NORTH COAST
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2015
3A
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City Council
also approves
salary increase
for city manager
By DERRICK DePLEDGE
The Daily Astorian
City lifeguards will get a
pay raise.
Lifeguards at the Astoria
Aquatic Center now start at
the state’s minimum wage of
$9.25 an hour and can earn
more if they work as swim
instructors or lead lifeguards.
The low pay has made it dif-
¿cult for the city to recruit
and retain lifeguards, and a
lifeguard shortage has forced
the city to temporarily reduce
pool hours in the afternoons.
The City Council unani-
mously agreed Monday night
to boost lifeguard pay to be-
tween $11.25 and $13 an hour.
Swim instructors, who now
earn $9.50 an hour, will re-
ceive between $12.25 and $14
an hour. Lead lifeguards, who
now make $10.25 an hour,
will get between $13.25 and
$15 an hour.
Angela Cosby, the director
of the city’s Parks and Rec-
reation Department, told the
City Council that the city’s
lifeguards earn less than life-
guards in other cities and pro-
grams. She said lifeguards at
the Sunset Empire Park and
Recreation District, which
competes with Astoria for life-
guards, earn up to $13 an hour.
The city announced when
the Aquatic Center reopened
in late September after a ren-
ovation that pools would be
closed from 1 to 3:30 p.m.
weekdays because of the life-
guard shortage. The city is
hiring lifeguards and hopes to
restore the hours.
The pay raises will cost
the city an estimated $57,000
a year, and city councilors au-
thori]ed Parks and Recreation
Department staff to explore
fee increases at the Aquatic
Center to sustain the higher
pay over time.
“We need to pay people an
adequate wage,” City Council-
or Drew Her]ig said. “That’s
part of our discussion on how
to live in Astoria. And we
know this money will go right
back into the community.”
City Councilor Zetty Nem-
lowill recommended that any
fee increases be imposed in-
crementally so as not to cause
“too much of a shock” on
Aquatic Center users.
In other business Monday
night, the City Council:
• Approved a 2.5 percent pay
raise for City Manager Brett Es-
tes after a positive performance
evaluation of his ¿rst year as the
city’s top administrator.
Estes, the city’s former
community development di-
rector, was hired last year to
replace Paul Benoit, who left
after more than eight years as
city manager to become city
administrator in Piedmont, Cal-
ifornia.
Estes also ¿lled in as ¿nance
director and community devel-
opment director until new di-
rectors were hired.
He has helped guide a City
Council in leadership transi-
tion with new Mayor Arline
LaMear and new councilors
in Nemlowill and Cindy Price.
LaMear replaced Willis Van
Dusen, the city’s mayor for 24
years, who chose not to seek
another term.
Estes currently makes
$116,853 a year. The pay raise
is retroactive to the one-year
anniversary of his hire date in
September.
• Agreed to spend $943,440
in cash on a new ladder truck
for the Astoria Fire Depart-
ment.
By paying cash, the city will
receive more than $55,000 in
discounts.
• Adopted a herbicide poli-
cy for city parks meant to en-
courage mechanical and natu-
ral methods where possible to
combat weeds.
• Rebuffed a request by
Price to consider potential re-
strictions on the number of
mariMuana facilities in the city.
Four medical mariMuana dis-
pensaries are temporarily sell-
ing recreational pot under a
state law that allows the sales
while rules are being drafted.
City Attorney Blair Hen-
ningsgaard said the city could
likely limit the number through
“clever time, place and manner”
restrictions on operations.
Price said that while city
voters approved legali]ing rec-
reational mariMuana, “I’m still
not sure that Astorians really
want to have a pot shop on ev-
ery other corner.”
But City Councilor Russ
Warr said councilors should
wait until city staff identi¿es
problems with mariMuana busi-
nesses before weighing action.
Other councilors also chose
not to support Price’s request.
• Held a moment of silence at
the start of the meeting to honor
the victims of the mass shooting
last Thursday at Umpqua Com-
munity College in Roseburg.
“Such a terrible, terrible
tragedy,” LaMear said. “And
our thoughts are with them all.”
State lawmakers contemplate µclaw back’ on tax credit pro¿ts
By HILLARY BORRUD
Capital Bureau
SALEM — Oregon law-
makers might consider legis-
lation next year to claw back
some oI the Sro¿ts reali]ed by
wealthy individuals and com-
panies who purchased deeply
discounted energy tax credits.
Gov. Kate Brown last
month asked the Legislature to
review energy tax credits, after
news reports that of¿cials at the
Oregon Department of Energy
allowed tax credit recipients to
ignore state price regulations
and sell the tax credits at nego-
tiated prices.
