Oregon Ground Zero in Congress’ Attack on Science

By Henry Waxman and Erica Stock.

Former Congressman Henry A. Waxman spent 40 years serving in the US House of Representatives, serving as chairman and ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He was a lead author of the landmark Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, and currently serves as Chairman of Mighty Earth.

Erica Stock is the director of the Oregon Sierra Club, and has extensive experience as a grassroots organizer, fundraiser, natural resources policy analyst and activist. Erica is passionate about empowering local communities working hard to protect and restore their rivers, fish, wildlife, and wildlands.

What if we told you that the Republican Congress just passed legislation to promote renewable energy and reduce carbon emissions? Most astute – or even sentient – observers of Congress would laugh out loud, including the Republican leadership themselves.

Nonetheless, Republicans and some Democrats are touting the last appropriations deal as a win for renewable energy – even though the provision they’re touting is a huge step backwards for the climate, Oregon’s air quality, and the long term economic prospects for clean energy.

A policy rider buried in the bipartisan spending bill requires the federal government to treat all burning of trees for electricity (known as biomass energy) – as carbon-neutral or emissions-free. According to Congress, burning trees for electricity is now as clean as wind or solar power.

Unfortunately, actual scientists who have studied the issue have found that burning trees for electricity creates 50% more carbon pollution at the smokestack than coal, on average, per megawatt hour of energy. These policies are doubly bad because they drive the incineration of trees that, when living, continue to suck carbon dioxide out of the air and breathe out oxygen.

Powerful timber interests have long advocated for special treatment, arguing that trees eventually grow back, so it will all be okay. Trees are renewable, they say, and eventually all that carbon that was released will be recaptured.

Will Oregon Democrats Betray Renters ?

By Shamus Cooke of Portland, Oregon. Shamus is an organizer for Portland Tenants United.

Oregon’s housing crisis is suffocating the state, and Democrats have the power to fix it. But will they? The Democrat-dominated legislature is discussing pro-renter House Bill 2004, which passed the House but faces a precarious future in the Democrat-led Senate, where the staunchest opponents are also landlords (Democrats need zero votes from Republicans, who are unified against the bill).

House Bill 2004 is simple: it makes rent control legal, allowing local municipalities to craft their own policy (there is currently a statewide preemption). It also makes no-cause evictions illegal, giving tenants basic due process in the eviction process (though it still allows landlords to use for-cause evictions for tenants that don’t pay rent, damage property, break laws, etc).

House Bill 2004 is also ‘revenue neutral’, meaning it would cost taxpayers nothing. In actuality it would likely save taxpayers millions a year, since it would relieve pressure from the homeless crisis by keeping people in their homes.

Pink slips for teachers, a big tax cut for the wealthy

Chuck Sheketoff

School districts in Oregon have been drawing up plans for staff cuts, in case the Oregon legislature fails to come up with the revenue needed to fill a $1.4 billion state revenue hole. And according to several teachers who spoke during a town hall in Portland this past Saturday, pink slips have already started landing in some schools.

While Oregon schools brace for layoffs, the richest Oregonians wait for a big income tax cut to fall into their laps.

Last week, we learned that Oregon is on course to trigger another personal “kicker” — the automatic income tax cut that kicks in when non-corporate revenue collections exceed the amount forecast two years earlier (in May 2015 in this instance) by 2 percent or more. When that 2 percent threshold is reached, the state spends the full amount of unanticipated revenue in the form of an income tax credit. Right now, state economists are predicting that revenues will exceed the two percent threshold by $70 million. If that prediction holds in September, and if the Oregon legislature does nothing to stop it, the state will spend about $400 million on kicker tax credits at tax time next year.

It looks like the kicker is kicking because some extremely wealthy Oregonians died. While estate tax revenues generally track changes in home sales and stock prices, they are impossible to accurately predict. State economists now project revenue from the estate tax to come in $110 million more — 50 percent greater — than the prediction made in 2015. In other words, if some ultra-rich people had not died, the kicker would not be kicking.

It’s ironic that deaths among the ultra-wealthy are making the kicker kick, because the kicker disproportionately benefits the wealthiest Oregonians. Each person’s income tax (not estate tax) payment for tax year 2016 determines the size of the kicker tax credit they will get in 2018. If the state economists’ current estimates hold true, the typical (median) Oregon taxpayer — one with income in the $30,000-$35,000 range – will get about $85 kicked off their 2017 taxes. The average member of the top 1 percent of earners — those who make at least $368,000 annually — will get a tax cut of about $4,505.

