Four quick items for Sunday

Jennifer Neahring. Internet by phone. Subscription Costs. Candidate Expunged.

Click to read editorial

1. Jennifer Neahring endorsed by Bend Bulletin. Their editorial suggests that Neahring is positioning herself toward a moderate position on forests issues ("She doesn't believe the federal government has struck the right balance in managing its public lands to ensure wildfires don't devour any chance to carefully log. She has reservations about the idea of charging for and putting new limits on access to wilderness.")  It is a hint that she is running somewhat more as a centrist, with words like "balance", rather than from the Democratic left flank.

2. The internet has gone mobile.  Desktops are the past, apparently, at least based on the people who read this blog by going to the site:

Readers on a mobile device: 70%

Readers on a desktop:          18%

Readers on a pad                    9%

Other/unknown                        3%    

Renew at 75% off.

The blog now routinely gets over a thousand readers a day.

3  Mail Tribune Subscription Costs.  People call me to report what they pay per year and everyone is different, with most being above $300 if they just pay the bill they are sent. Some pay $440/year to renew.

I thought the huge disparity in pricing for renewing subscribers hurts the Tribune's credibility, and I suggested they create some price discipline so neighbors aren't surprised when they compare notes. At the Pear Blossom Festival the Tribune had a booth selling subscriptions for $110 a year. What about renewals, I asked? The nice people there told me simply to come back every year and renew for $110. Subscribers who are passively trusting that the bill they get in the mail and are paying is the "fair" one likely pay much more than the price paid by "shoppers."  Don't pay more--unless you want to.

4. I expunged all records of a candidate. I have eliminated all references to any Republican opponent of State Senate candidate Jessica Gomez. Feedback I received on prior posts about her opponent left me very uncomfortable. I now consider her to be running un-opposed.

   

Michael Byrne: A Poet, and his pathway to victory.

"To earn the trust of the voters in Oregon's District 2 one must have a basic set of experiences that define us, and this place."

                                         Michael Byrne, the stone mason guy

Byrne

A reader wrote me:  "After reading about all the candidates and who they are, I really believe that the best one has the least chance.  That would be the stone mason guy.  He would make a great representative for the country."

He is informal, unpretentious, lighthearted. He has a profound case to make: that representation in Congress is about representation. 

Michael Byrne says Greg Walden is not our representative, not anymore. Walden is an actor who has broken character and has been revealed as a lobbyist. Byrne says Walden is fake, and credible populism cannot be faked. It has to be lived. "My District 2 backstory will get me elected. I am who Greg Walden pretends to be while he enriches himself at the public's expense.. . . District 2 is looking for a representative that can be trusted; with shared values and experience. Greg Walden has posed as that representative."

Michael Byrne writes campaign material the way Walt Whitman wrote poetry. Readers may remember reading Whitman's blank verse in high school. 

Byrne writes a modern "Song of Myself, done new for this era of Trump.

.

Byrne writes:

"Congress is a Millionaire's Club that neither cares nor knows anything about us.

To earn the trust of the voters in Oregon's District 2 one must have a basic set of experiences that define us, and this place.

In no particular order:

*Own a pick up truck

*Can field dress a deer, catch a steelhead, set up camp

*coached Little League

*gone years without health insurance

*have less than $1000 in savings

*have a nephew or son in the military

*your spouse worked a dead end job so your kids had health insurance

*looked up at the mountains and knew you wouldn't live anywhere else

*driven 200 miles in the middle of the night because there was a bed available in a   drug treatment center

*volunteered in your kids public school

*lived on a dirt road

*taken your family to the coast, because you could.

*attend the high school football games

*barbecue

*grow vegetables

Vietnam anti-war Byrne

*have some college

*went to school with Native Americans

*attend church irregularly

*know that a cord is 128 cu ft

*change your own oil

*has an elderly family member in a nursing home

It is too late to acquire this particular set of experiences, just as it too late for me to graduate from college at the top of my class.

My District 2 backstory will get me elected.  I am who Greg Walden pretends to be while he enriches himself at the public's expense."

This is a political blog, not a poetry blog. 

