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State Sen. Ginny Burdick, D-Portland, is facing a big plate of political broccoli.

She said she finds an initiative to reform Oregon鈥檚 corporate kicker 鈥渄istasteful.鈥� Nonetheless, she plans to vote for it on her November ballot because the kicker needs to be reformed somehow.

When the state brings in at least 2 percent more money than predicted two years beforehand, the excess is refunded. Few people like the kicker as it stands. Efforts to reform the kicker program have gained widespread bipartisan support in the Legislature and beyond.

But not one legislative effort to reform the kicker has gotten as far as a committee vote.

“Kicker reform has been a major priority for many organizations for years, and yet nothing has happened,” said Scott Moore, communications director for Our Oregon. Members of his group believe the corporate kicker should go toward Oregon鈥檚 public schools.

Burdick and state Sen. Frank Morse, R-Albany, have led the charge in Salem to amend the kicker. Burdick, president pro tempore of the Senate, said she doesn’t like the initiative coming in and scuttling everything she and her colleagues have worked for.

She particularly doesn’t want to see the money go to public education. The last time Oregonians saw any kicker money was in 2007. That hardly means a steady and predictable stream of income for schools, she said.

“It would make more sense to put the money in the rainy day fund,” Burdick added. “That said, I will vote for the initiative because the kicker is bad policy.”

Ryan Deckert, a former state senator who serves as president of the Oregon Business Association, said he also wants to see the money go to the rainy day fund. Businesses can do without it, he said.

Our Oregon members, however, see a problem with the rainy day fund, Moore said. State law requires a supermajority of two-thirds of the Legislature to approve spending the money.

“Those funds can be held hostage by a minority of legislators,” he said. “The money shouldn’t go into a fund that will take a political miracle to get out.”

But Moore has his facts wrong, according to Deckert.

“The Legislature can structure a rainy day fund any way they want,” he said. “The common approach is to have standard language the bond companies use defining the conditions that represent a recession. Then you can have a simple majority vote if those conditions exist.”

Lawmakers created the kicker in 1979 to spare Oregon the fate of the tax revolt California experienced because of its notorious Proposition 13.

Oregon voters passed kicker law in 1980 and voted to make it part of the state constitution in 2000. Oregonians received kicker money for the first time in 1985, and they received tax refunds again two years later. They were going to get refunds in 1991 and 1993, but legislators withheld the money to deal with financial crises stemming from voter-approved property tax limitations.

The kicker resurfaced in 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001 and 2007.

In 2007, the median refund for an individual taxpayer was $113, according to the Oregon Center for Public Policy. That same year, the center reports, 4 percent of the corporations that received refunds got 93 percent of the corporate kicker 鈥� with 84 percent of the corporations coming from other states.

Our Oregon’s initiative is sitting at the secretary of state’s office. Moore said Our Oregon members expect the signatures they gathered to be verified by Aug. 6. To get the initiative on the ballot, petitioners had to gather 116,000 signatures. Moore said they gathered 205,000.

“So we’ve got a substantial buffer,” he said.

Moore said Our Oregon members grew frustrated with reform efforts stalling in the Legislature.

“The kicker is irresponsible policy,” he added. “We’re sending checks out to the most profitable companies when they’re the most profitable.”

Meanwhile, he said, funding for public education in Oregon has gone from bad to worse.

“A lot of teachers and parents said last year was the last straw,” Moore said, noting that teachers complained that they often had 35 students in their classrooms. “Guess what,” he said. “They may have 40.”

Although the kicker is not a reliable revenue stream, Moore said it can help with one-time maintenance projects and other deferred expenses.

“The decisions will be made on a district-by-district basis,” he said. “Any money we can send will help.”

Moore said Our Oregon members realize the initiative is not a magic cure.

“We know this isn’t a solution, but it’s a first step,” he said. “We want to end this idiotic policy.”

Our Oregon wants something else: political muscle.

The advocacy group is funded by union members from the Oregon Education Association, the Service Employees International Union, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

“This is a tangible 鈥� and big 鈥� thing we’ll accomplish this November,” Moore said.

He said group members hope a November victory will rally supporters to oppose cuts in education and other public services in general.

Clout comes with a price, warned Deckert.

“The collateral damage here is a trust issue with labor leaders,” he said.

Deckert said he wants to see the kicker program reformed too, “but it’s not helpful if one group picks the low-hanging fruit. That’s the hard part of watching this initiative go through. There goes that half of the puzzle.”

Nonetheless, Burdick said, kicker reform is kicker reform. The initiative will get her vote.

“It would do more harm than good to defeat it,” she said.