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.

If you had a chance to sit back and write down your thoughts about what we, the candidates and the voters, should be talking about in this election cycle, what would be on the list?

Well, Thomas Friedman, in a piece for the New York Times on February 17, put it this way:

“I find this election bizarre for many reasons but none more than this: If I were given a blank sheet of paper and told to write down America’s three greatest sources of strength, they would be ‘a culture of entrepreneurship,’ ‘an ethic of pluralism’ and the ‘quality of our governing institutions.’ And yet I look at the campaign so far and I hear leading candidates trashing all of them.”

Good points, all.

The qualities Friedman lists are ones that set America apart from many other countries in the world. Yet, they are seldom even discussed by the candidates running for president or, as Friedman points out, are trashed by the leading ones.

Instead, some of the candidates talk about building walls around America to keep all immigrants out. Others talk about how to strain the budget by creating new government mandates. And  still others talk about what they will do either to trash the Obama Administration or George Bush Administration priorities rather than set out a new, positive agenda for America.

I, for one, wish for a more constructive, middle-of-the-road dialogue that would point out the virtues of the leading candidates for the nation’s highest political office.  Then, we, as Americans, could vote our conscience, not just respond to the latest criticism or insult.

Let’s get back, as Friedman advocates, to a discussion of what sets America apart – a culture of entrepreneurship, an ethic of pluralism and the quality of governing institutions.

The phrase – that was then and now is now – comes to mind as we watch the debate in Washington, D.C over a replacement for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Republicans say, no, the replacement should be named by the next president, which, they contend, would give Americans a chance to weigh on the selection.

Democrats, led by President Barack Obama, say, wait, a president is required to nominate persons for vacancies on the top court and, therefore, Obama should make the nomination.

The debate plays out, of course, against the backdrop of the one of the most contentious presidential primary seasons in memory – or even, perhaps, in the history of this country. In that context, the battle over Scalia’s replacement could take center stage in the campaign for months.

And, it will be even more critical because the court, without Scalia, tends to be split 4 to 4 between those labeled conservative and those labeled liberal. Thus, the new appointee, whomever he or she is, could be expected to break the tie and play a leading role in momentous court decisions.

Back to the phrase – that was then and now is now.

The best example of this is a recent Wall Street Journal editorial which pointed out the absolute duplicity of Senator Chuck Schumer, who is favored to become Senate Minority Leader in the next Congress (that is, if Republicans retain control of the Senate).

Here is the editorial.

***************

The New Schumer Precedent

Chuck tries to hoist himself off his own petard on Supreme Court nominees.

Supreme Court vacancies tend to showcase political consistency—or lack thereof. So it is amusing to watch how thoroughly New York Senator Chuck Schumer has been reduced to self-parody as he tries to excuse his 2007 demand that Democrats reject, sight unseen, any of George W. Bush’s nominees “if—God forbid—there is another vacancy under this President” during the last 18 months of his Administration.

In a post on Medium, the Majority-Leader-in-waiting now claims that his 2007 speech was little more than a suggestion that “Democrats, after a hearing, should entertain voting no if the nominee is out of the mainstream and tries to cover that fact up. There was no hint anywhere in the speech that there shouldn’t be hearings or a vote.”

Unfortunately for Mr. Schumer, his own words were on the record and are online. Consider this somewhat less than subtle hint: “I will recommend to my colleagues that we should not confirm a Supreme Court nominee EXCEPT in extraordinary circumstances.” The emphasis is Mr. Schumer’s in his prepared remarks.

Mr. Schumer never said that nominees were entitled to a hearing much less an up-or-down vote, and along with then-Senator Barack Obama he joined a filibuster of now-Justice Samuel Alito in 2005. Among the Senator’s major themes at the time was that the confirmation hearings process is of “limited usefulness” and “often meaningless.”

Mr. Schumer’s anything-goes approach also included a call to “reverse the presumption of confirmation. The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts; or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.” If he were consistent, Mr. Schumer would now be demanding that Mr. Obama nominate, in the name of “balance,” a like-minded conservative jurist to replace Antonin Scalia. At least Mr. Schumer is entertaining.