Can Michael Byrne actually win the election?

Byrne understands the circle of frustration he is in. "Part of the problem of not being taken seriously is you don't get taken seriously."

He seems marginal as a candidate because he doesn't have a crowd in front of him. Paul Simon or Bob Dylan would draw a crowd and be taken seriously. Whitman is a classic and professors call him a genius, or egotist, or revolutionary, but in any case they study him and assign him in class.

Without the cheering crowd there is nothing to draw a cheering crowd.  

Byrne spent the past week hosting a voter registration event in Hood River for the Latino community and teaching apprentice bricklayers about stone. There were no crowds.

Soccer Coach

Byrne is what voters think they want: a genuine representative who understands them and the problems of the district and who wants to fix them. Someone who who has a good heart, and who is a trustworthy neighbor, someone on their side. 

Here he is, if people want it.. If people don't vote for him, it is on them. .

Jeff Golden: Pathway to victory.

"In this District, this year, organization beats money."

Jeff Golden has an active campaign.  He tells me he has some 400 individual contributors to his campaign, he has campaign volunteers, he is out talking with voters, he knows the issues, he has an experienced campaign manager, and he has been in the public eye doing politics here for some 40 years.

Golden sounds optimistic.

Golden took a risk when he announced that he would not accept PAC money from any source. It shut off one potential source of money, but Golden has an alternative.  A large body of people have been contributing for decades, either to him or causes that he has promoted: public radio, public TV, his TV show Immense Possibilities, and his own political campaigns. That is where the 400 contributors came from.

The real risk to not taking campaign money from PACs, Golden says, is that political endorsements are tied to wanting and accepting the money. "The matrix of party leaders and PACs who fund campaigns are overly comfortable with the way things are now," Golden said. "A PAC chairman told me 'you better rethink this PAC thing, Jeff. If you stick with your position of not taking money the endorsements will go someplace else.' He was right."

Golden says he doesn't want to be in a position where some lobbyist thinks he is owed a vote. He wants to be able to vote his conscience and the interests of his District. "Critical thinkers, who have well thought out independent views of the issues, are likely to be annoying to those upstate PACs."

Candidate Kevin Stine questioned Golden on whether he would be as conflicted by individual contributions as would be a candidate who got money from "good PACs."  Golden said there is a huge difference. He said his three contributions greater than $1,000 came from personal friends and people who have been supporting his Immense Possibilities show for years, and like his approach to public issues. None of his 400 contributors are lobbyists, he said. They don't spend their workdays at the Capitol building, and their jobs don't depend on slipping into a legislator's office and getting him or her to add a word or sentence to a bill as it works its way through committee. 

"Mine is the cleanest money possible in an imperfect world," Golden said, "money from individual citizens who agree with me and trust me."

At a forum in Ashland

So far his reported contributions exceed the contributions of Athena Goldberg, his nearest competitor. She has been the candidate who has secured PAC endorsements and contributions. She has noted those in her Voters Pamphlet page.

The money he is raising is going to campaign organization, printed material, and to Facebook, not TV, radio, or newspaper ads. The official state record of campaign contributions and expenditures show that Golden has spent some $1,983 on Facebook ads. Athena Goldberg has spent $2,434. Julian Bell has spent $451. Kevin Stine shows no Facebook ads yet. Traditional media payments are zero for all four candidates.

Jeff Golden said he realized that the Primary election winner would likely face a tsunami of advertising from Jessica Gomez, the presumed GOP nominee. 

I asked him how he would deal with that. Other Democrats would presumably take PAC money and try to match the GOP advertising dollar for dollar. I asked if that might make them stronger general election candidates.

From Golden's Facebook promotions.

Money won't matter, he said. Turnout is what will matter, he said.  A giant money-driven campaign will backfire, and that would be true for the Democrat, as well, if they go the big-money route, he said.

"The Koch Brothers talked about investing $400 million in various state races in 2018," he said.  "Republicans spent $800,000 in Alan DeBoer's election campaign in 2016 and Gomez might spend two million dollars.  It wont matter because if she does spend that much, then 1.5 million of it would be wasted."  You can only spend so much money, he said, and when you spend too much on mailers, TV, and radio you just call attention yourself as being indebted to your contributors. It bolsters my case for independence and integrity, he said.  

