NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | December 2, 2016 | PAGE 7
...Measure 97 backers take their
campaign to the Legislature
From Page 1
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jority support for the measure,
but a $23 million ad campaign
by big business opponents
turned that around, and Measure
97 lost 59 to 40 percent. Sup-
porters are choosing to interpret
the result as voters rejecting that
specific proposal, not voters re-
jecting the idea that big corpo-
rations should pay more in order
for Oregon to improve funding
for schools, health care and sen-
ior services.
“The hundreds of thousands
of conversations we had with
voters at the door showed that
nobody wants us to be lowest in
the nation for corporate taxes,”
said Andrea Paluso, executive
director of Family Forward Ore-
gon. “The problem around cor-
porations not paying their fair
share still remains, and we’re
going to keep working until we
find a solution.”
Now the state is heading into
another one of its perennial
budget crises, with Legislative
Revenue Office forecasting a
$1.4 billion shortfall in the next
biennium.
“We refuse to accept service
cuts when Oregon has the low-
est corporate tax rate in the na-
tion,” said OEA President
Hanna Vaandering. According
to a May 2016 study by Ander-
son Economic Group, Oregon
has the lowest effective business
tax rate of any state in the nation
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“They have an uncon-
scionably
low tax rate.
That’s one
of the rea-
sons we’re
going to be
pushing tax
trans-
parency for
corporations.”
— Brian Rudiger,
SEIU Local 503 executive director
— 6.6 percent.
“They have an uncon-
scionably low tax rate,” said
SEIU Local 503 Executive Di-
rector Brian Rudiger. That’s
one of the reasons we’re going
to be pushing tax transparency
for corporations.”
Rudiger said the coalition
will be coming up with a set of
revenue proposals in the next
few weeks for the Legislature to
consider.
The Oregon Constitution re-
quires a three-fifths supermajor-
ity for the Oregon Legislature to
pass new revenue-raising bills,
thanks to a ballot measure re-
ferred to voters in 1996 by a Re-
publican-led Legislature. De-
mocrats are one vote short of the
supermajority in both the House
and Senate. But lawmakers
could refer tax measures to vot-
ers with a simple majority, and
they may also be able to repeal
or reduce tax breaks with a sim-
ple majority under a recent court
decision. Oregon has over $1.8
billion a year in personal and
corporate income tax breaks, not
counting deductions and exclu-
sions that come from alignment
with the federal tax code.
Ironically, business groups
that campaigned against Meas-
ure 97 by saying it was a sales
tax (actually, it was a corporate
income tax) have themselves
proposed a sales tax as the best
solution to Oregon’s perennial
budget troubles. But leaders of
A Better Oregon said they’re not
in favor of that.
“We don’t want to push for-
ward a revenue solution that
happens on the backs of work-
ing people and small busi-
nesses,” Paluso said. “We be-
lieve the focus should remain on
the largest corporations doing
business in our state.”