A8 THE BULLETIN • THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 2021
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
Decisions will change
Bend neighborhoods
R
ising home prices and rents in Bend are inescapable.
So much growth so fast has had fallout. The prices and
growth keep going up.
There are different ways to meet
that challenge. They clashed Tuesday
at the meeting of Bend’s Neighbor-
hood Leadership Alliance. The NLA
is made up of representatives from
Bend’s 13 city-recognized neighbor-
hood associations.
Some leaders of those neighbor-
hood associations believe the city is
going too fast to make code changes
to allow more housing. And they
are not convinced what the city
plans will help. Others argue the city
can’t act soon enough. Bend is in a
housing crisis and the city needs to
move, they say. Who is right? Who
is wrong? Whatever the case they are
very motivated because what the city
decides to do will change Bend and
its neighborhoods.
Some background: The city is in
the process of making code changes
to comply with state law — House Bill
2001. It passed the Legislature in 2019.
A quick way to understand it is with
an example. In theory, a home could
be torn down next to your home and
a quadplex put up in its place. That
might not be what you want, though
unless you have existing CC&Rs (cov-
enants, codes and restrictions) block-
ing that in your neighborhood, that’s
what the law says can happen. It could
create more housing. It could change
the feel of neighborhoods.
The law says cities over 25,000 in
population must allow more “middle
housing.” Duplexes, triplexes, quad-
plexes, cottage clusters and townho-
mes can be built in areas zoned resi-
dential. Bend has until June 30, 2022,
to get its code revised to allow that.
The city has limited wiggle room.
It can have some design and siting
requirements for middle housing
“provided that the regulations do not,
individually or cumulatively, discour-
age the development of all middle
housing types permitted in the area
through unreasonable costs or delay.”
That is not a lot of room to wiggle.
Bend has also been looking at
other, related code changes, such as
reducing or eliminating parking re-
quirements citywide. That wouldn’t
mean builders and developers would
not build any parking on a property
for homes or apartment buildings.
For instance, homebuyers generally
want parking on their property. So
that’s what homebuilders build.
Put new housing types in existing
neighborhoods together with reduced
or eliminated parking requirements
and it gets people stirred up.
Hans Jorgensen, chair of Bend’s
Neighborhood Leadership Alliance
and representing the Awbrey Butte
neighborhood, and Lisa Mushel,
vice chair of the NLA and represent-
ing Century West, penned a letter
calling on the city to slow down.
They argue Bend has not held the
kind of robust community discus-
sion about these changes that they
warrant. They point out Eugene has
held more than 30 public meetings.
Bend has held a mere fraction of
that. There is no proof that acceler-
ating this will create more affordable
housing, Jorgensen said Tuesday.
Well that letter was tabled for now.
Mayor Sally Russell popped into the
Zoom meeting, urging the commit-
tee members to get more information
and listen to the discussion at Mon-
day’s planning commission. Other
neighborhood association members,
notably Rev. Morgan Schmidt of
Larkspur and Summer Shears of the
Orchard District, spoke out against
the letter. Schmidt said Bend is in a
housing crisis and “I am not willing to
pump the brakes.”
Should the city slow down, seek
more public comment and get more
community involvement? Or should
it move fast? Let the Bend City
Council know what you think. Email
them at council@bendoregon.gov.
Make it a fair fight
for news organizations
P
ictures of some of the staff at
The Bulletin have been show-
ing up on the paper’s Face-
book page promoting Senate Bill
673, the Journalism Competition
and Preservation Act of 2021.
It’s admittedly self-interest. The
Bulletin would benefit. But so would
other newspapers and news orga-
nizations big and small across the
country. And so would you.
Want a strong and independent
press? Want quality local news? Well
local papers like The Bulletin are
not in a fair fight. As the bipartisan
group of senators and representa-
tives backing the bill say, Facebook
and Google have the edge. The be-
hemoths control the majority of the
online referrals to news sources and
the majority of the online advertis-
ing market.