****************

Like many others, Schumer views things one way at one point and then, without apparent difficulty, goes exactly the opposite way at another point. Such is the life of politics when principle doesn’t prevail.

You could no doubt point out duplicity on the part of Republicans, as well.

So, I say a pox on both parties. Let’s find leaders like the late Senator Mark Hatfield who put principle before expediency. That way we’d have a genuine battle over a Supreme Court justice, one that would benefit the country in the lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land.

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.

I recently posted a brief blog asking why creating jobs wasn’t a more central issue in political campaigns these days.

I continue to ask the question and have been abetted lately by a piece by Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn.  He provides much more detail and provides fodder for the answer better than I could.  Therefore, I repeat his column here, with appropriate credit to him for a thoughtful set of comments.

*********

Grow, Baby, Grow!

Republicans have a great message about economic growth for middle America. Why make it so boring?

By William McGurn

Feb. 15, 2016 6:28 p.m. ET

Why can’t Republicans talk about economic growth the way Bernie Sanders talks about his potted socialism or Donald Trump about making America great again: with an enthusiasm that connects with ordinary Americans?

Take Mitt Romney. In his 2012 run for president, Mr. Romney’s days as a partner at Bain Capital led to his being caricatured as a real-life Gordon “Greed Is Good” Gekko. Mr. Romney responded by playing his opponent’s game, emphasizing, for example, how his plan would ensure that the top 1% income earners would pay no less and possibly even more than they were paying.

By going on defense, Mr. Romney allowed Democrats to define his Bain years as a time when he destroyed lives rather than rescued companies. His greatest strength became his greatest weakness. And amid the wreckage of the election results, we learned that he lost to Barack Obama 81% to 18% on the question “cares about people like me.”

It’s not looking much better today, at least judging from the way the Republican candidates spoke about economic growth during Saturday night’s debate in South Carolina. Almost all checked the right boxes—lower taxes, smaller government, and so on. But they sound as dry and distant as Ben Stein’s high school Econ teacher in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” boring his students out of their skulls as he drones on about the Smoot-Hawley tariff and the Laffer curve.

The tragedy is that the GOP’s rhetorical flatness comes at a moment when economic growth ought to be the heart of the Republican attack. After all, since 2000 the economy has been limping along at a tepid average annual growth rate of 2%. By contrast, in the half-century before that, the economy averaged 3.5% annual growth.

Hint: It’s not about numbers. The issue is the damage that low growth inflicts on possibility and aspirations and a ladder up. And the huge improvement in life for the Ordinary Joe if we could bump up that growth just one percentage point.

John Cochrane, an economist at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, highlights what’s at stake in an essay that can be found on his blog, the Grumpy Economist. The most striking fact from that essay? From 1952 to 2000, real income per person in the U.S. rose from $16,000 to $50,000.

Think about that. That’s more than doubling the standard of living for the average American. Here’s the kicker: If over that same period of time the U.S. economy had been growing at our present 2% rate, real income per person in 2000 would have been only $23,000, not $50,000.

In other words, a growing economy means a growing standard of living. In human terms, that 3.5% growth from 1950 to 2000 translated into more dreams fulfilled for more Americans, whether that meant a college degree, a home in a decent neighborhood, or just the certainty that your children would do even better than you did. Not to mention the national wherewithal to do everything from tackling disease to providing for a military strong enough to meet America’s many challenges around the globe.

Now consider the future. In a back-of-the-envelope calculation that assumes a modest 1% boost in population, Mr. Cochrane worked out the difference between a U.S. economy whose GDP grows at 2% (the “new normal”) over the next eight years or one that grows at 3% (better than what we have, but by no means pie in the sky). For a guy earning $50,000 a year, with 2% average GDP growth, his income would rise to $54,400 in eight years. With 3% GDP growth, it’s $58,675.

The point is, small marginal gains in economic growth translate into huge gains for the American people. Better yet, this growth is compounded—like getting a raise year after year.

“Next to this increase in the standard of living, nothing the candidates are talking about—monetary policy, Fed, fiscal stimulus, minimum wage hikes, pay equity, and so on—even comes close to what growth can bring ordinary Americans,” says Mr. Cochrane.

