Plan to reform tax-levy rule heads to ballot

Measure 56 would ease double-majority requirement but stops short of overturning it

By Steve Law

The Portland Tribune, Sep 11, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (12 Reader comments)

Portland School Board member David Wynde says the double-majority rule forces officials to put tax measures on the ballot before they’re ready or forces them to delay proposals for funding.

L.E. BASKOW / TRIBUNE FILE PHOTO

Democracy, they say, is for those who show up. But not when it comes to local property tax measures.

A Portland parks levy failed in 2002 despite getting 70 percent voter support.

A Portland Community College bond fetched 59 percent of the vote in 2000 but went down. If 4,000 more people had cast ballots and voted no, the measure would have passed.

Since Oregon voters inserted the “double-majority” provision into the state Constitution in 1996, measures raising property taxes require more than 50 percent voter turnout and more than 50 percent of the votes to pass. The exception is measures on general-election ballots – Novembers in even-numbered years – when turnout is highest.

On Nov. 4, voters will consider a proposal to loosen the double-majority rule. Ballot Measure 56, submitted to voters by state lawmakers, would exempt property tax measures on any May or November ballot from the turnout requirement.

Since 1996, 49 local tax measures have passed muster with Portland-area voters but failed because fewer than half the registered voters cast ballots. Beaverton and Oregon City school districts each lost two bond measures. North Clackamas and Gladstone school districts and Mt. Hood Community College lost one.

West Linn lost seven different levies due to the double majority, and North Plains lost five. Statewide, 169 tax measures have fallen victim to the double-majority rule, including 38 fire district measures and 17 library levies.

Elected leaders, educators, librarians, firefighters and others complain that the double-majority provision hamstrings public services and lets nonvoters determine the outcome of measures.

Most are supporting Measure 56, which would enable governments to avoid the turnout requirement on four out of eight elections held every two years, instead of just one.

“Once every six months, that’s a lot of tax elections,” said Jason Williams, executive director of the Taxpayer Association of Oregon. Before 1996, “they were holding property tax elections when no one was showing up,” Williams said.

Measure has supporters, foes

Bill Sizemore, who crafted the double-majority rule as part of a broader 1996 tax-cutting initiative, Measure 47, said that one provision has saved citizens billions of dollars in property taxes.

“Measure 56 is not tinkering with the double majority, it’s effectively repealing it,” Sizemore said. “There will be hundreds of millions of dollars of tax increases hoisted on the backs of property owners even though only 10 percent of the voters approve them.”

Portland School Board member David Wynde said the original argument for the double majority – that local governments could sneak through tax measures when few people were watching – is invalid. Since the advent of vote-by-mail in 1998, everybody gets a ballot at home, and the envelope clearly states there’s a tax measure at stake, Wynde said.

In effect, he said, the double-majority provision only gives school districts and other jurisdictions a “once-every-two-years opportunity” to raise funds for public services. Wynde and other elected officials complain that forces them to rush tax measures to a general election ballot before they’re ready, or to delay needed funding proposals.

Because of the turnout requirement, Portland School Board members likely will wait until November 2010 to put a pending school-building renovation bond before voters, unless Measure 56 passes, Wynde said.

Low voter turnout stops levy

The double-majority provision also brings some unintended consequences.

When the Gladstone School District was able to pass its failed school bond at the next general election ballot 18 months later, taxpayers got socked for much-higher costs of school construction, said House Majority Leader Dave Hunt, D-Gladstone.

In West Linn, some opponents of a police levy urged others to refrain from voting, because it was easier to kill the measure by lowering voter turnout.

“People went out and said, ‘don’t vote, don’t vote,’ because they didn’t want to reach that 50 percent,” said Patti Galle, a citizen leader of the levy campaign. “That was their way of stopping the levy, and it was sad.”

More than 78 percent of West Linn voters approved the May 2007 public safety levy, but turnout only hit 42 percent. “It is just almost impossible to get that many people out at these elections,” Galle said.

West Linn wound up imposing new surcharges on residents’ utility bills for streets and parks, to free up city money for police services. So residents wound up paying anyway, but not getting a tax deduction for the extra payments, Galle said.

Similar measure rejected

Oregon voters rejected an earlier ballot referral by the Legislature that would have overturned the double-majority provision. But that was back in 1998, when the provision was still relatively new, and the measure failed by a slim 49-to-51 percent margin. Lawmakers say the new proposal reforms the double-majority rule without overturning it.

The political tide appears to be turning against the double-majority rule as more communities are affected.

Thirteen of the 29 House Republicans voted with the chamber’s Democrats to put Measure 56 before voters

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