OREGON AFSCME
e-lert
#1 ¥ Jan. 16, 2009
Edited by Don Loving, Council 75 Public Affairs
Director
A belated Happy New Year
— and welcome to our first "official" e-lert of the 2009 legislative session. Love 'em or hate
'em, those 90 statewide elected officials are back in Salem, ready to make or
modify state law and, of course, pass a state budget for 2009-11.
They'll do that under the
watchful eye of Oregon AFSCME's three full-time lobbyists: Mary Botkin, Ralph Groener and Joe Baessler. Three
this session instead of four, as Council 75 Political Coordinator Janice
O'Malley is out on maternity leave
and will miss the session. Yours truly will also be at the capitol from time to
time and pitch in as needed.
Anyway, let's get started
with a preview of what are expected to be big issues this session. We also have
some other tidbits to pass along, including news of a somewhat overqualified
interim staff rep.
It's the e-lert, and here we go ...
* * *
REVENUE $$$ — Given the state of the economy, no issue will
be more important at the 2009 Oregon Legislature than the state budget. All
three Council 75 lobbyists will be involved, although it is Groener who has
lead responsibility for revenue-related issues for AFSCME.
"We need to adequately fund
state agencies as best we can," says Oregon AFSCME Executive Director Ken
Allen. "That's a top priority for our
union at the capitol this session. We're talking about members' jobs, and we're
talking about vital services to all Oregonians. So we need to wade through the
current financial crisis."
Because the money news will
likely get worse before it gets better, lawmakers have asked for monthly
revenue forecasts; typically they receive such forecasts on a quarterly basis.
That means there will be even more rumblings and rumors than usual in the
capitol hallways, and everything will be in flux for several months. Still,
Groener identifies several areas where the union will have a hand in revenue
discussions:
á
Transportation — Gov. Ted Kulongoski has proposed a $1 billion per biennium transportation
package that would see major repairs to Oregon roads and bridges, accomplishing
goals of both creating jobs and providing much-needed infrastructure
maintenance. The money would come from three areas: a two-cent increase to the
state gasoline tax and big jumps in both automobile registration and driver's
license fees.
á
Corporate minimum tax — The current minimum corporate tax is a mere
$10. Groener foresees an eventual compromise on some sort of system that
indexes the amount corporations pay to their income, much as individual
taxpayers pay.
á
Cigarette and health
care provider tax increase —
The former appears to be a foregone conclusion; expect to see a permanent
50-cent per pack increase. The latter issue will spark much debate and we will
go into more detail in future e-lerts.
á
Beer tax — It's been 30 years since Oregon has increased
the state beer tax. That's likely to change this session. Oregon is one of four
states tied with the lowest beer tax in the nation, but when you factor in that
each of the other three states have sales taxes people are also paying on their
beer, that moves Oregon to dead last. In other words, enjoy your suds at their
current price while you can. A proposal to add 15 cents per bottle would create
$30 million for drug and alcohol prevention programs, $40 million to cover drug
and alcohol counseling programs for inmates mandated by Ballot Measure 57 and
also generate another $60 million that's untargeted for the state General Fund.
Groener points out that the $40 million mandated by Measure 57 will have to
come out of the General Fund otherwise, so the beer tax increase actually has a
$100 million positive impact on the General Fund.
á
Senior funding — More details to come, but the union is working
on ways to maintain funding for several senior services targeted for cutbacks.
This is an issue of concern for AFSCME's local government employees, county
workers in particular, as most senior programs are administered by counties
using pass-through money from the state.
á
'Wealthy' tax
increase — The first actual
bill we'll mention, HB 2078, would
raise the top bracket of the Oregon tax tables to 10 percent (rather than the
current 9 percent) for Oregon taxpayers will a taxable income over $150,000.
Many groups, including AFSCME and other labor organizations, have vowed to take
this issue to voters via initiative petition if legislators don't deal with it.
á
Targeted estate taxes — Currently, estate taxes go unfettered into
the General Fund. There is a move afoot this session to tie those dollars to
Head Start programs and to the state commission that provides secondary
education scholarships.
"Remember, a lot of this will
change anf fluctuate as the session progresses," said Groener. "This is my best
overview five days into the session."
* * *
CORRECTIONS ISSUES — It didn't even take a week for Botkin to get
hopping mad over an issue with the Oregon Department of Corrections. The
governor's proposed budget — at the urging of DOC Director Max
Williams, a former state legislator
— cuts all funding for state corrections officers to be trained at the
Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training (DPSST) facility in
Salem. Instead, Williams says DOC can do the training in-house.