This is the Republican answer to all those Democratic promises of new goodies, whether it’s Bernie Sanders saying college will be free or Hillary Clinton promising paid family leave. Most Republicans understand that jacking up taxes to expand social spending is a sucker’s bet. But most Republicans are not yet fluent in a language of growth and opportunity that goes far beyond vows of “creating jobs.”

The dominant narrative today holds that economic growth is something that benefits only hedge-fund managers and Wall Street. In fact, a booming economy is the Ordinary Joe’s only real hope for a better future for himself and his family, and this future withers when growth is anemic. This presidential campaign still awaits the Republican with the wit and vision to make that case effectively to the American people.

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.

In a piece that ran in the Oregonian this week, the Republican candidate for governor, Salem physician Bud Pierce, tries to make a case that he would do better than the Democrat incumbent, Kate Brown.

He makes a few good points about Brown’s first year in office, but Pierce stands little chance of unseating Brown.

If he somehow managed to do so, he would be the first Republican governor since the late Vic Atiyeh more than 30 years ago.

For her part, Brown appears to like the governor’s job, as well as meeting citizens. Both are direct contracts to her predecessor, John Kitzhaber, who gave up the office in response to ethical challenges and remains under federal investigation. During his long tenure, he did not appear to like the trappings of the office, including the “task” of meeting Oregonians, preferring, instead, to focus on the details of policies.

To be sure, Brown, if she wins a full term on her own, will face numerous public policy challenges, including:

• Implementing higher minimum wage standards, which promises to be especially difficult for businesses in rural Oregon. [Today, Governor Brown endorsed the Senate-passed version of the minimum wage increase, saying in blunt terms that the priority should be pulling people out of poverty rather than worrying about small businesses.]

• Deciding how to deal with transportation funding issues as congestion, even gridlock, continues to vex urban residents.

• Dealing with the reality of unfunded obligations in the Public Employee Retirement System (PERS), which will demand new money from local and state governments, perhaps at the risk of political priorities, such as money for K-12 education, higher education and health care.

• Fixing problems in Oregon’s public records system, which, while rooted in the precept that all government records are public, fails to live up to that standard.

• Finding a balance, if there is one, in a pending business tax increase heading to the polls next November – an increase that holds the potential for a huge fight pitting businesses against unions. And be sure of this – no one will emerge unscathed.

• Finding a way to prod innovation in Oregon’s higher education system beyond just, as Brown has already done, hire a new position, an “education innovation officer” on the theory, it would appear, that a new state government position is the answer to the challenge.

In his Oregonian piece, Pierce names all these challenges and others, then says he will be better able to handle them than Brown. Beyond naming them? Nothing.

He enunciates no plan to deal with any of them, perhaps hewing to conventional wisdom which says that voters want summary statements, not position papers. Still, there will be a long distance between advocating a position and achieving it.

Pierce’s political experience is limited. He was one of two physicians in Salem that the Oregon Medical Association (OMA) often summoned to the Capitol to testify on OMA bills. Beyond that, he has operated what appears to be a successful oncology practice (if the word “successful” can be applied to any cancer treatment center, which, of course is not Pierce’s fault).

He plans to spend a lot of his own money to run and, if money is the grease in politics, he will come up far short of Brown, who will be able to count on huge contributions from public employee unions and other typical Democrat interests.

So, expect Brown to win and to move on to her first full term in office. Then, she can be measured more fully on her tenure, instead of her assignment to fill out a portion of Kitzhaber’s term.

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.

Why is it that, when there is a job to be done or an assignment to take, Democrats usually advocate adding a new government position?

The option would be to assign current government managers new priorities.

There have been two examples of this recently.

One was when Governor Kate Brown, D-Oregon, announced that she would create an “education innovation officer” to inject innovation into the higher education realm.

What?

Why not specify a definition for innovation, then EXPECT it of current higher education managers?

Leaders of the Higher Education Coordinating Commission (HECC) in Oregon were surprised by Governor Brown’s new position. At least it would have been logical for the HECC to have been consulted so its members wouldn’t have had to read about the plans in the media.

The second example involves President Barack Obama who is in his last year in office as a two-term Democrat president.

