In Conversation With Jeff Golden; Ron Saxton - Republican

Hello I'm Jeff Gold and welcome to in conversation. Southern Oregon Public Television has invited all five contenders for governor of Oregon to join us in conversation. Tonight we meet Republican candidate Ron Saxton. I think what's disingenuous is telling people that you can have all the things you want and just trust me we're going to raise taxes to pay for all of it. But the voters want to hear is how are we going to take the money that's they're going to take all this new revenue that's already coming in and manage it to accomplish our goals. Stay with us for in conversation with our guest Ron Saxton Republican Party candidate for governor of Oregon in conversation with Jeff Goldman is made possible by the Ashland in Klamath Falls branches of the American Association of University Women and the patrons and producers of society. It runs in conversation.

Wonderful to be here today. Would you tell us something please about your background your experience and your qualifications to be governor of Oregon. Well the background I'm a fourth generation Oregonian grew up in Albany. My dad's family were dairy farmers over on the coast. My mom's family were farmers an area near Pratham in the Willamette Valley. Grew up here I've had a lifetime of being involved in the state in civic activities community activities business school things that I think are the real world experiences that prepare me to do this. As you look around the States about 20 newspapers have looked at the two of us and majority of them have concluded I think I bring the qualifications to be the governor we need. I like to start off by talking a bit about taxation which seems to become kind of the center of the of the race in the last in the ending days of the campaign. Generally speaking you had said that the governor is too attached to the idea of new taxes a variety of new taxes and fees and that you there are some programs you'd like to

fund better but you think you can do it with fish and she's the governor in turn says that's disingenuous. You're not being specific and in fact you can't do what you want without new taxes that's that's a condensation for voters who are trying to figure out who to believe on this what would you say specifically about how you would fund the new programs or the expanded programs that you want to without new taxes. I would say that when the governor says I can't fund them just by efficiency. That's both true and it's distorting what I've said. Of course you can't fund everything with efficiencies but let's take them in sequence. It's criminal not to find the efficiencies out there to spend money that's being spent inefficiently is wasteful and whether it's five dollars or five hundred million dollars we shouldn't be doing it. The governor himself said four years ago there's no state agency that couldn't be at least 5 percent more efficient than it is. He then appointed a task force of about 18 people to go out and identify those efficiencies. They issued a report issued a report you can get it it's a publicly available document. He has not implemented any of their

recommendations. So first are there efficiencies. Yes. Is it important to accomplish them yes. Is it enough money to do everything we want to do. Course not. You have to go to the second piece of it. Revenues in the state are growing they're not stagnant they're growing legislative Revenue Office says that revenues will go up predictably about 12 percent per biennium that is faster I'm sure than most of the listeners family incomes or business incomes. The problem we have as a state is there hasn't been any good judgment any good management of how to spend that growth. So the spending goes up this legislative session that starts in the spring will have two billion dollars more to spend than last time. So my point is a good governor a governor paying attention to be able to find those savings the 5 percent the governor talked about for whatever percent happens to be out there get the most value we can out of those dollars. Take this new two billion dollars of revenue and really get some value out of it. Third thing I just want to add to you. The governor has called for a variety of taxes but the problem is he called for all of those taxes in his first

term and he didn't get any of them when he asked the voters for an income tax they said no twice. When he called for keeping the kicker a sales tax those didn't go anywhere in his campaign actually renounced those after a while his calls for taxing auto insurance and so forth he tried those before he didn't get them. So I think what's disingenuous is telling people that you can have all the things you want and just trust me we're going to raise taxes to pay for all of it. But the voters want to hear is how are we going to take the money that's they're hardly going to take all this new revenue that's already coming in and manage it to accomplish our goals. Do you have a couple specific ideas of where significant money can be found in efficiencies. So I think that you've got a couple different kinds of things. Department of Human Services 10 billion dollar agency biggest one out there it's had four executive directors under Kulongoski which is to say centrally no management. The Oregonian had an article a week or so ago said the staffing levels of the kind of administrative levels to levels above the direct service are twice as much as they are in other states with similar programs. It's a

