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Hi, I'm Stacy, and I graduated from college in 2006. I am not condoning plagarism of any kind, but am putting my essays online to help with general writer's block. Learning by example is one of the most widely recognized methods of self instruction and effective tutoring. Feel free to read one of my essays to help you write your own! Donations are appreciated. Note: This is not an all-comprehensive guide to Oregon politics. It's just a quick-and-dirty look at some important information that everyone should have as a background. The Willamette Weekly had some eloquent articles about some of the subjects, and I decided that it would easier and more pleasant reading if I let their words stand. Articles copied from WW are noted. Quick Facts: Governor: Ted Kulongoski (D)
Who's Who Tom McCall The Republican governor of Oregon from 1967-1975, McCall helped pass several progressive laws that have positively impacted the state to this day. His major accomplishes include the Bottle Bill (the nation's first mandatory bottle-deposit law), the Beach Bill (which granted state government power to zone Oregon's beaches, protecting them from private development), the first statewide land-use planning system (which introduced the urban growth boundary), and the cleanup of the Willamette River. Bill Sizemore (Article taken from the 3/9/2005 edition of Willamette Weekly) For good or ill, Bill Sizemore defined Oregon politics in the 1990s. During that decade, the ballot initiative reshaped (some might say disfigured) the state's political landscape, and the driving force behind this change was a Portland carpet salesman. Bill Sizemore did for signature gathering in the 1990s what Ray Kroc did for McDonald's in the 1950s. Both men would turn their respective industries from sleepy, localized concerns into vertically integrated, massively financed enterprises. Just as Kroc used economies of scale to produce an endless supply of cheap, identical Big Macs, Sizemore brought a certain ruthless elegance to the mathematics of collecting petition signatures. If you were a wealthy political conservative with, say, $50,000, "Dollar Bill" could essentially sell you 50,000 petition signatures for your pet cause. Not only that, he could juggle your donation around between various accounts and organizations until, when it came time to report the campaign's finances, that $50,000 no longer had your name on it. (What Sizemore considered shrewd bookkeeping the courts would later identify by such names as "racketeering" and "money laundering," but let's not get ahead of our story.) He also refined the practice of "ballot-title shopping"-introducing several versions of the same measure, then picking the one whose final wording on the ballot best enhanced its chances of voter approval. Starting in 1994, when he put a measure on the ballot to force public employees to chip in more money for their own pensions, Bill Sizemore was a political juggernaut. He terrorized lawmakers, union bosses, bureaucrats and lobbyists alike. If you wanted to get things done in Salem, it might help to reach out to the governor-but you sure as hell had better know what Sizemore was up to. Despite his conservative Christian background, though, Sizemore was no Lon Mabon. He never introduced a measure to limit abortion or strip gays and lesbians of their rights. Leaf through the dozens of petitions he introduced over the years and you'll find they were almost always about money: keeping more of it in the pockets of taxpayers and less of it in the hands of government and labor unions. In 1996, for example, Sizemore authored-and voters passed-a measure to cap property taxes and limit increases to 3 percent per year. He also penned Oregon's "double majority" law, which requires new tax measures garner a majority turnout at the polls as well as majority approval by voters. Another Sizemore measure in 2000 tried to tinker with merit pay for teachers, requiring such awards to be based on performance, not seniority. He also tried to hobble public-employee unions by making it illegal for them to spend income from payroll deductions on political activity (effectively putting them out of business). Sizemore built up so much political momentum that in 1998 he decided to run for governor. He won the Republican nomination but was trounced by Democratic incumbent John Kitzhaber. Sizemore captured only 31 percent of the vote-the worst showing by a major-party gubernatorial candidate since 1942. No matter: The race still gave him a bully pulpit from which to promote his initiatives. In the end, Bill Sizemore's reign was cut short by the very political forces he had tried to quash-the public-employee unions. In 2002, the state's biggest teachers unions won a lawsuit against Sizemore's organization, Oregon Taxpayers United, for $2.5 million-the cost of fighting two anti-union measures placed on the 2000 ballot with falsified signatures and illegal campaign contributions. Last fall, a Multnomah County judge ruled Sizemore was personally liable for the sum. Meanwhile, fed up with Sizemore's endless stream of ballot measures, voters in 2002 approved a constitutional amendment outlawing the practice of paying petition gatherers a bounty (usually $1) per signature. This change radically altered the economics of initiative petitions-making it unlikely Sizemore will ever return to the pinnacle of power he enjoyed for almost a decade. Additional information: The Multnomah County judge also found Sizemore guilty of racketeering. Neil Goldschimdt A Portland city commissioner (1967-1973), a Portland mayor (1972-1979), the Secretary of Transportation under Jimmy Carter, and an Oregon governor (1987-1991), Goldschmidt held many important political offices in the state. He also had many political accomplishments that helped lead to the revitalization of downtown Portland, such as the creation of Pioneer Courthouse Square out of a parking lot, turning an expressway into Tom McCall Waterfront Park, and helping to create TriMet. In 2004, Goldshimdt confessed to having a sexual relationship in the mid-1970s while he was mayor of Portland with a 14-year old girl. This confession occurred before a planned article by Willamette Weekly to expos