Isaac Laquedem

The United States has 5% of the world's people, but produces 25% of its ...

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has a series of posters up at the transit station serving Reagan National Airport.  They say: "Welcome to America, home of 5% of the world's people and 25% of the world's prisoners."  Here's a picture of the same message, on a billboard.  I especially like the juxtaposition with the Statue of Liberty.

Washington's dysfunction starts with its escalators

Allowing that Congress doesn't run the transit system in the District of Columbia, it still surprises me that in the relatively modern subway system of our nation's capital, most of the escalators I encountered don't work.  I did see one that was actually running, and another being repaired.  I'd like to imagine that the government is encouraging transit users to stay fit, but the real reason is that Metro can't afford to repair them.  Metro pays $51,000/year per escalator for maintenance, or about $30 million in total.

A year ago, when about 60 of Metro's 588 escalators were out of order, Metro brought in an outside consultant.  The consultant's recommendations apparently didn't help; by February 2011, 88 escalators were out of order.   Today that number stands at 90.  The problem is chronic enough for Metro to have a web page that lists the elevators and escalators that are out of service.

Now consider the broken windows theory of policing.  The broken windows theory, first advanced by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, posits that when damage from petty vandalism, such as graffiti and broken windows, isn't repaired promptly, vandals do more damage and petty crime increases in the area.  Put another way, people who see that their neighborhood isn't being maintained stop caring about it, and some join in the destruction.

Our senators and representatives inhabit a city where the public escalators serve as the broken windows.  They don't apparently care about repairing the system that their employees use to get to work, and so it doesn't surprise me that they don't collectively care about repairing their own dysfunctional workplace.  I don't want to stretch this theory to mean that Congress would behave better if Metro's escalators all worked, but I don't think it would hurt either.

The Rules Committee asks the legislature to plug a PERS loophole

Having beaten up on the Interim Committee on Rules recently, I thought I should offer it a compliment.  Today's compliment relates to House Bill 2447, introduced without a particular sponsor.  It amends the definition of "final average salary" for the Oregon Public Employees' Retirement System to exclude unusual amounts of overtime.  Given the touchy subject matter -- pensions for public employees -- I can sympathize with why the Rules Committee hasn't attached anyone's name to this measure.

Here's how it works.  Under ORS 238.005, a retiring employee's annual benefit is based on the employee's average salary and benefits for his or her final three years of public employment.  "Salary" includes overtime compensation.  Some critics say that certain public employers load up employees who are nearing retirement with overtime assignments, so that their final three years of income are artificially inflated, and they get a higher retirement benefit as a result.  HB 2447, if enacted, will require PERS to exclude from an employee's final three years of income any amount of overtime that exceeds the average for that employee class. What the average is will be set by PERS.  PERS may set different averages for different parts of the state.  For example, if PERS finds that police officers in the Portland metropolitan area work an average of 50 hours of overtime a year, then retiring police officers in the metro area will be able to count only 50 hours per year of overtime pay when they figure their average pay at retirement.

This is a small reform that is long overdue.  If passed, it's also likely to spark a lawsuit, which the drafters apparently expect; they've conferred original jurisidiction for any lawsuit on the Oregon supreme court, and have instructed the court to move the case to the head of its docket. 

Isaac celebrates Tax Day 2011

Tax Day was three days late this year, thanks to this April 15 being a legal holiday in the District of Columbia.  Our mostly annual celebration of Tax Day, itself a little late, features as is customary a selection from the works of A.P. Herbert.  This year's selection expands on our 2007 commemoration, and comes from a case entitled "Wear and Tear," in which Mr. Herbert's literary creation and alter ego, Albert Haddock, an author, argues that he should be entitled to take depreciation deductions similar to those that a soap manufacturer enjoys, because his body and brain are his factory, and depreciate (wear out) if not regularly renewed and refreshed.  This extract comes from the judge's opinion, as quoted by Representative Eugene J. Keogh of New York on the floor of Congress in March 1954:

Mr. Haddock asks for a declaration that he is, and has been for some years, entitled to certain allowances of deductions for income-tax purposes under the heading of (a) expenses and (b) wear and tear of machinery and plant; and on the assumptino that he is right he claims that a considerable sum is owing to him in respect of past years in which the Commissioners [of Inland Revenue, the British equivalent of the IRS] have refused to grant him such allowances.