large bureaucracy the governor's been unwilling to take it on. We ought to be able to streamline that. You take the more kind of routine activities out there that one of the governors Bacchis talks about the Yellow Pages test if you can find a service in the Yellow Pages that government shouldn't be doing it unless it can do show it does it cheaper more efficiently What have you. So I would take all of those the printing the vehicle maintenance the data processing the payroll functions government agencies spend a lot of money doing those things they do and with their government employees in their government offices we ought to be testing is that the most efficient way to do that. I believe the answer is No. What is your central question of deciding whether a function should be provided by the private or the public sector. Well you've got the front line duties the police officer the schoolteacher so forth I think those ought to be public employees I think we ought to have you know the public teacher the public law enforcement when you get behind that who's doing the cleaning of the office building who's doing the you know the auto maintenance who's doing the printing. Central purpose ought to be how do we stretch the taxpayer

dollars. And I'll give you an example when I chaired the Portland School Board I went in and I said we were running the warehouse we were running it with school district employees you know so forth and I went in and said. Can we save money if we contracted out the warehouse and we put out a proposal and we got back proposals from Warehouse operators to operate for 3 million dollars a year Wes than we were paying. And there was some debate about do we want to do that are we changing these jobs or what are we doing to the warehouse. But then we went to the fundamental question. Would you rather spend that 3 million dollars operating the warehouse the way we've historically operated or would you rather save the money and spend it by hiring more teachers for the classroom. Suddenly it was an easy question everybody said With course we'd rather spend the 3 million dollars in the classroom. Would you imagine that there might be 10 percent 20 percent 30 percent fewer public employees in Oregon in a section of ministration. I suspect I don't think it's anything that dramatic I think it's certainly some fewer but the truth is what's happened in some of the states that have done it is governments actually figured out how to bring its costs down. When

a couple states they've looked at going outsourcing the printing and suddenly the Government Printing Office has said well maybe we can get more efficient and do things differently. There would be some reduction Ive soom from the kind of competition I'm talking about. But ultimately you would have I think a trading so you have fewer people doing the government payroll you have more people in the classroom or give you another example we've talked about. Most of what counties in the state that have large jails Multnomah I mean but not when I'm inside Washington Clackamas to shoots so forth they contract out their food service. I just put out a bid hire you know a food service company to provide the meals. The state of Oregon uses government and government cooks the government kitchen and government procurement rules. I think the cost of the government food preparation is about three times as much as the counties. The state argues with me and says No it's only double but you take that the dollar a meal difference it's about a dollar a meal for the counties it's about $2 a meal for the state dollar a meal three meals a day 365 days a year. Thousands of prisoners that

incremental savings could hire a lot more police officers. So to me it's not necessarily that you have fewer public employees it's that I'd rather have more police officers and fewer government cooks in that example. Let's before we leave taxation looking at the core structure of organ taxation with no sales tax a higher than average income taxes are considerably higher than average property tax. Is there anything you'd like to change as governor in that basic triad. I'd like to lower all of them but you know the governor of Arizona who is a liberal Democrat governor this last year of lowered their income tax 10 percent and put a three year freeze on property taxes. Our goal ought to be grow the economy to where we can reduce the taxes. If you don't we're going today is sixth in the country and our unemployment rate we have the sixth worst unemployment rate the average income of an Oregonian is below average. If you just made both those average we became average in our unemployment rate and average in our incomes you would generate so much more revenue.

We could talk about funding the programs we want and cutting taxes. So I'm not calling for a tax cut I'm telling you that if we have a goal the goal ought to be how do we reduce the tax burden on people not how do we increase it. But you have some questions about growth in Oregon. You're sitting in one of the fastest growing areas in the state. A lot of concern about traffic in particular that's the the fastest symptom that's changing. We have the projections of many more vehicles on the road. We are cutting back at the present time on public transportation. Where do you see this going as governor what do you think you would do specifically about congestion and transportation issues. Well there are two or three things I don't think we should be cutting back on public transportation public transportation makes a lot of sense and we need to make sure we have viable systems for it. I think you have to look at the interrelation of some of the policies we have as a state. Our government today tends to look at things and Cyrus you talk about land use then you talk about transportation

then you talk about housing policy then you talk when the truth is they all relate to each other. And so the kind of land use policies that we have. We need people to live in particular places I think they cause greater traffic on the roads you get more pollution more traffic congestion because of decisions to segregate. I think we've got to take a more integrated look at those things how do you how do you deal with minimizing the traffic congestion minimizing the environmental impact and using land use policies that let people live closer to where they were going to talk more so specifically about land use policies it's where you can land useful is very much up in the air right now there's a lot of effort to reduce the stringency of urban growth boundaries. And it relates very much to the issue we're talking about right now. What kind of leadership would you show in terms of direction on land use planning. I think we need some leadership literally to save the land use System. The truth is that the public has lost most of their confidence and that the public passed a measure seven four years ago which would have ended the land use System. They passed measure seven which made no changes to it.