He says he’s creating a new federal position — “chief information security officer” — to inject additional security into federal technology enterprises.

Again, wouldn’t it have been better simply to assign current managers to increase security precautions?

To these two examples, I say this: Leaders should show leadership by assigning current government managers to emphasize supposedly new areas of involvement – innovation in Oregon’s higher education policy and security in the federal government’s technology policy.

Of course, it also would be possible to suggest that those goals – innovation and security – should be undertaken by the appropriate government managers without having to create new positions.  This could produce better government.

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.

Why is that, when there is a job to be done or an assignment to take, Democrats usually advocate adding a new government position?

The option would be to direct current government managers new to take on new assignments.

There have been two examples of this recently.

One was when Governor Kate Brown, D-Oregon, announced that she would create an “education innovation officer” presumably to inject innovation into the higher education realm.

What?

Why not specify what was innovation was to be, then EXPECT it of current higher education managers?

Leaders of the Higher Education Coordinating Commission (HECC) in Oregon were even surprised by Governor Brown’s new position. At least it would have been logical for the HECC to have been consulted so its members wouldn’t have had to read about the plans in the media.

The second example involves President Barack Obama who is in his last year in office as a two-term Democrat president.

He says he’s creating a new federal position — “chief information security officer” — to inject additional security into federal technology enterprises.

Again, wouldn’t it have been better simply to assign current managers to increase security precautions?

To these two examples, I say this: Leaders should show leadership by assigning current government managers to emphasize supposedly new areas of involvement – innovation in Oregon’s higher education policy and security in the federal government’s technology policy.

Better that than financing new government.

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.

That question has troubled me as I look at the political landscape in Oregon, especially as public employee unions push forward with a job-killing initiative to impose a huge increase in business taxes.

Creating jobs – or, better put, creating an environment favorable to job creation — also does not appear to be a top tier issue for those running for president, at least on the Democrat side.

Political leaders in Oregon – and, at the moment, all of them are Democrats – rarely talk about producing more jobs (or even saving them in Oregon) as a way to gain more revenue for important priorities, including K-12 education, higher education, cops, prisons and health care.

Instead, leading Democrats seem always to talk about how to impose more taxes on business, which, as Oregon proved in several years ago, will come at the expense of new jobs.

Further, the current emphasis to increase minimum wages also, according to various experts, will come at the expense of entry-level jobs.

The question: Why?

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.

The question in the headline is on the minds of those following the 2016 short legislative session as lawmakers are gathered at the Capitol for a month.

There are at least two answers to the question, plus variations on the theme.

To Democrats, who are in charge in the Governor’s Office and in both the House and Senate, the answer seems to be that the short session is a time to consider big issues – an increase in the minimum wage, freedom to let voters decide on a major, public-employee-union backed corporate tax increase, and new environmental regulations.

They would call these “emergencies.”

To Republicans, in the minority everywhere, the short session should be a time to consider legislative fixes – read, housekeeping measures – and variations in the state government budget that have emerged since legislators were last at the Capitol. In other words, short session-small issues, which Republicans contend is what voters were led to believe would happen as they passed a constitutional change allowing every-year legislative sessions.

They would call these “emergencies” – small fixes that cannot wait.

At the start of the short session on February 1, Republicans surprised everyone by demanding that all individual pieces of legislation be read on the floors of both houses in their entirety, word-for-word, not just by title. They said that was a way to stall major issues, which should wait for the long session in 2017.

House and Senate administrators responded by looking for a computer program that would read all bills aloud faster than any human could.

If you were to talk with Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, the main architect of the annual session idea, and Senator Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day, the Senate Republican Leader, you would hear two markedly different descriptions of annual sessions.

To Courtney, annual sessions are a way to put the Legislative Branch on more equal fitting with the Executive Branch and that often means considering major issues.

To Ferrioli, Democrats are using annual sessions to try to achieve major changes, such as the minimum wage increase that he says will harm rural Oregon.   Such issues should wait for a longer time in Salem.

Here is the way he put it in a news release issued on February 4:

“Yesterday’s assertion by Linn County Commissioner Roger Nyquist that the Oregon Constitution allows counties to not comply with a proposed minimum wage mandate shocked policymakers convinced Oregon needs a higher minimum wage. This major hitch in the minimum wage plan left supporters stunned and scrambling to determine if their plan is enforceable, and if not, how they can compensate local governments for the unfunded mandate.

