It's not been a good week for those who are trying to build opposition to the tax fairness bills passed in the Leg last year and now referred to January's ballot. In two separate rulings at both the lowest and highest levels of Oregon's court system, teabagging plaintiffs who had sued for a change in the ballot titles were dealt strong rebukes--all but ensuring that the original (or even improved) titles will remain intact.
Our friends at Yes For Oregon have the details on both. First, their statement on last week's OR Supremes ruling {google doc}, which not only rejected plaintiffs' arguments about the titles, but to my mind actually improved them in a way that is not only more accurate but a boon for M66/67 proponents:
In short, the Court ruled today that the opponents challenge was without merit. The core of the argument made by the opponents -- -- Oregonians against job killing taxes -- -- was that voters should be made aware that the revenue from measures 66 and 67 will be spent to protect education, healthcare, and public safety.
The Court rejected that argument for both measures, changing only the phrase "maintains funds currently budgeted for education, healthcare, public safety, other services" to "provides funds currently budgeted for education, healthcare, public safety, other services."
The court also ordered a modification in the "Result of a No" statement on both measures. "Reduces funding currently budgeted for education, healthcare, public safety, other services by estimated $472 million" is now "leaves amount currently budgeted for education healthcare, public safety, other services underfunded by estimated $472 million."
The Vote Yes for Oregon coalition agrees that this language is a more clear and accurate way of describing to voters what's at stake in January. [emph orig]
As it appears the coalition believes, the change from "reduces funding" to "leaves underfunded" is not only closer to the real truth of the matter, it better highlights the consequence--UNDERFUNDING. Reducing funding is one thing, and can sound like a prudent savings, but nobody should think leaving something "underfunded" is a good thing. To put it another way, would you like your caloric intake reduced, or would you prefer to take in fewer calories than you need?
And yesterday, a circuit court judge in Marion County refused to place an injunction on the ballot title process, essentially clearing the decks for moving forward on the matter. In the aftermath the coalition's Scott Moore had some snark to throw down:
"The corporate lobbyists had spent weeks misrepresenting the ballot titles in the process, and the courts have now thrown out all of their arguments" says Scott Moore, spokesperson for the Vote Yes for Oregon Coalition. "It's too bad there isn't a process that also allows the Supreme Court to throw out their committee name -- -- Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes -- -- for misrepresenting the impact of the measures."
Moore has a valid point of course, but it's hard to avoid the sense that they're gloating a little bit over the epic fail of the plaintiffs. That's usually how these kinds of things go when one side really doesn't have much of a leg to stand on, but throws whatever it can at the wall anyway. So I don't blame 'em for letting a little giddiness slip.
Feeling legalo-wonky? The two OSC decisions are readable in their entirety here {pdf}, and also here {pdf}(there were two rulings, one for each Measure.) The Marion County decision can be found in this Google Doc.
A quickie: right now (4pm) the new head of the Oregon League of Conservation Voters, Jon Isaacs--late of the victorious Merkley for Senate campaign--is conducting a live blog on Measures 66 and 67. Why would an environmental advocacy concern take the time to talk about tax fairness? Isaacs has already responded:
These measures will preserve our environment for future generations by preserving funding for vital environmental programs -
-clean air monitoring, clean water protection, investments in renewable energy, reducing pollution.
all of these things require revenue and if measures 66 & 67 fail, they will face devastating cuts.
Its really that simple.
They've got a fair number of questions apparently set up for Isaacs to go through, and you can email toby-at-olcv-dot-org to submit your own question. Head on over! And if you still need more convincing that the Leg did the right thing, OCPP's Chuck Sheketoff uses the state's December Revenue report to explain why.
Today's Election Day across the country, such as it is in Oregon with only local races on the ballots in-state. But there's another one coming up in January that you may not be thinking about, and it's an important one--the key question will be an attempt at repeal of the tax fairness measures established by the Legislature last session. The astroturf Freedomworks affiliate in Oregon, strongly assisted by the Oregon Republican Party, secured more than enough signatures to place the question on the ballot, and so here we go playing Russian roulette with basic services again.
Most ballot questions are at least a little convoluted in their makeup, written as they are in legislative legalese and designed to explain something typically very complex in a few vague, catch-all phrases. Make it a ballot item about taxes, however, and the confusion doubles. Who pays what, and how much? Of course, it doesn't help when proponents of repeal have no compunction about misleading and flatly lying on the specifics.
Which businesses are going to be paying more taxes under Measure 67, and which won’t? Which Oregonians will pay more and which Oregonians will get a tax cut on their personal income taxes under Measure 66?
Oregonians now have an easy way to answer those questions with today’s release of two flowcharts by the Oregon Center for Public Policy.
