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 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.

As lawmakers prepare to head to Salem for 2023 legislative session, the time is right to emphasize again questions I think legislators should ask as they contemplate adding to the panoply of Oregon laws.

I have written about this before.  It has become a tradition for me to do so.

I propose these questions, perhaps a bit presumptuously, based on my 40 years or so in and around state government in Oregon.  I lobbied the Oregon Legislature for many of those years and developed a sense of how bills should be considered, including the questions that should be asked about each bill under genuine consideration.

The questions are not related to party labels, including liberal, conservative, or independent.  They are proposed in the spirit of making government better for all who serve and for all who watch that service. 

One of the realities is that, in any legislative session, more than 500 individual pieces of legislation – they are called “bills” – are proposed.  Burrowing through the thick and thin of those bills is a tall task, including to decide which bills have the stature to become more than just words on paper.

It is a task that deserves to be done in the name of better government.

So, here are the questions:

1. What is the problem for which a proposed policy or action is deemed to be the solution?

• Is there an appropriate role for government to play? 

• If there is, what does the state expect to get for the money it is spending — in other words, what is the expected “return on investment?” 

• How will state government action affect the private sector, especially individual and corporate taxpayers on whom the state depends for the taxes to fund its operations? 

If legislators would ask and answer these questions with a constructively critical eye, we’d have a better Legislature and better results.