2012 conventions 2012 election 2013 session 2013 special election arts arts and culture author ballot measures basketball bomb books boy scouts budget bullying business charlie hales children clackamas climate change coal college courts crime culture culture club democrats drugs economy education environment family film fluoride food gay rights guns handguns health health care health insurance high school history housing immigration international internet kitzhaber law legislature lgbt literary arts living marijuana marriage media medicine mental health military minor parties mohamed mohamud movies music native americans news newspaper obama olympics oregon our town parenting pers photography police politcs politics port portland portland business journal president prevention public safety religion republicans rnc romney rural salem sam adams sandy hook schools science shooting sports suicide supreme court taxes television terrorism theater third parties transportation union university of oregon washington wildfire women

Question for Mr Dudley:

As part of your 26-point plan on your campaign web site, one point is "Find It to Fund It". This requires that funding for new programs must involve ending an existing program or demonstrate equivalent cost savings of the new program. This sounds like a good idea.

Will you promise to do the same with any tax cuts you propose? To provide a similar revenue-neutral plan for tax cuts, you must estimate the tax revenue loss to the state, and cut existing state expenditures by the same amount.

It is simply not enough to hand-wave how tax cuts will stimulate business, grow jobs and thereby increase state tax revenues. [At 9% income tax rate, there's a fairly low state revenue return on every tax cut dollar.]

Will you promise to pursue this same approach? If not, why not? The risk here is that while state budget expenses will not grow, state revenues will shrink, which will continue to expand the Oregon budget deficit.

posted 2 years, 7 months ago
view in context

Question for Scott Bruun:

Kudos for supporting tax cuts and being concerned about the federal deficit. But if you support maintaining or further reducing taxes (ie, not increasing federal revenues through increased taxes), *what specific programs* will you seek to cut in order to reduce the federal budget on the expense side?

Simply saying "more efficient defense spending" and "cutting discretionary spending" is not a sufficient answer. In these tough times, we need congressional representatives with solid ideas, not general idealogies. Please elaborate!

posted 2 years, 7 months ago
view in context

I think the current reporting mechanism doesn't go far enough - requiring that you personally know a bad driver is a big obstacle to public safety, which is the real goal of reporting bad drivers. My wife observed an elderly man driving very dangerously in the Tigard area about 3 years ago and tried to report him, by his car make and license plate. She was of course refused under the current DMV reporting laws. Two weeks later, this same man and car were on the news, having run off the side of Hwy 99W, killing a mother and her child when he did.

Should every such report cause a reported driver to be tested? Probably not. But at some threshhold, I think the answer is yes.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
view in context