Democrats need to turn out, and will, Golden said. Golden said that he has a long track record of supporting progressive Democratic values, that this is a Democratic district, and no amount of money will convince Democrats to vote for a Republican, not this year. Republican ads--and Trump--will just motivate Democrats. He expects them to turn out.

And he has the organization to do it.  He said that Cathy Shaw, his campaign manager (and former wife) "has regularly beat campaigns that spent far more money."  She does it by getting our voters to vote.


[Note: I consider myself open minded about this campaign. There are things to like about each candidate. Like other long-time residents of the area, I have known Golden for years and have contributed to his various campaigns, as well as to public radio and public TV when he was soliciting funds, and I donated to Immense Possibilities. I have not contributed money to his political campaign this year, but I did give to Julian Bell and Kevin Stine. As I have said in other disclaimer notes, my giving money doesn't represent fealty; it represents respect for the hard job of raising money for political campaigns, so I frequently give to several, including anyone who asks. I am not a cheerleader for any campaign. I consider myself a centrist Democrat.  All four of the Democratic candidates are a little too liberal for my taste. I voted for Hillary in 2016, but I predicted Trump would win.]

Sweet are the Uses of Adversity

Democrats do not lose to Republicans.  They lose to apathy.  

Local Democrats are finally doing something interesting.  Before, it was just a game of scrimmage.  Now they are keeping score.

Political observers underestimated Donald Trump because they thought politics was the governing business. Trump understood that politics is show business.  Governing is the by-product. 

Local Democrats are in "turmoil", writes a local newspaper. They editorialize that Democrats should settle down, get through this "patch of turbulence," put questions to rest, and "move on." There are some factions and suspicions rising within the local party.  I say, so what? And of course! Factions and disagreement are the nature of politics.

There is no need to end turmoil and turbulence. Do the opposite.  Be interesting. Raise questions. People who do so aren't making turmoil. They are making democracy.

Golden video. Scroll down to April 8 post

Kevin Stine questioned whether the large personal contributions received by Golden were perhaps proof of "influence" just as much as had they come from NARAL or any PAC. It is a fair point, and one that Gomez's campaign would have the ability to hammer on, if Golden wins the primary. Jeff Golden presents himself as a new kind of candidate, one who walks-the-talk of clean government, a courageous politician who values leaders who are "grown-ups". Therefore, he refuses money from PACs or other interest groups, getting money from individuals only. He presents in video as a good and clean politician with exactly the kind of refreshing integrity we need in government.  

Stine suggested the opposite point--that maybe those contributions are as "politically interested" and dangerous as would be a contribution from the Sierra Club or the Oregon Teachers Association. I certainly can see how distinctions can be made between a $10,000 gift from a friend versus a $10,000 from a PAC, and yet Democrats have complained about the corrupting influence of individual contributions from the Koch Brothers, from the Mercer family, from Sheldon Adelson, etc., so it is a point that Golden will need to be able to defend.

[Blog post revised.  I have removed all references to any Republican opponent for candidate Gomez.]

I welcome controversies being aired and people discussing real issues, which means people need to be newsworthy.  Whether PERS can be improved in any way is an issue worth discussion. Gomez brought it up and Stine and Bell weighed in. Whether Jeff Golden's method of campaign finance is better for democratic government than gifts from PACs is worth discussing. Whether Gomez is "Republican-enough" to be a Republican is worth discussing. Issues of health care and taxes and immigration and abortion funding are worth discussing.

Candidates are raising issues. It may look like turmoil to some, but to me it looks like democracy, and news worth watching and reading. 

Kevin Stine: Jessica Gomez is "stupefyingly wrong."

Kevin Stine:  

"Jessica Gomez is correct politically to put PERS cuts on the table, but absolutely stupefyingly wrong if she honestly believe that any of those cuts will survive a court challenge."

Jessica Gomez, a Republican candidate for the State Senate seat for Medford-Ashland, put forward two proposals to fix the PERS problem in Oregon.  