Another way of looking at how the kicker tilts in favor of the well-off is to consider the share of kicker dollars that would flow to different income groups. Oregon’s richest 1 percent are expected to get over 21 percent of all the kicker dollars, nearly double the share projected for the lowest-earning 60 percent of taxpayers (about 12 percent). Further, the highest-earning 20 percent of taxpayers together will receive 70 percent of kicker dollars, while the remaining 80 percent of Oregonians will get 30 percent of the kicker.

Oregon’s schools and essential services already suffer from chronic underfunding. The $1.4 billion shortfall only makes a bad situation worse.

The choice before lawmakers is clear: Suspend the kicker to protect education and other essential services, or allow big tax cuts for the wealthy to go through and risk more pink slips at Oregon schools.

Chuck Sheketoff is the executive director of the Oregon Center for Public Policy. You can sign up to receive email notification of OCPP materials at www.ocpp.org.

By Chuck Sheketoff May 24, 2017

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Small voices with a big stake in state budget outcome

Chuck Sheketoff

Poor children don’t have a megaphone. They can’t create a dark money-funded group to pay for TV ads that attack lawmakers for their ideas.

Yet, Oregon’s most vulnerable kids have an outsized stake in the current tax and budget negotiations in the legislature. Many children in families receiving rudimentary cash and job training assistance through Oregon’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program would pay a steep price with budget cuts, should a revenue solution fail to materialize.

Sadly, this is nothing new. Whenever the state faces a shortfall, the TANF program often ends up on a budget cuts list, for two reasons. First, unlike Medicaid, the federal TANF block grant structure provides little incentive for Oregon to maintain its own TANF investments. Second, there is no large, politically powerful industry with a financial stake in TANF to go to bat for them with the politicians.

Right now, the legislature’s budget writers have warned that, in the absence of new revenue, TANF is in the crosshairs. As the Oregon Center for Public Policy has outlined in a recent paper, the proposed cuts would drive 11,000 poor kids deeper into poverty, making their life prospects even bleaker.

For instance, one proposal would make the TANF lifetime time limits significantly harsher than they already are. As a result, after 48 months, the maximum cash grant for a parent with two children would drop from $506 per month to $348 per month, despite the parent’s efforts to become employed. At 60 months, the grant would drop to zero. Families with physical and mental health barriers to work need more time and support to overcome them. As such, this cut would harm children who already face great barriers to a successful life.

Other proposed cuts are equally harsh and would impact children in households with disabilities and children being raised by relatives.

Oregon’s poorest kids don’t have a megaphone. It is up to us — you — to speak loudly on their behalf.

Chuck Sheketoff is the executive director of the Oregon Center for Public Policy. You can sign up to receive email notification of OCPP materials at www.ocpp.org.

By Chuck Sheketoff May 15, 2017

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A gross receipts tax? Oregon already has one

Chuck Sheketoff

The Oregon House leadership should be commended for putting forward a bold revenue proposal that would improve the lives of Oregonians. Their Oregon Education Investment Initiative would not only help fill the existing budget gap, but also result in about $2 billion in new investments, mostly in education — from pre-K to higher education. The funds would come from a tax on gross receipts for businesses with Oregon sales above $5 million a year. The proposal would also eliminate the corporate income tax and reduce the personal income taxes of low- and middle-income Oregonians.

For some, talk of a gross receipts tax is a non-starter.

They may be surprised to learn that Oregon already has a gross receipts tax. More than two-thirds of all C-corporations already pay taxes based on their Oregon sales, not profits.

These businesses pay Oregon’s corporate minimum tax. It’s a tax based on gross receipts, and it kicks in when it exceeds a corporation’s tax under the profits tax. This structure has been in place since 2009, after Oregon voters enacted Measure 67. While it’s a very modest gross receipts tax, nonetheless it’s a tax based on Oregon sales.

It may also surprise some to learn that Oregon’s existing gross receipts tax came from a proposal initially floated by the Oregon Business Association in 2009.

The Oregon Education Investment Initiative unveiled last week is certainly bold, but not novel in its use of a gross receipts tax. More than two-thirds of corporate taxpayers have been paying taxes based on sales, not profits, for some time now.

Chuck Sheketoff is the executive director of the Oregon Center for Public Policy. You can sign up to receive email notification of OCPP materials at www.ocpp.org.

By Chuck Sheketoff May 10, 2017

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