BREAKING NEWS: Kitzhaber Pushes for Across-the-Board Budget Cuts (Oregon Gov. Forced to make cuts)

KGW.com ^ | 08/27/2002 | By AP and KGW Staff

[scrubber]

Governor John Kitzhaber recommended across-the-board cuts to solve a budget shortfall he says could reach $450 million.

Kitzhaber made the announcement in a press conference in Salem this afternoon. He said the cuts could include the reduction of the school year by three weeks, closing four of the state's five regional juvenile facilites and laying off 100 state troopers, among other things.

He said that each day lawmakers delay taking action, they will deepen the impacts of cuts.

The governor is also calling for a fifth special session sometime next week. He hasn't said what day the session should start. Kitzhaber wants lawmakers to meet soon enough to put a tax measure, possibly an income tax increase, on the Nov. 5 ballot. He said the deadline for doing that is Sept. 7.

He said erasing the shortfall solely with cuts would slash spending by as much as 20 percent for the rest of the two-year budget period ending next June. Leaders of the Republican-run Legislature didn't rule out a tax increase but gave no indication that their opposition has lessened.

Kitzhaber said he continues to oppose bond borrowings to close the budget hole because that would shift debt onto the 2003 Legislature. Legislators last week upheld his veto of a bill that would have borrowed $50 million from future cigarette tax revenue to use for state school support.

Republicans have accused Kitzhaber of agreeing to things in private only to switch his stance later.

Kitzhaber has said GOP lawmakers' accounts have left out conditions he attached to agreements and said Monday the open meeting was fine.

Lawmakers last week finished a fourth special session, a two-day meeting held just to act on Kitzhaber's vetoes of two measures from the third special session, in June.

Legislators overrode his veto of a bill shifting $267 million in school aid to the next budget, to shrink the shortfall in this budget. It allows schools districts to borrow against the future payment in this budget period.

The June special budget session dealt with a gap mostly caused by a $550 million decline in income tax revenue, and the new hole is approaching that magnitude.

Kitzhaber last week outlined potential spending cuts based on a $350 million dollar shortfall, estimating the gap would be between $300 million and $400 million. He said Monday new data indicate a shortfall of around $450 million. The recession has caused tax revenue to plunge by more than $1.3 billion since lawmakers adopted the $12 billion, two-year budget in July 2001.

[Almondjoy]

Then I guess the masses have a lack of education when they see a massive budget deficit their officals created yet somehow they don't vote them out of office... hmmm.

[Almondjoy]

Agreed.. no accountability.. You have an agency head that asks for a budget.. who's going to disagree?? I think it would actually be kind of rightous for our Congress to trim the fat.. they wouldn't even have to cut programs.. bring in private sector firms to cut out the middle managers that corporations did and whoa look at that we would show a massive surplus. The whole system needs to be shaken up from top to bottom excpet there is NO ONE powerful enough to do it. I hate to say it but the last president that acutally shook up the system from tip to toe was Roosevelt.. blah blah blah for better or for worse he changed ALOT and I don't want you haters to say it was all bad because it clearly wasn't. In any case I agree with you compeletely on gov't. The problem is that the individual worker there doesn't deserve your contempt.

[joyce11111]

Maybe we wouldn't have such a shortfall if the deadwood was eliminated. And, the Pers program for state employees was drasticly cut.