Isaac Laquedem

Isaac's take on Measure 41 (income tax deduction): No

Oregon taxpayers may claim a credit against their state income tax obligations for each personal exemption on their state return.  In 2005, the credit was $154 per person; the number is adjusted each year for inflation.

Measure 41 would remove the tax credit and replace it with a personal exemption similar to that for our federal income taxes: each Oregon taxpayer could deduct from Oregon income an amount equal to the taxpayer's federal exemptions.  In 2005, this was $3,200 per personal and dependent exemption.  The effect is to reduce the income tax of most taxpaying households by about $140 per person per year.  The official estimate of fiscal impact on the state is to reduce state income tax revenue by about 6%, or about $386 million in fiscal year 2007-08.

The state can't print money to cover deficits.  Anyone who proposes cutting state revenues by $386 million should propose $386 million of spending cuts to go with the tax reduction.  Schools?  Prisons?  Parks?  Unidentifiable "government waste"?  Without knowing what spending cuts are tied to the tax cuts, we have only half the story.  I am voting no on Measure 41.

Isaac's take on Measure 40 (court districts): No

The seven judges on the Oregon supreme court and the ten judges on the court of appeals are elected statewide.  (They're actually mostly appointed by the governor and then elected without opposition, but in theory they're elected statewide.)  This measure would divide the state into seven supreme court districts and five court of appeals districts, with each supreme court district electing one justice and each court of appeals district electing two judges.  The justices and judges would have to be residents of their district when elected or appointed and remain residents of their district during their term of office.

The proponents' main argument is superficially appealing. They point out that the 17 statewide justices and judges live in only four of Oregon's 36 counties.  They then say that this means that 32 counties aren't represented on the supreme court or the court of appeals.  (The four lucky counties, according to the arguments in support of Measure 40, are Multnomah, Marion, Linn, and Jefferson.)

If we're going to measure diversity by geography, let's take a look at the figures.  The four represented counties are Multnomah (first in population according to the 2000 Census), Marion (fifth), Linn (eighth), and Jefferson (twenty-sixth).  Washington, Clackamas, and Lane Counties, the second, third, and fourth most populous counties in Oregon, have more than 1,100,000 residents (more than 30% of the state) and no appellate judges.  The 18 counties east of the Cascades have 450,000 residents put together and currently have at least one appellate judge, from Jefferson County.  Washington County has 445,000 residents and no appellate judges.  (All these figures are as of the 2000 census.)  The fact is that there aren't enough residents east of the Cascades to make up even one supreme court district, and this measure is thus no guarantee that the supreme court would always include an ultramontane jurist.

A more interesting solution to promote geographical diversity (not that anyone's asked Isaac) would be to require the governor, when appointing a judge or justice to fill a vacancy, to appoint someone from a county in which no sitting member of that court lives.  But that's not the measure on the ballot.   I recommend voting no on Measure 40.

Isaac's take on Measure 39

Measure 39 (restricts condemnation for private parties): Yes, with an asterisk

This measure has two parts.  One part is good, but not perfect, policy.  The other part has a flaw which in my view does not justify voting against the measure, but which the legislature should mend in 2007.

The first part prohibits a public body (meaning a unit of state or local government) from condemning private property if the public body intends to sell or lease the property to some other private party.  Condemnations for roads and utilities are exempt.  Condemnations of dangerous or contaminated property are exempt.  The public body is allowed to lease portions of the condemned area to retailers who will serve patrons of the public building.  (For example, the measure would not prohibit Multnomah County from condemning land for a new courthouse and then renting part of the courthouse to an operator of a coffee shop.)  This measure is a response to the 2005 decision of the United States supreme court in Kelo v. City of New London, in which the court said that a city could constitutionally condemn private houses to hand them over to a private developer for an economic development project.

