Oregon voters have made their feelings about the state’s income tax kicker system exquisitely clear.

To everyone except some state lawmakers, it seems.

Two state senators, Lew Frederick and Kayse Jama, both Democrats from Portland, have introduced Senate Joint Resolution 26. Its aim is to temporarily suspend the kicker, in which the state returns tax dollars to residents when income tax revenue exceeds what state economists projected by more than 2%.

Fortunately, lawmakers can’t block the kicker by themselves.

That’s because voters decided years ago to enshrine the kicker, which is unique among the states, in Oregon’s Constitution, where it is beyond the reach of legislators who rarely struggle to find ways to spend tax dollars.

Our new governor, Tina Kotek, for instance, proposed in 2018, when she was a lawmaker, to use kicker dollars to reduce the state’s unfunded liability for its egregiously generous retirement system for public employees. Kotek suggested the next year that the state keep half the kicker money and use it for transportation projects.

Senate Joint Resolution 26, if approved, would take the kicker question, in the form of a constitutional amendment, to voters.

The monetary stakes are considerable. The state estimates that the personal income tax kicker in 2024 could be a record $3.7 billion — a reflection both of the state’s relatively healthy economy and, more to the point, that Salem has enough revenue to run state agencies.

Indeed, the Legislative Fiscal Office projects the state will have $30.7 billion in general fund and lottery money to spend for the 2023-25 biennium, up from $29.3 billion in the current two-year budget cycle, which ends June 30, 2023.

The state is also forecast to have $2 billion in its rainy day fund. (Although the legislature can use money from that fund only with support from three-fifths of members.)

Lawmakers might well pass the kicker resolution this year.

But if they do, it seems likely that voters, as they should, will once again clarify what is already obvious — that they believe the tax kicker is a reasonable way to ensure that when tax revenue is sufficient to meet the state’s needs, some of the dollars should go back to the people who earned them.