“This sudden hiccup in the majority party’s plans is a symptom of a pervasive disease in the Oregon legislature: Democrat leaders have ambitious goals to pass major new policies in just 35 short days. 35 days is not enough time to consider sweeping changes to the way Oregonians live and do business, from a $5 billion gross receipts tax to a cap and trade model for energy policy.”

That so-called “hiccup” – either a two-thirds vote or an allocation of state resources to help local government respond to a minimum wage increase – struck many observers are more than a hiccup. The fact is that it stood a very chance of derailing the increase, which Governor Kate Brown hoped to usher through the session, in part to avoid a battle at the polls next November.

Taxes in general also are on the minds of those in Salem. A huge tax increase on business, proposed by public-employee unions, will make for a major fight at the polls next fall, one that will feature millions of dollars in advertising on both sides. It will be a bruising battle, with some businesses saying they will pull up stakes in Oregon if the increase passes.

Union leaders and others say the threat is overstated.

Early in the short session, Senator Mark Hass, D-Beaverton, made a courageous proposal for a middle ground solution, one that gained weight because of his position as the chair of the Senate Revenue Committee. But, at first blush, the Hass proposal did not appear to have any chance to derail unions from their appointed rounds leading up to next November.

In the spirit of full disclosure, as the intro says to this blog, I served as a private sector lobbyist for about 25 years and, thus, I have a number of biases built up over those years.

One is the annual sessions is a mistake. To use a lobby term, it is “the first step down a slippery slope” toward a professional legislature that would function much like – perish the thought – the U.S. Congress.

A better alternative would have been to develop a variety of legislative proposals to hold state agencies accountable for performance and results, and then use those proposals in the every-other-year legislative session to assert a legislative prerogative to make government work better.

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.

The question in the headline is on the minds of those following the 2016 short legislative session as lawmakers are gathered at the Capitol for a month.

There are at least two answers to the question, but plus variations on the theme.

To Democrats, who are in charge in the Governor’s Office and in both the House and Senate, the answer seems to be that the short session is a time to consider big issues – an increase in the minimum wage, freedom to let voters decide on a major, public-employee-union backed corporate tax increase, and new environmental regulations.

They would call these “emergencies.”

To Republicans, in the minority everywhere, the short session should be a time to consider legislative fixes – read, housekeeping measures – and variations in the state government budget that have emerged since legislators were last at the Capitol. In other words, short session-small issues, which Republicans contend is what voters were led to believe would happen as they passed a constitutional change allowing every-year legislative sessions.

Republicans say “emergencies” are just that – small fixes that cannot wait.

At the start of the short session February 1, Republicans surprised everyone by demanding that all individual pieces of legislation be read on the floors of both houses in their entirety, word-for-word, not just by title. They said that was a way to stall major issues, which should wait for the long session in 2017.

House and Senate administrators responded by looking for a computer program that would read all bills aloud faster than any human could.

If you were to talk with Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, the main architect of the annual session idea, and Senator Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day, the Senate Republican Leader, you would hear two markedly different descriptions of annual sessions.

To Courtney, annual sessions are a way to put the Legislative Branch on more equal fitting with the Executive Branch and that often means considering major issues.

To Ferrioli, Democrats are using annual sessions to try to achieve major changes, such as the minimum wage increase that he says will harm rural Oregon.   Such issues should wait for a longer time in Salem.

Here is the way he put it in a news release issued on February 4:

“Yesterday’s assertion by Linn County Commissioner Roger Nyquist that the Oregon Constitution allows counties to not comply with a proposed minimum wage mandate shocked policymakers convinced Oregon needs a higher minimum wage. This major hitch in the minimum wage plan left supporters stunned and scrambling to determine if their plan is enforceable, and if not, how they can compensate local governments for the unfunded mandate.

“This sudden hiccup in the majority party’s plans is a symptom of a pervasive disease in the Oregon legislature: Democrat leaders have ambitious goals to pass major new policies in just 35 short days. 35 days is not enough time to consider sweeping changes to the way Oregonians live and do business, from a $5 billion gross receipts tax to a cap and trade model for energy policy.”

