A sad state of affairs . . .

[PeteBooth]

[QUOTE]

Originally Posted by Tim C

On June 18th the Oregon Department of Labor ruled that all sports officials in Oregon are employees of local associations.

Tee it will be interesting to see how many officials (in all sports) retire for the HS season. I am pretty certian you will keep us posted.

How is Oregon set-up for Summer / Fall ball?

What I can envision is that there is no umpire association at all. The coaches simply have a 'list of umpires" and call officials from this list and pay them "under the table"

Summer Tournaments would most likely suffer big time because when a tournament is run the Pres simply calls the association and says I have a 100 games this weekend what's the cost and sends in a check.

if there is no association to call, the torunaments could turn into a mess.

Personally if that type of law passed here in NY my officiating days are over.
In addition to P/R taxes you have Federal taxes and in my case State taxes as well.

A $50.00 game Fee would turn into a net of about $30 - $35.00 taken into account taxes. Also, when you add your total officiating income to your regular salary that would most likely put you in a higher tax bracket.

Also, when you are an employee as opposed to a contractor you are limited in what you can write-off

Another ploy by some states to increase revenues. The government can bail out GM and the banks with billions of dollars and in the same breath "stick it" to officials making a marginal Fee.

You are correct very sad

Pete Booth