Oregon editorial roundup

The Oregonian, on allowing locals to decide on tobacco taxes:

Feb. 7

We're not prepared yet to conclude that voters in Multnomah County should approve a cigarette tax increase to raise millions of dollars a year to help pay for local health and human services programs.

We are already convinced, though, that Multnomah County and its voters should have the right to make that decision.

The Legislature is considering Senate Bill 1042, which would grant cities and counties the authority to raise local taxes on tobacco. As it stands, the state is the only government jurisdiction in Oregon permitted to adjust and collect tobacco taxes.

That's just fine with those who produce and sell tobacco. It means they only have one taxing entity to resist, and that situation has helped keep Oregon's cigarette tax, now $1.18 a pack, below the national average and some 85 cents a pack below the tax in neighboring Washington. In 2007, the tobacco industry and retailers combined to spend $12 million on a campaign that led to the defeat of a state cigarette tax increase to fund children's health insurance.

However, the prohibition on local cigarette taxes is not fine with cities and counties such as Multnomah, which are required under Oregon law to provide many public health functions, but are prevented from using all available revenue sources to pay for them.

Multnomah County is pushing the Legislature for the authority to pursue a 25-cent per pack local tax on tobacco. It faces a deep structural deficit in its health and human services budget and has reduced spending for nine consecutive years, in good times and bad. The local cigarette tax would raise between $7 million and $9 million a year, according to Commissioner Deborah Kafoury, who testified in favor of SB1042 during a Senate hearing Friday.

Again, we need to hear more of the arguments for and against a Multnomah County cigarette tax before we take a position on the proposal. Retailers raise legitimate concerns about such a tax driving smokers to stores in neighboring counties, hurting grocers, markets and other stores in Multnomah County. There also are questions about how a local tax would affect cross-border sales from Washington, and whether that would reduce essential funding for the state health plan.

But as a matter of government responsibility, cities and counties and their constituents ought to have the authority to look at the facts, consider how tobacco taxes fall disproportionately on low-income people, and decide for themselves whether to raise taxes on tobacco and other products.

On Friday in Salem, opponents of SB1042 warned again and again that tobacco taxes are a declining revenue source, and that further increases in cigarette taxes would dampen cigarette sales and reduce tobacco tax revenue.

Well, yes. But falling tobacco revenue means lower cigarette use, which means better public health and reduced costs for health providers, including Multnomah County. In the end, that may be the best argument for the bill giving cities and counties the right to set their own tobacco taxes.

The Register-Guard on embracing online education and schools:

Feb. 7

Oregon is having a hard time deciding how, or even whether, to integrate virtual charter schools into its systems of funding, standards and accountability — systems developed when few imagined schools as anything other than places where students gather each day in a classroom led by a teacher. Oregon's attitude should be one of openness and experimentation, because one of the few certainties about this matter is that virtual learning won't go away.

Part of the state's difficulty stems from a commendable determination to be careful with taxpayer funds and protective of children's educations. Part of is rooted in a less-commendable desire to protect the established model of education.

In virtual schools, students mostly study at home by following online curricula, communicating with teachers and classmates via e-mail or video links. There are obvious cost advantages: Virtual schools require no buildings or buses, and the self-guided nature of some curricula makes larger class sizes possible for certain subjects. There are challenges as well, notably the limited face-to-face contact with teachers and peers.

This type of education may look like a niche alternative today, a hybrid of home-schooling and brick-and-mortar schools suitable for students who aren't comfortable in either. But the line separating virtual schools from others is blurring. Much of education in any setting already has a virtual component; it's difficult for any student to succeed without access to a computer outside the classroom. All education is coming to rely heavily on ever-more-powerful technology and steadily improving online curricula. A near-exclusive reliance on virtual schooling will be embraced by increasing numbers of educators, students and families. Schools, like other institutions, must either adapt or be left behind.

In Oregon, adaptation has been slow. In 2005, the Legislature required that at least half of the students enrolled in online charter schools live within the sponsoring district. The requirement all but eliminates online charters' advantage of being free of geographical limitations. The rule has been waived for the two oldest and biggest online charters, the Scio-based Oregon Connections Academy and the Oregon Virtual Academy in North Bend, but the waivers are temporary and the schools' enrollments have been capped. Students need their home district's permission to enroll in a virtual charter, and some, including the Eugene School District, will not grant it.