"That's a step backwards of
25 years," said Botkin, who spent several sessions early in her AFSCME career
getting the certified DPSST training for corrections officers established. "We
know historically what happens when the DOC says it will do training in-house:
it doesn't happen. Any little problem with the agency budget and boom! 'We'll
just take it from the training line item.'
"Our officers need to know
that when they call for back up, the officer or officers that respond have the
same certified training and knowledge that they have, whether those back up
officers have been long-term at the current institution or recently transferred
from another facility. Max Williams argues that we can 'trust him' because of
our long relationship, but even if I did feel that way 100 percent, Max serves
as the DOC Director at the pleasure of the governor, and the governor will be
changing in two years. This isn't about Max and AFSCME, it's about good public
policy and the safety of our members. We will fight this tooth and nail."
Other Corrections issues on
Botkin's immediate radar screen include inmate work crews leaving institutions
without a corrections officer present; MRSA, a treatment-resistant staph
infection strain that is now more common in prisons nationwide than Hep C or
any other infectious disease; and the overall DOC budget.
On the budget, Botkin and
Oregon AFSCME Corrections Coordinator Tim Woolery note that DOC officials expect an influx of 2,425 new
state prison inmates by July 1, 2011, with much of the growth fueled by Ballot
Measure 57. That will put the total state prison population just a hair under
16,000 (15,982). Yet the current budget proposal adds less than 100 new
correctional officer positions system-wide.
"They don't want to hire
enough staff, and now they don't want to do certified training for the staff
they do hire," said Botkin. "We're not OK with that in either case."
* * *
OSH ISSUES — The Oregon State Hospital will be a major
focus this session, an institution where AFSCME represents both the doctors and
the registered nurses. First and foremost, Botkin says she will be monitoring
the progress of the replacement facility to be built on the current OSH grounds
in central Salem. To date, she says she's heard no rumors about that project
being delayed in any way, despite the current economic climate. In fact, the
state proceeded this week with the selling by auction of some houses and other
buildings on the property that need to go to make way for the new hospital.
"I think we're OK on that
topic," says Botkin.
But Botkin says she will be
"working aggressively with management to end the culture of violence at OSH."
That includes bringing in Oregon OSHA, cooperating with SEIU, which represents
direct care workers at the facility, and "anybody and/or anything else we need
to do to make the current environment there better now. We can't wait for some new building to magically fix
everything."
Botkin also intends to
introduce a bill that would bring doctors and nurses at OSH under the Police
& Fire tier of PERS, which results in a slightly higher retirement benefit.
"There will be some kickback
to that idea," says Botkin. "But in my mind it's entirely justifiable for two
big reasons. One, we have a horrible recruitment and retention problem at the hospital.
Nobody wants to work there. Two, in all honesty, while docs and nurses may not
fit people's initial mindset of qualifying for 'Police & Fire' PERS, the
reality is our members there are more at risk than many people in traditional
public safety fields that are in P & F. It'll be a fight, but we'll see."
* * *
Two other issues are high on
Botkin's priority list right out of the chute:
TIMBER JOBS — "We will be working collaboratively with the
timber industry to try and find a way to responsibly harvest some timber in an effort to create family wage jobs in rural Oregon. That
will also re-open some revenue streams for our local governments. We've got to
find a balance between those who want to cut every tree and those who don't
want a single tree cut down."
OHSU BOARD SEAT — "We will be pushing hard for a bargaining
unit seat on the Oregon Health and Science University's Board of Directors. We
want one seat that's a designated labor seat. We would then caucus with the
Oregon Nurses Association, which also has many members there, to come up with a
name or names to forward for confirmation. But securing the seat is the first
job."
* * *
PUBLIC CONTRACTING — Both Botkin and Baessler are working on a
plan to establish a statewide database for all public contracting information
in Oregon. Baessler is the lead AFSCME lobbyist on this issue, and says Oregon
is behind most other states in this area.
"It's public information, but
right now you have to go through the whole public records request process to
get it," says Baessler. "We need an easier, more transparent system. Who bids
on contracts, who wins the contracts and what happens after the bid is won. It
will make monitoring the system much easier, it will force accurate reporting
in instances where that's currently not being done and we'll get a true cost
for these public contracts."
As an example of the benefits
of such a system, Baessler cites what happened with Cascadia in the Portland
area last year. Cascadia was a large private, non-profit social service
provider specializing in services to various mentally challenged clients and
had several public contracts to provide such services in Multnomah County.
AFSCME was in the midst of an organizing campaign with Cascadia workers when
the agency seemingly went belly-up financially in the course of just a few
days.
"If we had this process in
place, contracts such as those Cascadia had could be monitored and they
progressed, and someone could have seen what was happening much sooner," says
Baessler. "It's a good fail-safe for the public contracting system."
