This measure proposes authorizing lowest-cost borrowing for the state’s real and personal property projects. Currently, the state constitution forbids lending the state’s credit or borrowing in excess of $50,000. The measure would amend the state constitution to add a new exception to allow the state to issue general obligation bonds to finance the acquisition, construction, remodeling, repair, equipping, or furnishing of state owned property.

General obligation bonds are the cheapest method of borrowing that the state may use.  This would cost less than the financing arrangements that the state currently uses.

The bonds would save about $5 million on interest costs for every $100 million worth of bonds that are issued. The measure does not actually authorize any bonds, but authorizes the Legislature to enact implementing legislation. The measure prohibits the levy of property taxes to repay the bonds and limits the amount of outstanding bonds to 1% of the real market value of property in the state.

In effect, all this measure is doing is letting the state borrow money for schools and other buildings and major projects at the lowest possible rates.  There is no added risk to the public.  There is no known organized opposition to the measure.

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Measure 69 updates a small part of the Oregon Constitution to make it reflect the realities of our modern life.  Currently, if we want to build a new building on a college campus, the state sells bonds to get the cash at a low interest rate to build the necessary structures.  That is the way things should be.  That also presumed that our colleges and universities are everything about campus life.

In the modern world, our institutions of higher learning are building centers in the places that people actually live throughout the state.  It is possible to take U of O courses or OSU courses without stepping foot in Eugene or Corvallis.  The Oregon Institute of Technology (OIT) is serving students in locations throughout the state, many who have never been to the main campus in Klamath Falls. Both institutions have a presence in Portland and elsewhere.  What this also means is that institutions are not necessarily building their own buildings; they are often purchasing existing structures and remodeling them to meet their needs. While this makes perfect sense, under our current financing structure, the universities cannot have the state sell the less-expensive bonds to finance the purchase.

This measure fixes that problem.  Certainly, we should be able to have the state sell low-interest bonds to buy a new building in the same way it would sell them to build the same building.  This measure will make that correction.  In the process, it will save the taxpayers of our state millions of dollars in financing costs.  Universities support this concept.  Businesses support this concept.  It makes sense to taxpayers, too.

Join me in voting YES on Oregon Ballot Measure 69.

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The first of these is Ballot Measure 68.  Measure 68 would add a new article to the Oregon Constitution, permitting the state to raise matching money through general obligation bonds for local school district projects, much as it does now for community college and university construction.   Currently, the state helps to pay for major projects in the local school districts, but must do so out of general funds.  This measure will allow them to issue bonds to finance these projects.  This will result in a less expensive interest rate for the state, and save us all money in the long run.  It would only be used if the voters in a local school district have also approved a bond measure for building, remodeling, maintaining, or repairing the school or its grounds.

Bonds are generally used for the financing of building construction, but all other expenses come out of the school’s operating budget.  With Measure 68, districts will be able to use bond money to buy equipment such as desks and book shelves, pave parking lots, and do other maintenance which they now finance with operating money.  This should free up more of that money for paying for teachers and books and day-to-day education costs.

The measure also creates a matching fund, where the state puts money into a fund for these expenditures until it is needed by the local schools.  This will allow the state to save money over the years for a time when a school needs to be built or repaired.  It helps to keep schools operating, even in times like today when we can’t really afford to be spending too much money.

This measure doesn’t really change a lot about how we pay for schools in Oregon.  It does not add new taxes to what we have to pay.  It simply opens up new, less expensive options for paying for these school expenses.  This measure does not cost us any money, but it will modernize the law to allow us to save money.

Join me in voting YES on Oregon Ballot Measure 68.

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These arguments make it look like any tax increase would require the business to directly offset their tax expenses by cutting labor expenses.  Perhaps the company could consider cutting other expenses.  Perhaps they could find a way to sell additional product to recoup these small costs.  One way or another, the only way anyone will lost their jobs is if a vengeful company owner chooses to do it just to be vindictive.  Measure 67 will not cause anyone to lost their jobs.

On the other hand, if Oregon Ballot Measures 66 & 67 do pass, the direct result will be that it will save jobs at our company.  I will give you the specific effects of what will happen to myself and the people who work with me in a moment.  First, I will tell you what happens if these ballot measures do not pass.

A vote against these measures will cut funding to the services that receive funding through Oregon’s General Fund.  The vast majority of this money goes to pay for education, for public safety, and for human services.  For education, this means that we will be cutting funding and services for everything from our young children who deserve the best possible education, to colleges that will be training many of us for the jobs that we will take as the recession fades.  For public safety, this means that our overworked police, courts, and prisons will have less to work with to keep us safe.  For human services, this means that the poor and the disabled, the most vulnerable of our citizens, will have even fewer services available to them.

