Job 'creation'

We beg your pardon.

We have a confession to make.

We’re afraid that we’ve contributed, through our news coverage, to the belief that Oregon’s state government is just about, figuratively speaking, down to its last nickel.

But now we have conclusive proof that this isn’t so.

In the past week or so, the state has created one job and filled a second that had been vacant for several years.

The combined annual salary for the pair? About $220,000.

A trifling amount in a budget that exceeds $10 billion, right?

But wait, there’s more:

The state didn’t advertise either job.

There were no candidates except the people hired.

And both of the new employees are state legislators.

Sen. Margaret Carter of Portland, and Rep. Larry Galizio of Tigard, are both Democrats, too, members of the party that has majorities in both houses of the Legislature.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski has a capital “D” next to his name, too.

Yet it’s not the seemingly blatant political favoritism that most annoys us about the state hiring Carter and Galizio.

It’s the financial hypocrisy.

The supposedly beleaguered state Department of Human Services managed to scrounge up $121,872 to create a job for Carter. Starting Sept. 1 she’ll be the deputy director for human services program.

The Oregon University System, meanwhile, suddenly decided it could afford $90,000 to $100,000 per year to hire Galizio to fill the director of strategic planning job, which had been vacant for years.

And why hadn’t the state hired someone before? Budget reasons, according to a state spokeswoman.

But what about the current “budget reasons?”

The state’s financial picture is allegedly so bleak that the Legislature this year approved income tax increases on corporations and individuals.

So the state can afford $220,000 per year to hire two legislators for jobs that nobody else had a chance to apply for.

Yet here are two things, both of which are pretty important, the state claims it can’t afford:

• $187,500 per year to help pay travel expenses for seven high schools clubs, three of which have chapters at Baker High School

• $131,500 per year for the SMART program, in which volunteers help elementary school students learn to read; Baker schools use the program

The lesson in all this seems to be that if you’re looking for a lucrative career path in state government, you’d do well to start by running for a seat in the Legislature.

Unfortunately, you have to be 21 years old to do that.

Which pretty much rules out the BHS students who participate in FBLA, FFA and Family Career and Community Leaders of America.

Not to mention the first-graders in SMART; they’re more than a decade away from the halls of power in Salem.