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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2017
Bentz: Legislature should prioritize revenue, PERS reform
By PARIS ACHEN
and CLAIRE
WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
JOHN DAY — A prom-
inent legislator who helped
shepherd a massive transpor-
tation package through the
Legislature earlier this year
is meeting resistance from
leadership on his calls to pri-
oritize budget and tax reform.
“Spending reform, tax
reform and (public pension
reform) are in another world
of complexity as compared to
the transportation package,”
said Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-On-
tario, in a meeting with the
Pamplin Media/EO Media
Capital Bureau. “We should
be starting now.”
His comments came hours
after a coalition called Prior-
ity Oregon announced it had
filed an initiative petition to
EO Media Group
Rep. Cliff Bentz is meeting
resistance from leadership
on his calls to prioritize
budget and tax reform.
make state and local public
agencies use excess revenues
to pay down unfunded obli-
gations of the Public Employ-
ees Retirement System.
The state faces potentially
dramatic shortfalls for Med-
icaid and PERS in the next
two years.
Instead, Gov. Kate Brown
and House Speaker Tina
Kotek, D-Portland, want to
focus on passing a “cap-and-
invest” carbon program in the
35-day legislative session early
next year. The program would
set a limit on the amount of
carbon a business could emit
and put a price on any excess.
It would yield an estimated
$700 million per year in rev-
enue to invest in projects to
slow climate change.
“If they pass cap and
invest to pull $700 million a
year out of our economy, are
we going to go back a short
year later and say we want
another $2 billion to address
PERS?” Bentz said.
“How much can our econ-
omy stand?”
Bentz and three other law-
makers — Rep. Phil Barn-
hart, D-Eugene; Sen. Brian
Boquist, R-Dallas; and Sen.
Mark Hass, D-Beaverton —
convened in late August to
discuss a format for pursu-
ing revenue and spending
reform.
The Ontario lawmaker
said he approached Brown
and Kotek about pursuing
reform ideas now.
“What I have been told
is wait until March,” Bentz
said.
Hass agreed that “cap and
invest” policy should wait
until 2019, when instead of
35 days, lawmakers have
more than five months to pass
laws. (The Oregon Legisla-
ture convenes for the shorter
session in even years and the
longer session in odd years.)
“Policies of that magni-
tude should be dealt with
in the long session, and the
short session should be to add
changes that require prompt
attention,” Hass said.
“I think it is fair to say we
can start a process to look at
that, but I think it is some-
thing we should pick up in
2019,” he added.
There are a few reasons
why leadership may want
to delay an overhaul of the
state’s interconnected bud-
get, public pension system
and tax structure.
For one thing, it’s unclear
what Congress may reform
health care and tax policies
that affect the state budget.
There’s talk that Medic-
aid funding for states could
move to a block grant for-
mat, Bentz said. That poten-
tiality and any changes to tax
policy, such as policies sur-
rounding deductions, could
affect the amount of revenue
Oregon brings in.
There’s also the complex-
ity factor: simply put, tax
policy is hard.
Hass, a consistent advo-
cate for tax reform, said last
month that legislators needed
to address tax reform sooner
rather than later, rather than
risk future fiscal crises.
The Beaverton Democrat
has advocated for an overhaul
to the state’s tax structure, a
move he believes could help
address the pension system’s
$24 billion unfunded liability
— the amount of money that
the state owes retirees that its
assets cannot currently pay.
Meanwhile, Gov. Brown
has convened an advisory
task force looking at ways to
reduce the unfunded liability
of PERS by $5 billion.
“Nobody disputes the
need to do this (revenue and
spending reform); it’s just a
question of when to start,”
Bentz said.
County approves
urban renewal plan
for Seaside growth
The project
will sunset
after 25 years
By JACK HEFFERNAN
The Daily Astorian
Clatsop County gave an
official nod Wednesday to
the Southeast Seaside Urban
Renewal Plan.
Because small patches of
the 530-acre project within
the city are considered unin-
corporated, the plan required
approval from the county
Board of Commissioners,
who unanimously voted in
favor.
The city hoped to gain
access to a failing septic sys-
tem affecting residents in an
unincorporated area.
“We certainly want to pro-
vide them with the services
that are normally available to
citizens of a city,” City Man-
ager Mark Winstanley said.
The Seaside City Council
approved the plan in August.
