Article IX of the Oregon State Constitution

Article IX of the Oregon State Constitution deals with "Finance".  There are 20 sections in this Article.  Some of them are long.  We will look at the first 5 sections in this post.

Section 1

This section is important in that it defines that laws for assessment and taxation have to be general laws.  Either the people through ballot initiatives or the legislature may create a law that assesses and taxes the people.  Elsewhere, it does say that a ballot initiative cannot remove a law that assesses and taxes the people.

Section 1a

This section has two parts.  The first is that there can be no poll or head tax.  These are considered infringing on citizen's right to vote.  The second part indicates that no law respecting taxation can be issued as an emergency law.  This means that the taxation can only come into force 90 days after the conclusion of the legislative session.

Section 1b

This section has a sunset clause in it that has expired.  It is historically interesting, but irrelevant.

Section 1c

This section provides a mechanism for funding urban renewal and redevelopment projects based on the increased tax income due to the increase in value of the properties affected around the project.

Section 2

As shown above, there is clearly some document control issues apparent since for some reason it was decided to shove 3 sections in between 1 and 2.  Anyway, Section 2 basically says that the State is not to run deficits and is repeated in a later section.