Since my company deals in something that would suffer if the human services part of the budget is cut, I will start there.  Certainly, similar arguments can be made in education and public safety.  But we will start here:

If the human services budget is cut, funding will be cut for healthcare for those who cannot afford it.  Those who are so disabled that they cannot function in society will suffer.  Programs that help the elderly continue to live independently so we don’t incur higher costs by institutionalizing them, will be left by the wayside.  This will mean that some number of the caregivers and other workers who keep these programs going will lose their jobs.  If Measures 66 & 67 fail to get a YES vote, these care-providing people will lose their jobs.

This is not a theoretical exercise where a $30 million corporation threatens to fire a worker because they had to pay $30,000 in state taxes this year, simply because they are not willing to admit right now that there are other ways to deal with it.  This is about the many people who will lose their jobs if these businesses do not pay their fair share in taxes.  Let me give you a specific example — my company.

At the moment, I am involved in a business that provides transportation services, and the majority of that business is something we call medical transportation.  Specifically, we transport people with disabilities to medical appointments, social service programs, and other places that they need to go.  A typical passenger, due to either age or disability, does not have the ability to get themselves where they need to go, and do not have the ability to use public transportation by themselves.

We do have many customers who pay for transportation themselves, occasionally their fee is paid by an insurance company or a charitable organization.  However, our largest customer is the State of Oregon.  Through Medicare/the Oregon Health Plan, the poor, the elderly, and the disabled have a way to get to the places that they otherwise cannot get to.

These trips are taken for a variety of reasons.  One of those is trips to the hospital, to a doctor appointment, or regular trips for things like chemotherapy or kidney dialysis.  Another is for trips to work or to training programs, so they can remain part of the community and continue to work.  Finally, for some selected people, the state provides assistance for trips to the grocery store or to outings that will help them to remain active in the community.  In this small way, keeping people independent keeps them from being more of a burden on the system that would otherwise have to provide a higher level of care.

If these ballot measures do not pass, one of the smaller budget items that will be cut is all of the non-medical trips under the Medical Transportation Program.  From the standpoint of the disabled person, they would now be essentially home-bound.  They would place needs on other parts of the system.  But if we think of this from the standpoint of the service provider, namely us, we will certainly have fewer drivers working for us.  If the state pays for fewer trips, there will be less work.  Either everyone’s income will be cut significantly, or there will be fewer drivers working at our company.

The number of positions lost will not be evident until the situation works itself out.  But I can promise you that if Measures 66 & 67 do not pass, there will be fewer people working at our company.  This is not a threat, rather, it is economics.

This is not only about myself or the medical transportation drivers.  It is about nurses and other caregivers.  It is about teachers and school employees.  It is about the police and corrections officers and court workers who keep us safe.  It is about many working Oregonians.

Please vote YES on Oregon Ballot Measure 66.

Please vote YES on Oregon Ballot Measure 67.

In these times of recession, this is what we can do to save jobs for Oregonians.

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We are presented this Sunday with an article from the Everett Herald that proves just how messed up we are at a number of levels.  The article, “School Lunch Issue Reveals a Sorrier Problem”, reveals a number of issues about ourselves and how we treat our fellow human.  I am also sorry to say that I don’t believe for a minute that similar does not happen in places other than in the Edmonds School District, the location mentioned in the article.

Our schools everywhere in Cascadia are run rather strictly.  Any child carrying as much as an asiprin tablet, if caught, can be expelled from school.  Any child with a pretend weapon of any sort, even in the name of a school play, can be expelled.  So certainly our teachers and administrators are trying to teach our children a lesson that any level of indiscretion, no matter how minor, will be dealt with harshly.

I can only presume that this is the line of reasoning used in taking school lunches away from children who are short the dollar or two that lunch might cost, or whose parents might be behind on paying the school for lunch.  At the face of it, in most any other situation in our lives, we live in a world where we are only entitled to things we can pay for.  OK so far.

This program takes things a step further.  In this case, children are allowed to actually go through the line and get their lunch on a tray.  Then this lunch is taken from them and thrown away if the payment cannot be made.  Further, we are not talking only about high-school-aged kids.  We are seeing this treatment of children as young as Kindergarten age.  At this age, children are not concerned about the economics of life.  They are concerned about being able to eat lunch like the other kids, and not being embarrassed in front of their classmates.

Did no one at the school see any problems here?  First of all, it was my understanding that the federally-funded schjool lunch program was in place to ensure that all children could get at least one nutritious meal every day, despite what was being served at home.  The quality of the lunches could be debated, but that is not the point.  We are taking lunch away from many of the poor children that can least afford not to be eating.  Even if the district’s lunch-money “shortfall” really was $207,763 last year, I’m quite certain that the average elementary school student would be lost by the economic relationship between that figure and having their lunch forcefully taken from them.

