Oregon School Boards Association

[July 27th, 2005] In playwriting, "the fifth business" refers to a character who, though not a prominent hero or villain, is essential to the plot's final outcome.

So it is that with the tragicomedic drama of this year's Legislature coming to a close, we recognize the quiet but crucial role of this week's Rogue: the Oregon School Boards Association .

To set the stage, consider that Oregon schools rank nationally near the biggest in average class size and the lowest in school days. And a tentative deal announced Monday in Salem that sets the state's K-12 education budget at $5.24 billion falls below what schools advocates say is needed to maintain even the woeful status quo.

The numbers in those negotiations might have been higher, except the influential OSBA came out earlier this year for a plan by House Speaker Karen Minnis-for even less funding for schools.

The position of Minnis, a conservative Republican averse to additional spending, is not surprising. But why would a key pillar of the education lobby sign on?

Here's one likely reason: OSBA makes more than $2 million a year, some 60 percent of its budget, by selling health insurance to individual school districts-and a bill pushed by Sen. Ryan Deckert and Kulongoski would take that business away. So OSBA has joined forces with Minnis to block the Deckert-Kulongoski plan.

Reports done in Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Michigan, as well as here in Oregon, have backed the Kulongoski-Deckert approach, which would set up an agency to save up to $100 million a year by eliminating school districts' administrative duplication and hefty brokerage fees.

OSBA claims those studies are all flawed. And the group's lobbyist, John Marshall, denies any quid pro quo. In discussions with the speaker, he told the Rogue Desk, such a deal was not "either implied or inferred."

It appears, then, that Deckert is doing Marshall a favor, because if OSBA were not in the insurance business, no one would suspect its motives-or question its role behind the scenes.