“The flowcharts are designed to bring clarity to the debate over Measures 66 and 67,” said OCPP executive director Chuck Sheketoff. “We want to help the public and the media understand how the two measures work.”
Sheketoff said the impetus for the charts was “widespread confusion about who will be paying more taxes, and how much they will pay.” He attributed the confusion to an opposition campaign that is “banking on fear and misinformed voters to beat the odds.”
Those odds, according to Sheketoff, are based on the fact that “people, not corporations, vote.” About 3 out of 100 taxpayers will see their taxes increase while about 270,000 of Oregon’s 1.5 million taxpayers will have a tax cut under Measure 66, according to an analysis by economists in the legislature’s revenue office.
“Our flowcharts will break through the campaign noise and dispel the fear created by the opposition,” said Sheketoff.
The press release links to the two pdfs showing the flowchart for each measure, but I've got a call in to OCPP in order to get the image versions that I can embed right into the page here. I'll add those when I get them. Edit--how about here and now?
No excuses now, it's easy! Unemployed? You'll likely GET money. One of the vast majority of Oregonians who make less than $125K by themselves, or $250 in their household? Congratulations, you pay nothing extra and get a host of urgently needed basic services in return. Make more than that? Your taxes will indeed go up, but by 2% on just the marginal amount--that is, just the part OVER 125/250K. Are you a corporation? The numbers are different, but the same principle applies--those who can most afford it are the ones taking on the burden (and it finally puts an end to the ridiculous $10 tax bill for corporations privileged to operate in Oregon).
There are just over two months to make sure folks are aware of the election, the ballot measures at hand, and what they mean. But you can distill it into one simple phrase, which I carved into a pumpkin this weekend:
With the expected announcement yesterday that Governor Kulongoski will sign two major tax bills needed to balance the Oregon budget, the battle to protect the Oregon budget from even further disastrous cuts has begun. These measures will raise taxes on the wealthiest Oregonians and on corporations (who had been paying a $10 minimum last adjusted in 1929!). The Oregon GOP has made it perfectly clear that getting these tax measures referred to the ballot is their #1 priority and so it will therefore serve as a test of how far they have fallen. Given OR's history of rejecting such increases, a rejection of them this time would not necessarily indicate GOP strength but if they are upheld the OR GOP could truly be in for a long time in the wilderness.
And for my money it doesn't get a whole lot more pertinent than another assessment of where Oregon stands among the states with respect to the business tax burden, given the continuing hymn from wingnuts and Bogdanski-types who like to complain endlessly about Oregon's corporate unfriendliness.
"God, ANOTHER confusing survey of business taxes?," I can hear you say. And it's true; there have been plenty of competing studies that purport to put Oregon near the bottom, in the middle or near the top. But I find this one rather compelling, because not only was it done by the respected firm of Ernst & Young--but it was paid for by the Council on State Taxation (COST), which itself is funded by 600 national and multinational corporations, in order to lobby states on keeping taxes low.
And as Sheketoff notes, the process was skewed from the beginning to consider any possible tax impact on business, not just basic marginal rates on profits. The intent of course is to poormouth business and aver that corporate taxation EVERYWHERE is too high, but that just makes Oregon's penultimacy all the more interesting--only in Connecticut is the effective burden smaller:
The big business lobby says that Oregon is one of the cheapest states in the nation when it comes to taxes. Their study finds that businesses in Oregon pay state and local taxes totaling 3.7 percent of the private economy, compared to 4.9 percent for businesses nationwide.
Using COST’s figures, OCPP has calculated that Oregon could increase business taxes by $1.6 billion annually and we’d just reach the level of state and local taxes being paid by businesses nationally.
The COST study also claimed that Oregon’s ratio of business taxes to public expenditures directly benefiting business tied with Virginia’s for the second lowest in the nation. Only Nevada got more business services for their business tax buck than Oregon.
In other words, Oregon businesses are getting a heck of a deal compared to their counterparts in all but one other state, if this study published by big business is to be believed. [emph me]
As the Legislature casts about desperately for revenue in the coming biennium, it's becoming harder and harder--and more and more ridiculous--to avoid confronting the elephant in Oregon's room: the share paid by business and the ultra-wealthy has lots of space to reasonably grow.
Read that bolded sentence above again, and remember that Oregon budgets on a biennium, and that so far the projected revenue shortfall is $3bil for the next two years. Double that $1.6bil mentioned in the article as Oregon's "headspace" before reaching an average level of taxation, and you get $3.2bil. So let's be 100% clear here: simply by restructuring the corporate tax burden, both to reflect previous eras in Oregon and also national averages--and doing NOTHING ELSE TO RAISE MONEY--the state can eliminate that shortfall.
