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NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Joint Ways and Means Committee presents $23.2 billion budget plan
By Mark Miller
Oregon Capital Bureau
Oregon’s K-12 schools
won’t feel pinched under a
proposal unveiled by legis-
lative budget-writers Thurs-
day, but other government
services throughout the state
are likely to see cuts.
The co-chairs of the Joint
Ways and Means Commit-
tee presented a $23.2 bil-
lion budget plan. That rep-
resents a 10 percent increase
from the approved 2017-19
state budget, but not enough
to maintain current service
levels.
Spending in nearly every
area of the budget comes
in below what state econo-
mists say will be needed to
keep service levels steady
over the next two years. That
would likely mean public
employee layoffs, less grant
money available to organi-
zations and municipalities
that rely on state support and
other reductions as Oregon’s
state government tightens its
belt.
In her $23.6 billion bud-
get proposal released late
last year, Gov. Kate Brown
called for spending $8.87
billion in general and lottery
revenues for the K-12 state
school fund, the main source
of money for school districts
throughout Oregon. The leg-
Oregon Capital Bureau
The Joint Ways and Means Committee presented a budget 10 percent larger than in the
current biennium but not enough to maintain current service levels.
islators did likewise in their
proposal.
“We’re putting $668 mil-
lion more into the current
service level than the pre-
vious biennium, which is a
non-trivial sum of money,”
Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hay-
ward, D-Beaverton, said.
“We’re doing the best we
can with the available
resources. We recognize that
it’s not ideal.”
State Rep. Dan Rayfield,
D-Corvallis, vowed that
lawmakers will be “working
this entire session to try and
find more money” for public
education.
Unlike Brown’s bud-
get, the lawmakers’ pro-
posal does not assume any
tax increases will give bud-
get-writers more money to
spread around. Brown rec-
ommended changing Ore-
gon’s business tax code and
ending payments to counties
under the Gain Share pro-
gram, lessening the need for
state budget cuts.
The cost of provid-
ing public services tends
to increase every year due
to inflation, cost-of-living
adjustments for employees,
rising pension obligations
and other economic factors.
The Oregon Health Plan
isn’t entirely spared from
cuts the way that the state
schools fund is, but Steiner
Hayward, who is a prac-
ticing physician, said the
co-chairs are proposing no
cuts to patient services.
“There may be some
areas of savings for admin-
istration, but we will not be
cutting eligibility or bene-
fits for any Oregonian who
receives services or is eli-
gible for services through
OHP,” Steiner Hayward
said.
Steiner Hayward was one
of two senators named to
co-chair Ways and Means
for this session. State Sen.
Betsy Johnson, D-Scap-
poose, said the three
co-chairs have worked well
together, and she suggested
that their geographic diver-
sity helped guide their bud-
get proposal. All are from
western Oregon, but John-
son represents a mostly rural
district northwest of Port-
land, Steiner Hayward rep-
resents an urban district on
Portland’s Westside and
Rayfield represents part of
the mid-Willamette Valley.
“We all brought our own
ability to project the con-
cerns of all of Oregon into
this budget,” Johnson said.
Rayfield said the com-
mittee’s job is to balance the
cost of government services
with the available resources.
“This is not a perfect bud-
get,” he said. “There will
be folks who are not happy
with this budget.”
The Senate Republican
leader isn’t one of those
folks.
“For the first time in my
career in the Senate, it is
refreshing to get a glimpse
at a budget framework that
is fiscally responsible and
will leave a healthy end-
ing balance,” said state Sen.
Herman Baertschiger Jr.,
R-Grants Pass, in a state-
ment released shortly after
the budget was unveiled
Thursday.
Johnson, Rayfield and
Steiner Hayward said keep-
ing Oregon financially sta-
ble is one of their main
objectives. They want to
avoid deeper cuts in the
coming decade, especially
if the state’s economy slows
down.
“This takes a significant
step toward creating sustain-
able budgets in the future,”
Rayfield said.
The
Legislature
is
required to approve a bal-
anced budget for the next
biennium by the end of June.
With both the governor’s
budget proposal and the
Ways and Means co-chairs’
plan now on the table, the
state’s leaders have until
the end of the legislative
session to hammer out an
agreement.
Legislature’s $1.1M sexual harassment settlement will divert funds budgeted for other purposes
By Claire Withycombe,
Aubrey Wieber
and Mark Miller
Oregon Capital Bureau
In the next month, the
Legislature will write a
check for $1.1 million to
finish its settlement of sex-
ual harassment claims at the
Capitol.
