Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Republican Jim Oakley of Pleasant Hill is challenging Democrat Phil Barnhart for state House District 11 in the Nov. 7 election.
Oakley is a self-employed consultant working with electric utilities. He worked for electric utilities his whole life, including Pacific Power and Light and then with Emerald Public Utility District for 22 1/2 years. He left work with the Emerald PUD in December and has been consulting since then.
He has an associate’s degree from Oregon Institute of Technology, 1969, and a bachelor of science degree from Linfield College in business management, 2002.
He has been a volunteer with the Pleasant Hill Rural Fire District and has served on its Board of Directors.
Oakley said he has been looking at running for this seat for quite a while. He was going to run this year but “a whole bunch of things were going on and I decided not to.” He decided to run when his party asked him to.
“My opponent seems to have one point he wants to stress all the time, and that’s schools,” Oakley said. In the meantime, teachers come to Oakley and say that Barnhart hasn’t done anything other than join attempts to raise taxes and keep the corporate kicker.
“Time and again those taxes are turned down by voters,” he said.
District 11 is really elected by four precincts, including the University of Oregon and the south hills of Eugene, Oakley said. Rural voters are not represented well. He has lived in rural areas while his opponent lives in the south hills area.
Those are the two main reasons that he decided to run, he said.
“We both know that one representative by himself isn’t going to do anything,” Oakley said. “Hopefully we can work together. When Republicans and Democrats see a problem, “what can we do to talk together and get some sort of solution.”
He wants to work with both sides of the aisle, he said. Borrowing a common saying, “If we keep doing what we’ve always done, we’ll keep getting what we’ve got.
“If we continue with tax increases, they’ll continue to get voted down.”
Oakley said he is a lifetime Oregonian raised in Grants Pass. He has lived in Lane County for more than 20 years, and he understands the district, its people and its problems.
“I would very much like to represent them,” he said.
The top three issues facing the state are taxation, public safety and education, Oakley said.
Public safety
“Public safety is the big one,” he said. “We have the lowest number of state police per capita in the nation.”
Criminals get arrested, “get booked and never see a cell because there’s not room,” he said. “We need to give public safety a higher priority.”
It can be funded without going to higher taxes in a state that’s already among the highest-taxed states in the nation, he said. It just means changing priorities, making public safety a higher priority.
Lane County is looking for an income tax to help support law enforcement, Oakley said. The tax increase doesn’t really support law enforcement though. Rather, it frees up money for other services, and that upsets people.
“Why is it we have to go out for an income tax to pay for law enforcement?” he asked. The priority for public safety is low on the list, thus it’s under-funded.
“That priority needs to come up so it’s funded to an adequate level,” Oakley said. Likewise, state police are not funded at an adequate level.
Taxation
One of the things his opponent keeps saying, in the primary voters’ pamphlet, is that he was among those responsible for keeping the corporate kicker, Oakley said.
The kicker is money refunded to taxpayers when income tax revenues are more than 2 percent higher than projected.
“If one of the things we’re saying is you deserve this money back, but we’re going to keep it, does it mean existing businesses won’t expand?” Oakley asked. “I don’t know, but it’s certainly a possibility. Our economy is recovering much slower than the rest of the nation.”
There are new jobs, he said, but it’s slower.
“We need to present that Oregon is a business-friendly state,” he said. “Economically, I don’t think it’s a wise move at all to keep it (any kicker money).”
To eliminate it might be a different story, but that could have repercussions like elimination of jobs, he said.
“I don’t want us to create new taxes,” he said. Instead, the legislature should look at every single aspect of government and ask whether it’s being run efficiently.
In Lane County, convicts are fed on $1 per meal through a contractor, he said. The state pays some $2.50 per meal, prepared by state employees. If the state could feed its inmates on $1 per meal, multiply it by three meals a day and thousands of inmates, that’s more money in the budget without raising taxes.
“I think the voters are telling the legislature, we don’t want more taxes,” he said. The state needs to prove to voters it has an efficient government before going out for more, and then “if we can go in and make a case, here’s why we need this, then maybe the voters” will support taxes.
Education
With education funding, “there’s stories on both sides,” he said. “There’s the stories of the pizza cutters in Beaverton…. So I think the key to this is we need this to be audited. We need a way to go in there and say where is this money going.”
Oregon spends more than almost all other states on education, Oakley said. “Where is it going? I think we need to be able to look at it, justify it and see where that money is going.”
Higher education has been cut tremendously in recent years, he said. He is open to providing more money to higher education, but he would like to look at it, audit it and justify it firest.
“Just because someone says I need more money is not justification,” he said.
Oakley also would like to look at the way charter schools work, he said. “Part of the problem I have with charter schools is they’re administered by the school district.”
Districts look at them as competition but have control over them, he said. “They’re set up to fail…. The whole system was set up kind of flawed.”
Then again, parents seem to like them, he said, and it sounds like they are doing a good job.
“I think you take a look at every one of those schools and say, is this worthwhile? Is it worth the money? Is it worth the effort?”
If they’re doing a good job, and test scores support it, they should continue, but he doesn’t think they should be under the supervision of the districts.
The state’s school report card system also needs another look, Oakley said. “I think it needs to be adjusted. One of the things that happens is they take the previous two years and average that and you’re compared to that average.”
If a school was high two years and then again a third year in terms of performance, the first two years might show as exemplary, but the third will show up as satisfactory although the school was among the best for two years.
The school did not get enough improvement points to keep its exemplary score, he said. He does not want to throw the system out. There needs to be a way to look at the schools and see how they are doing.
Rainy day fund
Oakley thinks the state needs to set up a rainy day fund, he said. “I think it just needs to be done through the budget.”
The legislature needs to figure out how large to make it, 5 percent or whatever it needs to be, and then budget for it, he said. It needs to be set for emergencies only, by law. To access it, the state should go to the people for permission.
“One of the things I’m big on is we need to go to the people and say, here’s why we need a rainy day fund,” he said.
Illegal immigration
“The state shouldn’t (provide) state services to illegal immigrants,” Oakley said. “Illegal means illegal.”
The state cannot afford to fund services for illegals, nor should it give licenses to them, he said. There should be a way to check for duplicate Social Security numbers and catch illegal immigrants trying to get licenses.
But agencies cannot even ask whether someone is illegal, he said. The same people arguing the state does not have enough money are often the same as those arguing “we have enough money to serve illegal aliens.”
Speed limits
Oakley said he would support raising the speed limit on the Interstate to 70 mph based on the information he has right now.
Field Burning
Oakley said he would need more information before deciding how he might vote on a field burning ban.
Field burning often drops a cloud of smoke on Sweet Home during the summer.
“I’m suspecting the answer would be, no, they don’t need it,” he said. “There’s far fewer acres that can be burned now than there were a few years ago. As far as I know, grass seed acreage hasn’t changed that much.”
Those farmers who do not burn are doing something else, he said, but he would need to hear from grass seed farmers before making a decision on the issue. “Maybe they’ve got a justification for needing that.”