Kevin Stine

Kevin Stine says Democrats already tried this and the courts shut it down. He says Gomez is doing good politics not good government.

Oregon received national attention for its public retirement system, not because our problem is the worst but because the original PERS formula allowed a few beneficiaries, most famously former Oregon head football coach Mike Bellotti, to receive sky high pensions. Bellotti receives $46,000 a month for life. A retired physician receives $76,000 a month.

Kevin Stine, a Medford City Councilperson vying for the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat, recognizes the power of the PERS issue for Republicans attempting "to put all the PERS problems onto Democrats." He wrote:

"Likely Gubernatorial Republican nominee Knute Bueller says that he will lead on PERS where Governor Kate Brown has failed. Knute also offers absolutely zero hard plans on what he'll do."

Stine says it is a misplaced target, but he recognizes it is a good one for politicians who are willing to campaign on false promises.

Pay our debts.

Many Republican incumbents and candidates point to those payouts as flagrant examples of government waste and incompetence, generalizing from this to all government employees, then to government in general. It fuels public discontent and enables a broader GOP policy position and narrative: cut taxes, because after all, look at all the money that is being wasted by Democrats and their union buddies.

In Oregon public employee unions generally support Democrats.  Republicans generally campaign opposing those unions.

Stine does not defend the Bellotti payouts, but he does say that he accepts the reality of the PERS situation, and that he isn't playing political games with it. Gomez is, he says. Stine acknowledges that we have a debt to pay off over the next thirty years. The courts decided it.

The PERS problem was bi-partisan in its creation. In the 1980s it was tempting to pay then-current employees with promises of future benefits. It meant lower taxes and more services right then. Political leaders of both parties imagined investment growth as the magic that would pay the bills. Democrats liked the extra service; Republicans like the low taxes. Presumed Wall Street investment gains--"free future money" --would replace tax payments.

Readers should be cautious in condemning the political cowardice and foolishness of those who agreed to this back in the 1980s. This is not simply some sort of Democratic Party lunacy or a mistake we know better than to make now. No. It was bi-partisan in creation, and we are still spending now, paid for by borrowing. The United States Congress, with near unanimous Republican votes and Republican majorities, just passed--at the top of a business cycle, no less--a Tax Bill with tax cuts and spending increases that increase the deficit even more than before. Spend now, pay later. Former deficit hawks now assure us that those debts will be paid by "future growth." The allure of painless "free future money" continues to drive politics.

Eventually we will work this out, if we can afford it during this long payout period. Oregon already "fixed" PERS for employees hired after August 29, 2003. The assumed retirement age was moved to 65 (up from 58 and 60) and the formulas are much less generous. The resulting pension benefits are likely to achieve the intended policy result: lifetime income of about 45% of the employee's final years of income.  

The problem is the legacy formulas from before 2003, which are locked into place. Eventually the beneficiaries will grow old and die, and in the meantime we will pay our debts.  That is the actual solution.  Of course, the people who are beneficiaries of those formulas don't consider them a "problem," and are, of course, in no rush to die. They consider it a deal that worked out great, and only fair. Others feel it is exactly how public employees ought to be paid--well--and that higher progressive tax on the wealthiest Oregonians would--and should--cover the deficit. 

Stine acknowledged that Gomez's first proposal, financing a voluntary early payout option for Tier One and Tier Two eligible employees, might be legal and could save the state money. He has observed a similar program with military retirement pensions. 

Stine says her other suggestions are a re-hash of things Democrats had already tried. Stine said that in 2013 Democrats exercised political courage by disappointing their own base with proposed reductions in the cost of living formula in the PERS contract, and did so without any Republican votes. Union were upset with Democrats, he said, and it was all for naught. 

The courts said no, Stine noted. A contract is a contract. A pension benefit is property and the state cannot confiscate any of it by changing the rules.

Julian Bell

Julian Bell, another Democratic candidate for the seat, wrote that PERS is "badly designed" but that in any case the Oregon Supreme Court "prevented the state from changing existing contracts, which is why they have not already been changed."  He said "we bought a lot of employment on credit."