Mr. Haddock appears on behalf of the whole body of authors, artists, and composers, and the position of a large number of creative brain-workers will be affected by our decision. * * *

As to wear and tear.  One of the constant disadvantages of the author's trade is that he is a one-man business, at once his own employer, designer, technician, machine-minder, and machine.  Once the soap manufacturer has equipped and organized his factory he may relax; a week's holiday, a month's illness will not suspend the output of his soap or the growth of his income. But when the author stops, the machine stops, and the output stops. * * * Here is one more reason why a hundred pounds earned by the author should not be treated and taxed on the same terms as a hundred pounds accruing as profit to the soap manufacturer.  Yet, says Mr. Haddock, since this is done, let it be done thoroughly and logically.  The author's machinery and plant are his brain and his physique, his fund of inventiveness, his creative powers.  These are not inexhaustible; they are seldom rested (for the reasons given above); the strain upon them increases as the years go by, and in some cases, I understand, is aggrevated by late hours and dissipation.

Under this head Mr. Haddock has repeatedly appealed for relief in respect of sums expended on doctor's accounts, on sunlight treatment, on nourishing foods and champagne, and upon necessary holidays at Monte Carlo and Cowes.  The Commissioners have refused, and I find that they were wrong.

The self-employed owe a debt of gratitude to Congressman Keogh, and through him, to A.P. Herbert, for Mr. Keogh used this argument and others to persuade Congress to authorize retirement plans for the self-employed, known to this day as Keogh Plans.  Mr. Herbert himself stayed on mostly good terms with the Inland Revenue, even though he poked fun at the agency throughout his long and exuberant writing career.  As he observed in another of his cases, "There is no law against ridiculing the income tax."  And a good thing, too.

Our customary jovial support of the welfare state will return tomorrow.

The Oregonian: Man bites dog

No canines in this story, but it's almost as newsworthy: The Oregonian actually met a streetcar it didn't like.

The Feds won't regulate CO2 from biomass plants. Should Oregon?

Here's another interesting measure, also from our good friends on the Oregon House Interim Committee on Rules.  It's House Bill 2440.  Just one page long, it exempts from state greenhouse gas regulation certain air contamination sources.  The sources it would exempt are those that use "straw, forest slash, wood waste or other waste from farm or forest land, nonpetroleum plant-based biomass or animal-based biomass" to produce "thermal energy, electricity, or biofuels." ("Thermal energy" is a fancy word for "heat.")  The state could continue to regulate greenhouse gases from these sources only to the extent that the federal government requires it to do so.  The federal Environmental Protection Agency has put off for three years regulating greenhouse gas emissions from biomass plants, leaving the field open for the states.

The measure itself defines emissions from these facilities to be "carbon neutral emissions," regardless of whether they are actually carbon-neutral, a fine bit of artful phrasing.

The first question to ask when you read legislation is cui bono - who benefits?  I thought of several industries that might support this measure.  For example, a plant that produces and burns natural gas from cow manure would be protected from state greenhouse gas regulation.  So would a plant that burns forest slash, if it uses the energy to boil water or heat a building.  So, also, would woodstoves in private homes.  It's a measure that may have a worthy purpose, but that provides one more reason for presession measures to say who (not just what) proposed them, and at whose request.

Teach your children Chinese, say nine Oregon legislators

Amidst its serious work, the Oregon legislature offers some amusing entertainment, principally in the variety of measures that its members propose.  I haven't solved the mystery of House Bill 2442 (the one that would prohibit political parties from using the word "Independent" in their name, and which no one will claim credit for), but in this weekend's ramble through the bills I came across HB 2010, introduced by Matt Wingard of Wilsonville and co-sponsored by seven other representatives and one senator.  This bill would require any public school that offers two or more foreign languages to include Mandarin Chinese as one of them.

Representative Wingard and his colleagues undoubtedly have a worthy motive for introducing this bill -- Oregonians of the future will be better able to negotiate for rare earth metals if they can speak Chinese -- but they're overlooking two points.  First is that, given Oregon's location and demographic trends, our children would get more practical use out of learning Spanish.  (A friend recently learned the hard way what 'piso mojado' means.)  Second is that we're not funding many of our public schools at a level to support teaching two foreign languages.  I'd be more impressed with the legislature requiring public schools to teach Chinese if it were willing to give the schools the money to hire the teachers. 

