Fund Voters' Pamphlet.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Even while facing a stupendous budget-balancing problem, the 2003 Oregon Legislature can point to several important accomplishments. But it erred badly by leaving next year's Voters' Pamphlet in limbo. The Legislature did not provide direct funding for the pamphlet, nor did it pass a bill that would have financed its publication by charging increased fees for candidates and the supporters and opponents of ballot measures. The Emergency Board should rectify this blunder.

The 2002 pamphlet cost about $1.3 million to produce. Secretary of State Bill Bradbury's office requested that same amount for next year's pamphlet.

The Oregon Senate chose to cover the expense through Senate Bill 139, which in theory would have made the Voters' Pamphlet self-supporting. It would have done so by raising the fees candidates must pay to have their photos and promotional material published in the pamphlet. The bill called for the fee for candidates for the Senate to rise to $2,000 from the current $300. The fee for House candidates would have gone to $1,000 from the current $300. The fee that political parties pay to have their statements in the pamphlet would have gone to $3,000 from $600. And the price of a half-page statement in support or opposition to a ballot measure would have risen to $2,500 from $500.

Those are steep increases. But then, the Voters' Pamphlet is the state's best bargain for political advertisers. SB 139 would have tested the market for Voters' Pamphlet space - how many candidates, parties and issue advocates would have been priced out of the pamphlet is unknown.

The Senate passed SB 139 in mid-August, but it ran afoul of some hanky-panky in the House Rules Committee. There, Rep. Dan Doyle, R-Salem, the committee's chairman, decided to stuff the bill with 69 pages of amendments, including changes in campaign finance reporting. Doyle defended his action by saying other lawmakers used the same tactics to combine several closely - or vaguely - related issues into the same bill.

Whether Doyle and his committee colleagues didn't like the fee increases, or whether they genuinely thought they were "improving" a simple bill, they were caught short by the Senate's adjournment within a few hours after Doyle's committee amended the bill. Even if the full House had passed the amended version, it would have been dead on arrival in an already adjourned Senate.

Oregon law requires the production of a Voters' Pamphlet, a staple of Oregon elections for decades. The pamphlet is often unwieldy - in the 2000 general election, the state Elections Division produced a two-volume pamphlet, one for candidates and a separate one for the 26 measures on the ballot. The measures pamphlet had a whopping 374 pages and a record 607 arguments.

With no appropriation from the Legislature and no fee increase bill, Bradbury says his office's reduced budget doesn't contain enough money to produce a pamphlet next year. So he's going to the Emergency Board, which doles out money between legislative sessions, to request the $1.3 million to produce a pamphlet next year. The board should do just that.

Oregonians have become accustomed to the Voters' Pamphlet and deserve to have one delivered to their mailboxes next spring and fall. It's an indispensable source of information about what's on the ballot and how to cast one. The bulk of the Voters' Pamphlet in recent years is evidence that candidates and issue advocates would tolerate substantial fee increases. But that is now a matter for the 2005 Legislature to decide. In the meantime, the E-Board should see that the Voters' Pamphlet survives.