Oregon issues tax credits
as an incentive to renewable
energy and ef¿ciency proMects
to help offset capital costs. Re-
cipients can use them to reduce
taxes, or sell them to raise cash.
Many tax credit recipients are
governments and companies
that do not owe state taxes, and
the Legislature has passed laws
that required the Department of
Energy to adopt a formula to
set sales prices. The goal was
to ensure most of the bene¿t
CAPITAL
THE
BUREAU
from the incentives went to the
energy proMects.
“I’m thinking about a poten-
tial clawback,” state Rep. Phil
Barnhart, D-Spring¿eld, said
after a meeting on the issue last
week. Barnhart is chairman of
the House Interim Committee
On Revenue. Barnhart said he
had not ¿gured out the details,
but the concept was based on
questions asked by Rep. John
Davis, R-Wilsonville, about
“what our recourse is at this
point.”
Davis asked senior deputy
legislative counsel Kate Toss-
will whether the Legislature
can make changes to tax cred-
its which have already been
issued to public and private
organi]ations that pursued re-
newable energy and ef¿ciency
proMects. Tosswill said that tax
credits are a matter of “leg-
islative grace,” meaning that
because lawmakers created the
credits, they have some degree
of discretion to make changes
after-the-fact. Those changes
would not breach a contract,
and would not necessarily con-
stitute a taking of someone’s
property.
“Certainly there are cases
where a taxpayer ends up with
more liability, and it is support-
ed,” Tosswill said.
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It was unclear how much
money might be at stake during
hearings on the issue last week.
However, an analysis of Ore-
gon Department of Energy data
by the EO Media Group/Pam-
plin Media Group Capital Bu-
reau suggests that the agency’s
decision to ignore price regula-
tions for one type of energy tax
credit resulted in as much as
$1.2 million in underpayments.
Tax credit recipients have
sold roughly $6.4 million in
tax credits issued through the
state’s energy incentive pro-
gram, which rewards alter-
native fuel proMects, school
retro¿ts and transit districts.
Purchasers would have paid ap-
proximately $6.1 million if the
Department of Energy had re-
quired them to follow price reg-
ulations. Instead the purchasers
paid around $4.9 million for the
credits. The energy department
has also issued tax credits that
could still be sold in the future,
and Chris Allanach, a senior
economist in the Legislative
Revenue Of¿ce, told lawmak-
ers that future legislation could
impact a total of approximately
$44 million in energy incentive
program tax credits.
The extent to which tax
credit purchasers underpaid for
a controversial earlier credit,
the business energy tax credit,
was unclear. When state audi-
tors asked the energy depart-
ment to provide examples of
negotiated price tax credit sales
from 2012 to 2014, the agency
provided only a handful of ex-
amples and the most someone
underpaid was approximately
$2,00. However, of¿cials in-
structed energy employees not
to verify or question the pay-
ments in the tax credit deals,
and the agency’s former chief
¿nancial of¿cer Anthony Buck-
ley told auditors that “there was
suspicion by some” that buyers
and sellers of tax credits were
using a “kickbacks” scheme to
make it appear they were com-
plying with price regulations
when they were actually nego-
tiating lower prices, according
to auditors’ notes.
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The business energy tax
credit involved much larg-
er tax breaks than the scaled
down energy incentive pro-
gram that replaced it. From
2006 to 2014, wealthy indi-
viduals and companies bought
business energy tax credits
worth $703.6 million for
$494.2 million, according to
the EO Media Group/Pamplin
Media Group Capital Bureau’s
analysis of nonrefundable en-
ergy tax credits. That’s a cap-
ital gain of $209.4 million, or
29.8 percent.
“I want to consider the pos-
sibility of clawing back some
of the pro¿ts, as it were, by
the guy that bought the credit,”
Barnhart said, referring to a tax
credit which the TriMet transit
agency sold a portion of at a
deep discount to Dan Wieden,
co-founder of the Portland ad-
vertising agency Wieden+Ken-
nedy. Wieden and other pur-
chasers bought shares of the $2
million tax credit for 75 cents
on the dollar, instead of 98
cents on the dollar required by
state price regulations.
TriMet sold a second energy
tax credit worth approximately
$1 million for 75 cents on the
dollar, instead of 95 cents on
the dollar as mandated.
One thing lawmakers don’t
need to do is re-write existing
law to clarify that tax credit re-
cipients must follow state price
regulations, Barnhart said. He
pointed out that Tosswill told
lawmakers “it’s doubtful” that
existing state law allowed for
the Department of Energy’s de-
cision to allow negotiated price
tax credit sales.
“She said we got it right the
¿rst time,” Barnhart said of the
statute.
The Capital Bureau is a
collaboration between EO Me-
dia Group and Pamplin Media
Group.
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