PORTLAND, Ore. — The 26-day Portland teachers strike finally ended this week, but the incident is casting a long political shadow. The labor dispute sparked accusations that Oregon lawmakers didn't allocate enough money to the State School Fund, and after Portland schools reopened, Gov. Tina Kotek was quick to call for a reexamination of state funding mechanisms for education.
It's a conversation that intersects with another current financial hot topic in Oregon politics: the record-breaking $5.61 billion kicker rebate set to go out when Oregonians file their taxes next year. With the teachers strike shining a spotlight on the financial struggles of Oregon's education system — and with plenty of other state agencies strapped for cash — the enormous pending kicker has prompted renewed questions about whether those billions of dollars could be put to other uses.
One KGW viewer put it bluntly in a recent email: Why are Oregon taxpayers getting a record-setting kicker refund while schools and parks and ODOT are underfunded?
THE QUESTION
Could Oregon's 2024 kicker money be reallocated to fund other priorities such as education?
THE SOURCES
THE ANSWER
No, Oregon's 2024 kicker can't be altered. The legislature does have the power to reallocate kicker funds, but it has to be done before the end of the budget cycle, which means it's too late to make any changes to the upcoming kicker.
WHAT WE FOUND
After she announced her school plan at a news conference this week, Kotek was asked about the possibility of using some of the upcoming kicker money to juice the education budget. She said she'd be open to that conversation in the future, but shot down the idea of taking money from the current kicker round, arguing that Oregonians are counting on the tax relief next year.
She also noted that the kicker is enshrined in state constitution, which hints at the other reason why the upcoming rebate won't be altered: the window to make any changes closed five months ago. To explain that deadline, it's worth briefly recapping the history and rules of the kicker.
The kicker was introduced by the legislature in 1979 and voters added it to the Oregon Constitution in 1999. The law requires the state to develop an advance estimate of how much revenue it will bring in during each two-year budget cycle. If actual revenue exceeds the estimate by 2% or more, the difference must be sent back to taxpayers after the budget cycle ends.
There are technically two separate kickers for personal and corporate taxes, but voters amended the constitution again in 2012 to redirect all corporate kicker dollars to K-12 schools. That ballot measure passed with nearly 60% support, but efforts to get a similar constitutional amendment onto the ballot for the personal kicker have so far struggled to find traction.
Voter approval is required for any permanent changes to the personal kicker, but the current law does give the legislature the power to make one-off reductions or suspensions. Lawmakers can pass an emergency bill to retroactively raise the original revenue estimate for a given budget cycle, but crucially, it has to be done before the end of that budget cycle.
The upcoming kicker is from the budget cycle that began in July 2021 and ended in June 2023, so any changes would need to have been made back during this year's legislative session, before the end of the budget cycle on June 30. At this point, it would be constitutionally impossible to change the 2024 kicker even if lawmakers wanted to do so.
One-off suspensions are also a heavy lift because they require a two-thirds vote from both chambers. The legislature has only used its kicker suspension powers twice — once in 1991 for the personal kicker and again in 1993 for the corporate kicker, in both cases due to budget problems from Ballot Measure 5, according to a 2004 report from the Legislative Revenue Office.
But while it's too late to change the current kicker, there is a way to send at least a little bit of those dollars to public education: Individual Oregonians have the option to donate their kicker rebate to the Oregon State School Fund (or an approved charity) when they file their taxes, although if goes to education they must donate the entire amount.
