5
T H E O R EG O N STATE EMPLOYEE
Oregon State Employee is a new
publication so ably edited and so filled
with real merit that it may weld opin
ion of state employees into such an
effective pressure on the 1945 legisla
ture that it will succumb to the de
mand for a state civil service law de
signed to protect present state em
ployees in what they may deem to be
a vested interest. Mistakenly, or per
haps by design not recognized by mem
bers having no direct interest in fav
oring a state employee, League of W o
men Voters has given its tremendous
support to such a bill in past sessions.
The League is too fine a body to permit
itself to be used as a stooge for a pres
sure group seeking an unfair advant
age. There is so much genuine m erit in
civil service reform, especially as against
the spoils system, that it is easy to
rally support for a special interest bill
that is anything but a reform. We have
been evolving a m erit system in prac
tice in state employment in Oregon;
the practice on the whole has been ex
cellent and is improving and expand
ing; its further development could be
furthered by the right kind of statute
and its administration, but to enact
the kind of a bill which has been pro
moted heretofore would be worse than
a step backward; it would be freezing
state employment into a pattern from
which even a spoils system m ight be
welcomed as relief. Aside from this one
possible notivation, may we compli
ment the editors of Oregon State Em
ployee for issuing a first class, helpful,
constructive magazine that is w orth
reading from cover to cover.
— Oregon Voter, Sept. 16, 1944
"The success or failure of democracy
depends on its administration by hu
man being.”
Money in the Pot
The state tax commission in its com
putations of a tax discount for next
year, which it fixed at 30 per cent on
income and corporation excise taxes,
had to do some unusual figuring or the
discount would have been 40 per cent.
This was because it found itself with
too much money, a very rare condition
in the history of Oregon’s treasury.
N ot only would the commission have
had to increase the discount by ten per
cent, but the state would have lost the
six per cent m arkup for the current
fiscal year, in its tax base.
The device by which the commission
avoided making the extra ten per cent
discount on income taxes and avoided
a stationary tax base for the current
year was by invoking the provision of
the law (L. 1941, c. 440, sec. 19)
which authorizes the commission in
preparing its statement for the tax levy
to include
when such apportionment is made on the as
sessment of an even year, such additional
amount or amounts as the governor may
deem necessary to meet the expenses of the
state for the fiscal year.
This is an old provision of the
statute, though prior to 1941 the au
thority was vested in the governor, sec
retary of state and state treasurer. So
far as is recalled the provision has
never before been used, for the reason
th at it always took the full six per cent
increase to cover the legislative appro
priations.
The 1943 legislature appropriated
more than enough money to absorb the
six per cent increase allowed under the
constitution, but two things occurred
to throw the accounts off balance.
First, the increase in miscellaneous re
ceipts last year, over estimates, which
amounted to $1,133,966.51, mostly in
increased collections under the inherit
ance tax; and second, reversions of un-
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