Sen. Alan Bates, who is on a subcommittee looking into the Department of Health and Human Services, said irregularities already have been uncovered that could lead to improvements in that department.

Education, anticipating cuts under the governor’s proposed $5 billion K-12 budget, might see more money thanks to increased revenues from property taxes because of new housing and increased valuations, he said.

"We’re not going to make any more cuts to K-12," said the Ashland Democrat.

Depending on the outcome of the March revenue forecast, on which the state bases its budget, Bates said education could get up to $5.4 billion in the next biennial budget. Educators hope for a minimum $5.2 billion.

Bates believes legislators want to come to agreement on the education budget shortly after the March forecast, rather than waiting until summer.

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Programs run under the Department of Health and Human Services have been the subject of scrutiny by legislators for the past six months.

Bates said that since the 1990s, the amount of money going toward drug and alcohol programs has increased by 50 percent, but questions arose about how effective the programs were.

"What they didn’t do is measure whether that extra money had made a difference," he said.

Some small studies done in Multnomah and other counties indicated that people were staying off drugs and alcohol. But Bates said further analysis showed the surveys were flawed.

"They asked the patient: ‘Have you stopped taking drugs?’" said Bates. "They didn’t check the urine. They didn’t check to see if they had gone back to jail."

On the other hand, programs like Jackson County’s OnTrack Inc. had developed a good method for tracking their patients, he said.

Legislators have discovered that the accountability of programs varies from county to county, but initial analysis indicates privately run programs tend to do better.

"We might make more of a move to public-private partnerships," he said.

While education might see more money, Rep. Dennis Richardson said the governor’s proposed $12 billion budget contains a lot of "what ifs."

"He’s assuming a lot of money that is not there," he said.