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.
