LanceSpring:

Hope:

I strike a different balance than Lance does. I'd pay up to another, say, $30 per month in taxes, as long as the person making/spending twice as much paid twice as much in additional taxes, and so on. Obviously, there is a limit -- but we can't get services for free, so we either have to choose the ones we don't want or pay more. It's as simple as that.

I have the impression that most folks in our area are as ignorant of all this as I was before I started paying attention to the county budget process and watching the budget presentations. Why wouldn't they be? Nobody reads the county budget stuff for fun, so the folks who read it tend to be people with an interest or victims, like me, who are trying to figure out why the system doesn't work anymore.

Now that I get it, I'm pissed that the government hasn't made a better effort to educate the citizens. I really believe most Eugene and Springfield residents would join in the solution if they knew:
1) The extra tax would be affordable -- like $5 or $7 per week for the average low-wage-earner like me and maybe $12 or $15 per week for a higher wage earner, and MUCH more for the corporations which experienced a windfall savings under measure 5.
2) The tax would be a blend which would include a roll-back in property and income taxes and the institution of a sales tax and higher "user fees" -- like registration taxes, beer and wine taxes (which have not increased in decades, and so on.)
3) The extra tax would produce a radical improvement in essential services, from education to mental health and infant care, including public safety.

Hope, you clearly live up to your name, as you are absolutely hopelessly out of touch with current economic realities.  Have you no clue as to what is going on currently in our society?   Do you not know that Oregon's unemployment rate is currently skyrocketing?   The official state figure went up a whopping 1% just in the past month. 

Well, we consider unemployment extremely low at 4.5%. The doom-sayers are suggesting Oregon could get as high as 8.5% if the trend continues another 6 months, which would make it the worst recession in over 30 years. That would take us from an optimum of 96 of every 100 job-seekers being employed to a "catastrophic" 92 of every 100 job-seekers being employed. For a little perspective, the unemployment rate was 25% when Roosevelt was elected.

Mike T:

Spanky, if you get a chance, please refer me back to where I made the quotes in the box.  I need to go back and see what I was thinking at the time.

As to paying average taxes, maybe we do and just don't know it.  Have you looked at the burden we have put on property lately.  With the bonded debt we are collecting over $20 a thousand, approaching $25 in some locales.  This was the level that prompted measure 5.  Add to that the 9% income tax and we spend a lot of money on government.  The county is on the short end of the stick, but overall we pay out a lot of money.  This is in a location that half the property is off-limits to taxes.  I visit the Portland area on occassion but never wanted to live there.  Obviously the high density allows for the high tax collections and the most efficient delivery of services.

I acknowledge your observation about new business coming to the area.  I don't think we have a chance of creating the jobs and economic development to grow our way out of this situation.  With a collective mind-set that we are entitled to have the rich pay our bills for us, even if it means taxing them out of existence, we don't have a very bright future.  It used to be democracy meant a hundred of us would get together and each put a dollar in the pot and then vote on how to spend it.  Now, 99 of us get together and agree to have someone else put a hundred dollars in the pot and then  we vote on how to spend it.

Did you know that under our current federal tax system, the top one percent of the incme earners pay 40% of the tax burden?  What is more interesting, that 40% is paid on just 22% of the income.  The top 5% pay 60% of the taxes on 37% of the income.  The Obama group is going to increase their share.  We better hurry and get our fair share from them before they run out of money.  Do you know what I find to the funniest part of this?  After we eliminate a few rock stars , jocks and movie stars, the top level of workers in this group are from the medical profession, and then we whine about the high cost of health care.  I truly love the crowd that wants to fix our tax problems on the backs of the corporations.  If we would just shift all the taxes to Safeway and Albertsons all our problems would be solved.

 I share the frustration of the ignorance of the public.  It is not clear if the media is the primary cause or the education system.  The sessions the County has scheduled will be interesting.  From the list of invitited participants I can guess at the programed outcome.  Still, I will attended and participate.  As a pragmatic optimist I believe we can educate Handy and the others without waiting for a cataclysmic event to educate them. 

 

Mike, I reread all of your earlier posts twice before looking elsewhere... I see that I somehow screwed up and attributed Lance's quote to you, though I have no idea how I did it, as I usually select the "quote" button so the process is automated. Sorry about that.

I agree with everything else you said.

I am aware of the disproportionate burden on the highest income earners, but I think Lance and Danielle are representative of the average citizen here. If the most productive 5% of the citizens are paying 60% of the tax now, they'd like to see them pay 75% -- or whatever. As Danielle said, everybody favors the tax the other guy pays. The average citizen has no idea how tax burden translates to job loss.

Here's another problem. In the late 1940s, after the military draw down, less than 25% of all workers were employed by the local and federal government. Depending on the estimate used, government employees now comprise at or over 40% of the total workforce -- because it's not just schools, public safety and public health. The welfare burden is enormous. It dwarfs everything but education and prisons. Who will pay for that? The answer is invariably "Corporations and anybody who earns more than me." Of course, corporations can leave and they do. They also collapse under the weight of the burden of employee benefits, taxes and workers compensation costs. For example, the health insurance cost at GM averages over $1,400 for every vehicle they build. In contrast, Toyota is under $200 per vehicle -- and that's for the Toyotas built in the USA with American workers. Obviously, they have to get a handle on the absurd CEO compensation , but as ridiculous as it is to pay the CEO thirty or fifty million dollars, it has no significant impact on the corporate bottom-line of a company the size of GM. Like the county, the real cost-driver is the overall cost of labor, and we've driven that into the stratosphere.