But it won’t be legislators
or employees accused of the
misconduct who have to pay.
The money comes from
taxpayers.
The settlement between
the Oregon Bureau of Labor
and Industries and the Leg-
islature was announced
Tuesday.
Nine victims will receive
up to $415,000 each.
The Legislature will pay
for the settlement using extra
money initially budgeted for
other purposes, according
to Legislative Fiscal Officer
Ken Rocco.
The Legislative Assem-
bly, which is part of the over-
all legislative branch of state
government, has spent about
70 percent of its $41 mil-
lion budget and is 80 percent
of the way through its cur-
rent two-year budget cycle,
which ends June 30.
The Legislature gets
nearly all of its money from
the state’s general fund,
which is paid by taxpayers,
according to state records.
The legislative branch
has spent less than expected
on personnel, Rocco said.
When the economy is doing
as well as it is now, fewer
people want the part-time,
limited-duration jobs avail-
able during the session.
Under the settlement,
the Legislature will cut
the check to the state labor
bureau within 30 days.
Then the labor bureau
will distribute the money to
the victims of harassment.
The Legislature will
pay nearly $1.1 million in
non-economic damages to
eight victims, about $26,000
in legal fees to a state sena-
tor who was harassed, and
$200,000 to the labor bureau
for attorneys’ fees and out of
pocket expenses.
The bureau’s investiga-
tion, released Jan. 3, focused
largely on the actions of for-
mer state Sen. Jeff Kruse,
R-Roseburg, who resigned
a year ago, although the
behavior of three lawmakers
was called out in the report.
But it’s not clear which
lawmakers’ actions led to
settlement money for which
victims.
A spokesman for the labor
bureau declined to disclose
that information Wednesday.
The settlement caps alle-
gations dating back to Octo-
ber 2017, when Sen. Sara
Gelser, D-Corvallis, pub-
licly accused Kruse of inap-
propriate behavior.
Internal
investigations
by the Legislature were fol-
lowed by the labor bureau’s
investigation and resulting
complaint in January against
legislative leaders.
Kruse was named as a
respondent in that com-
plaint, but other legislators
were not.
Private talks in recent
weeks between the labor
bureau and legislative lead-
ers produced the settlement
announced this week.
The labor bureau reached
out to Kruse to participate in
the conciliation process but
he didn’t respond, a spokes-
man for BOLI said.
The settlement, which
was signed by Senate Presi-
dent Peter Courtney, Speaker
of the House Tina Kotek and
Labor Commissioner Val
Hoyle, doesn’t say specif-
ically whether the victims
can separately pursue their
abusers.
A separate agreement
protects the Legislature from
future legal claims from
the victims who were paid
settlements.
Kotek’s office was con-
sidering a request Thurs-
day from the Oregon Capi-
tal Bureau for access to that
agreement.
An attorney for two
interns who were harassed
by Kruse said her clients
don’t plan to sue the former
state senator.
“At this time, my cli-
ents do not intend to pur-
sue any rights that may still
exist against Jeff Kruse in
his individual capacity after
their currently filed case is
dismissed,” Charese Rohny
said in an email Thursday.
The settlement calls for
the Legislature to adopt rec-
ommendations from an Ore-
gon Law Commission work
group formed to tackle sex-
ual harassment in the Capi-
tol. House Bill 2859 would
create a confidential chan-
nel for lawmakers, lobby-
ists, and state employees and
contractors to report harass-
ment in the Capitol.
Those complaints would
go through a proposed Leg-
islative Equity Office and
could be excluded from pub-
lic disclosure.
HB 2859 and Senate
Bill 744, which creates the
Equity Office, received a
mixed reception at a Feb. 6
public hearing.
Gelser
read
anony-
mous testimony from two
women who complained
of harassment, who urged
lawmakers to abandon the
idea of restricting disclo-
sure of information about
harassment.
One of Gelser’s staffers
also testified, telling mem-
bers of the Capitol Culture
Committee, “By trying to
complicate the process, you
are discouraging survivors
from coming forward.”
A spokesman for Sen.
Ginny Burdick, D-Portland,
who co-chairs the com-
mittee, confirmed Thurs-
day that leadership intends
to move forward with those
bills, although they have yet
to be scheduled for a vote in
committee.
Meantime, Gelser, Sen.
Tim Knopp, R-Bend, and
Rep. Karin Power, D-Mil-
waukie have proposed leg-
islation to prohibit using
public money or campaign
money as “hush money” for
victims of sexual harass-
ment and abuse who agree
not to publicly disclose their
allegations.
