November 11, 2016
CapitalPress.com
3
Oregon GMO mediation
needs legislative fix
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Pamplin Media Group
Rebecca Tweed, head of the anti-Measure 97 campaign, said a large coalition of consumers and businesses helped defeat the corporate
tax proposal.
With Measure 97’s defeat,
$1.4 billion deficit looms
Legislature must
deal with shortfall
By PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
PORTLAND — After vot-
ers defeated Measure 97 Tues-
day, the battle over increasing
taxes on corporations is likely
to rage on in the Oregon Leg-
islature in 2017.
Measure 97 failed Tuesday
58 percent to 41 percent. The
measure would have levied a
2.5 percent tax on certain cor-
porations’ Oregon sales ex-
ceeding $25 million per year.
The measure was opposed
by a coalition of business in-
terests, including many from
Oregon’s agriculture sector.
Lawmakers plan to pro-
pose a more “reasonable” pro-
posal next session to offset a
$1.4 billion revenue shortfall
in the 2017-18 budget, said
Sen. Mark Hass, D-Beaver-
ton.
“I think policy will be de-
veloped by lawmakers and in-
terested parties at the next ses-
sion,” said Rebecca Tweed,
Defeat the Tax on Oregon
Sales campaign coordinator.
“Our coalition came together
for the purpose of defeating
this $6 billion tax on sales,
and we’re thankful we were
able to do that.”
Proponents of Measure 97
vowed to lobby lawmakers to
make large corporations pay
a larger share of Oregon’s tax
revenue and protect invest-
ments in education and health
care, which the measure was
intended to support.
“We are going to keep
fighting,” said Ben Unger,
campaign manager for Yes on
97.
The campaign was sched-
uled to release details of its
next steps at a news confer-
ence Wednesday, Nov. 9.
Unger declined to comment
Tuesday on whether the pub-
lic employee union-backed
“Voters didn’t buy claims that the $6 billion
tax, based on business sales instead of
profits, would not increase consumer costs.”
Rebecca Tweed, Defeat the Tax on Oregon
Sales campaign coordinator.
Our Oregon would attempt
another ballot measure in
2018.
A coalition of businesses
raised a record-breaking $26.5
million to thwart the measure.
Proponents raised about $17.7
million. The ballot measure
was the most expensive in the
state’s history.
“Voters didn’t buy claims
that the $6 billion tax, based
on business sales instead of
profits, would not increase
consumer costs,” Tweed said.
“And they understood that
the money raised could have
been used any way legislators
wanted to spend it.”
The opposition’s blast of
advertising on television, ra-
dio and social media drove
home projections by the non-
partisan Legislative Revenue
Office that consumers ulti-
mately would pay for much
of the measure in the form of
higher prices. The office esti-
mated that the typical family
would pay about $600 more
per year under Measure 97.
Unger said Tuesday his
only regret during the cam-
paign was that Yes on 97
failed to raise as much money
as the opposition.
He said he believed his
campaign’s message resonat-
ed with voters.
“We didn’t win this elec-
tion this time, but we did
win the debate,” Unger said.
A legislative mix-up has
blocked the Oregon Depart-
ment of Agriculture’s im-
plementation of a mediation
program for growers of con-
ventional, organic and bio-
tech crops.
A lack of interest in the
program, however, raises
questions about its necessity.
In 2015, Oregon lawmak-
ers passed House Bill 2509,
which created mediation pro-
tocols for growers who be-
lieve nearby farming practic-
es are interfering with their
operations.
While the wording of
the legislation is broad, it
was considered a compro-
mise bill to soothe conflicts
among producers of geneti-
cally modified organisms, or
GMOs, and their neighbors.
Another proposal to cre-
ate “control areas” where
GMOs would be subject to
restrictions died in commit-
tee that year.
When the ODA began
the rulemaking process for
the mediation program, the
agency discovered it lacked
the authority to legally im-
plement it.
Another bill passed in
2015, House Bill 2444,
clarified language related
to mediation by the agency
and removed key provisions
that ODA relied upon for the
GMO mediation program.
“Through the hustle and
bustle of the legislative ses-
sion, it wasn’t cross-checked
with the other mediation
bill,” said Kathryn Walker,
special assistant to ODA’s
director.
The problem will re-
quire a legislative fix during
the 2017 session, she said.
“There is interest in correct-
ing the situation.”
Since the law was passed,
though, the agency has re-
ceived no requests for me-
diation under the program,
Walker said.
Growers can seek sim-
ilar mediation through the
USDA, but none have ex-
pressed interest with that
agency, either.
Problems with cross-pol-
lination among GMOs and
other crops aren’t prevalent,
said Barry Bushue, president
of the Oregon Farm Bureau.
“My guess is there’s
probably not a lot of need
for it,” Bushue said of the
GMO mediation program.
Bushue pointed to a
USDA survey that found
only 92 organic farms across
the U.S. experienced crop
losses from GMOs between
2011 and 2014, while the
nation has more than 14,000
organic farms.
“It’s incredibly small,”
he said.
Oregonians for Food
and Shelter, an agribusiness
group, wants to know what
kind of problems exist, but
the lack of conflicts reported
to ODA or USDA indicate
they’re likely minimal, said
Scott Dahlman, the group’s
policy director.
“It speaks volumes to the
fact that farmers know how
to work together and find
ways to figure it out them-
selves,” he said.
It’s possible that some
conventional and organic
growers haven’t sought help
from the mediation program
because they see it as bu-
reaucratic, said Elise Hig-
ley, director of Our Family
Farms Coalition, which sup-
ports GMO-free zones.
Perhaps the legislative
fix required for the pro-
gram will allow lawmakers
to revisit a 2013 bill that
pre-empted local ordinances
from restricting GMOs, she
said.
Rather than have a me-
diation program to deal
with the consequences of
cross-pollination,
farmers
would benefit more from a
system that prevents prob-
lems in the first place, Higley
said.
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