Oregon faces deep cuts in schools, health and safety

[Aidoneus]

Oregon faces deep cuts in schools, health and safety
By Noah Page
13 February 2004

Schools, health services and public safety agencies in the state of Oregon are bracing for more than half-a-billion dollars in budget cuts as the result of a successful campaign by the right-wing group Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) to rip off the band-aid that a bipartisan coalition of elected lawmakers applied to the state’s hemorrhaging finances during the 2003 legislative session.

Measure 30 was a referral by CSE of the legislature’s approval last summer of a temporary $800 million income tax surcharge and various other fee increases to help overcome a shortfall in the state’s $11.5 billion budget.

Following a round of cuts in schools and other programs in the 2001- 2003 budget, legislators responded to declining tax revenues resulting from the sluggish economy by approving the tax increases. It featured the $800 million surcharge as its centerpiece and enacted other changes to the tax code designed to boost revenue for public services.

The measure asked voters whether they wanted to approve or reject the legislature’s budget-balancing package. By a margin of 59 to 41 percent, they rejected it.

The measure’s defeat triggers automatic cuts, including $285 million from K-12 public schools, $7.5 million from universities and $6.8 million from state community colleges; $154 million from health services, including a health insurance program for some 50,000 working-class men and women who cannot afford health insurance; $12.8 million from services for seniors and the disabled; $12 million from family welfare services; $10 million from court-appointed lawyers for the poor; and $13 million from the state court system.

In no way can the vote in Oregon be construed as the product of a “grassroots” effort, as it was portrayed by CSE or by such talk radio hosts as Lars Larson, whose Portland-based, statewide broadcast subjects listeners to a four-hour cacophony of reactionary diatribes against government workers, public schools, taxes and the homeless every weekday afternoon.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/feb2004/ore1-f13.shtml

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corollary:
Anatomy of a fraudulent “grassroots” campaign: Citizens for a Sound Economy in Oregon
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/feb2004/ore2-f13.shtml