Can Oregon afford a no vote on 66 & 67?

By: Tyson Pruett

If you are like me, I am sure that you have talked to people who say that they are afraid that they will lose their jobs if Oregonians vote no on ballot measures 66 & 67. In an effort to find out what the job impact of each vote would be I talked to numerous people from both sides of the issue as well as did a lot of reading of others opinions, studies and reports. During this process, one thing became very clear. If the measures pass their will be jobs lost.

According to an article in the Oregonian dated December 12, 2009 they predict that a yes vote will cost Oregon between 3,800 and 4,700 private sector jobs. This job loss will also cost Oregon revenue as those people will not be paying in as much in taxes.

During this process, I also came across the 210 page Comprehensive Annual Financial Report which was just released. According to the report, Oregon had 4.4 billion in excess fund balance as of the end of the biennium. 25.1% of that fund balance is designated so that leaves 74.9% or $3,295.600,000 available to spend to cover the dollars that they wanted from these two tax measures. Now according to Oregon’s estimates, the measures will bring in about 700 million so there is plenty of dollars available to mitigate any lost revenue.

Also in that same report it states that the December 2009 economic and revenue forecast projects a robust recovery in general fund revenues for the next two biennium up 15.3 percent to 15.4 billion in 2011-2013 and 16.5 percent to 18 billion in 2013-2015. This means that after this budget period, the state is predicting that they will have significant increased revenues even if these measures don’t pass.

So to answer the question of can Oregon afford a no vote, I say Oregon cannot afford a yes vote.