Kitzhaber Launches his Budget Plan

Paulie Brading

Kitzhaber is correct. Oregon cannot keep spending our limited resources on the same approaches. He spoke at a news conference yesterday in Portland presenting his bold ideas and recieved almost instant push back from Bob Tierman, state Republican party leader and from the Dudley campaign.

Dudley's spokesman lamely chided Kitzhaber for not being in lock step with current Governor Kulongoski's "reset" budget. Tierman pulled out the predicatable. "thieves and thugs will wonder the streets if we recuce prison spending."

The money quote comes from Kitzhaber. "Dudley's narrative that we can just whack public employees, keep us safe, take care of the vulnerable and educate our kids is poppycock."

Among Kitzhabers ideas are reducing the rising costs in social services and health care; asking all state agency directors to resign and only hire those who will reduce costs, create a single budget and school board for education at every level and rank state services in order of priority, cutting from the bottom of the list first.

I wrote earlier about Dudley's strange proposal to provide college scholarships to Oregon's top 5% in a time of a serious economic crisis. I noted Oregon needs to stop investing in Oregon's problems and start investing in Oregon's future and that means eduction, reductions in public services, looking at state worker compensation and more.

It is time to face Oregon's reality. Kitzhaber is willing to address the "new normal". We face difficult prioritorization and rethinking of our assumptions about state services.

John Kithaber is in Medford today. I can't wait to congratulate him for his courage to address this state's downward spiral.

By Paulie Brading Sept. 08, 2010