You wouldn’t normally think that Measures 48 (to limit state spending) and 45 (to limit terms in the legislature) have anything in common. In fact they do and his name is Howard Rich, a New York multimillionaire real estate developer who, so far as I know, has never been to Oregon. Rich financed more than 85 percent of the expensive paid signature gathering on both initiative measures, spending over a million dollars just to get the measures on
the ballot.
Measure 48, “TABOR” (so called Tax Payers’ Bill of Rights), was tried in Colorado with disastrous results. Colorado’s school funding went from among the best to 47th and its economy grew the slowest of all western states during the period it was in effect. Last year Colorado Governor Bill Owens, a Republican who previously had supported TABOR, easily convinced Colorado voters to suspend the measure to give the state a chance to recover. As Colorado discovered, Oregon will have to reduce necessities like road and bridge repair, funding schools and the Oregon Health Plan. Colorado’s prisons are overcrowded because of TABOR. Oregon already has only half the State Troopers we need. Measure 48 will only make it worse. TABOR is opposed by major business groups, doctors, teachers, firefighters, the Oregon PTA, the state police officer’s association and many, many others. It is supported by Don McIntire, who told us Measure 5 would not hurt schools. It did, big time. Don and the few other supporters call TABOR the “Rainy Day Measure” even though it does NOT set up a rainy day fund, as he admitted in a letter to the Secretary of State.
Measure 45 limits terms in the Legislature to six years in the House and eight years in the Senate for a total duration of no longer than 14 years. Mr. Rich successfully sold Oregon this idea in 1992. It was thrown out by the Oregon Supreme Court in 2002, but it had already damaged our legislature’s capacity to do the people’s business. We are just now beginning to recover. Government is a complicated business. Like any other complex profession, experience is usually important. I don’t want my heart surgery done by a surgeon who has never done heart surgery before. Writing laws and intervening in the bureaucracy on behalf of constituents (something I do every week) requires judgment honed by experience. Even without term limits, most legislators don’t serve long enough to become really good at it. Many of our most important problems require long study and long-term solutions.
Term limits force legislators to adopt a short term view, increase partisanship, decrease efficiency and lengthen legislative sessions (the last two were the longest ever). The last three Speakers of the House each had only two regular sessions’ experience before having to lead the complex enterprise of a legislative session. That inexperience showed. Besides, we already have term limits; they are called elections. A broad coalition has formed to oppose term limits: AFL-CIO, Associated Oregon Loggers, Stand for Children, the Oregon Business Association, teachers, firefighters, the League of Women Voters and more. The supporters include Mr. Rich’s Oregon cabal, “Committee to Restore Oregon Term Limits” and virtually no one else.
Howard Rich also supported similar measures in a bunch of other states he probably has never visited. Courts in Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Michigan and Missouri have thrown several of Mr. Rich’s measures off their ballots this year because of illegal signature gathering tactics. His paid signature gatherers, many of them the same folks who gathered them in Oregon, misrepresented the measures or tricked voters into signing one measure when they thought they were signing another in all those states. In Montana a judge said, “The court finds that the signature-gathering process was permeated by a pervasive and general pattern and practice of deceit, fraud and procedural non-compliance.” In Oregon similar complaints have been filed with the Secretary of State, but our rules do not allow disqualification of the measure from the ballot, only a fine.
We need to do more to protect our legitimate initiative process from out of state special interests and those who would commit fraud against the voters.
Representative Phil Barnhart (D)
Phil Barnhart is State Representative for House District 11, covering Central Lane and Linn Counties