PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH 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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

The Department Of Peeves is open because I, as the director, say it is. No one can overrule me.

So, here are three new pet peeves:

THE OPAQUE STATE OF OREGON BUDGETING PROCESS

Those involved at the top of this pyramid like to say that budgeting processes are transparent. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The fact is budgeting processes are opaque, a word that may need to be defined. The dictionary says opaque means, “not transparent or translucent; impenetrable to light; hard to understand; not clear or lucid.”

Exactly the case with state budgeting.

Even if you were a financial expert, you would not be able to track the whereabouts of government dollars, including the “general fund” (individual and corporate tax money), federal dollars, special purpose dollars, lottery dollars. Perhaps you could come up with some kind of over-arching estimates, but they would fail to deal with the detail which is, to go back to the word above, opaque.

This has been especially true over the years in three cases – hospital taxes, health insurance taxes, and tobacco settlement dollars. In each case, legislators took the money from those sources and directed them, at least in theory, to expanded health care and tobacco prevention programs.

Then, out of the glare of public view, legislators took other money out from behind these “new” dollars and directed the other money to K-12. In budget parlance, it’s called “supplanting.”

My view: Legislators should devise a system that is patently clear about where money comes from and where it goes. Make the process transparent, not opaque.

PROPOSING WHAT EVANGELICALS BELIEVE AND HOW THEY SHOULD VOTE IS OFFENSIVE

I write this subhead as one of that group – an evangelical, someone who has made a personal decision to follow Jesus Christ.

So, when commentators presume to tell evangelicals what they should believe and how they should vote, I shudder. That is especially true in this current, worst-in-history presidential election.

Evangelicals should make their own personal decisions about voting, not follow a crowd.

A PROBLEM WITH PROPERTY INSURANCE – PREVENTION IS NOT COVERED

If you have insurance on your home, you would think that taking action to prevent a problem would be covered, right?

Well, the answer is no.

Insurance officials say they cannot afford prevention.

I say they cannot afford not to fund prevention.

This issue came home to roost for me recently when we arranged for earthquake retrofitting for our older home. We knew we would be paying for that. But the workers found a worse problem – the foundation around a couple of our house and garage walls had eroded away, which could have caused a major, future problem, walls caving in.

We thought the fix would be covered by insurance because, if the foundation had caved, the fix would have been even more expensive.

But, the answer was no.

My reaction, as a former lobbyist, is to consider asking one of the legislators who represents me where I live to introduce a “bill for an act” that would require insurance coverage for genuine prevention actions by homeowners.