Happy Monday Everyone:
With the presidential election going around its final turn I'd thought I'd turn my attention to the Oregon election. We have some pretty important state initiatives/ballot measures to ponder. The measures range from marijuana to taxes to gambling. The DPO has recommended the following yes and no votes.
Democratic Party of Oregon Recommendations
Vote Yes
Measures 77, 78, and 85 have the endorsement of the state wide leadership.
That is a yes vote on giving the governor and the legislature additional authorities in case of disaster (77), a clean up of the language/grammar in the Oregon Constitution (78), and devoting the corporate kicker refunds to K-12 education (85).
Vote No
The leadership opposes a constitutional amendment to prohibit real estate transfer taxes (79), casinos (82 and 83), and the phasing out of estate/inheritance taxes (84).
You Decide
On the measures about marijuana and prohibiting commercial non-tribal gill netting there were no recommendations. There was no consensus on these two measures thus no recommendations.
From the Oregonian
Today's Oregonian had an editorial recommending a no vote on all three tax measures (79, 84 and 85) which did make sense to me. Essentially the tax structure in the state needs a review and overhaul and it should be left to the governor and legislature to to that. This would leave everything on the table for negotiations and compromise. There were two articles in this morning's Oregonian I found interesting. The first was the above editorial on taxes the other was an article about agriculture and Columbia River water. We in Union County don't use Columbia River water except for electrical power (somewhat) but the Columbia Basin is in our state legislative district and our state senate district. So the article isn't a moot point for us. Go to www.oregonlive.com to get the article.