this information was published. What's What Same-Sex Marriage In March 2004, Multnomah County began to issue same-sex marriage licenses. A total of 3,000 licenses were issued before a county judge shut this practice down. Anger over allowing same-sex marriage, in addition to frustration with the fact that no public hearings were held before the commission decided to allow these marriages, lead to a backlash and the passage of Measure 36 the following November. Measure 36, which passed 57% to 43% was a constitutional amendment that defined marriage as between one man and one woman. The defense of Marriage Coalition was the organization that proposed the initiative and collected the necessary signatures. Assisted Suicide Although the subject is unlikely to come up often, Oregon's assisted suicide law is nonetheless interesting and important to local politics. In 1994, voters narrowly voted (51% to 49%) to allow doctors to write lethal prescriptions of terminally ill patients. This measure was tied up in litigation and in 1997 Measure 51, which would have repealed the Death with Dignity Act, failed in the polls. In March 1998 a Portland woman who had fought breast cancer for 22 years became the first person to use the law to end her life with a lethal prescription. Though the matter continues to be a subject of controversy, as of December 2003, only 171 people had taken advantage of the law to take a lethal prescription to end their lives. Oregon Health Plan (Article taken from the 3/9/2005 edition of Willamette Weekly) Does this scenario sound familiar? Spiraling health-care costs. Hundreds of thousands of Oregonians without insurance. Hospitals stretched thin. Patients can't pay their bills. Welcome to the health-care crisis of the early '90s. But back then, somebody actually tried to do something about it. In March 1993, the feds approved an ambitious project designed to radically expand health-care access in the state: the Oregon Health Plan. The brainchild of a Roseburg ER doc and state legislator named John Kitzhaber, the Plan promised to deliver health insurance for the "working poor"-the people who earned too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford private insurance. The Plan's biggest innovation was a rationing scheme that ranked operations by medical necessity and cost effectiveness. Vaccinations ranked high-liver transplants for alcoholics ranked low. The Plan also used HMOs and transferred savings back to hospitals and docs. In 1994, the first year of the program, things seemed to be going swimmingly; 120,000 new members signed up, and bad debts at Portland hospitals shrank by 16 percent. As long as the economy stayed healthy, so did the OHP. But when the bubble of the '90s finally ruptured, the swollen OHP was the first to get butchered in Salem. Health advocates swarmed to stop the bloodletting, but to no avail. In February 2003, bureaucrats restructured the plan, slashing benefits and imposing co-pays and premiums. Since then, 75,000 low-income Oregonians have been squeezed out of the plan. In July 2004, the OHP stopped accepting new patients unless they live in absolute poverty. Since then, ER visits at Oregon hospitals by the uninsured have soared by 50 percent. And we're back where we started. PERS PERS, which stands for the Public Retirement System, is the pension fund system for public employees (including teachers, police officers, firefighters, legislators, judges, prison guards, child welfare workers, management employees in state and local government). In 2003, the legislature made key revisions to PERS to deal with the state budget shortfall. In March, the Oregon Supreme Court struck down two of these revisions. Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) The UGB, designed to help prevent urban sprawl, is the boundary surrounding each of Oregon's cities that draws a line between land that can and cannot be 'urbanized.' Zoning prohibits urban development outside the boundary. Areas outside of the UGB are mostly used for farming, forestry, or low-density residential development. Vote by Mail Oregon was the first state (and is currently the only one) to implement a system of vote-by-mail for all elections. It began in 1998 when voters passed Measure 60, an initiative requiring that all ballots be vote-by-mail. Under this system, a ballot packet (which includes a ballot, secrecy envelope, and a return envelope) is automatically mailed to each registered voter. The voter then fills out the ballot and either mails it in or turns it in at a designated drop site. One of the big changes that vote-by-mail has made to the Oregon political system is that the focus isn't only on election day, but the several weeks preceding it as well when voters have their ballots. CIM Oregon's state-wide testing system to gauge student achievement, CIM (Certificate of Initial Mastery) currently covers the topics of English/language arts, mathematics, and science, using both standardized tests and work samples. At the moment, CIM is not required for graduation. Measure 5 In 1990, voters passed this ballot measure which established state constitutional limits on Oregon's property taxes on real estate. School funding had traditionally come from such property taxes and when they were capped the responsibility for school funding generally transferred from local to state government. This also had the effect of taking control of school funding from local voters. Although voters were told that the lowered property taxes would not hurt schools (because the state would make up the lost money), Measure 5 has been blamed for cuts in school programs and the budget crisis of 2002 and 2003. Measure 47/50 In 1996, Bill Sizemore and his Oregon Taxpayers United placed Measure 47 on the ballot. This measure, a continuation of Measure 5's philosophy, put a cap on property taxes and limited increases to 3% a year. Measure 47 also created Oregon's double-majority law which required that for a local tax levy to pass, not only did a majority have to vote "yes," but a majority of registered voters must also turn out. After the measure passed, there was some confusion regarding its actual effect. To clarify, legislators sent out Measure 50 in 1997.
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