The public's watched its conference. I'm here to tell you I believe in a land use system I think we ought to have the system with its core state role with you know with the core values of it which are preserved farmland preserve natural resource land cause cities to grow and fish ways so your way out sewers and streets and so forth and efficient way. The problem is this system's been implemented so that the public's lost confidence because it leads to nonsensical conclusions you know best farmland gets a shopping center built on it but it can't really grow anything it's designated farmland how do you restore that confidence. So I'm over last week in Union County you know northeast Oregon Union County size or Rhode Island has fewer people in it than you know live in a modest city around here. They couldn't get land use approval to build a 200 acre distribution facility so the company wept and went to Idaho. You've got to have an approach that says decisions get made in a timely fashion they get made in a way that reflect common sense to people and they get made in a way that still protect those core values we've had. And so. As the

public's been upset is the governor has really ignored those and let two ballot measures come through that people got it. It's time to sit down it's time to sit down with the land use advocates this time sit down with the development people at a time sit down with the county commissioners who are struggling to implement measure 37 and basically have one of those Mahoney a hall summits where I say enough. I'm tired of the competing initiative measures I'm tired of the years of litigation. I'm not going to stand by and watch the whole system thrown out. But we've got to restore some common sense to it if we're going to have people accepting it. There are people in the urban areas the rural areas including county commissioners who say Happy to talk to you but at the end of the day these decisions have to be ours you have to be local. We'll take your your advice and your suggestions but there are decisions local decisions this is really a rule for the state. What would you say to them. Well I think the system we have was adopted years ago and I would still keep as one that has statewide policies and guidelines and rules to be followed and then allows the counties and in some instance the cities to actually implement them but they have to do it within the framework.

The problem we have isn't that there are state wide rules. It's that they're inflexible and don't recognize the differences so that policy that led to a ridiculous result in Union County might have been a policy that made some sense if you applied it in Jackson County I don't know probably if I don't know you know I'm not commenting on that I'm just saying. Part of that state wide approach has to be a state wide recognition that different parts of the states have different situations have different needs have different land use you know realities. And so a state wide approach does not mean identical rules for every county. Are there any other environmental issues that you'd point to as a real challenge for Oregon going forward that you'd like to address as governor. Well I think the biggest issue is environmental slash energy issue it's that we're going you know we import our energy to Oregon we import our electricity from out of state we import our natural gas Oregon is not self-sufficient in any of its energy resources. And. Well it's some people like to talk about an Oregon energy plan the truth is we need a regional energy plan

it's not realistic to think Oregon by itself. Northwest you know Northwest I mean the majority of the electricity in the Northwest comes from the Bonneville Power Administration in that system that's not just the pacific northwest of the United States but British Columbia and their policies there about how that systems operated to maximize the electricity production and still deal with fish policies and water policies so you have that. When you have the development of wind energy you have spent years of my life being involved professionally in wind energy development. It doesn't state lines you've got a lot of wind development along the Columbia Gorge and you put it on whichever side of the gorge is better for placement and for the wind situation. But we've got to be serious about developing renewable energy and we've got to be serious about the fact that it has to be done in a way that's cost effective or it won't work ultimately what would your job as governor be in that context. Well you take something like wind wind raises the same land use issues where can you put windmills people you know they raise land use issues there. They're industrial facilities of some sort the truth. And so dealing with how do we locate them how do we decide how do we integrate them in ways how do we have

government able to make decisions so that the companies investing in those technologies can do it in a timely way. There are a lot of policies there we can do it. You take another one that we've talked about you know the developing of wave energy I think that's a little farther out. But it's an exciting one. I actually staff the first legislative. Hearing on wave energy I did that in one thousand seventy three. It's been a long time that Oregon State's been working on this. But again we ought to be funding the research we ought to be encouraging what ought to be our goal Temporist dollar support for research just as it ought to be our goal. We're going to be a leader in developing these technologies and not only does that help provide our energy but it creates a new industry for it in Oregon is a place that's manufacturing the new and fishnet wind turbines are that's creating the new technology for wave energy. I think it's a great opportunity. You have an extensive background in public education is key through 12 K through university K through 16 getting adequate funds given all things considered in Oregon right now. And how do you determine adequacy.

