 |
OPINION
Who's Supporting Who? Challenging a widely held misconception about state funding |
|
Mayor Vera Katz's web site is at http://www.ci.portland.or.us/mayor The most important part of Mayor Katz's State of the City address Friday was not intended for her City Club audience. It was not her agenda for the year ahead, a laundry list that included everything from a proposal to finance summer school for kids who are failing classes to an effort to amend the state constitution so that neighborhoods can zone away sex shops. It was not her announcement that she has all but decided to run for re-election. It was something more important than her kinetic agenda and her electoral plans--and it was targeted at all those Oregonians who would never consider spending an afternoon at the City Club. Portland's destiny, Katz claimed, is threatened by "urban/rural antagonism." Often, she explained, "when we from the Portland area travel to other parts of Oregon, we are told 'the state gives Portland special treatment,' 'Portland schools drain money from other school districts.' ... The list goes on. This is not harmless sibling rivalry." For at least a decade, this antagonism has stoked the fires of jealousy across the state. It has helped shape much of the knee-jerk anti-Portland sentiment in the corridors of the Oregon Legislature. And it is responsible for the huge crevasse that stands between Portland schools and adequate state funding. "I sat in revenue committee for years and asked for a study of who was [subsidizing] whom," Katz says of her days as a state legislator. "I could never get an answer." Now we have it. Last week, Katz received a remarkable report that should be required reading for everybody in public office. Produced by Joe Cortright, an economist who worked for many years in Salem, "Oregon Fiscal Flow Analysis" is a groundbreaking study of where state government revenues come from and where they go. The report concludes that the Portland metropolitan area subsidizes the rest of the state, not the other way around. In almost every significant category--K-12 education, human resources, higher education, unemployment compensation, public safety and the courts, economic development--there is an outflow of dollars from the Portland area to the rest of the state. According to Cortright's report, for example, each year the Portland area sends almost $1.1 billion to Salem in the way of taxes dedicated to the state school fund. We get back only $812 million. In other words, each year this area gives the Legislature $275 million that it never sees again--and this is just education dollars. All told, the Portland area subsidizes the rest of the state by more than a half a billion dollars a year. Metro-area residents shouldn't begrudge their support of the rest of the state. At the same time, they shouldn't have to endure those in Salem who consistently maintain that the metropolitan area is Oregon's favored child. Mayor Katz's challenge to this deeply flawed premise deserves a far wider audience than the City Club.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
