Measure 5’s Long Shadow
I was recently appointed to the Lane Community College Budget Committee by the Board of Trustees, though late enough in the year that I only participated in the final three meetings. As far as entries into an established group go, mine was a little clunky. During my first meeting, no one acknowledged the new member in the room and, during the roll call vote, my name was omitted entirely.
Still … three meetings were enough time for me to notice a larger story hiding underneath the spreadsheets.
For those unfamiliar with the process, Oregon community college budget committees are composed of elected Board members plus an equal number of other citizens from the district, appointed by the Board. Their charge is to review the proposed budget, hear public comment, examine the assumptions behind the numbers, and ultimately recommend a budget to the Board for final approval.
This year’s discussions were unusually prolonged and, while mostly civil, occasionally bordered on contentious; there were some close votes. Lane’s proposed FY27 budget comes on the heels of mid-year class cancellations, a mitigation plan involving program closures, and broader concerns about the institution’s long-term financial condition. One recurring issue involved tuition.
Earlier in this academic year, the Board had approved a tuition increase of just 1.2%, considerably below the current rate of inflation. Then, during the final night of deliberations on May 27, Trustee Zach Mulholland proposed revisiting that earlier decision and raising the increase to 2.1% in order to help offset anticipated future shortfalls. I seconded the motion, not because I had fully embraced the proposal, but because I believed the issue deserved public discussion.
The motion failed overwhelmingly, and in the end I voted against it myself.
But what stayed with me afterward was not the outcome of the debate. It was the realization that an important part of the conversation had gone largely unspoken, and that I had failed to voice it myself. We discussed tuition levels, budget pressures, and projected shortfalls, but almost entirely in the language of present-day necessity, with little acknowledgment that Oregon’s higher education funding problems have been shaped by political and economic choices stretching back decades.
To understand why tuition debates at Oregon colleges now carry such weight, we have to go back to Ballot Measure 5.
Passed by voters in 1990, Measure 5 dramatically limited property taxes in Oregon. In many respects it mirrored California’s Proposition 13, reflecting the anti-tax politics that swept through much of the West during the late 1970s and 80s. Supporters argued that homeowners, including retirees on fixed incomes, needed protection from rapidly rising property taxes. That concern was understandable enough, but the long-term consequences for public education proved to be immense.
Before Measure 5, local property taxes played a major role in supporting schools and community colleges. Once those revenues were capped, the state assumed far greater responsibility for financing K-12 education. The difficulty was that state revenues were never really sufficient to fully support both K-12 and higher education at previous levels. Over time, political pressure understandably favored protecting primary and secondary education as much as possible, while colleges and universities were increasingly expected to generate their revenue from other sources. That meant: student tuition hikes.
The shift happened gradually enough that people barely noticed it occurring. One tuition increase did not fundamentally change the system. Neither did the next one. But year after year, decade after decade, the cumulative effect has been truly profound. Public higher education has slowly evolved from something funded primarily by the broader public into something increasingly financed by students themselves.
When I first entered higher education, way too many years ago now, the dominant philosophy was that colleges served a broad public purpose. An educated population strengthened communities, employers, civic institutions, and democracy itself. Students obviously benefited personally from earning degrees and improving their employment opportunities, but society benefited as well. The costs, therefore, were understood as something to be shared collectively.
Over time, however, the dominant cultural and philosophical view of higher education shifted. College increasingly came to be framed less as a public investment and more as a private consumer commodity. If students would eventually earn more money because of their education, then they should bear most of the financial responsibility for obtaining it.
At one level, this argument has a certain logic to it. Students absolutely do reap the benefits from their higher education. But the argument conveniently overlooks the larger public decisions that constrained educational funding in the first place. We, and I mean we taxpayers and voters, collectively shrunk the revenue source that once supported public colleges and universities, then gradually shifted more of the resulting burden onto students and their families.
That reality sat quietly underneath the Budget Committee discussions at Lane, even though no one acknowledged this out loud.
During public comment time, students did argue passionately against tuition increases, and understandably so. Many are already balancing work, rent, food insecurity, housing insecurity, childcare, transportation costs, and/or debt. Even relatively modest tuition increases can feel overwhelming when they are already living close to the financial edge. At the same time, the institution itself faces legitimate fiscal pressures involving bargaining agreements, deferred maintenance, enrollment shifts, program sustainability, and a looming demographic cliff. The math driving these discussions is real.
