A talk at the City Club, September 10, 2004

Some people aren't willing to accept the results of elections like they used to. What's happening? Why don't elections settle controversies anymore?

I think there are three reasons. One, so few people vote anymore that some people are no longer willing to accept the results of elections as an authentic "voice of the people."

Two, there is a widespread feeling the initiative and referendum are being abused by well-heeled interests who buy their way onto the ballot to skirt the constitutional checks and balances built into the legislative process.

Three, certain factions in our political system have become so polarized they are unwilling to accept a victory by the other side and are pushing the envelope of acceptable use of the political system.

Let's take the last reason first because that's what brought this issue of the declining credibility of elections to a head in our community.

The effort to draft -- or in my view browbeat and bully -- Mayor Jim Torrey into running for a third term as a write-in candidate after he declined to run in the primary is a first rate example of pushing the political envelope.

In our political tradition, a candidate runs for reelection or he doesn't. If a longtime incumbent does not run for reelection, it opens the door to new blood in the political system. New people step up, they campaign and we choose one.

Write-in campaigns are certainly legal in a fall election with one candidate on the ballot, but traditionally a write-in campaign is reserved for extraordinary circumstances like the death or disability of a candidate -- largely because write-ins usually fare so poorly against a candidate actually printed on the ballot unless there are extraordinary circumstances.

That tradition was not acceptable to former Mayor Jeff Miller and a gauzily vague group of unnamed allies. Instead of Miller stepping up and offering to run -- he had a rather undistinguished tenure as mayor -- Miller and his friends began a draft Jim Torrey movement -- without Torrey's permission.

Now Jim Torrey's politics are not my politics, but years ago when Jim managed KUGN when it was a real radio station, we agreed to disagree and became friends.

Torrey is one of these guys who never does anything halfway. He runs pedal to the metal until he feels he has done his job, then he stops and does something else.

That is how Jim feels about being mayor. He has given this city his lifeblood for eight years, often at the expense of his own health and his family life. Jim decided not to run for reelection this spring for health and family reasons.

Torrey considered running for the Republican nomination for Secretary of State -- a job he would do well. But several of us urged Torrey not to run for that post because the Oregon Republican Party is no longer the party he knew. He was not extreme enough to be nominated by the Oregon Republicans who vote in the primary and there was no point is risking his health on a futile race. Torrey's wife's health issues settled that question for him.

This business of volunteering someone else without permission to run for office, browbeating them publicly into running, risking health and family life definitely pushes the political envelope. This "Run, Jim, Run" is a bit too much like "Run, Spot, Run. See Spot Run," from the Dick and Jane readers of our youth. It has a nasty paternal, plantation owner air about it.

Jim, in his usually laconic way, put an end to it by calmly offering to consider it, mulling it over and graciously declining. It was a wise choice, not just because it throws water on a potentially divisive political campaign that would push the political envelope, but because Torrey will be more effective achieving some of his unmet goals as an elder statesman working quietly behind the scenes.

This January, I suspect, will find Jim and his wife on a cruise ship somewhere in the Panama Canal -- a dream he's had for some years -- and I can't think of a person who deserves it more.

The second reason elections have lost credibility is the widespread feeling that the initiative process has been abused. That feeling is not wrong. Measure 37 is as good an example as any. This is the so-called compensation initiative. Developers bought their way onto the ballot some years ago, it narrowly passed in an election dominated by other issues, but the Oregon Supreme Court ruled the measure had constitutional irregularities and now the same suspects have brought the measure back.

Measure 37 says that if government action like land use restrictions prevent a landowner from making the most profitable use of his property, the public must pay him the difference between the most profitable use and the restricted use, even if the most profitable use is incompatible with surrounding property owners. Potentially this means if a developer wants to build an apartment complex and zoning permits only single family houses, the public owns the developer the difference between the money he would make on an apartment building and the money he developing single family houses.

I would be more sympathetic with developers if they compensated the public for increases in the value of their land created by government actions. Undeveloped land has no value other than growing crops or pasture until government -- the public -- steps up and builds the infrastructure than provides necessary public services like streets and roads, sewer, water, electricity, not to mention parks and playgrounds, schools, and police and fire protection.

While property taxes pay for the some operating costs of these services, the developer who makes that first conversion from agricultural to urban use walks away with a substantial windfall as a result of public investment and government actions. It is unjust to compensate developers who find their property uses restricted by zoning and land use actions without also asking for compensation from developers who receive an increase in value from government actions. Measure 37 only deals with half that issue because it was written by developers who bought their way onto the ballot -- again.

