Oregon Budget Battle Persists

Last State Where Lawmakers Still Struggle To Reach An Agreement

(CBS/AP)  In a year of bickering over crunched budgets, even politically contentious California managed to reach a compromise last week. Not so its neighbor to the north.

Oregon is the last place where state lawmakers are still in session this summer, struggling to reach a budget agreement. The Legislature is on track to set a record for the longest session in Oregon's history.

Looking on from the other end of the nation, the leader of the Connecticut Senate says he feels for the lawmakers pinned down by budget battles.

“It brings out the worst in people,” said Kevin Sullivan, the chamber's president pro tem. “All they want to do is pontificate and be partisan.”

This past week Connecticut lawmakers managed to put their own differences aside and pass a new two-year budget. In California, the Assembly's longest session ever ended with a compromise budget plan designed to alleviate a potential $40 billion deficit.

That leaves Oregon.

Mired in a fiscal crisis that experts have called the state's worst since the Great Depression, the Legislature is set to reach a milestone of sorts on Friday — the longest session in state history, at 208 days.

A few other states are still wrapping up loose ends. Pennsylvania has a budget deal, but has not yet resolved the question of school subsidies. In Alabama, legislators plan to return to session depending on the outcome of a Sept. 9 tax vote. Texas lawmakers are in a special session to resolve their redistricting dispute.

But in Salem, the big question remains whether lawmakers will be able to wrap things up and approve a budget before the start of the new school year, which is Sept. 2 in most places.

“I am hopeful. I go to mass every Sunday morning and pray for that day,” Gov. Ted Kulongoski said last week, only half jokingly.

The way things are going, it might take divine intervention to resolve the stalemate, brought on by a $2 billion drop in state revenue since the state slid into a recession in 2001.

With the House solidly Republican, the Senate evenly split and the governor a Democrat, finding common ground has been “extremely difficult,” says House Speaker Karen Minnis.

The governor has approved two spending extensions that allow state workers to keep getting paid even though the new fiscal year has started.

Lawmakers still haven't agreed on whether they will provide enough state aid to schools to help them avoid laying off teachers and shortening their school year. This year, almost 100 school districts cut days from their calendar to save money.

Social services spending is also still unresolved, including whether thousands of “working poor” will be kept on the Oregon Health Plan or be forced to fend for themselves on health care.

Camping is the latest solution to the thorny issue of housing ex-cons — particularly registered sex offenders — that has vexed officials for years as they struggle with nervous neighbors and reluctant landlords.

Most counties in Oregon, and most states nationwide, offer transitional housing. Sometimes, parole officials put up newly released prisoners in cheap motels.

In Oregon, the responsibility of implementing parole policies falls to the counties, said Ginger Martin, spokeswoman for the Department of Justice. State officials are on the record as opposing camping as an alternative to transitional housing, she said.

Linn County has only one parolee — Erbs — whose transitional housing is a tent.

But in neighboring Polk County, commissioners ordered about a half-dozen parolees to camp in a parking garage outside a county office beginning in February. The parolees unfurled foam pads in the evening, and rolled them up in the morning when county employees arrived to park their cars.

The camp temporarily disbanded last month after city officials objected to the policy. Now, county officials are looking for a site outside city limits, said Marty Silbernagel, community corrections director.

“This is an issue of county philosophy,” Silbernagel said. “Our county commissioners strongly believe the taxpayers should not pay money to house convicted felons.”

What's more, lawmakers haven't passed any of the $1 billion-plus in revenue increases needed to balance most versions of the budget that are being discussed.

Despite the severity of the state's fiscal problems and the many months lawmakers have been trying to fix them, some observers are struck by the seeming lack of urgency among legislators to reach a deal and go home.

Veteran education lobbyist John Marshall said a strong element of stubbornness is standing in the way of adjournment.

“People are frozen in their own ideologies, and they are not willing to move,” Marshall said. “That includes the conservatives who believe we can get out of here without raising some new revenue and the liberals who believe we can get out of here with a higher level of spending.”

Senate President Peter Courtney detects a degree of avoidance among lawmakers who are having trouble choosing among bleak prospects.

“Every vote is a hard vote. Nobody wants to do it,” the Democrat said. “I've often felt legislators will do anything they can to keep from making tough decisions if they can help it.”

Sullivan, the Senate leader from Connecticut, said at some point elected officials have to make the hard choices, no matter how difficult the circumstances.

“In the end, you have to deal with it and make a decision,” he said. “The only thing worse is making no decision at all.”