Most jurisdictions don't abuse their condemnation power.  Unfortunately for them, the excesses of a few governments have poisoned the well, and this measure is the result.  Governments should interfere in the real estate marketplace with caution, because mostly they don't do it very well.  I support this part of the measure, which has no fiscal impact on the government.

The second part of the measure changes one rule of condemnation.  Under current law, the public body that wants to condemn your property must make you an offer before filing suit.  The government can continue to make offers during the case up to the point of trial.  If the jury awards you more money than the government's best offer made at least 30 days before the trial starts, then the government pays your attorney's fees and costs.  Most condemnation cases settle without trial.

The measure would change this to say that the government pays your attorney's fees and costs if you're awarded more money than the government's initial offer (made before the government files suit).  The government's concern is that because property values tend to go up, most owners will want to go to trial because by the time of trial their property will be worth more, and they'll be awarded more than the government's initial offer, and they'll get their attorney's fees and appraisal costs paid by the state.

I think this concern is logical but overblown; however, the proponents have a point.  Under current law, the government could offer (say) $10,000 for your property before suing, then propose paying $20,000 in the suit, then make you a settlement offer of $50,000, 31 days before trial.  By that time you've already run up attorney's fees and appraisal costs to get ready for trial, and you're stuck deciding whether to take the $50,000 and pay your costs (which leaves you, net, with much less than your property was worth) or to go to trial and gamble on not being awarded more than $50,000.  The government ought to be encouraged to make a fair offer at the start and not on the eve of trial.  I think back on the delightful case of the government (TriMet) that offered $500 for a desirable corner property in downtown Portland, only to have a court award more than $300,000 to the property owner.  It seems reasonable to me for the legislature to modify this to say that the property owner recovers costs only if he or she is awarded more than the initial offer plus interest at 9% per year, so that inflation by itself doesn't encourage people to take bad cases to trial, but the need for this small fix doesn't merit opposing the measure.  I intend to vote yes on 39.

St. Philip Neri leads an Ask.com searcher to Isaac

Most of the searches that send people to this small corner of the blogosphere have to do with personalities of Portland and Oregon.  A few are for things that I would never think could lead people here, including one today for "St. Philip Neri on his deathbed."  Although I've referred once to the parish of St. Philip Neri, served by a landmark church on SE Division Street, I can't think of any useful information this blog would have on the topic in question.  In this instance the saint, through the agency of Ask.com, has led one of his followers astray.

Leslie Roberts defends herself, and Lawyer W. objects

Other races may be more important, but the contest for the seat on the Multnomah County Circuit Court formerly held by Youlee You is the most interesting.  For one thing, it's seldom that a race stirs up much attention when only one candidate's name is on the ballot.  This one's different; it's the race where only one candidate, Leslie Roberts, filed to run against the incumbent (the governor had appointed Ms. You to fill the vacancy created when Jan Wyers resigned this summer).  Ms. Roberts and Judge You were neighbors.  After the filing deadline had passed, Ms. Roberts told the secretary of state's office that Judge You had not lived in Oregon long enough to meet the statutory qualification to sit on the circuit court, and the secretary of state disqualified Judge You from the ballot.  A few days later, she resigned from the bench, leaving the seat vacant and leaving Ms. Roberts as the only candidate on the ballot.

She is not the only candidate in the race, however; an attorney named Charles Henderson has mounted a write-in campaign against Ms. Roberts.  Unusually for a write-in candidate, he has been endorsed by the Oregonian, Willamette Week, and the Portland Mercury.  The endorsements don't question Ms. Roberts' ability, but criticize her for (in the Oregonian's words) "denying voters a real race" by filing to run against Judge You, knowing that her neighbor didn't qualify for the ballot.

Yesterday Ms. Roberts e-mailed 100 friends and colleagues to ask for their support and stating her position that no one, not even an appointed judge, is above the law.  Ms. Roberts' e-mail contains the interesting snippet, which I haven't been able to check out yet, that Ms. You filed for the seat before she was appointed on August 9; that is, she filed to run before she became a judge, and then refiled later so that she could run as an incumbent.