"It doesn't seem ethical to try to back out of the contracts" and those high pensions for Bellotti and the physicians are the exception. Besides, Bell said, most PERS payouts are in small pensions as originally intended, and that money "is recirculated directly back into the economy."

Jessica Gomez posited a problem and a solution. It put the issue on the table. Kevin Stine and Julian Bell said her solution has been tried and found to be illegal. She may choose to defend her position. A good discussion of this would benefit the voters.

Stine and Bell's comments may not hurt her in the Republican primary. Indeed, she may be helped by having Democrats criticize her. [Post revised. I have removed all references to any Republican opponent Jessica Gomez may have.]

Kevin Stine says her proposal is built on a political narrative that sounds good to Republicans, but it is simply untrue. He said "Republicans say to elect them so they can pass huge PERS cuts. This makes no sense. . . . She's giving people what they want to hear, not anything that can pass legal muster. Maybe she truly is a Republican after all."
                                                          
                                                              ***    ***

[Readers have inquired who I favor in this and other races. I like government that works and deals with problems. I consider myself open minded about this State Senate campaign. I see things to like about each of the candidates. I have made multiple political contributions in a variety of races, signifying not always who I favor or plan to vote for, but instead my sense of obligation to help any candidate who dares to ask me for money. Back when I was a candidate for office in 1980 I wished there were more people who made campaign contributions and I am trying to be what I longed for back then, a politically interested guy with a checkbook.]

The kumbaya period has ended, at long last.

Local Democrats are worried that the resignation of the volunteer chair of a campaign advisory committee signals a problem.  

It doesn't.  Relax. It signals engagement.  A little turmoil was overdue.

The Democratic candidates for the State Senate seat held by the retiring Alan DeBoer has finally gotten real. There are four candidates--Julian Bell, Athena Goldberg, Jeff Golden, and Kevin Stine. This is a tournament and only one can win. 

Most voters have had near zero exposure to the campaigns. Some of this is due to the hollowing out of local media, so coverage has been largely limited to coverage of their campaign announcements. Some of it is due to campaigns moving to Facebook and friends-of-friends instead of battles between press releases.  

Most important, though, in the aftermath of the Bernie-Hillary divide an idea has settled into the minds of Democrats: don't create divides, don't disagree publicly, "can't we all get along?" There was an informal peace-pact, and disagreements, however gentle and accurate, were considered "negative" and they broke the peace.

The forums consisted of everyone essentially agreeing on everything, all adopting positions of "Bernie-complaint" liberal environmentalism. The candidates are essentially four flavors of the same vanilla, differing in age and gender and issue knowledge, but not in policy.

Kumbaya among the Democrats.  Until now.

The hard feelings of the Bernie-Hillary campaign came to the surface locally this weekend, when the Executive Committee within the local Democratic party asked the campaign committee chair to resign. Ostensibly, the issue was whether the chair had assisted one candidate in a contested election by giving access the names and data in a Neighborhood Leaders group.The information was of little value, but the situation touched a nerve: was the local official Democratic Party acting in any way like Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who favored Hillary over Bernie in 2016. Bernie progressives remain suspicious and alert to the "official" Democratic party favoring familiar, establishment candidates. Meanwhile local activists want to avoid at all costs any appearance of unfairness. The result was a resignation and then a long email conversation within the party including demands for investigations and questioning of motives, explanations from several sides, all amid a majority of voices urging people to mellow out.

Not enough news yet.

Is this controversy a self inflicted wound for Democrats?  

No. I consider this ongoing evidence of engagement and participation. People care. And net-net the publicity is good. 

The controversy gave Kevin Stine an opening, calling on Jeff Golden to drop out of the race. "Jeff Golden should put the Democratic Party above his own ambitions and announce that he will no longer seek the nomination for Senate District 3." The suggestion is preposterous, but at least it required people to consider: did anyone do anything wrong here? At long last, Democrats are faced to make choices. 