But arithmetic alone does not explain why Oregon students now shoulder so much of the cost of public higher education. That outcome reflects a more profound, and largely-unspoken decision about who benefits from higher education and who should pay for it.
For decades now, Oregon has largely answered that question by shifting more of the responsibility onto students themselves. The budget-development process and Board decision-making at Lane did not create this reality.
In the end, here’s how I see it: tuition debates are never simply about percentages. They are arguments about public priorities, generational obligations, and the extent to which society still views higher education as a shared public good rather than merely a private economic transaction.
These are larger issues than any single Budget Committee can resolve in any single year. But they are questions worth acknowledging explicitly, especially when the bill increasingly arrives in the hands of students.
Fully Unsupervised
I’ve written previously about the isolation and loneliness that can accompany the life of a single old guy. But one of the more attractive aspects of being entirely unattached is the freedom to make decisions that may appear non-logical, impulsive, or perhaps just plain crazy. I’m accountable to no one. I can go a little nuts whenever I want, and there is no one around to intervene.
A recent example comes to mind.
So there I was, innocently watching television, when a Subaru commercial appeared featuring the redesigned 2026 Crosstrek. Now, I have owned three Subarus over the years: a 1999 Forester, a 2007 Forester, and my current 2020 Crosstrek. Naturally, I paid attention.
Wow, lookin’ good, I thought.
On a whim, I picked up my iPad, visited the website for our local Subaru dealership, and began browsing inventory. Before long, I found myself looking at a blue 2026 Crosstrek and noticing a button inviting me to receive an online trade-in quote for my current vehicle. Foolishly, I took the bait. I answered a few questions, anticipating that they might respond with either an attractively optimistic number, or at least a reasonable range.
Instead, what followed was a parade of generic emails from the dealership’s “internet sales” department, none of which really answered my question. I replied more than once, attempting to redirect the conversation back toward the trade-in value. Eventually, an actual human being emailed me with a range.
The low end was mildly discouraging. The high end, however, got my attention.
More emails followed. Eventually, they persuaded me to stop by so they could evaluate the car in person. While my Crosstrek was out being test-driven, the salesman asked whether he could also put together numbers on a new vehicle.
I shrugged and said “sure.”
What came back was disappointing. They valued my trade-in (low mileage! very clean!) at the absolute bottom of the quoted range while simultaneously presenting a rather ambitious price for the new Crosstrek that most interested me. So I walked.
To be fair, I had warned them from the beginning that I was mostly window shopping and not particularly serious about buying a car right now. The sales manager followed up afterward, and I reiterated that point. I also informed him, diplomatically enough, that the salesman he had assigned me was not someone from whom I would ever purchase a vehicle.
More emails followed.
Would I consider a used vehicle? A different trim level? Another salesperson? (“I have just the guy.”)
And honestly, the sales manager seemed sincere. (Or am I just naïve?) He appeared genuinely interested in finding a way to make a deal happen. So I kept casually browsing inventory online and eventually noticed another Crosstrek that checked most of the boxes, especially the safety-related features I cared about. I agreed to come back in, meet Joseph, the alternate salesman, and take a test drive.
2026 Subaru Crosstrek Premium
Well, of course, that was doom.
The new interior was even more cockpit-like than my current car. It drove beautifully. It looked terrific. The entire thing felt smooth, quiet, and just futuristic enough to flatter me into imagining myself as the sort of person who should own one.
I agreed to let them run the numbers again.
I still balked. The trade-in figure remained lower than I wanted, and I had become increasingly fixated on including an extended warranty in any final deal. One of my thoughts at that stage was this: if I could get a new car with a seven-year warranty, I would probably be set, vehicle-wise, until age 86. (Honestly, who knows if I will even be alive that long, much less still driving?! But this did feel like a legitimate plan.)
So naturally, we went back and forth on the numbers for a bit. Eventually, they came close enough to the bottom-line figure I had in mind and, after a very long afternoon, I drove off the lot in a new 2026 Crosstrek.
There was no one around to question my choices. Or stop me. Freedom and loneliness, it turns out, often arrive as part of the same package.
Soundtrack Suggestion
