Candidates answer KVAL viewer questions
COTTAGE GROVE, Ore. -- Republican Chris Dudley and Democrat John Kitzhaber were in Cottage Grove Friday afternoon for the Oregon Mayors Association conference. They answered questions from city leaders from around the state.
Thursday, we asked our viewers: what questions do you have for the candidates?
Here are the top three, along with the candidates' responses:
How do you plan on bringing a state that is so polarized back together working towards one common goal?
Kitzhaber: "I think that by demonstrating to people that the challenges that we face today, the discrepancy in our state budget and records that we have affect all of us, directly or indirectly and they can’t be solved unless we take this on directly. I'm planning to use the campaign to bring Oregon together to talk about the shared decisions we’re going to have to make the difficult choices we’re going to have to make—we’re going to have to build a foundation for re-building Oregon."
Dudley: "Well, I think the message first of all, is [that] I'm on the Republican side, but I'm running as an Oregonian and I'm coming from the outside saying, 'we as a state can do better and we need to work together to rebuild this state.' And I think that's clear--that resonates across party lines. And we'll be working together and coming with the attitude that we need to work together and it starts with communication."
How are you planning on balancing the state budget without cutting necessary resources like safety and also education?
Dudley: "We have to get out of the habit of the unsustainable, automatic budget increases. So we can no longer… Say we spend "X" last biennium and were going to automatically spend "X" plus an 8, 10, 12 percent increase, we're going to have to scale back. The revenues, our overall general fund, plus lottery dollars will stay constant. We're growing the revenues, but were losing one-time funding so it's going to be a constant. We just can’t increase the way that we have done so in the past and were going to have to be very focused and target and prioritize where those cuts are and what our priorities are as a government."
Kitzhaber: "I think that we have to recognize that we are going to have to make reductions just about in everything--but everything isn't in the same value. So this won’t be across the board, it'll be target and prioritize. Most importantly it will be part of a ten year plan. When we make the reductions that were going to have to make next year, we're going to have to show people how we’re going to rebuild these programs as the private sector economy comes back. So, there is light at the end of the tunnel, we can do this. If we do it right, this can be the first step in a robust re-building of our state, our educational system, our Oregon, in our public safety and our human services over the next decade."
With schools across Oregon making drastic cuts, what are you going to do to ensure that kids still receive a good education?
Dudley: "I think that there’s a couple things that we have to do. One, we have to do a better job of budgeting for the long term. In other words, we can’t go from quarter to quarter by a school system. We can't have the peaks and valleys. We have to establish a better rainy day fund that's on a go forward basis. Next we have to use the dollars that we have today--use them in a better manner and make sure that those are actually getting into the classroom. And there’s a number of exciting things that are happening across the state that are showing ways that we can make better use of our dollars."
Kitzhaber: "We need to view the next two years as building the floor. We need to provide our school districts an amount of money they know they can count on. ... Then we need to engage the broader community in helping pick up the slack: the private sector, NGO's, not-for-profits. And we need to set aside a little money to target districts that are having particular difficulties -- high-risk schools, high-risk students. So I think if we view this, again, as the first step in a rebuilding plan, then we can find that stability that I think is very, very important for managing during difficult fiscal times."
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Ads from both major parties have hit the air around Oregon.
Watch an ad for Democratic gubernatorial candidate, John Kitzhaber
Watch an ad for Republican gubernatorial candidate, Chris Dudley
