• Eugene lost one of its most
creative artists last week.
Cancer stole Catherine
Vandertuin from us when
she was far too young. In
her too-short time here,
Vandertuin, the founder and
artistic director of Eugene
Chamber Theatre, applied
enormous energy, creativity
and collaboration to the
innovative theater/music
productions of Dust and
Dreams, Antigone, The
Descent of Innana and Ice Cure, the last adapted from an
original manuscript. She also collaborated in various puppet
and mask theater productions. Her vision was to create
multi-disciplinary works that explored themes of balance
and wholeness. Catherine brought Javanese gamelan music
to Eugene in 1992 with the founding of Gamelan Nuju Laras,
well known for accompanying labyrinth walks created by her
partner, Jeff Burch. Although her theater work and family
obligations eventually forced her to give up the gamelan,
Catherine’s contribution continues in Nuju Laras’s successor,
Gamelan Sari Pandhawa, and the 90-piece Javanese game-
lan Gamelan Kyai Tunjung Mulya, whose construction she
commissioned and supervised. Gamelan Kyai Tunjung Mulya
was ultimately donated to the UO where it is used to teach
UO students and other community members. Through her
teaching at LCC, collaborations with other community
artists, and irrepressibly creative spirit, Catherine made
Eugene a much more artistically vital place, and her legacy
will live on in the audiences she touched and the artists she
taught and inspired.
• The squabble between Eugene and Lane County over
enterprise zone standards could lead to the death of the
new enterprise zone, which is not such a bad thing, or a
reversion to lax state rules, which is a bad thing. This is all
about Hynix, but is Hynix really going to leave Eugene if it
doesn’t get monster tax breaks in the future? Seems highly
unlikely. Meanwhile, this whole mess could have been avoid-
ed if our city manager and staff had hashed out local stan-
dards with county officials before applying to the state for
the enterprise zone. Who has the most to lose politically if
the EZ dies? Our mayor and councilors who favor reason-
able restraints on corporate candy are likely to be unfairly
tarred as anti-jobs and anti-workers in the next elections —
particularly since the local mainstream media continue to
give these complex issues superficial attention.
• We’ve speculated for years about DeFazio giving up his
congressional seat to run for governor. We wouldn’t expect
him to run against Kulongoski in a Democratic primary (as
Pete Sorenson says he’ll do), but if Kulongoski gets fed up in
the hot seat and DeFazio wearies of always being in the
minority, anything could happen. Willamette Week this week
(www.wweek.com) notes that DeFazio’s been a very public
figure in Portland lately, meeting with labor and business
groups and even with the governor himself, “fueling specu-
lation that he may jump in the governor’s race.” But
DeFazio’s office tells us there’s no hidden agenda, just a
series of meetings that had been scheduled during his “dis-
trict work session.”
Martin also says that the venue will con-
tinue to evolve with the ever-changing and
growing interest in local music. Since its
original opening in 1992 John Henry’s
has tried to maintain an image as a kind
of Mecca and launching pad for Eugene
bands.
In other clubs news, the Jazz Station, a
new club featuring, you guessed it, jazz,
opens this week at 68 West Broadway.
Check out their grand opening Friday night.
Black Forest owner Mike Neria just opened
a new venue, El Dorado, in the former
Sher's location at 3000 W. 11th Ave. And
Da Houze is now closed and will soon
move to a new, to-be-announced, loca-
tion.— Emily Freeman
CORRECTIONS/
CLARIFICATIONS
Last week’s news story, “Fuel Fight,”
failed to report how two Lane County repre-
sentatives voted on the biofuels bill, HB
3481. Rep. Robert Ackerman (D-Eugene)
voted no along with Reps. Paul Holvey (D-
Eugene) and Phil Barnhart (D-Eugene). Rep.
Terry Beyer (D-Springfield) voted yes along
with Rep. Debi Farr (R-Eugene).
BY ALAN PITTMAN
$
300,000 Per Job
County demands city give Hynix more.
T
he Lane County Commission is de-
manding that the city of Eugene in
effect give Hynix tax breaks of up to
about $300,000 per new job, if the corpora-
tion completes plans to expand its chip plant.
But the Eugene City Council says it wants to
cap such tax breaks at $30,000 per added job.
Concerned about the potential huge loss
of funding for already underfunded schools
and other government services and skeptical
whether such massive giveaways are actually
needed to create jobs, the council voted 5-4
July 18 to give the county until July 22 to
agree to a tax break cap. Without an agree-
ment the city will seek to terminate the new
enterprise zone (EZ) program.