That so-called “hiccup” – either a two-thirds vote or an allocation of state resources to help local government respond to a minimum wage increase – struck many observers are more than a hiccup. The fact is that it stood a very chance of derailing the increase, which Governor Kate Brown hoped to usher through the session, in part to avoid a battle at the polls next November.

Taxes in general also are on the minds of those in Salem. A huge tax increase on business, proposed by public-employee unions, will make for a major fight at the polls next fall, one that will feature millions of dollars in advertising on both sides. It will be a bruising battle, with some businesses saying they will pull up stakes in Oregon if the increase passes.

Union leaders and others say the threat is overstated.

Early in the short session, Senator Mark Hass, D-Beaverton, made a courageous proposal for a middle ground solution, one that gained weight because of his position as the chair of the Senate Revenue Committee. But, at first blush, the Hass proposal did not appear to have any chance to derail unions from their appointed rounds leading up to next November.

In the spirit of full disclosure, as the intro says to this blog, I served as a private sector lobbyist for about 25 years and, thus, I have a number of biases built up over those years.

One is the annual sessions is a mistake. To use a lobby term, it is “the first step down a slippery slope” toward a professional legislature that would function much like – perish the thought – the U.S. Congress.

A better alternative would have been to develop a variety of legislative proposals to hold state agencies accountable for performance and results, and then use those proposals in the every-other-year legislative session to assert a legislative prerogative to make government work better.

As lawmakers have descended on Salem for their “short annual legislative session,” the time is right to emphasize again questions legislators should ask as they contemplate adding to Oregon laws.
It used to be that Oregon’s Constitution limited sessions to every-other-year – the odd year. That changed several years ago when, led by Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, legislators proposed and voters approved a move to annual sessions.

Courtney and others sold the idea as a way for legislators to move farther toward being equal with the Executive Branch rather than just showing up in Salem every other year, leaving the State of Oregon’s business mostly to state agencies.
Courtney wanted the short session – it lasts only for a month – to deal with housekeeping measures, emergencies and other smaller-gauge issues that could not wait until the regular odd-year sessions. It would not be a session devoted to major policy proposals. No one seems sure this year that small issues will dominate the session. Democrats headed to the Capitol with what has been described as an aggressive agenda — new taxes, a minimum wage increase and affordable housing proposals.

Republican leaders countered that those issues were too big for a short session and responded, on the first day in Salem, by demanding that individual bills be read in their entirely, word-for-word. Usually, bills are read aloud by title only. The Republican move appeared to catch Democrats off guard, but clerks in both the House and the Senate were reporting to be looking for computer programs that would bills aloud, but at warp speed.

Before the session, Courtney’s counterpart in the Senate, Senator Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day, issued a news release questioning whether Courtney and the Ds had designed the short session properly.

“As I recall,” Ferrioli wrote, “Oregonians were sold on the idea of annual meetings with the promise that the short session would focus on balancing the budget, making small legislative fixes, often referred to as housekeeping measures, and responding to emergencies that need immediate attention from the Legislature. I’m sorry to report that the short session has become little more than a setting for the majority party to pursue an over-reaching agenda of tax increases, regulation, and ideological issues dear to the progressives who rule Portland and to a great extent, the rest of Oregon.”

Ferrioli expressed concern that a minimum wage increase, a “cap and trade” energy mandate that he said would raise energy costs for businesses and families, and a mandate for affordable housing that the said would force construction contractors to build a certain amount of below-cost housing units for people of limited means, to be paid for by higher costs passed on to more traditional home buyers were appropriate for consideration in a short session.
Courtney and Ferrioli will never agree on policy, nor should they as they play their leading roles for Democrats and Republicans.

But, as they meet at the Capitol, legislators on both sides of the aisle should be prepared to ask at least four questions in relation to each legislative proposal, however big or small it is.
1. What is the problem for which a proposed policy or action is deemed to be the solution?

2. Is there an appropriate role for government to play?

3. 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?

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

If legislators would ask and answer these questions with a constructively critical eye, observers have said Oregonians would have both a better legislature and better results.