* * *
INITIATIVE REFORM — Baessler also has any issue that is election
related in his AFSCME bailiwick. He says the union will support an omnibus
election reform bill coming from the office of new Secretary of State Kate
Brown that "fills in the gaps"
overlooked in a similar 2007 reform bill.
"We want to make it harder
for people to cheat, plain and simple," said Baessler. "Anything we're talking
about won't impact any honest person involved in the initiative system. For
example, we want to only allow signature gatherers to have one version of their
signature on file. That may seem like a no-brainer, but right now, you can have
several, and many of them don't match up very well. You don't have to imagine
too hard how this could be used to forge signature sheets. So you have a
signature on file, period, and that's the one the Secretary of State's office
will use when it does the mandatory comparison."
Baessler says the bill will
also mandate "rolling" turn-in dates for gathered signatures. Currently,
petitioners can hold signature sheets for up to 18 months before turning them
all in at once.
"The 'rolling' dates
accomplish two things," Baessler explained. "First, it eliminates much of the
opportunity for unscrupulous signature gatherers to use signatures from one
petition and forge them on a sheet for another issue. Second, it makes it much
easier for elections officials to verify the signature sheets, because they're
coming in periodically rather than all at once at the end. Other states have
adopted this process and are pleased with the results, and again, if you're out
there doing things the right way, this doesn't cause you any harm."
* * *
Baessler also cites two other
issues he'll be watching early on in the session:
LOCAL GOVERNMENT REVENUE — While Groener oversees most of the Council's
revenue issues, Baessler does have some small pieces. One piece of the revenue
puzzle that Baessler will monitor this session is pre-exemptions for local
governments.
"In many cases, there are
state laws on the books that tie the hands of local governments in raising
certain fees, and we're at a place where many municipalities need to look
there," said Baessler. "If the City of Canby wants to raise some sort of
building related fee, as a hypothetical example, why should a state law stop
that from happening? We're going to take a long look at that issue."
Indeed, coincidentally new
Portland Mayor Sam Adams is
currently in the news talking about wanting to erase the state restriction that
doesn't allow tolls on Portland bridges. There is a state law that specifically
bans Multnomah County from collecting tolls on any bridges within its
jurisdiction; no other county faces such a restriction. (As an aside on this
issue, Adams says he has "no plans at this point" to talk about tolling all
city bridges, but admits a toll bridge could be an option in the discussions
about replacing the notoriously unstable Sellwood Bridge, which has a safety
rating of 2 out of 100. Try not to think about that this fall as you creep
across it trying to get to the Portland Labor Day Picnic at Oaks Park!)
CHILD CARE ISSUES — Baessler is pinch-hitting for O'Malley this
session on state child care issues, and working with Council 75 colleague Faye
Zepeda, the staff rep for statewide
Local 132 that represents child care providers under the AFSCME/CCPT banner
— CCPT being shorthand for Child Care Providers Together.
After the much celebrated
victory in the 2007 session in getting the Oregon child care subsidy rate
raised to the 75th percentile nationally, which is right about where
it should be, Kulongoski's proposed budget takes all of that away and more
— leaving providers in worse shape than they were. Zepeda has numbers
that show such a cut could force over 700 providers out of the industry and
leave as many as 7,000 low-income children without care.
"It's completely
counter-intuitive in this economy," says Zepeda. "People can't go out and get a
job if they can't afford child care, or if they can't find a child care
provider. The state shouldn't be doing something that's squashing jobs and
access to child care, let alone the giant step backwards it is to the providers
financially."
Baessler notes that the
provider subsidy increase bill passed the 2007 session "by a wide margin, with
bipartisan support. We're already in legislators' offices talking about this
important issue."
* * *
MORE INFO SOON — We are in the process of updating our Oregon
Legislature web page tab to reflect all of the new members in the legislative
class of 2009. For example, newly appointed state Sen. Martha Schrader (D-Canby) — who replaced husband Kurt
Schrader, who resigned to take his
elected position in the U.S. House — had capitol workers buzzing around
her office all week putting up nameplates, hooking up computers and telephones,
etc. But soon you'll be able to directly e-mail all legislators from our site,
search out your legislators based on your address if you aren't sure who they
are and track bills of interest to our union. That section should be fully
updated by mid-week next week.
* * *
We close with some odds and
ends that aren't related to the Legislature ...
PERS SAYS NO 'WINDOW
INVOICES' — The folks at PERS
apparently read our website. They'd like to make a distinction in our recent
update that they are no longer sending "invoices" for past due amounts to lump
sum "window retirees." They are still sending "notices" of such money owed, but
not, apparently, any longer in the form of an invoice.