“This community wants to help busi-
nesses, but not with a blank check,” said
Eugene Councilor Bonny Bettman.
The demands of the Republican and con-
servative-dominated County Commission
have collided with the Democratic, progres-
sive majority on the Eugene City Council to
create a legal and political morass.
The county and the city co-sponsored an
EZ application to the state this spring. Lane
County participation was required because a
small fraction of the zone falls outside city
limits. State law makes the county an equal
partner even though the city has about four
times more land and lost tax revenue at stake.
In April, both the commission and the
council passed resolutions in support of the
application stating that they intended to im-
pose a “per job created” cap on tax breaks in
the new zone. On June 28 the state approved
the EZ, but the next day the commissioners
voted to not cap the tax breaks per job created.
8 JULY 21, 2005
The council voted to withdraw its enterprise
zone application, but the state economic de-
velopment department refused to allow the
city to cancel the application and imposed the
zone on the city effective July 1 without the
cap.
Bettman says the city may have legal re-
course to sue the county for “breaching the
agreement” to include the caps.
But even if the city could successfully
argue in court that the resolutions were a
legally binding agreement that the county
breached, the resolutions only refer to a cap
The city could attempt to force the depart-
ment to cancel the zone by refusing to ap-
point a local zone manager. Under state law if
a sponsor is unwilling to appoint the manager
as required, “the director shall order termina-
tion of the enterprise zone.”
Even if such legal strategies worked, the
city could still face problems with state laws
designed to favor corporate welfare over
local control. State law does not allow reduc-
tion of EZ tax benefits by more than one-
third, so the cap may not be able to be en-
forced beyond such a reduction. State law
also includes grandfathering provisions that
could allow Hynix to still receive tax breaks
for 10 years even after the EZ is terminated.
The private law firm that does the city’s
‘This community wants to help businesses,
but not with a blank check.’
— Councilor Bonny Bettman
and not a specific amount. It could, however,
be politically difficult for the county to argue
that it wants to give away $300,000 in tax
breaks for each new job.
Bettman said the commissioner’s aggres-
sive fight to give Hynix huge tax breaks
while they are “screaming poverty” and call-
ing for big tax increases for public safety will
make it harder for them to pass any future tax
increases.
Under state enterprise zone law, the city
cannot easily terminate the EZ on its own,
city staff have advised.
The city could lobby the Economic
Development Department to rescind its earlier
refusal to allow the city to withdraw the appli-
cation. But the department in the past has been
a strong booster of Hynix tax breaks.
legal work, Harrang Long Gary Rudnick PC,
also has Lane County and Hynix as clients.
The firm has denied any conflicts of interest.
How did the city get in such a mess?
Councilors mainly blame the county for
reneging on the caps, but they’re also angry
with city staff.
Staff did not tell the council before it
agreed to apply for an enterprise zone that the
County Commission might have effective
veto power over any effort to later impose
meaningful caps or community job quality
standards. In contrast, city staffer
Denny Braud did tell the County
Commission April 6 that it would
have approval authority over the job
quality standards, according to meeting min-
utes.
Staff also did not tell the council that the
cap would be subject to the one-third limit in
state law.
“They definitely were not voluntarily
forthcoming with information that would
have dissuaded us from making an applica-
tion,” Bettman said.
This isn’t the first time. In 2002 city de-
velopment staff did not provide the council
with key information that could have re-
versed a close vote in support of an additional
$2.2 million tax break for Hynix. City offi-
cials said it was an “oversight” that staff did
not tell the council that Hynix had filed a
major tax appeal while asking the council for
yet more tax breaks.
City staff have strongly supported Hynix
since the corporation (formerly Hyundai)
came to town. In 1995 staff secretly formed a
“dream team” to help the company win per-
mits to destroy wetlands, and withheld infor-
mation from the council and public, docu-
ments revealed.
This also isn’t the first time the County
Commission has sought to force the city to
give Hynix bigger tax breaks. In 1997 Lane
County commissioners forced the Eugene
council to give Hynix an estimated $93 mil-
lion more in potential tax breaks if the corpo-
ration built later phases. Like this year, the
council then had also sought a per job cap on
the giveaways.
In 1997, Hynix hired former Gov. Neil
Goldschmidt to lobby county commission-
ers. Now, Jack Roberts, a former Republican
gubernatorial candidate, is pushing the com-
mission to oppose the city’s tax break caps.
Robert’s directs the local Metro Partnership
business lobby, a group partially funded by
the city of Eugene.
ew