Family Feud

[January 31st, 2007] It wasn't exactly a midnight massacre, but a stealthy move in the dying hours of the 2005 legislative session stripped two of Oregon's most powerful offices of budget authority. Now they want it back.

"This is not the right way to fix a perceived problem," says Kate Richardson, chief of staff to Treasurer Randall Edwards.

A pending bill this session would restore the power of Edwards and Secretary of State Bill Bradbury to submit their offices' budgets without the governor's oversight. Edwards and Bradbury were unhappy to find out four months after the 2005 session ended that their offices had lost that authority.

The dispute creates an odd situation in which the two elected Democrats are in effect fighting with Oregon's top elected Democrat, Gov. Ted Kulongoski, over who has final say in the budgets of the Treasury Office (about $13.5 million in 2006) and the Secretary of State's Office ($26 million in 2006).

"This puts our budget under the governor's control," says Bradbury spokeswoman Mary Conley. "Bill was elected by the people, not the governor."

Before the then-chairmen of the Joint Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Wayne Scott (R-Canby) and Sen. Kurt Schrader (D-Canby), added the change into one of the Legislature's "go home" bills in 2005, the treasurer and secretary of state enjoyed a statutory exemption from submitting their budgets to the governor's staff for review and approval.

In practice, explains state legislative fiscal officer Ken Rocko, the treasurer and secretary of state submitted budgets; the governor then typically submitted different numbers for each. That left the Legislature and the legislative fiscal office to sort out discrepancies, which Rocko says was unnecessarily time-consuming.

Rocko explains that the last straw came last session when the Secretary of State's Office submitted a convoluted budget package that included a new proposal for funding the state archives.

"This takes away all of our flexibility," counters Conley, adding that the last-minute change in 2005 was coupled with another bill that year prescribing in far greater detail how Bradbury's office spends its money.

Although the change won't necessarily cost either office money, Richardson says it defeats the separation intended by the Oregon Constitution.

"We're trying to protect the integrity of this office," Richardson says. "This governor would not do so, but it gives future governors a chance to fool with elected officials' budgets."

Rocko says the proposed rollback of the changes is a bad idea. "This isn't political," Rocko says. "It's about accountability."