INSIDE: DEAR ABBY, HOROSCOPE, PUZZLES & FEATURES
THE BULLETIN • SUNDAY, MARCH 7, 2021
bendbulletin.com/business
B USINESS
C1
Central Oregon | New business
Setting up shop
in a pandemic
Ryan Brennecke/The Bulletin
Stacia Guzzo, CEO and founder of SmartyPits, and Brian Vernon, vice presiden
t of sales and business development, mak e a batch of product at the company
’s Bend facility on Feb. 25.
BY SUZANNE ROIG
The Bulletin
W
hen Smarty-
Pits outgrew
its home in Te-
hachapi, Cali-
fornia, the com-
pany started looking around for a
new home.
There were few expansion op-
portunities in the small mountain
town in Southern California for
the personal products company.
When the company’s chief finan-
cial officer, a remote worker liv-
ing in Bend, suggested maybe the
company should relocate to Cen-
tral Oregon, Stacia Guzzo, founder
and CEO, thought about that.
A quick trip up to Bend and
rounds of talks with economic de-
velopment officers and real estate
agents, and Guzzo was sold. Bend
has a strong labor pool. Bend has
great outdoors. And Bend is not
isolated, even though it’s not along
the interstate.
“I had been looking to move
personally for a while,” said Guzzo.
“But when I came to Bend and saw
how supportive the community is
of entrepreneurship, I realized it
would be an improvement.”
SmartyPits, an aluminum-free
deodorant that is 100% hand-
made in its 2,400-square-foot Bend
warehouse, is among a handful of
new businesses that have relocated
or expanded to Central Oregon.
Despite being in the clutches of a
pandemic, Central Oregon is at-
tractive to young new businesses
that are businesses are building
warehouses, providing jobs and di-
versifying the economy.
Stacia Guzzo, CEO and founder of SmartyPits, makes a batch of product while work-
ing at the company’s Bend facility on Feb. 25.
See Smarty Pits / C8
The case for tax-per-mile instead of per gallon of gas
A
s usually is the case,
technology far outpaces
the abilities of govern-
ments and municipalities to
keep up. Gas taxes account for
over 40% of Oregon’s transpor-
tation budget and two factors
are contributing to the decline
in tax collections, the increas-
ing number of electric vehicles
and the dramatic improve-
ments in mileage-per-gallon
EDGE
OF TECH
By Preston Callicott
(mpg). As internal combustion
engine (ICE) vehicles continue
to be displaced by EVs, and
ICE cars approach 45 to 50
mpg, taxing entities need to re-
formulate a new way to tax ve-
hicles which use our transpor-
tation infrastructure, for both
EVs and ICE.
Full disclosure, I own a Tesla
Model Y EV. It gets charged in
my garage by plugging in over-
night when the rates are at their
lowest. It gets the equivalent of
over 125 miles per gallon. Even
if it was an ICE car that guzzled
gas instead of an EV, it’s still a
huge increase in miles-per-gal-
lon which generates a lot less
gas tax for the same usage. The
best solution proposed so far is
a vehicle miles traveled (VMT)
tax of some form, which treats
all vehicles the same, regardless
of fuel source.
Oregon has been experi-
menting with a VMT tax with
5,000 volunteers, and Wash-
ington state is about to im-
plement its version, possibly
in the current session. The
challenge is determining the
best way to track the mileage
to achieve high adoption and
compliance.
The gas tax has always been
a pay-as-you-use revenue
source, which penalizes those
who have low-mpg ICE cars,
travel farther, or make more
trips. The VMT will be a sim-
ilar tax, with potentially more
options for incentives and pos-
sibly some taxing strategies to
even the playing field.
The average licensed Oregon
driver drove over 14,000 miles
in 2019 (before COVID-19).
The current Oregon gas tax
totals 54.4 cents per gallon (36
cents state, 18.4 cents federal).
The national gas mileage aver-
age is 25 mpg.
See Callicott / C8