These two issues -- polarized partisans pushing the political envelope and the widespread abuse of the initiative process have a lot to to with the first reason that elections are losing credibility -- too few people vote anymore.

About half the eligible voting age population no longer participates in elections. About a quarter of the voting age population is not even registered to vote and in any given election somewhere from a quarter to one half the registered voters do not vote -- it varies with the nature of the election and the issues on the ballot, but the statistics are undeniable. fewer people are voting despite the ease of the mail in ballot.

We deal with this by dismissing those who don't participate as apathetic or arguing they are just failing to do their civic duty. "If you don't vote, you have no right to complain about the results," we patronizingly intone. I know. My archives are filled with just such patronizing commentaries.

Then I began asking people WHY they don't vote. The responses are eye-opening. The depth of disillusionment with our political process is so deep, I have come to doubt we can continue to function as a self-governing society much longer without changes.

The carefully perpetuated myth that we are governed by two political parties -- Republicans and Democrats -- that contain the polar stars of our system -- liberals and conservatives or as we put it these days left-leaning and right-leaning has deliberately disenfranchised the quarter to one-third of the voting age population that does not subscribe to these polarized views. Since the increasing fragmented media revolves around this polarization myth -- the independent voter hears virtually no voice that speaks for them and they simply drop out in frustration.

Elections are losing their credibility because nearly half the voting age population has no stake in them and feels the people chosen do not represent them. We dismiss this new reality at our peril. Self-government cannot survive if half the voting age population feels it has no stake in elections. That is the bad news.

The good news is that politics is a dynamic state. it never stays the same for long. And in the primaries this season, I thought I saw the beginnings of a backlash against all three reasons I think elections are losing credibility. Not only were primary turnouts higher than expected, but if you scour the election returns carefully, you can detect -- not just a higher turnout of partisans -- but a return of voters who have stayed away in the past -- and these people appear to favor candidates who promise to be less partisan and more inclusive.

Jim Torrey and Kitty Piercy understand what Nancy Nathanson and Jeff Miller and their vague allies apparently do not. Eugene -- like most of the state and most of the nation -- is not divided between liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats. The opposite is true -- neither of those parties or factions represent a majority of the voting age population anymore. Eugene has at least five or six factions in the town. The agenda that Nathanson's Chamber of Commerce supporters urged on her was simply not broad enough to pull a majority of votes from these various factions -- remember many of these people are among the independents who feel no one speaks for them. Piercy's promise to be a Mayor of All Eugene attracted a lot of voters who consider themselves disenfranchised.

But this is fragile support from people who really believe the political system no longer represents them. If Piercy's supporters do not allow her to be the mayor of all Eugene then it simply becomes another disillusioning campaign slogan. This does not mean that Piercy must accept the Chamber's narrow agenda as her own. Piercy does not have to give up her opposition to the West Eugene Parkway or her desire to change official economic development priorities to show she is the mayor of all Eugene.

Piercy will, however, have to listen to those factions that are not among her supporters or the Chamber's supporters. These are the disillusioned voters who insist no one is speaking to them or for them -- and they are not wrong.

And what is it that the self-perceived disenfranchised want to hear talked about by their political leaders?

A serious change in economic development priorities is certainly one. Our state and local economic development model is simply a modern reincarnation of the 1960s smokestack chasing -- we chase chip plants and telemarketing centers instead of fostering homegrown businesses likely to stay here. Economic development officials have been afraid of real innovation since the Van Dyne Candy hustle of the 1980s, but chasing minimum wage jobs and brand-named electronics plants is no substitute for nurturing homegrown industry that began here and wants to stay here.

The Culinary Arts program at Lane Community College is doing more to create a labor force for a growing industry than any university computer science program whose graduates are finding their future jobs out sourced to India even before they graduate. My idea of economic development is the Lantz cabinet plant in West Eugene, not Sony once-upon-a-time CD plant in Springfield.

And speaking of the Sony CD plant, I hope Sacred Heart's board of directors like the location. It's likely to be their permanent new home. Now that there's a court-ordered break in the action, Springfield, Eugene and Lane County officials need to take a hard look at this silly game of music hospitals we have been bullied into by some developers that threatens to unnecessarily raise the cost of medical care in this region for a generation.

At a time when the rising cost of medical care is threatening family wage jobs -- and it is -- these lavish hospital facilities designed to extract the last insurance and Medicare dollar out of aging and dying Baby Boomers needs serious public scrutiny they have not had.

