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About The Observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1968-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 30, 2019)
B Wednesday, October 30, 2019 The Observer & Baker City Herald Oregon’s tax exemption laws can hurt HAPPENINGS Small-business & Ag Voting begins for 2019 Farm Service Agency county committee elections WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. De- partment of Agriculture will begin mailing ballots on Nov. 4 to eligible farmers and ranchers across the country for the Farm Service Agency county committee elections. County committee members play a key role at FSA. More than 7,000 members nation- wide provide their valuable knowledge and judgment on decisions made about FSA services, including disaster and emergency programs. To be counted, ballots must be returned to the local FSA county offi ce or postmarked by Dec. 2. Producers can fi nd out if their local administrative area is up for election and if they are eligible to vote by contacting their local FSA county offi ce. Eligible voters who did not receive a ballot in the mail can pick one up at their local FSA county offi ce. Visit fsa.usda.gov/elections for more information. Northeast Oregon FSA offi ces: • Union County — 1901 Adams Ave., Suite 5, La Grande, 541-963-4178 • Wallowa County — 401 NE First St., Suite E, Enterprise, 541-426-4521 • Baker County — 3990 Midway Drive, Baker City, 541-523-7121, ext. 106 Video contest promotes workplace safety for young workers SALEM — High school students across Oregon are invited to let their video skills shine for a good cause: increasing aware- ness about workplace safety for young workers. The annual video contest — “Speak up. Work safe.” — is now open for submissions. The top three entries will take home cash prizes ranging from $300 to $500, and students will earn a matching amount for their school. Students must create a 90-second or less video that inspires young workers to do at least one thing differently to stay safe on the job. The video must include the theme: “Speak up. Work safe.” The video must educate young workers about the impor- tance of speaking up in the workplace. Whether they sing, dance, use humor, or go documentary-style serious, participants are encouraged to tap their imaginations while emphasizing ways to protect themselves and their co-workers from getting hurt on the job. The deadline for submissions is Feb. 7, 2020. Videos can be submitted online or mailed. Contest winners will be unveiled at a screening event in spring 2020, and win- ning entries will be posted on YouTube. For contest details, rules, tips, entry forms, resources and a playlist of past fi nal- ist videos, go to www.youngemployeesafety. org/contest. Roundtable, discussion explores racial privilege ENTERPRISE — Northeast Oregon Economic Development District will con- tinue its public programs and roundtable discussions in November for volunteers, boards and staff members to learn, share and discuss diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) methods and strategies. Emily Drew, an associate professor of sociology and ethnic studies at Willa- mette University, will facilitate a public conversation entitled “Racism, Power, and Privilege in Oregon” on Nov. 5, at two locations: 3 p.m. at the Cook Memorial Library, 2006 Fourth St. in La Grande, and 7 p.m. at The Place, 301 S. Lake St. in Joseph. Many Oregonians value racial diversity and the dimension and depth it adds to our lives, yet the vision of a racially integrated society remains unrealized. The discussion will seek to answer questions such as: What systems are in place to prevent the racial integra- tion and equity many of us strive for? Knowing what we do, how do we act — as individuals, organizations and businesses — to embrace the opportunity presented by a more diverse Oregon? This conversa- tion is free and open to the public. Regis- tration is not required. On Nov. 6 at The Place in Joseph, Drew will lead a roundtable workshop, “Wrestling with Whiteness: White Privilege in Every- day Life.” Through an exercise and discus- sion, participants will consider the ways in which structured privileges afforded on the basis of race are everyday, unearned and usually invisible to those who receive them. Participants will also examine the central role of white privilege (and blindness to it) See Happenings / Page 3B By Mike Rogoway The Oregonian As bustling metropolises have grown increasingly skeptical of big tech companies demanding tax breaks, Oregon’s rural com- munities keep doling them out. The Hermiston City Council and Umatilla County commis- sioners voted unanimously this month to grant Amazon broad property tax breaks for massive data centers planned in Eastern Oregon. It’s the latest in a string of similar agreements with Amazon that shave nearly $50 million an- nually off the company’s Oregon tax bills. Facebook, Apple and Google save tens of millions of dollars more each year thanks to similar agreements for data cen- ters in Prineville and The Dalles. Amazon didn’t respond for a request for comment on its plans for Hermiston. Its total savings in the new deal will depend on how much the company spends on its data centers, but the as- sistant city manager in Herm- iston overseeing the new tax deal estimates it will run in the “hundreds of millions” of dollars over the next 15 years. In exchange, Amazon need pay only $40 million in compensatory payments in that timespan and create just 10 jobs. Oregon law gives small com- munities the sole responsibility to grant such local property tax breaks, even for mammoth proj- ects like this one. The state has no authority to reject Amazon’s incentives, no matter how large, so long as the company complies with the technical requirements of Oregon’s “enterprise zone” program for tax exemptions. That autonomy may not be a blessing. Since Oregon sets no limits on how big the tax breaks can be and exercises no oversight over how communities negotiate them, these cash-strapped small towns end up competing with one another to offer the biggest tax savings to the companies that arguably need it the least. Hermiston, population 17,400, is a largely agricultural commu- nity that sits south of the Colum- bia River. Offi cials there and in Umatilla County say they can’t afford to risk losing whatever Amazon offers. Amazon’s $40 million will be divided up by councilors and commissioners in Hermiston and the county seat in Pendleton. They need the money, they say, to balance the budgets, pave the roads and hire sheriff’s deputies. “Maybe if I was in Seattle or New York I could look at it differ- ently but I’m not,” said George Murdock, chairman of the Uma- tilla County Commission. “We’re kind of out in the sagebrush and we have to make decisions in a different way.” A