This may sound nit-picky, but
it is important for such retirees to note they may receive other
invoices from PERS that they do in fact need to pay.
"We may be splitting hairs a
bit here, because my advice on the lump sum repayment is the same — don't send them money for that,
whether you received an 'invoice' early in the process or a 'notice' more
recently," says PERS Coalition attorney Greg Hartman. "That said, we never meant to imply that retirees
can ignore any and all invoices from PERS. They send all sorts of other
invoices to PERS members that are legit."
The "window retirees" —
those who retired between March 2000 and March 2004 — likely won't see a
complete settlement on the repayment issue until both the Arken and Robinson legal cases are "fully litigated," most likely meaning reaching the
Oregon Supreme Court. And that's probably at least 18 months away. Also, PERS
does continue to reduce benefits for retirees who opted for a "regular"
retirement as opposed to a lump sum payment. Again, that will all ultimately
get sorted out through Arken and Robinson.
* * *
PEBB OVERAGE DEPENDENTS — Council 75's Diane Lovell, a staff rep for Local 328 at OHSU and the union's
longtime representative on the Public Employee Benefits Board (PEBB), wants to
alert you that if you have an overage dependent, they must be certified by Jan.
30. "Overage" are those between 19 and 24, and there were about 8,400 such
dependents identified by PEBB members during Open Enrollment last October.
"While 81 percent of those
did properly certify their overage dependents, that still leaves 19 percent who
did not," says Lovell. "That's 1,564 that are up in the air for the agency, and
those need to be dealt with by Jan. 30."
You can read the full
story on this issue on the AFSCME website.
* * *
LOCAL 2067 COMPLETES
'SEASON OF GIVING' — This is
another story you may have seen on the Council website, but it bears repeating
here as it sets a high bar for other local unions to match. But kudos are in
order to AFSCME Local 2067, which represents over 600 members at the City of
Salem.
Last night (Jan. 15),
surrounded by other local union officers and members, Local 2067 President Jack
Tucker presented checks totaling
$10,000 to two energy assistance agencies on Jan. 15, wrapping up the local's
2008-09 "Holiday Season of Giving" which saw the local donate over $40,000 to a
variety of community causes.
The donation to Oregon HEAT
last night, which is a non-profit assistance agency, matched an earlier
donation of $5,000 to Salem Electric. In both instances, the money will go to
programs that help elderly and other low-income residents pay their winter
heating bills. Local 2067 also presented a $5,000 check Thursday to
Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action; that money will help with similar
assistance to low-income users of natural gas.
Since Dec. 1, Local 2067 also
made cash donations of $20,000 to various branches of the Oregon Food Bank
network, with $15,000 coming in conjunction with the statewide Council 75
Oregon Food Bank drive. In addition, the local donated $5,000 to Salem's own
sewer and water department, also for financial assistance to low-income customers.
And the local purchased a 10-yard dump truck full of toys for the city's
holiday toy drive.
"We believe it's very
important for us to be good citizens and participants in our community," said
Tucker, who works in the City of Salem's Public Works Department. "City
employees are real people, too — we live in the local communities, we pay
taxes and we have a vested interest in making our communities better. We see
our 'Holiday Season of Giving' program as a practical way to help people in
need, and as a group, we're always looking for ways to give back to our
community. It's a high priority for this active group of union members.
"It's also a way to help put
a positive face on our union in our community. That's important to us."
* * *
FAMILIAR FACE — We end with a name that will bring back
memories for a lot of Council 75 old-timers: Cecil Tibbetts. Tibbetts was the Oregon AFSCME Executive Director
from roughly 1981 through 1993. Among the staff names you've seen in this e-lert, Tibbetts was "responsible" — to use that word
— for hiring Botkin, Groener and Lovell, as well as yours truly. Tibbetts
was also the person who hired current Executive Director Ken Allen back to Oregon AFSCME in 1987.
Why the trip down Memory
Lane? Because Tibbetts is currently back on the Council payroll, albeit
temporarily, staffing the one-person Bend field office.
"I am semi-retired, but I was
talking with Ken and he needed someone to fill in at Bend, and it worked out
well for me right now, so it's been fun," said Tibbetts, who lives in Central
Washington state. "It's been a long time since I've been at the ground floor of
representing union workers, and I'm loving it."
"It's great to have Cecil on
board, even if it's only for a while," said Allen. "He's an important part of
the history of this Council, so for us to be able to draw on his expertise,
even on a temporary basis, is great."
Tibbetts admits with a laugh
that "it can get a little lonely at times here in this office." If you'd like
to send him a greeting, you can do so at cecil@oregonafscme.com.
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