Kicking a hornets' nest.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Judging by the response, the Lane County commissioners who voted for an income tax last Wednesday might as well clean out their desks, go home and forget about ever coming back to work. Maybe they should forget about ever leaving their houses. The mail and comments posted on www.registerguard.com/talk are running about 10 to 1 against the income tax and the three commissioners who voted to enact it. But even those who oppose the tax should put aside the torches and pitchforks.

The most common line of attack against the three tax supporters - Bill Dwyer, Bobby Green and Faye Stewart - is that there must be some part of "no" that they don't understand. It was just last November that Lane County voters defeated an income tax proposal. Now the board has adopted an income tax anyway. The board's majority is accused of defying the voters' will, rendering elections meaningless and courting a modern-day Boston Tea Party.

Set aside the fact that the tax adopted Wednesday is substantially different from the one proposed last fall. More important is the fact that the commissioners themselves were elected, and they were elected for the purpose of doing what they think is best for Lane County and its people. Wednesday's enactment was clearly against the three commissioners' political interests, as they knew it would be even before the vote kindled a firestorm. It's worth pausing to examine what it is that led Dwyer, Green and Stewart to risk political suicide in favor of a course they felt would advance their constituents' interests.

Those interests are threatened by a financial crisis more serious than the one the county faced in November. The prospect is receding that Congress will renew a law that has pumped $20 million a year into Lane County's general fund. The loss of federal funds greatly compounds the problem last November's tax proposal was designed to address - an underfunded public safety system squeezed by slow-growing property tax revenues.

Under these circumstances, the course the board chose is not a good one - it's just less bad than the others. Waiting for Congress to make its intentions clear, as Commissioner Peter Sorenson proposed, risked leaving the county in the same situation as now, but with less time to respond. Putting the tax on the ballot in May would have brought the county to the brink of the financial cliff, with little time to prepare a campaign or make adjustments in case of failure. Waiting for a vote in November would mean blowing a hole in the county budget and hoping it could be repaired later.

Doing nothing would be worst of all. An estimated 300 county employees would be laid off. Because 70 percent of the general fund goes to support public safety programs, the most essential of the county's services would be affected: already inadequate prevention, policing, prosecution, incarceration and supervision services would be further curtailed.

Three members of the board decided they could not stand by and let this happen. They acted well within the scope of their authority under the county charter. People are under no obligation to agree with the commissioners' action, and the referendum provides an avenue to block it.

But in an age of poll-driven, focus-group-tested politics, people should find something admirable about officials who see a problem coming and try to fix it before it hits - that is, leaders who actually lead.