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 to 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 press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as 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.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

The headline formulates a question you could only ask in Oregon and get an answer.

The “kicker” is an Oregon law that says, if projected tax revenue is more than 2 per cent over projections, then the “excess” is returned to taxpayers. 

In other words, the “kicker” kicks.

All of this came to mind the other day for at least two reasons:

• First, a friend of mine who knew I worked in and around state government for many years said he had heard that legislators would find a way to avoid sending excess revenue back to taxpayers.  I said, no, that wouldn’t’ happen.

• Second, the latest revenue forecast projected a huge “kicker” for personal taxpayers in their 2021 filing.

Here is more information on both points, even as I write about this for the second time in a week:

Some legislators in Salem may want to spend “kicker” money instead of returning it to taxpayers, but they cannot take such action on their own.

The reason is that a measure went to the ballot in 1979 to put the “kicker” law in the Oregon Constitution.  It passed by a wide margin – 62 per cent approval.  So, undoing the “kicker” would require a vote of the people, and that is not likely to happen and, if the “kicker” law was sent to the ballot, there is little question but that it would be retained.

In 2007, lawmakers did succeed in diverting funds from the corporate kicker to a surplus account called the rainy-day fund, but that involved a deal with corporate payers, not individual payers.

The latest Oregon revenue report was more eye-popping than its predecessors, showing the state will bag $1.18 billion more in taxes and lottery proceeds than originally projected.  The report pretty much solidifies that Oregonians will get what state economists call the “mother of all kicker” refunds when they file their 2021 tax returns.

The “kicker” could return $1.4 billion to personal income taxpayers, ranging from around $300 to Oregonians earning up to $40,000 per year to nearly $13,000 for high-earning filers.  The average refund would be $636.  The corporate income tax kicker also would be triggered, but refunds, projected to top $660 million, would go to K-12 education reserves.

The prospect of huge kicker refunds triggered, as it has in the past, some comments on how the refunds could be used if not returned to taxpayers.

House Speaker Tina Kotek said she would favor redirecting some of kicker to “bold action and immediate relief” for struggling families. Legislative Republicans, by contrast, were quick to push back, insisting kicker refunds “belong to taxpayers” and “there is no justification to take refunds from them.”

That’s the normal political debate, one I witnessed up close and personal during my time as a state lobbyist.  It is not likely to recede.  So, count on the “kicker” refund this year.