1. Do you support requiring autos sold in Oregon to meet California's tougher clean-air standards?
The Governor had to sneak through the back door to please the extremists in the environmental community. I’m sorry that he felt that this was necessary.
2. What specific changes would you make to improve the quality of Oregon's public colleges and universities?
The OUS and Oregon’s Community College system both need to be given their entrepreneurial wings allocating their resources where their resident experts believe that the limited public resources should be spent.
3. What changes, if any, would you make in Oregon abortion law?
Do you support Measure 43 (parental notification)?
I support parental notification. I do not believe that scarce state resources are best employed in providing family planning in the form of taxpayer-financed abortions.
4. Would you support an increase in the cigarette tax to pay for health programs?
No. Squeeze the balloon in one place and it pops out in yet another. Smokers will change smoking preferences and buying patterns which engenders greater enforcement problems and less net state-tobacco-tax revenues.
5. Would you support reduction, elimination or other reform of the corporate income tax kicker?
No. If corporations want to (voluntarily) contribute their kicker to some specific, valid public purpose, offer them an added tax incentive to do so.
6. Do you favor changes in land-use law as defined by Measure 37? If so, what?
We need to approve real estate “lots-of-record” partitions and return private property rights to Oregon land owners. The control over secondary lands needs to be returned to local government. We continue to artificially inflate Oregon housing costs by limiting the amount of dirt which should otherwise be made available for housing developments.
7. Do you support or oppose Measure 48 (state spending limit)? Why?
To the extent that there is no artificial ratcheting-down of state expenditures during economic downturns, I support a constitutional spending limit. Presently, Oregon State government is both spending and revenue limited. The statutory spending cap can be flexed in times of need, while the constitutional revenue limit (the “kicker”) keeps excess revenues in the pockets of the working, taxpaying citizens.