The bill would grant a 48-month
safe harbor for news organizations
to work together to negotiate with
the online titans. That could lead to
a fairer distribution of revenue and
more quality in local news.
We know this issue is something
many people don’t really care about
or can’t get motivated to do anything
about. Even Oregon Sens. Jeff Merk-
ley and Ron Wyden, were noncom-
mittal when we asked about their
views on a similar bill a year ago.
This time around Wyden’s staff says
he will look at it closely “if it comes
to the Senate floor.” Merkley’s staff is
gathering information so he will be
ready consider it “if it comes to the
Senate floor.” So they are content to
let local news dwindle and the tech
giants thrive unless “it comes to the
Senate floor.”
Editorials reflect the views of The Bulletin’s editorial board, Publisher Heidi Wright, Editor
Gerry O’Brien and Editorial Page Editor Richard Coe. They are written by Richard Coe.
Tax corporate wealth created
O
BY RICH BELZER
ne option President Biden has
mentioned for funding his in-
frastructure proposal is rais-
ing corporate taxes from 21% to 28%.
They stood at 35% until the Trump
tax cuts were passed
in 2017.
The public ap-
pears to like cor-
porate taxes much
more than personal
income taxes, even
if the proposed in-
Belzer
creases would affect
less than 1% of our
population. I sup-
pose it’s because corporate taxes are
supposed to get these wealthy corpo-
rations to pay their “fair share.” This is
highly misleading.
Corporations aren’t “wealthy.”
They generate wealth for their em-
ployees and shareholders. Secondly,
raising corporate tax rates generally
motivates corporations to raise their
prices in order to maintain the de-
sired level of after-tax earnings. This
works fine when they’re competing
in the U.S. against other U.S. compa-
nies. If they’re competing overseas,
it becomes problematic as they must
choose between being less competi-
tive or generating lower profits.
President Biden spoke about all of
the large corporations that paid no
taxes at all but he didn’t mention why
that was the case. Consider that when
our corporate tax rate was 35%, the
effective tax rate paid was 18%. To be
clear, corporate taxes are on pre-tax
earnings. These earnings are calcu-
lated as follows:
• Add in: Revenue, which is total
sales of all products
GUEST COLUMN
• Subtract out: Cost of goods
sold – how much it costs to make the
products; expenses, the cost associ-
ated with marketing and selling the
products, engineering/development
of the products, the overhead of a
manufacturing organization, general
administrative costs like human re-
sources and IT; other, depreciation
based upon investment in facilities
and capital equipment, interest ex-
penses (less interest earned)
• Difference: Pre-tax earnings
(profits)
This result is taxed at the going
rate, which is currently 21%. Given
that every corporation is taxed at the
same rate, why was the effective rate
only 18% when the corporate rate was
35%?
The answer is that over many years,
Congress has provided benefits to
specific industry segments, often
called “loopholes,” which have acted
as tax rebates for companies within
these segments. If all we did was sim-
ply do away with these loopholes,
then the effective tax rate would be
higher now (at 21%) then it was when
the corporate rate was 35%.
I have a better idea. Let’s stop taxing
corporations at all and tax the wealth
that they generate at higher rates.
With much higher “after-tax” profits,
corporations would have a number of
options:
Lower prices in order to be more
competitive worldwide.
Pay higher salaries to employees in
order to reduce turnover.
Pay higher dividends, which bene-
fits shareholders.
Buy-back shares of their stock,
which increases earnings/share and
drives up stock prices, also a benefit to
shareholders.
How would we make up for the loss
of tax revenue by eliminating corpo-
rate taxes?
In Case 2), those making higher
salaries would pay increased income
tax. Perhaps another bracket should
be added on income over $1 million;
how about 42%?
In Case 3), increased dividends get
taxed as regular income.
