National Context and The Passage of Measure 5
Inspired in part by Proposition 13 in the neighboring state of California, Oregon voters placed limits to property tax in the Oregon Constitution in 1990 with the passage of Measure 5. A majority of voters were frustrated by the increase in property taxes attributed to rapidly rising property values in the Portland area. Some attribute this home price inflation to an influx of population in the Portland metro, which is surrounded by an urban growth boundary that limits the supply of developable land. Others observe that the situation was much more complex, pointing to the loose monetary policy pursued by Alan Greenspan, including adjustments to the CPI that measured homeowners equivalent rent instead of actual home price, a recovering economy in the region, and numerous other factors. Measure 5 shifted the burden of school funding to the state (which levies an income tax) and away from counties.
Measure 5 also equalized school funding throughout the state, which meant that schools in rural areas benefited while schools in Portland saw budgets reduced. The budgetary restraints caused by Measure 5 were responsible for funding cuts that were made in public schools and universities budgets.
Read more about this topic: Oregon Tax Revolt
Famous quotes containing the words national, context, passage and/or measure:
“The word which gives the key to the national vice is waste. And people who are wasteful are not wise, neither can they remain young and vigorous. In order to transmute energy to higher and more subtle levels one must first conserve it.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“The hippie is the scion of surplus value. The dropout can only claim sanctity in a society which offers something to be dropped out of—career, ambition, conspicuous consumption. The effects of hippie sanctimony can only be felt in the context of others who plunder his lifestyle for what they find good or profitable, a process known as rip-off by the hippie, who will not see how savagely he has pillaged intricate and demanding civilizations for his own parodic lifestyle.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“Must we to bed indeed? Well then,
Let us arise and go like men,
And face with an undaunted tread
The long black passage up to bed.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
“Both the man of science and the man of art live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it. Both, as a measure of their creation, have always had to do with the harmonization of what is new with what is familiar, with the balance between novelty and synthesis, with the struggle to make partial order in total chaos.... This cannot be an easy life.”
—J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967)