Truce declared for now
“Instead of spending millions on ballot measure battles, we have an agreement that provides an opportunity for people to work with one another on solving Oregon’s biggest problems.” – Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber
Both sides drop ballot measures, avoiding fight over union rights, corporate tax hikes.
Here’s a story we could use more of. Public employee unions and anti-union zealots in Oregon have agreed to a cease-fire on competing ballot measures, avoiding an expensive and bruising showdown between unions and business interests. The agreement means that police officers, teachers, firefighters and others won’t have to deal with an onslaught of out of state money paying for advertising campaigns portraying them as the villain.
Jonathan Cooper, writing for the AP, says the decision was a “coup” for Gov. John Kitzhaber, who has worked for more than a year to get business and labor interests to move past their acrimonious 2010 fight over two measures that raised taxes on corporations and the wealthy. He hopes to eventually broker a compromise that would have both sides support a wide-ranging tax-reform effort designed to reduce Oregon’s heavy reliance on personal income taxes to fund schools and state government, but the ballot measures threatened to poison the waters.
“Instead of spending millions on ballot measure battles, we have an agreement that provides an opportunity for people to work with one another on solving Oregon’s biggest problems,” Kitzhaber said in a statement. “I appreciate the willingness of the measures’ sponsors to take this enormous step forward.”
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