Even the Oregonian gets it right occasionally. The article mentions the fact that the voters in the David Douglas School District voted down a bond measure to build a new school. It doesn't say what the levy amount was for the bond, but the amount per taxpayer for school bonds is usually very low, given that the repayment occurs over 20+ years. So Opie wants to jump in and give them a new school that they voted against?? This thing sounds like it was given even less thought than the voter-owned elections system. And this is Sten's parting "gift" to Portland?? Eric, please, just send flowers.

A friend and I were discussing this and it reeks of opening the door for a "noble cause" so that precedence is set and then the flood gates are open for the UR funds to be shifted around to the favored few in other cases. Its the familiar "for the children" to get something changed that would allow the further diversion of TIF tax dollars that should be going to fund schools and social services.

It's time to declare the Pearl a victory over blight and pay off the crushing debt that was incurred to yuppify it.

Would it scramble the universe any more than does "revenue bonds" which purport to make a future appropriations choice way ahead of its time? Is there any revenue, under state law, that is excluded from this odd -- wholly arbitrary -- game?

Revenue bonds cannot and do not "make future appropriation choices". In Oregon, those choices are made by the Budget Committee of the jurisdiction. A Budget Committee can choose NOT to appropriate spending for repayment of revenue bonds. Of course a whole undersireable series of events ensue from defaulting on bonds. It is still, however, a choice that remains in the hands of the Budget Committee each year - whether or not to make those bond payments.

Dear Oregonian,
Cracks in the cosmos? A scrambled universe? Careful, you'll pull a hype muscle. Okay, I see how it happened. Satellites got you thinking about space, right? Well, as long as we're trying to be clever, we just had a satellite falling out of orbit that had to be shot down by a missile. Couldn't we have gone with that? Instead we get an orgasm reference from a movie, and a Robin Hood reference from folklore. Why not stick with the space imagery? It sounds ridiculous when you bounce around to other topics - the editorial version of a mixed metaphor.
As far as your actual point: I always get suspicious when we become too high-minded to help a lower class neighborhood, and then let far more dubious breaks for the wealthy slide by with little more than an encouraging push. Wait, let me put that in space lingo for the Oregonian editors: You strap on booster rockets to payloads for the rich, while this - even if your reasoning is valid - gets the overly dramatic Mission Abort. Portland, we have a problem.

Quite an conundrum, eh? Spend tomorrow's tax collections today, then work backward to find some "rational" explanation and cram that explanation into the statutes . . . for no other "rational" public purpose than to escape the clear unequivocal constraints in the constitution. (For the time being the court finds it acceptable.)

Now let's give a try at terms of pay to be paid in the future but not reducible to a known quantity at the time such pay is "negotiated." (Fits squarely into the constitutional standing/controversy prerequisite that an issue not be based on speculative future contingent events.) Like, if OIC controlled investments totally tank, what is left of any "obligation" ("moral" or otherwise) of the taxpayer to insure against loss the private investment choices (characterized as retirement so as to prevent a run on the bank) for an exclusive subset of state citizens/residents? (This one gets a bit trickier in the court setting, where they try to apply rationals that work well in a pay-as-you-go context instead to an investment bank context where they look like they belong in outerspace.)

Cosmic, man. Where the use of the word by the O is itself wholly arbitrary. Sten's folly, in the O's world view, is not the mechanism but the intended spending/"investment" choice.

Ben Canada resurfaces at an ironic time (link is above or search AP):

Other states have taken steps to curb big payouts to departing superintendents.

Last year, for example, the Oregon Legislature passed a law preventing the deals, after several school administrators collected large sums of money upon leaving their jobs.

"I was tired of hearing about school superintendents walking out with a ton of cash, and, not only cash, but some of them were walking out with gifts like automobiles," said the bill's sponsor, Oregon Sen. Vicki Walker, D-Eugene. "It's very difficult to get folks to want to agree to a tax increase when they see money go out the door for work that is unearned. That's what is so frustrating about it."

Walker said her bill, which severely limits buyouts, was prompted in part by the departure of former Portland, Ore., Superintendent Benjamin Canada, who departed with a $260,000 package in 2001.

Canada, now associate executive director for district services at the Texas Association of School Boards, said districts could save money and avoid turmoil if they outlined terms for severance when drafting a superintendent's contract.

"You need to be thinking about the end in the beginning," he said. "We talk about the 'ouch factor.'"
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Ouch indeed, municipal pain is just beginning.