PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write. I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf. The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie. And it is where you want to be on a golf course.
Wait for it!
It is not very well known, but December 1 is an important date in Oregon state government every other year, the odd-numbered year. December 1, if you don’t have your calendar handy during the pandemic, is tomorrow, Tuesday.
It is the date when, by the law, the governor must unveil a “Recommended Budget for the New Biennium,” this time for 2021-23.
During my 15 years in state government management, it was always a very important date because I was involved in either of two ways: (a) I was in charge of the two-year budget for an agency when I served as deputy director of that agency, or (b) or, I was on tap to answer questions from reporters and editors about budget recommendations for an agency or for the Governor’s Office when I worked for Governor Victor Atiyeh.
When I became a lobbyist, the date retained its importance because it would have substantial affect on my firm’s clients.
That’s because state tax revenue goes essentially four places – K-12 schools, higher education, social and health programs, and public safety programs, (including state police and prisons). Many of my firm’s clients cared deeply about these funding locations.
Add federal funds, lottery funds and fees to the mix and you get a $36 million biennial enterprise – state government as a whole every two years.
Here’s what important about the budget recommendations:
- What the budget recommends is what the governor – in this case, Governor Kate Brown – views as important for the future of Oregon. Put another way, some observers believe a budget is just another set of numbers. No, it is the most detailed example every time of a set of POLICY recommendations by the leader of state government.
- There is also a belief, in some quarters, that the budget is only a set of “recommendations,” not something that will stick. But the reality is that about 90 per cent of what a governor recommends will be retained through the legislative process.
- I am not sure what Brown will do this year, but, in some past cases, governors made a mistake by not recommending what I call a “current services” budget. That is a document that recommends what it would cost to operate state government for another two years, including the cost of inflation and predicted caseload growth — and not including expanded programs.
The recommended budget also is NOT supposed to include proposals for new taxes, which should be lodged in a separate document, not the main budget document.
In a current services budget, members of the Legislature’s Joint Ways and Means Committee could consider genuinely what it would cost to operate government for two more years and decide whether to retain or change the cost.
At the same time, the House and Senate Revenue Committees are the venues for considering proposals for new taxes, which, if passed, first by the House and second by the Senate, would then go to the full House and Senate chambers for actions on a statutorily required three-fifths vote.
In the past, I have recommended that governors be charged with proposing three documents, not just one, every other year. So, from my position outside government, I loft these recommendations again.
- Governors, by law, should be required to announce a CURRENT SERVICE LEVEL budget recommendation
- Governors, by law, should be required to produce a document showing TAX INCREASE PROPOSALS
- Governors, by law should be required to produce a document describing programs that have outlived their usefulness or have not achieved agreed-upon objectives and, thus, should be CUT BACK OR SCRAPPED.
If these kinds of proposals were adopted, the budget recommendations would gain far more clarity. Often, the current documents can be opaque because they mix and match spending and taxes.
For a $36 billion dollar enterprise, clarity is critical.
And, here’s hoping that, tomorrow, December 1, we’ll get that clarity…but I also am holding my breath.