Oregonians have an interest in making sure that they get their money's worth from these schools, and from the others that would pop up if geographical and numerical caps on enrollment were lifted. Charter schools are eligible to receive 80 percent of state per-pupil funding through eighth grade, and 95 percent for high school students. Given the schools' near-absence of capital costs, the potential for profit or savings is large. Publicly supported online schools should also be expected to deliver the same or better educational results as other schools, which means ensuring that teachers are qualified, curricula are comprehensive and administrators are accountable.

Achieving those goals isn't easy, but Oregon does not appear to be moving forward. An example of official hesitation came in the current state legislative session. The Oregon Virtual Academy has 80 students in its current eighth-grade class, and sought approval of an amendment that would have allowed the school to negotiate with the state Department of Education for the addition of a ninth grade. The amendment was rejected, which means those eighth-graders can't continue their educations in the school they have chosen.

While Oregon gropes for a way to accommodate or restrict online charters, children's education is being affected. A suitable regulatory framework must be devised. But the real choice for public schools, and for Oregonians, is between riding a wave of great and gathering force, or being engulfed by it.

The Mail Tribune on the conflicts between state's land-use planning and farming:

Feb. 7

Oregon's land-use laws are worthwhile when they achieve their intended purpose: to encourage growth in and around cities and discourage sprawl that replaces farmland with subdivisions. But sometimes, the reality of commercial agriculture conflicts with the ideal, and some flexibility is called for.

That's the intent behind changes State Rep. Peter Buckley, D-Ashland, is contemplating to help the Rogue Valley's pear industry survive and prosper. Buckley is already taking heat for his willingness to work with orchard companies to allow some orchard land to be designated for future growth near Rogue Valley cities.

Supporters of Oregon's land-use planning laws are sincere in their desire to preserve farmland, but in this case, adhering to the letter of the law could well have the opposite effect.

The valley's major pear producers — Harry & David, Associated Fruit and Naumes Inc. — are in a bind. They still operate orchards on the outskirts of Medford, Phoenix and Talent, but those orchards are aging and are not capable of producing the high yields per acre today's pear market demands.

In addition, housing growth already has encroached on those properties, creating conflicts between residents and commercial orchard practices such as spraying and spring frost protection. The orchardists would like to plant new orchards on available land farther away from urban areas. But the old orchard land is not valuable enough to allow them to sell it or to borrow against it to purchase new property. Planting new orchards is expensive, and requires capital the orchardists don't have.

They want to see some of the land designated for future growth, thereby raising its value and allowing them to move their operations to more rural locations. Participants in the Regional Problem Solving process, designed to plan for future growth, elected to exclude some of these aging orchards from that designation, despite requests from the pear industry. Their reasoning was that farmland should be protected as long as possible.

If this land were suitable for some other high-value agricultural purpose, that would make sense. But it's not.

Soils and microclimates that favor pear trees often are not suitable for wine grapes, for instance. The land could produce hay or be used for pasture, but not at a profit. An analysis by the economic consulting firm REMI Northwest concluded that the land now planted in low-yield orchards would likely become unprofitable pasture or "hobby farms," while the valley's economy would suffer from the loss of the commercial pear industry.

Some of the increased land value would allow orchard companies to pay off debts, which is a primary concern for Buckley, and rightfully so. Harry & David, for instance, is saddled with debts incurred by Wasserstein, the East Coast venture capital firm that borrowed heavily in order to buy the company. Allowing out-of-state speculators to pay off their debts by paving over farmland in Oregon isn't likely to sit well with Oregonians.

Buckley is suggesting rules that would require orchard companies to reinvest a significant portion of the increased land value in new plantings.

Nothing is likely to be decided on this issue in the current, four-week legislative session. Buckley says he plans to start the discussion now with the goal of introducing legislation in the 2011 legislative session.

The dilemma facing pear growers is an example of one-size-fits-all land-use rules that conflict with the realities of the agriculture industry. Oregon lawmakers — and land-use planning advocates — should carefully allow some flexibility in the law, or face the real prospect of destroying the agriculture industry they're trying to protect.