Elimination of 33 acres of
land originally included in
the project, but not owned by
the city, made the decision
easier both for city council-
ors and county commission-
ers. Inclusion of the land
had prompted backlash from
residents.
The project has a legal
cap of $62.4 million indebt-
edness and will sunset after
Christina Grauff
Astoria High School students (from left) Tyler Gagnon, Issi Wilcox and Matthew Grauff assemble a donated drill press
they will use to build a robot as part of the FIRST Robotics Competition.
Astoria High launches robotics team
Students need
computer-savvy
adult mentors
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
For the past three years,
Astoria High School senior
Matt Grauff has traveled
to South County rival Sea-
side High School, where he
was an engineer with the
CYBORG Seagulls, a com-
petitive robotics team with
the international FIRST
Robotics Competition.
For his senior project,
Grauff is captaining an effort
to start a team in Astoria,
nicknamed the River Bots,
for this year’s international
competition.
FIRST, created in 1992
by Segway inventor Dean
Kamen, annually challenges
high schoolers from around
the country to build a robot to
complete a specific mission.
“The first Saturday of Jan-
uary, they announce what
the year’s challenge is to all
the teams in the world at the
exact same time, and then
you have exactly six weeks to
build a robot that will fulfill
that,” Grauff said.
Advising the team is Cris
Wilcox, a parent of three
students and a former man-
ufacturer with the Oregon
Air National Guard’s 173rd
Fighter Wing in southern
Oregon and Intel who moved
to the area several years ago.
“When I first moved here,
I was surprised there wasn’t
already a robotics team in the
area,” she said.
One of Grauff’s earliest
teammates was her daugh-
ter Issi, who said she became
interested in the team after
growing up watching her
mother working on fighter
jets, seeing her cousin com-
pete in the FIRST competi-
tion and building Lego robots
at Astoria Middle School.
Grauff spent the summer
reaching out to more than
50 businesses and individu-
Christina Grauff
Matthew Grauff (standing), a former member of the Sea-
side High School’s CYBORG Seagulls, is trying to start a
team at Astoria High School.
als, raising more than $5,000
to fund the team, which
received another $5,000 in
startup money from the dis-
trict. After putting out word
over the summer, more than
20 students showed up at the
high school interested in join-
ing the team, he said.
By
mid-November,
the team needs to solidify
its membership, find sev-
eral adult mentors and pay
$11,000 to register with the
competition, after which they
receive a robotics kit.
“We want as many stu-
dents as are interested,”
Grauff said. “It will be a core
of students more dedicated,
then others who come in
every once in a while.”
FIRST provides a kit to
build an entire robot, but
encourages teams to budget
and buy their own specialized
W A NTED
parts. The River Bots are hop-
ing to raise a total of $23,000
in grants and donations to
cover registration, building
and travel expenses through-
out the competition.
With no coding classes
at the high school, the team
especially needs comput-
er-savvy
mentors.
One
adviser is Clatsop Commu-
nity College physics instruc-
tor Pat Keefe, who oversees
an underwater robotics team
through Marine Advanced
Technology Education that
draws students from local
high schools.
“I’m interested in AHS
robotics as my son, Malachi,
is in the club,” Keefe said of
River Bots. “I hope to help
them with specialty parts.
Being AHS’ first year, they
will have a hard time getting
something together.”
For more information,
contact Grauff at mgrauff@
gmail.com and Wilcox at cri-
selda.wilcox@gmail.com
25 years. It may help build
bridges, add traffic enhance-
ments and fund infrastructure
improvements for the Sea-
side School District’s new
campus in the southeast hills.
Designating an area as
an urban renewal district
allows for the use of prop-
erty taxes to revitalize down-
trodden or underdeveloped
areas. Taxes resulting from
increased assessed property
values in the district are fro-
zen, and increases are fun-
neled toward the city’s urban
renewal agency rather than
taxing districts.
Improvements that lead to
higher assessed values then
generate more funds for the
district.
The Board of Commis-
sioners also reviewed the
plan to make sure it followed
statutes as well as coun-
ty-wide plans. While the
county will not see any short-
term impact, increased prop-
erty taxes once the project
sunsets could ultimately lead
to more property tax revenue.
“It’s basically another
type of stimulus program,”
Clatsop County Manager
Cameron Moore said.
Urban renewal district
boundaries could be frozen
— and the land designated as
a taxing district — as early as
October.
“Now we are really get-
ting going on this,” Winstan-
ley said.
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