Did this help Stine? My sense is that this probably hurt Stine more than it helped him, since it quotes him making a non-credible point, but Stine needs visibility, and he got some. Did it hurt Golden? My sense is that it may have given his long time supporters a useful startle--maybe Jeff isn't a sure thing after all. Golden's response was consistent with his brand: mellow, lightly condescending to the young whipper-snapper, urging everyone to play nicely.

The candidate forum scheduled for today surely received more notice by Facebook and word of mouth by being cancelled than it would have were it held as scheduled, viewed by a couple hundred attendees who came to the event knowing in advance who they favored, and then was--once again--ignored by the local media other than Facebook chatter, a Democratic Party video, and this blog. Controversy made news.

Stine raises the issue of "influence"

Kevin Stine made a second charge, this time within Facebook. He called Jeff Golden "the big money candidate" and showed his list of largest contributors, which include people giving $10,000, $9,000, and $3,500, and several additional people giving  $1,000 contributions. Jeff Golden responded saying there was clear difference between individual money and the money of special interest PACs. Stine said both are potentially big money and both are dangerous. Again, controversy.  People have to make decisions.  

Stine's Facebook pages report people unhappy with him and deciding to "unfollow" him. (A former brokerage client called me to tell me that I should tell Stine that he "will never, ever vote for Stine for anything ever again. Tell him his comment is stupid and immature.")  Others, no doubt, agree with Stine. A $10,000 contribution seems like a lot. Who is that Katheryn Thalden, and what does she want? Perhaps nothing whatever other than good government, but now there is something to talk about. Golden can handle the questions, and if he cannot, better to know it now, in the primary.

It isn't all perfect. There is too much controversy over process and not enough over issues. I welcome this new phase of the campaign, but I have reservations. All of the controversies involve process:

  ***Is the local Democratic Party utterly impartial?

  ***Are Jeff Golden's campaign contributions clean and pure?

  ***Do Athena Goldberg's upstate endorsements mean she is good, or that she is influenced?

The GOP race has its own problems, with discussion of personality and campaign process rather than policy options. Jessica Gomez's introductory video projected a mood and tone of bipartisan community building, not specifics that would assure Republican voters she is one of them. 

[Post revised.  I have removed all references to any opponent of candidate Gomez.]

Controversy over issues will not destroy useful politics in southern Oregon. It will enable it. Six candidates will appear on the ballot and one of them eventually will be elected.  We need to make choices.

[Note: I consider myself impartial on the State Senate race. I have made contributions to candidates in this and other races, but not because I necessarily plan to vote for them. My contributions to campaigns have an idiosyncratic motivation. When I was a candidate for County Commissioner in 1980 I sorely wished there were some business-oriented Democrats who did not pepper me with litmus test issues, and who instead just genially wrote me a check and said "good luck." Southern Oregon needed people like that, I thought. I still think that. So now I try to be one of those people.]

PERS. Too big to contemplate

Oregon made the national news.  PERS isn't just a calamity.  It is an embarrassment.

What can an Oregon Democrat do?

The New York Times ran a feature story about Oregon PERS. The story focused on Southern Oregon: Klamath Falls and Josephine County. 

Cities cannot afford to maintain bridges.  Schools cannot afford teachers.  PERS is big problem and we aren't facing up to it.

Click: New York Times article

The Oregon Public Employees Retirement System shares something in common with most other jurisdictions. It is underfunded.  

Oregon has a calculated shortfall of $25.3 billion dollars (based on current assumptions of a 7.2% return on the investment portfolio) and that means we are better funded than most states, at 81% of what we need, compared to a national average of 66%, according to a Pew study.

But Oregon is special, with some features that make PERS politically toxic: payouts to high-visibility beneficiaries who take advantage of a unique payout formula. PERS rules allowed the millions of dollars in side income earned by former Oregon football coach Mike Bellotti to be included in his salary for PERS purposes, and he had a long career with the football program. Many years, multiplied by that enhanced final income, gets him $46,000 a month.

Then it got worse. Two doctors, whose side income at Oregon Health Sciences entered their calculations, created the pension shown in the NY Times cover: $76,000 a month, for life.

