State: Listen to the voters

The Oregon Legislature is trying to pull a sort of bait and switch on voters.

Except lawmakers want to keep the bait, at least temporarily. And the switch, well it doesn’t even exist.

The bait was Measure 57. The measure, which requires longer sentences for people convicted of certain drug and property crimes, was touted by the Legislature as a better, and cheaper, alternative to Measure 61, which would have imposed similar, but tougher, sanctions.

Measure 61 barely failed, with 48.9 percent voting yes (although the measure would not have become law unless it passed by a larger margin than Measure 57).

 What’s important to note here is that almost 850,000 Oregonians voted for Measure 61. That means they thought Measure 57 did not levy sufficiently harsh punishments on people who commit drug and property crimes.

Yet now a group of legislators wants to take from voters even the meager solace of Measure 57. The lawmakers have proposed to postpone Measure 57 from taking effect for two years.

Their excuse, not surprisingly, is money. They claim the state can’t afford to incarcerate people as the measure requires.

If Measure 57 takes effect, the legislators contend, the state will have to, among other things, close the 50-bed Oregon Youth Authority center in Burns and lay off 39 state troopers.

Spare us the scare tactics. No reasonable person believes that the state, which has about 40,000 workers, can’t find 39 whose work is less important than what state troopers do.

Fortunately there is a better option.

The Oregon District Attorneys Association, along with two crime victims groups, claims the state can save $78 million to $99 million — enough to cover the costs of Measure 57 so it can take effect as voters intended — by letting an estimated 2,000 non-violent inmates out of prison six months early.

That’s not an ideal solution, of course.

But we think the counter-proposal, which would at least put people in prison as Measure 57 promised, comes closer to fulfilling the wishes the voters expressed last November.