Testimony on Senate Bill
478 explained the legisla-
tion would end the practice
of using public money or
campaign money to coerce
someone to sign a nondis-
closure agreement.
Gelser testified the issue
was transparency. Someone
running for office shouldn’t
use that money to arrange to
buy a victim’s silence, she
said.
Looking ahead, Gelser
said in an interview that she
hopes the settlement will
signal victims of harassment
that they can come forward
and “seek remedy.” But
beyond that, she wants the
environment in the Capitol
to change.
“I just think it’s important
that we don’t wash our hands
of this now and say, ‘We
wrote a check, it’s all over,’”
Gelser said. “We need a
complete transformation of
our culture. And that’s a lot
more than words, and it’s a
lot more than policies.”
Legislator backs study of extending commuter rail from Wilsonville to Salem
By Mark Miller
Oregon Capital Bureau
Ten years ago, the West-
side Express Service began
running between Beaverton
and Wilsonville.
State Rep. Mitch Green-
lick hopes that in another 15
years it will run south to Ore-
gon’s capital city.
House Bill 2219 would
commission a 17-member
task force to study the con-
cept of extending WES com-
muter rail to Salem, deter-
mining whether it would be
feasible or beneficial. The
bill received an initial pub-
lic hearing before the Legis-
lature’s Joint Transportation
Committee on March 4. No
committee vote has yet been
scheduled to advance the
legislation.
“It would make WES
much more viable,” Green-
lick said before the hearing.
“I think WES would be much
more effective if it had the
riders that would come from
… the north Salem area.”
WES is part of the TriMet
system, which treats bus,
light rail and commuter rail
fares as interchangeable. The
typical fare is $2.50 for two
and a half hours, or $5 for a
full day.
Like nearly all commuter
rail systems, WES operates
at a loss, meaning a trip costs
more than what the rider pays
for it. An average commuter
trip costs TriMet $18.14.
That makes WES consider-
ably more expensive to oper-
ate, relative to the number of
riders, than TriMet’s bus and
light rail services. MAX’s
average operating cost per
ride is $2.95.
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A TriMet WES train arrives at the Beaverton Transit Center.
A bill introduced in the Legislature could extend WES trains
south to Salem.
Ridership on WES has
also been decreasing year
over year, which TriMet
spokeswoman Roberta Alt-
stadt attributes to business
closures along the commuter
route. Last fiscal year, WES
provided 265,668 rides — on
average, 5,109 trips per week.
“Those who do ride WES
often call it the best kept
secret as it provides a quick,
reliable and comfortable ride
between Wilsonville and
Beaverton,” Altstadt said.
A 2010 state study con-
cluded that extending WES to
Salem was “technically feasi-
ble,” but it would be a com-
plex project that would cost
up to $387 million to build.
The amount TriMet must
spend for WES operations
every year would likely tri-
ple, the study added. It made
no recommendation on how
to proceed, and the idea got
little further public attention.
Greenlick is restarting the
conversation.
Shelley Snow, Oregon
Department of Transporta-
tion spokeswoman, said in
an emailed statement, “We
understand the goal of the
bill’s sponsor and should the
bill pass, we look forward to
participating in the task force
and/or in any other way that
would be helpful.”
Express transit between
Wilsonville and Salem exists
today in the form of bus line
1X, which runs as a partner-
ship between Wilsonville’s
bus service SMART and
Salem-area transit operator
Cherriots.
Cherriots did not respond
to a request for comment,
but SMART transit direc-
tor Dwight Brashear praised
Greenlick’s bill at Monday’s
committee hearing.
“I think this is an opportu-
nity for us to study something
that will benefit future gen-
erations to come,” Brashear
testified.
SMART and Cherriots
track ridership for all of their
routes, including bus line 1X.
Last fiscal year, the route
averaged 1,386 boardings per
week, with SMART serving
the majority of them.
Officials from Beaverton
and Wilsonville testified in
favor of Greenlick’s bill. In
a letter of support, Wilson-
ville Mayor Tim Knapp sug-
gested SMART could “re-de-
ploy assets” to cover other
unserviced areas if WES was
extended to Salem.
Officials in Tigard and
Tualatin are watching as well.
Sherilyn Lombos, Tualatin
city manager, said her City
Council supports extending
WES.
“Anything that adds ser-
vice to Tualatin, we’re inter-
ested in,” Lombos said.
Interstate 5 runs through
Tualatin and Wilsonville, and
during peak commute hours,
the freeway can become
choked with vehicles. Lom-
bos and Knapp see a WES
extension as potential con-
gestion relief.
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