needed boost Amazon reported $233 billion in revenue last year. When it EO Media Group fi le photo A new Facebook data center was constructed in 2016 in Bend. comes to taxes, though, the com- pany counts every penny and has repeatedly demonstrated it will play hardball. The online retailer walked away from plans for a second “headquarters” in New York this year after residents balked at $3 billion in incentives Amazon had negotiated. Seattle dropped plans for a “head tax” on large employers when Amazon vocifer- ously objected; despite winning the fi ght, Amazon began shifting new operations across Lake Washington to Bellevue. Seattle and New York are thriving cities that can take the economic hit. Lots of other busi- nesses want to move in. Oregon’s rural communities maintain their calculus is different. Six years ago, Murdock said, Umatilla County was cutting staff and programs. Since Ama- zon began opening data centers in the county, he said the revenue from the tax agreements — even after millions of dollars in exemp- tions — has helped balance the budget and enable the county to expand its number of deputies from seven to 17. “We aren’t Portland. That’s a pretty big deal out here,” Murdock said. “It hasn’t been our sense that the state of Oregon has been willing to sustain us without this kind of thing.” The benefi ts are real. Tax watchdogs don’t dispute that but maintain that Oregon’s system for awarding incentives has the effect of pitting communities against one another to the ben- efi t of the big companies seeking tax breaks. “This is a situation where the tax policy isn’t adjusted for the business basics,” said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a Washington, D.C., think tank that critiques state tax policy and corporate tax breaks. He says Oregon’s tax system is fl awed because it pro- motes competition among com- munities and fails to capitalize on the state’s inherent advantages. “The state’s not letting the ‘GrantReady’ workshops held for nonprofits NEOEDD ENTERPRISE — North- east Oregon Economic Development District’s “GrantReady” workshop series will be offered in Wallowa County next month. The series provides a supportive learning environment for volunteers, board and staff members of nonprofi t organizations to acquire the tools and skills needed to help them become more competitive for grant funding and bet- ter prepared to operate and evaluate their programs and projects. The four- session series will be held on Thursdays from Nov. 7 to Dec. 5 (no session the week of Thanksgiving) at Wallowa Resources, 401 NE First St., in Enterprise. • The GrantReady train- ing sessions will cover: See NEOEDD / Page 3B local governments play a smart hand,” LeRoy said, “even though you’ve got great cards.” Something for nothing Oregon’s enterprise zone pro- gram of property tax breaks dates to 1985, a time when large capital projects usually meant large facto- ries with lots of workers. Data centers were inconceiv- able back then. They’re big, dark, chilly warehouses, almost completely devoid of people. Instead, they’re packed with rows and rows of computers, whirring and blinking as they process hordes of digital informa- tion — everything from Netfl ix videos to corporate secrets. Shoppers know Amazon for its everything store and rapid delivery. But its data hosting business is at least as important to the company. Amazon leases its server farms out to every kind of company, from major enter- prise to tiny startup, storing their data and promising it will be kept secure yet readily available — anytime, anywhere. A single data center can cost hundreds of millions of dollars because of the high-end comput- ers inside. A complex of them, like the one Amazon plans in Hermiston, can run in the bil- lions. All those computers are subject to sales tax in most states — or, in Oregon’s case, property taxes. So tech companies demand that communities exempt their computers from local taxes. Communities comply because the tech companies bring a big brand name, excitement and tax dollars — albeit greatly reduced by those incentives. Listen to how local offi cials described Amazon’s deal: “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity before you this eve- ning,” Hermiston Assistant City Manager Mark Morgan told the city council this month. John Kirwan, the Hermiston city councilman who chaired that meeting, told the council that Amazon would replace recently lost railroad jobs with “techno- logical jobs that are going to be the wave of the future.” “Some people would say what are we giving away? Well, the an- swer to that is we’re giving away zero,” Kirwan declared. “Because if we don’t do this Amazon will go someplace else. And some other city will embrace this substan- tial amount of no less than $40 million and they’ll take it and run with it and they’ll have the opportunities Hermiston could have tonight.” In truth, data centers rarely bring an infusion of high-tech work. Nearly half the people working at Facebook’s Prineville data center, for example, are security guards. And geographically, Amazon’s alternatives are limited. Data centers can’t go just any- where. Even electrons take time to travel from place to place. Tech companies must distrib- ute them regionally so it doesn’t take too long for a corporate ana- lyst to pull up a database stored in an off-site server farm, and so people at home can stream their favorite songs and movies without a lag. Moreover, the Northwest enjoys some of the nation’s lowest power rates thanks to the hydro- electric projects on the Columbia River. And Hermiston is a special bargain: The local utility, Uma- tilla Electric, sits right on the river and charges 17% below the regional average. That’s a big deal when you’re powering a billion dollars’ worth of computers. The Columbia’s clean hydropower is also attractive to Amazon and other tech companies that have come un- der fi re for their data centers’ carbon footprints. Amazon, like other tech companies, says it wants to shift its power load to renewable energy. When crafting Amazon’s latest tax breaks, though, local offi cials say they don’t believe they had any leverage at all. See Exemption / Page 3B Oregon OSHA to present first Spanish- language workplace safety conference OSHA SALEM — Oregon OSHA will present its fi rst Spanish-language conference addressing workers and their needs Nov. 19. Topics will include asserting their rights to a safe workplace, protecting their health and safety at work and at home and protecting against wage theft. This conference refl ects our on- going mission to improve outreach to the most vulnerable workers by offering an event entirely in the language of many such workers,” said Oregon OSHA Administrator Michael Wood.” Presenters at the free confer- ence — to be held from 8:30 a.m. See OSHA / Page 3B
