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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (July 20, 2016)
JULY 20, 2016 Portland and Seattle Volume XXXVIII No. 42 25 CENTS News ...............................3,8,10 A & E .....................................6-7 Opinion ...................................2 STEM Careers .................10 Calendars ........................... 4-5 Bids/Classiieds ....................11 CHALLENGING PEOPLE TO SHAPE A BETTER FUTURE NOW JUBILEE PARADE Carole Smith Carole Smith Retires Immediately By Christen McCurdy Of The Skanner News C arole Smith, who served as su- perintendent for Portland Public Schools for 10 years, announced Monday that she would retire im- mediately — not in one year as previ- ously announced. Smith’s announcement came on the heels of the release of a report by the law irm Stolle Berne, which was hired by PPS to investigate the district’s han- dling of lead in drinking water. That report found that the district knowing- ly misled the public about the safety of drinking water in schools. The report also cited budgetary con- straints — which prevented the district from upgrading decaying infrastruc- AP PHOTO/SETH WENIG See SMITH on page 3 Mike Perry, with the Cure Violence group, looks at his phone as he patrols the Stapleton Houses area in the Staten Island borough of New York June 8. His team works to defuse arguments that can lead to shootings and match people with job training and counseling. PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED Announcement comes immediately after damning lead report The PNW Drumline marched in the White Center Jubilee Parade July 17. The parade was held on the inal day of the 93rd Annual Jubilee Days, a four-day event which included a street fair, garden tour, ireworks display and carnival. Wyden Seeks to End Prison Tax Breaks Bill would change tax status of two largest private prison companies By Arashi Young Of The Skanner News L ast week Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden intro- duced legislation that would end a very lu- crative tax break used by private for-proit prison companies. The Ending Tax Breaks for Private Prisons Act of 2016 would overturn an IRS classiication that allows the two largest pri- vate prison companies, the Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group, to operate as Real Estate Investments Trusts (REITs). Sen Wyden said that these for-proit prison companies are taking ad- vantage of a “broken tax code.” “As part of rethinking our criminal justice sys- tem, particularly as it re- sults in the mass incarcer- ation of low-income and minority individuals, the tax rules for REITs must be changed so we are not encouraging companies to unjustly proit from pris- on detention services,” Wyden said. In January of 2013 the Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group announced plans to restructure their compa- nies as REITs. These trusts are normally reserved for companies that generate income from real estate -- apartments, warehouses, hotels, shopping centers, etc. CCA and GEO petitioned the IRS, claiming that their prisons are real estate and their proits constitute real estate income. This change allows these corpo- rations to avoid paying U.S. federal income tax, and re- quires them to pay at least 90 percent of their taxable income to their sharehold- ers. According to Enlace, an organization behind the campaign to end these tax breaks, CCA and GEO Group, had a combined reported income of over $3.6 billion in 2015 — and almost all of that income was tax-free and paid to stockholders. The legislation intro- duced by Wyden would reclassify the income as prison operating proits and not real estate proits, which would eliminate the REIT status. See PRISONS on page 3 Kam Reviews the New ‘Ghostbusters’ Movie page 7 CINCINNATI (AP) — Police brutali- ty has been a major focus of the ive- day NAACP national convention that wrapped Wednesday for thousands of participants in Cincinnati. Cornell William Brooks, the NAACP’s president, pledged Monday to end “lynching in the 21st century ... practiced not with sheets and ropes but with deiled uniforms, deiled badges and deiled oaths.” Black voters cast some 13 percent of presidential ballots in 2012, ac- cording to exit polling, and are par- ticularly pivotal in Ohio, Florida and other swing states. Directing his remarks to Repub- lican Donald Trump and Demo- crat Hillary Clinton, Williams said, “Don’t think you’re going to measure the (White House) drapes without us.” He called on the next president, whether Trump or Clinton, to com- mit to taking actions as president such as cutting of federal funding to law enforcement agencies found to have a pattern of discrimination and increasing federal investigative pow- ers into police agencies. CARA OWSLEY/THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER VIA AP) / THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER VIA AP Bridging the Gap NAACP: Trump, Clinton Need Black Support to Win Police brutality a major focus of convention Between the Police and the Policed page 8 In a July 1 photo, Bishop David Thomas, Sr. leads a gospel song during the NAACP national convention at the Duke Energy Center in Cincinatti.