Case 4) is unique because higher
stock prices can be used by share-
holders to create gains when they sell
some or all of their shares. If they have
held these shares for a year or more,
the gains are taxed as long-term cap-
ital gains, which are capped at 20%.
For example, if you earned $2 million
in long-term capital gains, your tax
would be $400,000 – 20% of the gains.
That tax rate is the same as if you had
taxable income of $295,000. This is a
significant discrepancy that favors the
very wealthy who could earn millions
of dollars a year in long-term gains
but be taxed at the same rate as some-
one who earned a salary and made
roughly $300,000.
Raising corporate taxes makes no
sense; it will merely cause an increase
in prices and make American corpo-
rations less competitive.
Taxing the wealth created by cor-
porations is a far more reasonable ap-
proach.
Rich Belzer served as director of federal marketing
for a NYSE-listed computer company and
was subsequently a senior executive with two
NASDAQ-listed high-tech companies. He moved
to Bend to join Columbia Aircraft where he
became VP of worldwide sales.
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Getting big money out of politics is a bipartisan issue
BY STATE SENS. JEFF GOLDEN
AND TIM KNOPP
R
ecognizing that unrestricted
contributions degrade the in-
tegrity of our democratic elec-
toral processes, Oregon voters wisely
and overwhelmingly approved Mea-
sure 107 last year to allow for sensible
limits on campaign contributions. It
is time for legislators to finish the job
voters directed us to do and establish
a campaign finance system that em-
powers the people and lets candidates
from all parties and backgrounds
compete fairly for election.
Real campaign finance reform is
a bipartisan issue. Every candidate,
regardless of party, wants to spend
more time talking to voters than rais-
ing funds. Enacting campaign finance
limits will help address the arms race
in fundraising that has driven up the
spending in Oregon
campaigns and re-
duced the voice of
the people in our
democratic pro-
cesses. Sadly, Ore-
gon is one of only a
Knopp
handful of states left
in our country that
does not have limits
on how much a per-
son, corporation, or
union can contrib-
ute to a campaign.
Although we belong
to different political
Golden
parties, we share the
belief that we can
address this in a way
that is fair to all candidates for public
office.
Now is the time for our Legislature
GUEST COLUMN
to lead in this next step in electoral
reform. Oregon is a national model
in supporting every citizen’s ability to
vote. Ensuring that the choices pre-
sented to voters are driven by who can
attract the most support, not the most
money, will make that vote that much
more meaningful. We believe in a
deeper democracy where a rancher, a
teacher, and social worker all have the
opportunity to have their voices heard.
The ability for a small group of
individuals or organizations to use
unlimited amounts of money to in-
fluence our elections distorts our
democratic process and saps the pub-
lic’s confidence in our elections. Our
nation is founded on the principle of
one person, one vote. How can the av-
erage citizen believe we are living up
to that value when a handful of large
funders can dictate the public debate?
Controlling the power of money in
our elections restores power to the
people and empowers candidates to
run on their ideas, not the special in-
terests they can woo.
We are living in difficult times. Our
politics has become more polarized
and our discourse coarser. The in-
crease in spending to influence our
democratic processes and the loss of
transparency in who is funding those
efforts is a key contributor to those
dynamics. Enacting campaign finance
reform is an important step we can
take to curb the influence of money
and restore confidence in our democ-
racy. Elections should be determined
by how candidates can secure support
and build consensus on how our state
Oregon is a national model in
supporting every citizen’s ability
to vote. Ensuring that the choices
presented to voters are driven by
who can attract the most support,
not the most money, will make that
vote that much more meaningful.
should be governed, not the ability to
cater to those with the most resources
to spend. It is time for the Oregon
Legislature to enact meaningful cam-
paign finance reform that provides
true limits and transparency in how
money is used in our elections.
State Sen. Jeff Golden is a Democrat representing
Ashland. State Sen. Tim Knopp is a Republican
representing Bend.