A, be-
cause it’s not my fault I missed all the an-
swers. They’re not really wrong, see, because
I didn’t entirely read the textbook.”
“Innocent, your honor. I didn’t do any-
thing wrong. I didn’t entirely read that sign.
Who woulda thought they would’ve ex-
pected me to yield to that guy?”
“St. Peter, sir, you have to let me in. It
wasn’t my fault they killed 50,000 innocent
Iraqi civilians. ‘Bear false witness’? Never
heard of it. I didn’t entirely read that book.”
So what did Bush “entirely read”? Mein
Kampf?
Ann Tattersall
Eugene
DENNIS IS DIFFERENT
Every day’s news confirms that President
Bush is taking this country down an ugly and
dangerous road. Today, I read that the
Pentagon, under Donald Rumsfeld’s orders,
is devising a new military plan for con-
fronting North Korea. It consists in part in ha-
rassing North Korea’s military forces into
using up scarce fuel and rations. This is in-
tended as an ongoing peacetime action.
Also in the news, Bush wants to renege on
the ozone treaty [Montreal Protocol, 1987],
the most successful cooperative action ever
undertaken by the global community to avert
an environmental catastrophe. He wants to
void the 1997 agreement on [phasing out]
methyl bromide, the most potent remaining
ozone-destroying chemical.
BY TONY CORCORAN
Slots for Tots
Speaker’s education budget
a long-shot gamble.
I
t was noon on Friday, nothing was going on in the Senate. We had al-
ready taken care of the state’s most pressing issue earlier in the week. We
passed SB919, which “specifies titles that may not be used by a person not li-
censed as a landscape contractor.” Yes, that’s the actual explanation from the staff
measure summary. This solves a major controversy in Oregon: What does one call one-
self if one is a lawnmower? But remember, there is an exception: You don’t have to have
a license if the work you perform is “of a casual, minor, or inconsequential nature.”
Hmmm, do you think that was a backdoor way of exempting legislators?
So, feeling that great burden lifted from my shoulders, I moseyed over to the House
to watch the debate on the K-12 school budget. The session was delayed two hours for a
Republican caucus; arms were twisted and the bill passed 32-26. Every Democrat pres-
ent voted against the bill.
Take that, you Nader purists: There is a difference between D’s and R’s!
In the past six weeks of negotiations House Republicans have reneged on three
agreements: one to fund schools at a higher level; another — in writing — regarding
changes to the Oregon Health Plan; and another on spending for public safety. And for
the past six weeks the speaker has threatened to form her own budget committee and
put out her own budgets, bypassing the Joint Ways and Means Committee process, to
punish the Democrats and the governor for not giving in to her pathetic demands. She
finally pulled the trigger, ended negotiations, and chose the K-12 budget as the first
product of her new committee. If this is the best she can do, we are in deep horse drop-
pings.
The speaker’s bill would provide only $4.56 billion from the General Fund and
Lottery; the rest is “funny money”:
• It steals $131 million from next year’s School Stability Fund, the interest of which is
used to pay for low-income college scholarships for Oregon students. We can’t steal this
4 JULY 31, 2003
year’s fund because the R’s already stole that for last year’s school funding. By the
way, the R’s got to the ambitious figure of $131 million by assuming the addition
of extra video poker terminals and new slot machines in bars and restaurants.
• And, the bill sets up a trigger mechanism for distributing an extra $250
million in the second year: If the May 2004 revenue forecast is at least $200
million over the May 2003 forecast, 43 percent of the excess over $200 mil-
lion goes to the schools. (It would take over $700 million in growth to actually
get to the $250 million proposal — I don’t think our state crystal-baller economist
would agree with this prediction.) Of course, if revenues actually exceeded the
forecast by $200 million, it would cause the kicker to kick! So, we’d be paying for the
2004-05 school year with kicker money we’d have to send back to the taxpayers in
2006! Is that a cool Ponzi scheme or what?
Consensus among the Senate Democrats is that we will not go below $5.3 billion of
real money for schools, a figure which School Superintendent Susan Castillo says won’t
even get us back to the level of funding for the 2001 school year.
O
n a local note, Rep. Pat Farr’s vote was a real disappointment. He failed his first
big test as a freshman after getting elected as an education supporter. He buck-
led under pressure from the speaker and voted with the Republicans. His justifi-
cation, that his school districts would be fine with this level of funding, was nonsense.
Hell, Pat, I can take you to a bunch of small school districts around the state, even here
in Lane County, that are dying on the vine. Our job is to represent all the school kids, not
just the ones in cities lucky enough to have voters who were so pissed off at legislative
inaction, that they went forward with their own local tax.
What irritated me the most was Pat’s comment to me on the House floor after his
vote: “Please, Tony, fix it for us in the Senate.” I wouldn’t need to, Pat, if just two more
Republicans had the cajones to take on their leadership. Then again, caucus politics can
be brutal. And Republicans are different than Democrats.
Sen. Tony Corcoran of Cottage Grove represents portions of Lane and Douglas counties in Senate District 4, which
includes the UO area. He can be reached at sen.tonycorcoran@state.or.us