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.

Now that the 2017 legislature has passed and sent to Governor Kate Brown legislation to continuing imposing taxes on hospitals and commercial health insurance premium payers, it is a good time to raise questions about these tax policies.

In fact, they are not so much tax policies as an expedient means to an end.

Before I go on, let me offer this caveat. I represented Providence Health System (including its health insurance arm) when the taxes started in 2003 and I was involved in various extensions of them over the years. Though I am now retired (as noted in the introduction to this blog), I am surely not a dispassionate observer.

There are several substantial problems with these taxes. Let me enumerate them from my admittedly biased viewpoint.

1. The health care taxes constitute questionable tax policy

On the theory that solid tax policy would be based on taxing the widest range of payers, not singling out a single group and imposing a patently unfair penalty, these taxes do not pass that test. To me, the income, property and sales taxes represent fair policy, though, of course, there always will be tussles over the balance among the taxes and the size of each.

2. The health care taxes are designed to garner federal matching funds

The rationale for these taxes is not straightforward. Rather, it is to accumulate cash in order to use that state cash to garner Medicaid matching funds from the federal government. Most states are engaging in this approach, which sounds like a scam, but is legal, even as it increases federal spending.

3. There is no way to guarantee that the health care tax proceeds will go to fund health care programs

This is one of my major contentions about the taxes. From two combined sources, hospital/health insurance taxes and federal matching funds, the money comes to state coffers and is considered just that – money.

The way this works is that legislative leaders, with staff, retire to a backroom where there is a white board. Then, they write revenue sources on that board – (1) “general funds” (personal and corporate income taxes), (2) lottery funds, (3)special tax funds (such as the hospital and health insurance taxes), and (4) federal funds. And, then, they simply allocate the money to the various spending priorities, which tend to break down in this order – K-12 education, higher education, cops and prisons, and social services.

When all that is said and done, legislators then consider what they should have considered first, which is where money is supposed to go based on the reasons why payers have sent it along to government.

Thus, there is no way to assure that the health care money actually goes, in total, to health care programs; some of it is diverted to other programs.

4. It doesn’t make sense to turn private health insurance companies into tax collectors

Under this tax scheme, commercial health insurers have to become tax collectors. They bill their policyholders for a tax surcharge, then have no assurance that the money goes where they tell their policyholders it goes.

5. There is no way to cut a deal with the governor and the legislature and count on that deal to hold

I have dealt with this issue since 2003. Those of us who have sat at the table or helped those who did have reached an unfortunate conclusion: Any deal with the governor and the legislature lasts only until the next emergency, real or imagined. Then, the public officials are very willing to go back on the deal and, in only one case, has a public official owned up to the change. That was Senator Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose, who expressed regret about the reversal.

Let me add that there are real emergencies – forest fires, floods, higher-than-expected welfare caseloads, etc. – which must be dealt by the legislature and might even require fund diversions. It’s just that, if health care funds are diverted to new purposes, there ought to be a way to announce that new deal publicly.

That’s enough for now. I suspect the new taxes will become law – again. There may be a short-term rationale for the taxes. Without them, given other legislative priorities, thousands of low income Oregonians would lose health care coverage under Medicaid.

So, if I was a legislator voting in Salem this session, I would take two actions: First, I would express misgivings about this tax increase expedient, and, then second, I would most likely surmount those misgivings and vote in favor of the taxes on the strength of this axiom: In legislative law or “sausage-making,” as it sometimes called, you seldom have your way in an imperfect setting.