Update on Handy: He's done NONE of what he promised. In fact, he's moving the other way!

KMTR's early election night coverage included an interview with Handy featuring him saying, "We've GOT to get more police officers on the streets!" Yeah, right. How did that work out?

Now Handy is part of your anti-public-safety consortium. (Sorenson, Fleenor and Handy) Even Handy's friends are discouraged and writing letters to the editor. They aren't even talking about solving the problems tackled by Bobby Green. If they add back the positions the county administrator is recommending, and they probably won't, they'll still be no where near the police staffing Bobby and other former commissions were trying to improve on.

It's a shame nobody plays that tape to hold politicians accountable.

Halo,

You are right. Him and "Otherwise" (see Register-Guard public forum) Fleenor, and Sorenson, are anti-safety, but continue to maintain it's about budget. While asking for several hundred thousand dollars for personal assistants, and a job for Handy's campaign manager. What a disgrace.

I saw Mr. Handy speak at the dedication/celebration of the new Sponsors facility. (For those who are unfamiliar with Sponsors, it's a wonderful local organization that serves as a halfway-house for cons being released from prison. Sponsors provides lodging, and helps them find work to get on with crime-free lives.)  The sheriff made a gracious, supportive speech that focused on the good done by Sponsors. Mayor Piercy did the same. It was a great celebration until Handy spoke.  His speech had nothing to do with Sponsors at all. Instead, he used his time to rail on the sheriff and vow he would never support the county jail. It was bizarre and totally out of place. It was one of those strange moments when everybody listening started looking around the audience to measure the reaction of others, like "Does this seem as crazy to others as it does to me?" It was obvious that the audience reaction  was nearly unanimous. Handy's speech was irrelevant and inappropriate, at best. The woman who brought us to the event, a long time Sponsors supporter, couldn't stop talking about Handy's speech on the way home. We were all completely blown away. It was totally inappropriate, unwelcome and embarrassing.

Sponsors is well-liked in the progressive community, so the audience for the Sponsors' celebration was probably mostly progressive. Handy mistakenly interpreted that as a good opportunity tobash the sheriff and share his anti-public safety agenda, but progressives are NOT anti-public-safety. We ARE pro-alternatives, and pro-programs like Sponsors that reduce recidivism, but we understand that we also need police and jails. We get it. Handy clearly doesn't. It's a shame his unpleasantness detracted from Sponsors' moment in the spotlight.

This is old news, and I wouldn't be writing about it now, except I just heard Handy's speech FOR public safety. What? Thats right. Just a couple weeks after his "No jail beds over my dead body" speech at the Sponsors' event, Handy voted to restore 84 beds at the county jail and capped the event off with a disingenuous speech about his support of public safety! The contrast was so stark, and so bizarre, I started asking around for explanations. Apparently Handy, Fleenor and Sorenson misread public and political will on the public safety issue when they voted against partially restoring staff at the jail and DAs office. They got beat up in the newspaper as angry citizens complained that they were again voting to hurt public safety while adding personal staff for themselves and, most importantly, they got a LOT of heat from the big league politicians. State legislators like Vicki Walker, Floyd Prozanski, Phil Barnhart and others unanimously supported efforts to restore public safety in Lane County, particularly after reading the terrible Lane County public safety report from the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission. United States Senators Wyden and Merkley both agreed and urged Handy, Sorenson and Fleenor to reconsider their vote to further cut public safety funding. The pressure was too much, and Mr. Fleenor caved in, as he's facing an election fight next spring, and he can't afford to be the only anti-public-safety politician at the polls. Once Fleenor went over the pro-public safety side had a three commissioner majority in Stewart, Dwyer and Fleenor. When Handy was unable to persuade Dwyer to change his vote, Handy had to choose between a meaningless vote against the winning majority, or a vote that he could later claim as evidence of his support. He made the political choice, completing his 180 degree flip-flop in just a few weeks. It's the right result, but it's terribly sad.

What happened to the intelligent, committed, courageous politicians in the progressive Peter DeFazio model? Dwyer is at the end of his last term and may not run again. Stewart, more conservative, appears to be a person of principle, but at least two of the three who advocate the progressive agenda, Fleenor and Handy, are political windsocks without a wit of understanding or character.

The progressive agenda isn't mindless. It's an agenda of tolerance, principle, understanding and courage, the courage to stand against the tide and do the right thing. Handy isn't bright enough to determine the right course, but that's not his most dangerous shortcoming. The biggest problem is the absence of character. He's 100% politics, passionately opposed to public safety on the 15th, and voting to fund it on the 30th, complete with two-faced political speeches. Lane County is not well served by Handy.  I hope Eugene finds a better alternative.