A little free advice for law-abiding employees of Reed College

I read with great interest the Oregonian's recent coverage of rapes and sexual assaults at Reed College, and the school's response to complaints by women students.  The article said that Reed discouraged women who reported being sexually assaulted from reporting the crimes to police, but urged them to present their complaints to student-run honor boards.

A school such as Reed, that attracts a diverse group of brainy intellectuals, must get a number of 17-year-olds among its entering classes.  Chapter 419B, Oregon Revised Statutes, requires certain groups of people, including all school employees, licensed professional counselors, psychologists, regulated social workers, and physicians to report suspected incidents of child abuse.  "Child" means an unmarried person under the age of 18, and "abuse" includes rape, sexual abuse, and unlawful exposure to a controlled substance that subjects a child to a substantial risk of harm to the child's health or welfare.

So if a 17-year-old Reed student tells an employee of the college that she has been sexually assaulted, Reed's employee has a duty to report the charge to the police and not just to the honor board at Reed College.  A Reed employee who knows of a charge of sexual assault but fails to report to the police has committed a Class A violation (ORS 419B.010).  I'm assuming that a college is a "school" -- ORS Chapter 419B requires school employees to report suspected child abuse but does not define "school" -- but as Reed's website describes Reed students entering from high school and going on to law school or medical school, Reed must consider itself a school also.

There's unfortunately no similar statute to protect 18-year-olds at Reed, but it sounds from the newspaper reports as if the school should ensure that its employees know their legal duties to protect minor students.  As I read the statute, they also have a duty to report to the police information that 17-year-old students are in the presence of illegal drugs, but I doubt that Portland's finest have enough officers to deal with the influx of calls that would result.

 

TriMet to expand rail service north, east, and south

TriMet announced this morning that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire substantially all of the rail and facilities of the Union Pacific Railroad.  TriMet will electrify the lines and convert them to light rail service, to be integrated with the existing system.  The Yellow Line will be extended from the Expo Center to run north through Vancouver and Olympia, to terminate at the Seattle's King Street Station, with service planned to start in 2015.  By 2018 the Blue Line will be extended from Gresham to run east through Pendleton, Ogden, and Denver to terminate in Kansas City, and by 2021 the Green Line will provide service south through Eugene, Sacramento, and Oakland to end in Los Angeles.  Additional light rail lines, tentatively named Crimson, Magenta, Maroon, Brick, Carmine, Scarlet, Lenin, and Reed, will open on the UP tracks from 2021 through 2030 and serve Spokane, Reno, Lubbock, Chicago,  Salt Lake City, El Paso, New Orleans, and the Pearl District. 

"This is an exciting day for TriMet," said general manager E.M. Frimbo on Friday, "and should easily quadruple our ridership by the time the Scarlet Line opens in 2027.  We are optimistic that the Department of Transportation will approve our request for a 95% matching grant to finance track and station improvements, new rolling stock, public art, and two more fare inspectors."  Sale of unused portions of the track will also help finance the expansion, as will the increased payroll tax revenues from the ballooning of the service district. 

To denote its expansion from 3 counties into nearly 1000 counties, TriMet will change its name to KiloMet.

Transit-oriented businesses cheered the announcement.  "Now we will have direct-to-tram service from twelve of the 309 largest metropolitan areas in the country," said OHSU's director of marketing.  Sources close to developer Homer Williams said that the eastward expansion will open up opportunities for transit-oriented development of the existing railyard at Hinkle.

However, TriMet's move drew some early criticism, directed at the effects on existing bus service and the fare structure for the new trains.  A TriMet spokesman who requested not to be identified said that non-peak service on bus lines numbered 2 and above will be eliminated to provide operating funds for the new light rail lines.  Zoned fares will also be a problem.  "How can a fare machine issue tickets for 300 different zones?" a critic asked.  "And what wild expansion comes next -- Japan?"  In response, TriMet confirmed that plans for the Pacific Ocean Passage - Tokyo-Astoria Rapid Transit ("POP-TART") have been indefinitely shelved.