news
BY ALAN PITTMAN
Schools Tax Adjusted
Council exempts poor from paying tax
to fund schools/jobs
T
he Eugene City Council voted 6-2
Feb. 22 to exempt the poor from a
proposed income tax for schools
and job creation for the May ballot.
After months of pleas from hundreds
of parents and citizens concerned that
budget cuts could leave many classrooms
packed with up to 50 children, schools
cut to four days a week and make it
diffi cult for the city to attract employers,
the City Council referred a small income
tax to voters last week.
But school funding supporters
expressed immediate concern that the
council had made the tax hard on the
poor and harder to pass by including a
tax on families living below poverty that
they had never asked for.
Councilor George Brown said that
taxing the poor “was deeply dissatisfying
to me in that I don’t think it refl ected
community values. I’m not exactly sure
how we ended up with that product, but,
thank goodness, there was a chance to
correct it.”
Brown worked with the city attorney
and city staff to craft “a much fairer
and more rational scheme, one that is
progressive, one that exempts people
below the poverty line,” he said. “This
better refl ects the intentions of the
proponents” of the school funding
measure, he said.
At the urging of council conservatives,
the original council measure was largely
a fl at tax and included taxing income
even of extremely poor people struggling
to feed and house their families. The
revised version has rising rates based
on the ability to pay and low income
exemptions similar to the federal tax
structure.
The revised tax referral exempts joint
income of less than $31,000. Between
$31,000 and $51,000 joint income,
people would pay a 0.25 percent tax
on income after deductions (Oregon
Taxable Income, OTI). Between $51,000
and $74,000 in gross income the rate
would rise to 0.40 percent, 0.64 percent
between $74,000 and $106,000 and
1.02 percent above $106,000 in joint
income. The city estimates a third of
people would pay no tax, a family with
joint income of $50,000 would pay $86
a year, joint income of $90,000 would
pay $397 and joint income of $250,000
would pay $1,941. Many taxpayers may
be able to deduct the city taxes on their
federal return, reducing the impact by
about a third.
The tax would raise approximately
$17 million for 4J and Bethel schools
which face laying off up to 100 teachers,
boosting already crowded classes by up
to 25 percent, and cutting up to a day
of school every week in response to
recession budget cuts. The tax revenue
is “to reduce or eliminate instructional
furlough days and to reduce class size,”
the council resolution states.
“The one thing we all agree on up
here is that we care about our schools,
we care about our city’s well being and
we care about the future of our kids,”
Mayor Kitty Piercy said. “We’ve had
many, many people from our community
who asked us to step up and help,” she
said of the school funding measure. She
said the revised tax structure “makes it
more humane.”
Piercy noted that ECONorthwest
economists found that the school
funding measure would be a boon to
the local economy, potentially attracting
businesses and creating hundreds of net
jobs and millions of dollars in increased
wages. “Investing and working on our
school funding issue will pay off for our
community.”
Councilors George Poling and Mike
Clark opposed the school funding/job
creation measure.
Hilary Johnson, a leader of the
grassroots group of school supporters,
praised the council for improving the tax.
“We’re grateful,” she said. “I applaud
Councilor Brown for really working hard
to improve these tax rates.”
“We have a very grassroots-based
campaign, hundreds of volunteers have
signed up,” she said of the effort to
pass the May measure. “We’re going at
breakneck speed.”
But local school funding supporters
may face opposition from a right wing
group funded by the oil billionaire
Koch brothers. Posts on the website of
the Oregon chapter of Americans for
Prosperity indicate the group has targeted
the school funding and job creating
measure. Supporters of the measure plan
to get their own website up at www.
strongschoolseugene.org soon.
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EUGENE WEEKLY FEBRUARY 24, 2011 9