Aside from electing the next leader of the free world, Measure 97 is the most important decision Oregonians will have to make on the November ballot.

And it will be a hard one.

The measure, if passed, would bring in nearly $3 billion a year to state coffers. Depending on your outlook, it will either solve many of Oregon’s chronic problems or be a crippling weight thrown over residents and the state economy.

And that’s really at the heart of the disagreement: If you trust government and the legislature’s ability to spend that money wisely — to revamp Oregon’s flagging education system, to improve health care in our state, to solve a serious crisis in funding state employee retirements — then Measure 97 is a no-brainer.

But if you’re more suspicious, this looks like the largest tax increase in Oregon history, a bureaucratic cash grab with no defined plan for how to spend the windfall.

The measure itself is quite simple, which is part of the design and also part of the problem. It would impose a 2.5-percent tax on all corporate sales in the state above $25 million, regardless of actual profits.

That means the big out-of-state corporations that make billions in profits and sell expensive things in Oregon would pay more taxes — companies like Intel and John Deere, for example. But so too will Safeway and Pacific Power, Wal-Mart and Walgreen’s and Powell’s Books. Increasing taxes on those companies is likely to get passed along to the consumer in some form or in full, increasing the cost of living for everyone and costing middle-class private sector jobs too.

We are reluctantly standing against the measure.

We know schools are not adequately funded, and our students are suffering for it. And we know that without a major overhaul, the state will never have the steady revenue stream required to continue improving, instead of constantly being mired in a cycle of cuts and temporary hires.

We know health care costs will continue ad infinitum, and we know that the state signed a contract — an unaffordable one, perhaps, but still a contract — with state employees.

The state needs to find ways to increase and stabilize revenue streams, but a big no-strings-attached money dump is not the answer.

Tax policy is terribly complex. The bluntness of Measure 97 will hurt Oregon, and the corresponding help is not quantifiably better. What Oregon should do is defeat this measure, then hold legislators and the governor accountable for getting business and labor together. Once at the same table, they shouldn’t get up until we have a plan for stable funding for Oregon schools and health care programs. Measure 97 isn’t it.