Well I'd say no but I'd break as they know they're not getting adequate money but I break it into pieces. K through 12 has seen its revenues go up pretty dramatically in the last four years under Ted Kulongoski funding of K through 12 has gone up almost a billion dollars. I don't think we've gotten value for the money but more money's gone in the community colleges and four year schools have actually seen a decline in their funding. So I think they're absolutely we have to do more to certainly media future would that be a higher priority for additional funding from the higher ed absolutely has to have more money. I think K through 12 just two and a Saxton budget you're going to see me putting more money into the entire education continuum. But the point I want to make especially with K through 12 is you can't get from the schools we have to the schools we need just by putting in more money we're putting in a lot of money now. We still have out of 100 ninth graders only 69 will graduate from high school in Oregon. How do you dance quality. You know you take projects like this chalkboard organization looked at it they've come up with a long list of things. Oregon has 40 percent of teachers quit in the first five

years there are things we ought to do about that. One of them one of their recommendations you know better mentoring and such. But another one is change the way we pay I'm starting pay for teachers is terrible. It ramps up on based on seniority. Their recommendation I support is higher starting pay but then make the increases have a merit component people you know pay for pay for performance as you go along. I think that has to do. We're going to state that has serious barriers to lateral entry into teaching. If you're up you know high tech in mathematics or science person and you decide you want to start teaching school you'd like to change career paths you live in California or you live in Idaho or other states. You can do it fairly easily it's a fairly short you know educational requirement to get your classroom credential and you can be teaching. We're going the barriers are terrible you know barriers to entry. So the most important thing in a school is a great teacher in the classroom. We've got to make sure we're making it an attractive occupation that we're helping people succeed and then we're helping in helping keep them in the system.

There are a number of people who are slow to support tax measures and bonds for education because they think teachers are too privileged in Oregon. There's a lot of. I think angry feeling about that in the state. What would you say to those folks. Now most of the teachers I know are doing heroic work. They're out there putting in long hours doing great job teaching our children and they deserve our appreciation. I think where you get concerned by taxpayers is really it's really two things. It's that whole discussion about the retirement system which is you know a major issue for schools the major issue for local governments all around and so you've got frustrated voters there and I I do think we need to address that. And then you've got this sort of public perception that too much of the money goes to administration. And the truth is there is some truth to that and there's some not truth to that. The public I think does not have an accurate sense of what's going on there. And one of the things I've called for is complete transparency in those budgets. This shouldn't be a mystery to anyone where the money goes in a school. You ought to be able to see where every dollar goes and be able to make those judgments about it. So I think there's a public confidence problem

here. And the answer is information. Let's give them information let's be honest and then let's talk about what we can buy with that money and what we can't. I want to ask you about one recent criticism of your campaign with regard to the education issue and as do some television advertising where if I understand it correctly the charge was made that during the. Cool in years performance in K through 12 has dropped or got poor grades and then in the fine print he had it said that the study the statistics were taken from a higher ed study and he took criticism in the Oregonian and elsewhere for not being very straightforward about that. If you do stand by those who answer would you do it differently if you had I stand by that the criticism is on the Oregonian was the criticism of the Ted Kulongoski campaign people criticizing it being it. The two items in that ad that are the source of their criticism do come from a higher education report. But the two categories that were being reported were preparedness for higher education. They were to say items that specifically talked about how prepared were Oregon students to start higher education.

You know that's absolutely a comment an evaluation of how were the students when they came out of the K through 12 system. I think they were perfectly fair and appropriate. I like to know your sense of the governor's job in terms of. Developing family wage jobs you've got a lot of jobs in southern Oregon and too many of them pay wages that can sustain families. So specifically as you can. What's the governor's role in that equation. I think the governor full Porton government doesn't create jobs but government creates the climate where businesses can create those jobs and I think Ted Kulongoski is done a poor job. You know he likes to talk about Oregon being one of the last states to come out of the recession. I don't know I never know why you want to talk about that because that seems to me a point of leadership. But today we're going to has the sixth highest unemployment rate in the country. A week ago they ranked us 9 3 falling back to 6. Gotten worse and so we still have a terrible unemployment problem in this state. When you look at the jobs that were created during his first

