ASUO President Emma Kallaway will speak today at an Oregon University System board meeting in Portland to discuss voting goals across the state and to give testimony about Measures 66 and 67.
“We want to see what the whole state in terms of students can do in terms of 66 and 67,” Kallaway said. “Every student should put their voice forward.”
Measures 66 and 67 will put the fate of increases in the minimum tax rate on corporations and high-income earners into voters’ hands.
The tax increases, signed into law this summer, will be retained if both measures pass. Failed measures would result in leaving the roughly $730 million currently budgeted for education, health care, public safety and other services severely underfunded. Measure 66’s failure would mean an estimated $472 million loss in the state budget, while Measure 67’s failure would mean an estimated $255 million loss.
Kallaway said that because OUS represents more than 100,000 students, her efforts
are nonpartisan.
“We’re really after voter education at the University — to make sure students know the pros and cons of voting either way,” she said.
ASUO Sen. Zachary Stark-MacMillan is a member of the Facebook group “Students Voting Yes on Measures 66 and 67.”
I’m voting ‘yes’ because if these measures don’t pass then the state is going to have to cut services,” he said. “Higher education is usually one of the first things on the chopping block.”
Stark-MacMillan said that a majority of Oregonians would not be affected by the tax increases that the measures address.
“The taxes only affect large corporations and those making over $250,000 a year,” he said. “Most of Oregonians will not be affected, except for their services won’t be cut. It’s a win-win for most people.”
Stark-MacMillan explained that the budget for this year was created as if the taxes were in place. If the measures fail, there will be a February special session in which the state will decide which services will take financial cuts.
“(The legislature is) budgeted as if these measures were there. We can only lose money at this point,” Stark-MacMillan said.
ASUO Sen. Demic Tipitino said he would be voting “no” on these measures.
“If legislation had really wanted to solve the problem, then they would have passed a temporary tax, not a permanent one,” he said. “Americans all over the country are forced to tighten their belts. The state budget hasn’t seen a decrease in over 20 years, and the state should do what everyone else is doing and tighten its belt loops.”
Tipitino also said that the campaign to try to garner support for the measures has been highly political by targeting education and senior citizens, issues that people are sympathetic toward, as areas with potential funding cuts.
“We already have the highest income taxes of the states, and these measures were gone about in a very political way,” he said.
Tipitino said he didn’t think the measures would pass.
“I think it will fail,” he said. “I think that the Oregonians are smart enough to know that it is completely out of line.”
Kallaway, the chair of the board of directors of the Oregon Student Association, spoke yesterday at an OSA press conference about voting, as well.   
“It’s really important for the University of Oregon student body president to be there because it furthers the idea of the University being the flagship for the state universities,” she said.
Her speech Thursday was mostly geared toward thanking the work students did across
the state.
“Being out there on the street, filling up their time — it’s really important and we think that (the University’s) numbers are pretty high,” she said.
Students registered nearly 6,000 of their peers in two days across the state, bringing the OSA-led student voting coalition’s number of registered student voters to 14,271.
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