The status quo has its defenders. Some of the provisions were contracted for, making them a property right of the beneficiary and the US Constitution specifically forbids governments to take private property for public use without "just compensation."  An employee's pension is their property, just as would be their bank accounts or homes. But some of the rules regarding the pension allocation formulas may be open to the public will, i.e. politics. 

Whatever the legislature does will get tested in the courts.

Oregon's public employee unions are steadfast in opposing anything which would hurt current beneficiaries, and public employee unions are routinely essential in the election of Democratic candidates to the legislature and statewide offices.

Jessica Gomez, Republican Candidate

None of the four Democratic candidates for State Senate--Julian Bell, Athena Goldberg, Jeff Golden, and Kevin Stine--address the PERS issue in their web pages.  They each address "the issues": health care, education, the environment, housing, climate change, daylight savings time, and more.  But not one mentions PERS.  

Political newcomer Jessica Gomez, a Republican candidate for the Medford-Ashland State Senate District, has posted specific proposals to help fix the problem. They may not get passed. They almost certainly will be opposed by public employee unions, and therefore many and perhaps all the Democrats in the legislature. However, they deserve consideration and Gomez deserves recognition for actually making serious proposals she posts under her own name.

As I understand them, they can be summarized this way: 

Proposal #1. A voluntary option of a one-time cash disbursement to current beneficiaries in lieu of monthly payments, to be funded with Oregon's bond capacity. The interest costs to taxpayers for the tax free bonds would be lower than the rate earned by PERS investments. It would be taking advantage of the arbitrage between taxable and tax free bonds. It might be attractive to beneficiaries wanting flexibility and it would save the state money. This would help make up the overall shortfall in funding.

Click Here: Gomez's PERS proposal.

Proposal #2. Change details of the formula. Get rid of the conflict of interest of judges and elected officials by putting them into a 401k program instead of PERS. Stop the use of sick and vacation time artificially to raise the final year income, and make the benefit based on the final ten years, not the current three years. Cap the income eligible for pensions to $100,000 a year. Change the rate of annuitization of payouts from the artificial and unrealistic 7.2% down to the actual market rate, currently about 3.5%. 

Are these reasonable?  It would be good to have a debate on their merits. I know from my long career as a Financial Advisor that the assumption for return on investments during the payout phase is far greater than any offered in the private marketplace. Also, the practice of "spiking" (i.e. artificially creating a high final year's income in order to game the formula for the pension payout) means that money set aside over a long career is inadequate to fund a pension based on an unexpectedly high calculation gamed by that last year. Spiking is a bi-partisan practice of giving politically convenient thank-you gifts to politicians and employees. I wrote about it last month:  Click: Gaming the PERS system

Would her proposals be popular with the public? I suspect very popular. Voters--other than Tier One PERS employees and their families--widely consider the pension results to be very generous, and in the case of the highest paid recipients, obscene. Local media has covered what the New York Times covered. People realize we have a problem.

A Republican candidate can do what a Democratic candidate may not want--or dare--to do.  Public employee unions can influence general elections, but their involvement can be dispositive in Democratic primaries. Public employee unions have money and campaign volunteers to mobilize.

The State of Oregon established PERS and its rules in a bipartisan manner, but the PERS problem now has a partisan skew. Republican legislators and voters "support education" but many work in opposition to PERS. Democratic legislators "support education" but education is defined as support for policies advanced by employee unions, not by students and parents. 

This proposal was politically easier for Gomez to put forward than it would be for a Democrat.  Still, PERS is a huge problem for Oregon, and Gomez has put something on the table. Her raising this issue may force Democrats to take a position.  It may flush out some differences among the candidates, both in policy and where they expect to get political support in the upcoming primary.  In any case, perhaps the public will get a worthwhile airing of the subject.


[Note: I have asked for comments from all the candidates, and will be reporting them in detail in subsequent posts. As of this morning,  Kevin Stine has made a substantial response, observing that he thought proposal #1 to be workable and #2 to be likely legally impossible. Curt Ankerberg responded with emails saying that Gomez's plan is deeply flawed, except for the portions that were plagiarized from him, that Gomez lacks the ability to do serious proposals on her own, and that I must have been paid off by Alan or Sid DeBoer to have written this post.]