term almost half of them were low wage jobs. And so when we talk about how do we create better jobs more opportunities we have to be creating those opportunities for businesses to invest and expand. And I simply don't think we have it. I think because I'm out traveling around talking to businesses their big concern is we don't have an educated workforce that the people who have the educational credentials the educational training to take better jobs we're going to not preparing those. Most of the companies not most will say a lot of companies in Oregon are doing major parts of their hiring out of state when they're hiring people who have college degrees people for good jobs are bringing in people from out of state. So we're not preparing our students for the workforce opportunities. And then I think there are a variety of policies at the state that make it a poor place to make investments and you're seeing companies choose to invest either way. Let's have a really specific policy initiative that you would undertake to improve business climate or meet businesses needs here for family wage. And tell you one government needs to make decisions for what I call the speed of business.

When I was over in Eastern Oregon this week two different counties the county commissioners met with me and talked about businesses they had lost one to Idaho one to Washington. Each instance not because you couldn't find Oregon regulations that would work but because they couldn't get answers in a time line they needed. So outlandish is the biggest one of those siting issues but there are other regulatory issues. And they said they couldn't get Oregon State Government to just to make decisions fast enough Say yes say no but do it in a timeline that these businesses need to have their questions answered so I think there's that absolute commitment that whatever we're going to do let's give answers timely. We can go on and talk about more but I think that's at the top of the list. Let me ask you this there's a widely publicized recent studies that indicate that Oregon may be 50th of 50 states in terms of corporate tax burden. And some people say that shows we have bent over too far to be business friendly at the cost of equity equity and financing state services. Do you agree with that criticism. Now you know I think that's almost funny when you look at it. We're going to down to one

Fortune 500 company. I think Idaho is still up five or six or seven and Washington has a dozen or so we have one. Any notion that this is a haven for for corporations is not held up or not supported by by the evidence that their play pitch is poor the business tax burden could be increased. Well see I think when people talk about business tax in Oregon being low it's typically because the proportion of income that's paid by companies as well because we have so many fewer businesses are so few large or business or I'm not out to raise businesses tax burden I'm out to create a healthy business environment. I run we have about two minutes left. And in those two minutes I'd like I'd like you to let viewers know why they should elect you governor of Oregon. Well there are series of challenges facing our state as we've talked about a few of them today. When you talk about how we treat children there are various grades out weren't in that ad but you know that when the children's organizations gave We're going to deed the other day in how we deal with children's programs. CATO Institute put out a report card the other day gave the state a D and its

financial management practices. We are forty nine in the country in law enforcement per capita down the list of things. There's a lot of wonderful things about our state but there are a lot of things where government simply isn't delivering and spending at our government level is about average in the country. We're not getting is the value for it. So when we look at how I want great schools I'm not in this because I want average or because I want to tear things down. Running for governor because I want great schools I want a great public education system I want a great university system. They ranked forty seventh in our investment. I want public safety that's good today we're in the top five states and larceny burglary car theft. That's not acceptable. So I look at that range that I want to great state that can meet its needs and is as good as the people who live here. And I don't think we have it. And I think we've got great people we've got great ideas what we're missing is leadership. And as I travel around the state everywhere locally elected officials local business people community leaders educational leaders there are a huge number of people out there committed and ready and trying hard to do the right thing. What's missing from the mix is leadership at the

top. And when the governor's unwilling to talk about how to take the resources the state has and get into the classroom get them to the police officer get into the social work we haven't talked about things like mental health or children services or senior services. But they're the same as we're saying we're doing a poor job at prioritizing how we get the services to the needy. And we're doing a job of putting the money into a bureaucracy it is too expensive. So it's about leadership it has to start at the top newspaper after newspaper around the state have endorsed me and they've all really had the same response. Ted Kulongoski hasn't got the job done. We can do better. We think Ron Saxton is the one to do it. Ron Session thank you for spending time with us in conversation. And thank you for stepping up to offer yourself for public service. Thank you very much. Ron Sexton is the Republican candidate for governor of Oregon. Thank you for joining us in conversation. I'm Jeff golden. Good night. In conversation with Jeff golden continues on our website. You can watch the full program again online at a soupy TV does to work on.

In conversation with Jeff Goldman is made possible by the actual in Klamath Falls branches of the American Association of University Women and the patrons and producers society.