U NDA THE
R OTUNDA
BY SEN. VICKI WALKER
The Scarlet Letter
‘A’ is for accountability
I
magine being handed a check from the state of
Oregon for hundreds of thousands of dollars that
provides tax incentives to your business to ei-
ther locate here or expand your current operations.
Imagine further that the money comes with rela-
tively few strings attached: If you’re in an enter-
prise zone, you only have to increase employment
by 10 percent and invest $50,000 in buildings or
equipment; if you’re in the free-for-all-world of eco-
nomic development, your check is a ticket to unfettered,
unencumbered spending that promises little in the way of jobs or economic de-
velopment. And if you’re wondering who pays for it all, take a look in the mirror.
The Oregon Legislature long ago bought into the theory that tax breaks
— or tax expenditures as they’re known in the tax code — are good for the
economy. According to the 2005-2007 State of Oregon Tax Expenditure
Report, the most recent count lists 352 tax breaks: 120 relate to property
taxes, 195 to personal and corporate income taxes and 37 to other state tax
programs. Many of these are benefits provided to the less fortunate among us
or are opportunities for citizens to do good things and benefit society as a
whole. We have tax credits for alternative energy production, energy efficient
appliances, hybrid automobiles, health care expenses, child care and depend-
ent care expenses and affordable housing, to name just a few.
These types of credits are easy to track and to hold people and business
entities accountable for. Where we get into trouble is when we write checks to
large corporations and businesses under the guise of economic development,
holding press conferences about all the great jobs we’re providing to the state
and then not following through on ensuring they have met their commit-
ments.
According to the Oregon Revenue Coalition, a broad-based group of organi-
zations concerned about such things, Oregon now gives away more in tax
breaks than we collect in taxes. In fact, tax breaks are actually growing faster
than revenues, a trend the 2007 Legislature is on track to continue. There
seems to be no consistent policy analysis that is used to assess these “great
and wonderful” giveaways of your tax dollars, particularly as they relate to cor-
porate interests — until now.
E
nter SB 518, a bill I modeled after the Illinois Corporate Accountability
in Tax Expenditures Act that Gov. Rod Blagojevich happily signed into
law in 2003. The bill will provide an annual unified development report
listing all state aid, tax expenditures and giveaways under our development as-
sistance programs. All state subsidized corporations must file a report, and all
the detailed information about salary levels, number of jobs provided, health
care benefits and other information is available to you, the taxpayer, on the
Internet.
The pinnacle of the bill, however, is this: Corporations that default or fail to
meet their job projections must repay all state subsidies received during the
year of the default. You might not be surprised to learn that many of the prom-
ised jobs were low-wage jobs without benefits or that companies would prom-
ise jobs at one wage level and then cut salaries at another.
And you might not be surprised to learn that the business community is all-
atwitter about SB 518. According to a Portland Business Journal story Feb. 9,
Senate Republican leader Ted Ferrioli went so far as to call my bill passive-ag-
gressive behavior, saying it would cause “the beneficiary of the tax benefit to
wear a scarlet letter that brands themselves as guilty.”
Maybe so, Sen. Ferrioli, but quite frankly, I don’t give a damn. If a business
takes our money — whether it be in taxes or lottery dollars — that business
should be accountable for how they spend it, because in my book “A” is for
Accountability.
It’s time that Oregon join at least 10 other states with similar laws that ask
business to show us the money. And if they’re worried about SB 518, what will
they think of SB 783, my bill that brings accountability and responsibility to
state enterprise zones? Quick, grab the defibrillator — I think their hearts have
gone atwitter again. Until then, I’ll see you on the front lines — I’m having too
much fun!
Vicki L. Walker of Eugene is a state senator representing District 7.
4 MARCH 1, 2007
TO THE EDITOR
TRAGEDY IN THE NUMBERS
The Lane County commissioners gave us
all a Valentine. On Feb. 14 they unanimously
passed a resolution urging our congressional
delegation to “reduce the number of U.S.
troops engaged in wars and to take action to
provide federal financial support targeted for
the welfare, safety and health of returning vet-
erans affected by their participation in war,
their families and communities.”
This resolution came from the Mental
Health Advisory Committee, a volunteer Lane
County committee charged with advising the
Board on community needs and priorities for
mental health services.
In the course of our research into this issue,
we discovered mental disorders are reported in
more than one in four returning soldiers from
Iraq and Afghanistan; almost 1,700 service
members returning from the war this year said
they harbored thoughts of hurting themselves
or that they would be better off dead; more
than 250 said they had such thoughts “a lot”;
nearly 20,000 reported nightmares or un-
wanted war recollections; more than 3,700
said they had concerns that they might “hurt or
lose control” with someone else; and the
Veterans Benefits Administration has a back-
log of 400,000 pending claims.
I look with great disappointment at these
figures and can see, as you can, the tragedy
within. I hope both the city of Eugene and the
state of Oregon take up this call for relief from
the horrors of war and ask our federal govern-
ment to step up and pay for the damage they
are doing to our friends and our neighbors, and
to end this nightmare today.
Tim Mueller
Lane County Mental Health
Advisory Committee
CHAINSAW SOLUTION
Logging industry front group Oregon
Forest Resources Institute recently staged the
conference “Forests, Carbon and Climate
Change” at OSU to promote their solution to
global warming: more logging!
Has the logging industry finally turned
over a new leaf, or is this just the latest pro-
logging propaganda?
The U.N., NASA and the British govern-
ment’s Stern Review on climate change blame
logging for one-third of the human-made car-
bon emissions released into the atmosphere.
The idea that those who caused the devasta-
tion of one planetary ecosystem, our forests,
will now lead the charge to protect other plan-
etary ecosystems would be hilarious were it
not such a dangerous — and brilliantly con-
cocted — lie.
Fanning the flames of fire hysteria, logging
interests insist our native forests are sick and
in need of “thinning” (i.e. logging) on an un-
precedented,
landscape-wide
basis.
Conveniently enough, these proposed thin-
ning projects would produce a large amount of
woody debris. Industry’s intention is to build
biomass energy factories that must be fueled
by a constant input of organic matter to remain
economically viable, resulting in escalated
logging.
Industry’s spin in a nutshell: Not only are
they “fixing” forests, they’re turning “waste”
into a clean, renewable energy source. This
deceit undermines the efforts of those gen-
uinely invested in tackling global warming.
The reality hiding behind the green curtain
is that “forest biomass” extraction is the latest
ploy to continue plundering our forests — this
time stripping the fragile understory, a vital
part of an intact forest ecosystem.
Josh Schlossberg
Native Forest Council
NEW HOPE FOR SANITY
It is wonderful news that environmental
activist Jeff “Free” Luers will have his prison
sentence reduced thanks to the Oregon Court
of Appeals ruling that he was improperly sen-
tenced to 22-plus years for an incident that re-
sulted in minimal financial damage and no
harm to life.
While the actions that landed Jeff Luers in
prison were wrong, his harsh and excessive
punishment has been a tragic embarrassment
to the state of Oregon. That we punish mis-
guided but well-intentioned activists for burn-
ing cars worse than sexual predators and seri-
ously violent criminals is shameful and inex-
cusable. A sentence reduction for Jeff Luers