Having covered the political scene for decades, I see a historical connection between Oregon’s 45-year-old income tax “kicker” and the recent, unsettling news that the state accidentally gave 1,259 non-citizens the right to vote.

The question that connects the two issues is whether Oregonians trust their state government. Legally, only U.S. citizens may vote.

The kicker was nowhere near the agenda, nor was it even mentioned, during the House Rules Committee hearing Wednesday on the voter fiasco.

However, the kicker consumes more than its share of political talk behind the scenes. Republicans swear by it. Some Democrats (including ones currently running for higher office) and their political allies would prefer to end the kicker as we know it, shifting more of the refund to lower-income folks or spending the money on state services.

Any such change would require voter approval. That won’t happen unless and until Oregonians feel greater confidence in state agencies.

A lesson from history can be found in why the 1979 Legislature created the kicker: It was a curb on state government spending and growth — an antidote, or so legislators hoped, to the anti-government sentiment flowing north from California. Taxpayers and corporations would get money back if specific state revenues were more than 2% higher than projected.

The kicker was part of wide-ranging reforms billed as “the largest tax relief package in Oregon’s history.” The voters gave their blessing in 1980.

Then voters kept going, further whacking government spending. 

The Legislature eventually trimmed or ended much of the 1979 tax relief, but not the personal income tax kicker. It currently is projected to give Oregonians a nearly $1 billion refund in 2026.

Which brings us back to government accountability and agency performance, an area that Gov. Tina Kotek has prioritized with decidedly mixed results.

The voter-registration blunder stemmed from clerical errors in the Oregon DMV’s automatic voter registration system. Elections officials might not have discovered the problems were it not for an independent think tank that posed routine questions.

Wednesday’s questioning of state officials was at least a small step in taking responsibility and rebuilding credibility.

“This issue will have no impact on the 2024 election. We were able to catch the error in time,” testified Ben Morris, chief of staff in the Secretary of State’s Office, which includes the Elections Division. “Ballots going out to voters in 2024 will only go to eligible voters.

“Non-citizen voting in Oregon and around the country remains exceedingly rare.”

Still, Oregon can no longer claim a perfect record in that regard.

The hearing, which lasted nearly an hour, was wonky, low-key and soft-spoken. There were pointed questions, but the majority Democrats and minority Republicans avoided turning it into a partisan free-for-all.

House Majority Leader Ben Bowman, D-Tigard, who chairs the Rules Committee, opened the meeting by saying, “I want to be very clear from the outset that this hearing is not about scoring political points.”

Bowman said he was channeling past wisdom from Rep. Mark Owens, R-Crane: “We will probably disagree today, and that’s OK, but it’s important that we disagree respectfully and that we follow House rules.”

Officials said so few ballots were cast by the possible non-citizens that they did not affect election outcomes. Laura Kerns, Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade’s communications director, followed up with me by email Thursday:

“To be clear, we still cannot say definitively those with a voting history were not citizens at the time they voted. We are currently in the middle of a multi-step process to figuring that out.

At this time, we are still looking into 7 people. These are individuals who were accidentally registered through the DMV’s clerical error and have a voting history. We had earlier shared it could have been as many as 9 or 10 people, but the (county) clerks’ due diligence has found mitigating factors that lead us to believe these people were citizens all along, so now that number is 7.

And we aren’t done. Our due diligence is ongoing.”

House Republican Leader Jeff Helfrich, R-Hood River, and his colleagues promised that Republicans would introduce bills in the 2025 Legislature to tighten the election process.

Given the Legislature’s power imbalance, those bills won’t go anywhere unless tailored to meet Democrats’ desires.

Meanwhile, any Democrats’ bills to rework the kicker also will disappear, because they’re not a priority for the Democratic leadership.

The legislative reality is most bills die along the way, but lawmakers introduce as many as they want.

One example from Wednesday is Rep. Rob Nosse, D-Portland. He serves on several House committees, including Rules, and chairs Behavioral Health and Health Care.

He told me that he already had 54 personal bills in the works — on a variety of topics — as well as roughly 25 health committee bills primarily dealing with Medicaid and the Oregon Health Plan’s coordinated care organizations.

Nosse is just one of 90 legislators.