One of the recipients, who describes himself as a longtime friend of Ms. Roberts and her husband, replied that it was wrong for Ms. Roberts to file for what she alone knew was likely to be an open seat.  Because I'm not sure the recipient intended to hit "reply to all," I'll call him "Mr. W."  (The Knower of All Things sent me the e-mails, which I'm sure will be circulating around law offices on Monday.)  Mr. W. suggests that Ms. Roberts commit now that if she wins, she will resign the office and let the governor appoint a replacement who would then run for election in 2008.

Mr. W. is a prominent and successful attorney, but he is overlooking two points.  One is that Ms. Roberts isn't the one who deprived voters of a choice; no other attorney was willing to run against an incumbent judge, even though the incumbent judge was a political unknown who had held the office for only two weeks before the filing deadline.  It's those other lawyers who didn't run that deprived the voters of a choice, not Ms. Roberts.

The other point Mr. W. overlooks is this.  Mr. W. is correct that if Ms. Roberts were to be elected and then resign, the governor would appoint someone to fill the vacancy, and the appointee would run in 2008.  But there's no reason to think that local lawyers would be any more likely to run against a sitting judge in 2008 than they were this year; that is, Mr. W.'s plan won't give the voters a choice.

One of the dirty secrets of the judicial world is that no matter what judges say they will do -- and most, when asked in public, will promise to serve out their terms -- most of them resign so that the governor, instead of the voters, will get to choose their successor. 

I've long thought that judicial vacancies should be filled by election and not by appointment, so that when a vacancy arises the voters would have a real choice and not just a rubber stamp.  The You-Roberts-Henderson election proves my point.

Term limits in Salem: a different idea

From time to time it's suggested to impose term limits on Oregon's legislators.  If the problem that term limits are supposed to solve is that legislators get captured by lobbyists, then maybe the answer is to impose term limits on the lobbyists.  They can have eight years in Salem, then two years away, though not perhaps in Maui.

There once was a blogger named Isaac . . .

Thanks to Jack's posting of the Willamette Week limerick contest for tonight's Candidates Gone Wild event, I sent a few in.  Last week I received the happy news that one of mine was chosen as a finalist, so I'm off to sneak in the back of the hall and hear it read by Storm Large.  It's not quite as prestigious as being considered for the Nobel Prize for literature, but as I age my ambitions have become more modest.

The City is going to set Third and Alder right, or maybe straight, depending on which lane you're in

In January I wrote about how the City of Portland created a dangerous intersection at SW Third and Alder by painting new stripes without completely removing the old stripes, so that drivers in the right lane can go straight or turn right onto Third Avenue, but drivers in the center lane think they can still turn right, across the path of other cars that go straight.  (Today I saw a driver in the center lane run a red light to make this dangerous and illegal turn, managing to scare traffic in both directions at once.)

The Knower of All Things reports that the City has belatedly realized that it's created a traffic hazard, and it's going to restore the old alignment before Thanksgiving.  Much as I'd like to claim the credit, I think the City figured this one out without me.

Verizon catches itself spamming its customers

I switched my home e-mail to Verizon a few weeks ago.  Verizon has an efficient spam filter, in some ways too efficient, because it occasionally blocks messages that I send home from my work e-mail, something that I've complained about to Verizon.

My opinion of Verizon's spam filter went up, however, when I went through the spam box and discovered that it had routed to the spam box not only the bulk e-mails promising to lengthen this and strengthen that, but also an e-mail offering extended internet service, sent by Verizon itself.  Now that's service.

The brighter side of North Korea's nuclear test

A Laquedem friend, possibly quoting from one of the wags on television, said that the good thing about North Korea's nuclear test this week is that the Beloved Leader Kim now has one less bomb than he had last week.

That's good news for Seoul, Pusan, or Tokyo; we just don't know which one yet.