I know the people involved on both sides of this case quite well. The Jacqua's are represented by Al Johnson -- a lawyer who used to practice in this town and now practices in Portland. Johnson is on anybody's list of the five top land use lawyers in the state. Sacred Heart's decision to bull their way past obstacles in Eugene for raw land outside the urban growth boundary will be protracted and expensive and in the end unsuccessful. It's time to take another look at this decision before anymore public resources are spent accommodating this unnecessarily expensive scheme.

There is a lot of talk about reforming school finance. It's just talk, but at least the subject is being talked about and there is a public awareness of the problem. The State of Oregon's finances are a wreck waiting to happen and no one is talking about it much less doing something about it.

Over the last 15 years the legislative leadership has plunged Oregon into the largest unsecured debt in the state's history. The debt is $1.4 billion dollars. I'm not talking about debt secured by revenues or property taxes or state veterans' mortgage payments -- they are in addition to the $1.4 billion. I'm talking about an orgy of borrowing financed by instruments called certificates of participation. This is $1.4 billion in borrowed money secured only by a promise to pay them off out of future state revenues. Over the next 30 years, the State Treasurer's office estimates the interest payments on these bonds will cost the state an additional $500 million dollars. Within the next four years, these interest payments will begin to compete with schools, human services, the Oregon Health Plan and other services financed by Oregon's General Fund of income tax revenues.

As the legislature reduces the tax burden of the well-to-do and the income of Oregon's once-middle class continues to decline for low-wage jobs, the state income tax revenues will not be able to keep up with obligations in a state whose population is predicted to double over the next 25 years.

This profligate borrowing has lowered Oregon credit rating for at least 30 years and driven up interest costs for all bonds in the future. It may facilitate the State and national Republican Parties' plan to repeal state and federal income taxes and substitute state and federal sales taxes or it just may lead to more layoffs, larger classes and less help for those who rely on their government for help.

The point is that we are in the middle of a campaign for control of the Legislature and the silence on this subject is deafening.

Lastly we need to discuss our public schools -- not the usual topics of finance or even class size. The problem is a constitutional issue we are ignoring. Since statehood in 1859, the Oregon Constitution has said, "The Legislative Assembly shall provide by law for the establishment of a uniform and general system of Common Schools."

Lawyers will tell you that the words uniform and Common schools are words of art -- that is they are terms defined, not by the dictionary, but by previous rulings on cases in court. Common schools are characterized by a similar, if not identical curriculum, to pass the common culture on from one generation to the next. This is the bedrock of the justification for publicly financed schools -- without the task of passing on a common culture and sufficient education to find a place in the workforce there is no reason not to make parents pay for their own children's schooling.

As Nancy Willard of Eugene has demonstrated so ably, the charter school moment is neither uniform, nor common. It is a smorgasbord that offers a little something for everybody with little accountability to the taxpayers paying the bill. Worse, it is clear that public charter schools are the tail wagging the dog with the children of wealthier parents getting the smaller charter school classes while the children of poorer parents remain in larger classes in traditional uniform and common schools.

The problem, of course, is that one of these days some parents will sue one of Oregon's school boards arguing the "elite charter schools" violate the Oregon constitution because their are not "uniform and Common." And they will probably win. In the past the courts have tolerated "alternative" schools that are not clearly "uniform and Common" as experiments that might produce innovation that could be included in "uniform and Common schools." But charter schools have been institutionalized politically and can no longer be considered temporary experiments.

To avoid this inevitable lawsuit and a judicial solution to the problem we must have a discussion about amending the constitution to eliminate the requirement for "uniform and Common" schools or put some uniformity into the charter schools to justify continuing public financial support.

I fear this will be a bitter debate because there is no longer a consensus on what constitutes a common curriculum to teach in "uniform and Common schools." Public schools no longer have a common culture to pass on from generation to the next because in our dangerously fragmented society we no longer have a common culture. But better we debate it and try to for some consensus, than as judges to decide a question we really can't agree on ourselves.

But the most serious issue is the failure of our political system to discuss these serious issues and try to solve them instead of serving us political pap like dishing up more money to already heavily subsidized developers who can't make the most profitable use of their land regardless of the consequences, abolishing the State Accident Insurance Fund so Oregon Workers' Compensation insurance is controlled by a private monopoly and gnashing our teeth over whether homosexuals should have the same civil rights that heterosexual couples have.

Our state and national political life is increasing irrelevant to most peoples' daily lives. No one should be surprised that half the voting age population has no incentive to participate in our increasing precarious exercise in self-government. The politicians who control that system have given those people no incentive to participate at the same time treating the system like it was their private preserve to loot for their supporters at will.

This abuse cannot go on indefinitely. The question is when will the backlash come and what will be the consequences.