There it sits, a gleaming pot full of money, about $1.4 billion, to be exact. It’s Oregon’s kicker money, paid in by Oregon taxpayers and required by the state constitution to be returned to them.

Gov. Kate Brown is loath to do that. She wants the Legislature to approve a law that would keep a bit more than a third of the kicker money in Salem, to be spent by the politicians in the Legislature. Kicker payments would be capped at $1,000.

The shift would give the state about $500 million, half of which Brown would, with legislative approval, use to ease the sting of Public Employees Retirement System payments on school districts; $220 million would go to rural housing and the remainder, $29 million, to rural broadband projects.

All well and good. But …

The kicker provision, Article IX, Sect. 14, of the constitution, says that when state revenues exceed the revenue estimate made at the close of each odd-numbered year Legislature by 2 percent or more, the excess goes back to the people who paid it. This year revenues are measured against an estimate made in 2017, and the amount owed taxpayers is that $1.4 billion.

Brown doesn’t see it that way. She’s not alone in this, by the way. House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland, in May introduced legislation that would retroactively change the 2017 estimate, magically reducing what would go back to taxpayers by about half. House Bill 3440 was assigned to the House Revenue Committee, and there’s been no action on it scheduled.

Brown’s plan would be a stretch under the best of circumstances, no doubt. Lawmakers already have approved a $1 billion hidden sales tax this year, for one thing. Too, keeping all Democratic lawmakers in line and finding Republicans in each house to go along with her scheme may be more difficult than she expects.

Oregon’s kicker provision may have its flaws, but that’s a matter that should, like all provisions in the state constitution, be left up to taxpayers.

Brown’s plan skips that vital step. It should be given a quick burial.