Second is a problem of equal importance.  School is, and always has been, an educational experience from the moment the children get to school to the time they leave.  They look to their teachers and other adults present for guidance on how to act in their lives.  They look at their classmates to understand how to live together in our society.  This makes it that much more virulent that an adult at school would decide that the best way to deal with a situation like this is to run up to a child and grab their lunch away from them, all while embarrassing them in front of others.  If the child exhibited the same kind of behavior on the playground to their friends of teachers, they would be disciplined.  If an incident like this happened in the workplace, the employee would be disciplined.  But our enlightened school staff find this an appropriate way to solve conflicts in the cafeteria.  this is a truly sad development.

Sure, the kids didn’t have their school lunch money.  Perhaps someone should find out why.  But to solve this problem by having an adult make a scene in a public place is certainly not the best course of action in this case.  We learn a lesson in school that “rules are rules”  I believe that it shows a severe lack of quality in our educators if they are unable to use better means to help our children thrive in school.

Is it really possible that the only way to control our children in school is to be so inflexible that we cannot ask “why” something happened?  Must we always choose the most severe punishment possible, even in cases where the child blundered into doing something wrong?  I am really starting to wonder if the problem in schools is not our children, rather, that it might be a staff that doesn’t understand the need to nurture children toward growth.

Really — what is to be gained by treating out youngsters like criminals for every minor act that they or their parents might do?  And what response is left for the time when the child really does something wrong?

I leave you with a challenge:  How is this problem dealt with at your local school?

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However, over the years, we have become more enlightened in how we deal with assimilating those around us into society.  We have programs to help people settle in our land.  We encourage all groups of people to work together without regard for their origin or that of their forefathers.  One program to help newcomers adapt is to teach children who speak other languages in ways that allow them to grow.

Currently, we assess our children in a number of ways to see what they need to make the most of their education.  If a child has a physical or mental disability, we place them in an appropriate program.  If a child is slower than average in learning, we will do what it takes to get them up to grade level.  In fact, we have programs for testing and programs such as “No Child Left Behind” to ensure that all children get the instruction that they need.  That is why I don’t understand why, if a child has a disadvantage because they have spoken a different language all their lives, that they should not also be offered a program designed to meet their needs.

We currently have programs that do just that.  If a child does not understand English as well as necessary to keep up with their class, there are English as a Second Language (ESL) classes that get the children up to grade level.  The goal is always to get them into regular classes as soon as possible, without getting them behind in their other subjects.  This is why Oregon Ballot Measure 58 is so unfair to our children.

Ballot Measure 58 would require children to be placed in “mainstream” classes within a certain period of time, rather than putting them together with the other students when they are ready.  It is a worthy goal to see that all children can be taught together in the same classrooms so that they can socialize together.  But there is no logical explaination as to that is suposed to happen at the same rate for every student.  this measure adds layers of rules to a school system that is already trying to do its best to teach all students in the most appropriate way.

The measure does away with ESL classes after one to two years, depending upon the child’s grade level.  It replaces them with a program of “English Immersion Classes,”  a concept that is not defined by the ballot measure.  This could mean that all children must go to classes with the rest of the students, whether or not they would benefit from that arrangement.  This would certainly not make sense, since the measure itself defines non-English speaking students” as those students not capable of being taught in English.  It could mean setting up a new English Immersion program, which would cost us money to set up and run, and would get the student behind in other subjects.

This ballot measure starts out by stating that “English is the language of oportunity in America” and that “Learning English opens the doors to better jobs and opportunities.”  I do not disagree with either of those statements.  But I also believe that learning English, as well as mathematics and science and social studies and other subjects will also open doors to better jobs and opportunities.  We need to teach our children in ways that meet that individual child’s needs.  Putting a child in a science class where they might not yet understand what the teacher is saying will only serve to alienate the student and cause them to fall farther behind.

Most schools or teachers or administrators will tell you that this type of ballot measure is a good idea.  That is because the measure is not in the best interests of educating our children.  It is also not in the best interests of our society to have children held back from learning to their full potential.  Besides, it will not save us money to replace the current ESL system of learning with an undefined system of English immersion classes, which will likely require more teachers to implement.

No, Ballot Measure 58 will only serve to amuse the folks who want to covertly put up roadblocks at every turn for new immigrants to our country.  We have a history of discriminating against newcomers throughout history.  This one is especially mean, though.  It does not only serve to impede newcomers to our area, it is detrimental to the families and the children who have just immigrated to our country.

Shame on Bill Sizemore and his crew for atacking our children to keep them from learning at their fullest potential.  Next time you want to pick on a group that you hate, please try to pick on someone your own size.

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