Does anyone at Mahonia Hall or the Golden Dome in Salem have the requisite testicular fortitude to even propose such a thing, much less ram it through? Probably not. But don't let your representative pretend there's nowhere to get the money from--and in fact, you'd be well served to initiate the conversation and suggest this potential revenue stream to him/her yourself. One more time, for emphasis: our current budget struggles can be entirely fixed, simply by bringing Oregon's business tax code into rough parity with the rest of the country. Toss this little nugget into your next cocktail party conversation (or bowling league night), and see what happens.
It's that time of year again: budgets, battles, competing interests, tax hikes or cuts, and line items being added and slashed.
Today, the Federal Reserve has verified that the United States is officially in a recession. In this climate, Oregon’s discretionary budget pie for the next biennium is worth about $16.1 billion; but according to The Oregonian, http://www.oregonlive.com, "that amount is $1 billion more than the current two-year budget, but more than $1 billion less than he expected to have available before the economic trainwreck."
The news outlet says that Gov. Kulongoski's priorities will include:
Education: The governor has said he wants no retreat from the gains made during the 2007 session in funding for public schools, colleges and universities, including a big increase in financial aid for college students.
Renewable and alternative energy: This is a legacy-building theme for Kulongoski, who sees green technology as the doorway to a robust economic future for Oregon. There likely will be new incentives to attract solar, wind and biofuel companies to the state and for cars that rely more heavily on electricity.
Transportation: Kulongoski already has outlined a $1 billion plan to boost spending on bridges, highways, railways and mass transit to reduce congestion and put people to work on construction projects. Controversial elements include a proposed 2-cent hike in gas taxes, a 21⁄2-cent tobacco tax increase and a shift in some lottery profits to transportation projects.
Children’s health care: Backed by a stronger Democratic majority in the Legislature, Kulongoski once again wants money to cover Oregon’s 100,000 kids under 19 who lack insurance. Voters rejected a tobacco tax increase to help fund it. this time Kulongoski wants to tax hospitals $700 million over the next two years.
Sounds like a lot of good can be done in this fashion. But will taxpayers ever realize tangible benefits from this plan?
For example, in addition to having to navigate this proposed spending through the legislature, Kulongoski faces other challenges:
First, his budget is "based on the most recent revenue forecast and some say the numbers could drop by another $1 billion as the legislative session progresses, which would cause a restacking of priorities," the Oregonian reports. And "the proposed budget is about 7 percent bigger than the current two-year plan, not enough to cover much higher increases in caseloads, health care costs, negotiated salary increases and other pressures."
Also, what will Kulongoski do about the agencies that are not on his priority list? There will be great opposition to sharp and sweeping cuts.
The governor also has not yet spelled out how Oregon will pay the estimated $157 million in costs that will be run up by Measure 57, which requires longer prison sentences for property crimes and more drug and alcohol treatment for offenders, the Oregonian reports. He can also expect opposition from hospitals, tobacco companies, truckers and industrial energy users. Some educators may think his budget comes up short for schools.
Will Kulongoski raise taxes? Will we get any more federral stimulus payments? Will they work? Where will the federal money for the stimulus payments come from (in addition to the source for the federal billions in the new stream of big business bailouts)?
Oregon's budget negotiations will take place in a minefield.
Apparently Steve Novick has recharged his batteries, and is back on the horse taking folks like old nemesis Bill Sizemore to task. After a tumultuous spring the clouds have parted, the sun is shining like it's supposed to, and The Hook is giving our lesser, aggrieving citizens the what-for. All is right with the world:
On Tuesday, Bill Sizemore's measure to allow an unlimited deduction of federal taxes on Oregon income tax returns -- a repeat of a measure Oregon voters defeated in 2000 -- qualified for the November ballot. Sizemore's measure will join, among other things, Kevin Mannix's measure to impose mandatory minimum prison sentences for certain property crimes. What the two ballot titles won't tell voters is what impact either measure would have on education, health care, senior services and child protective services in Oregon. But, in fact, the measures will divert money that would otherwise be spent on those services.
...it's not possible to slash taxes for wealthy people or to spend lots of new money on prisons without affecting education, health care, senior services and child welfare. Repeat: It's not possible to slash taxes for wealthy people or to divert money to prisons, without affecting education, health care, senior services and child welfare.
That's not spin; it's arithmetic. There simply isn't enough "other" spending to cut. The entire "other" budget for 2007-09 is less than the amount of the Sizemore tax cut, once it's fully implemented.
Now, why won't the ballot tell people that these measures affect education and health care? By tradition, the "ballot titles" address the things a measure says it will do, but devote little if any attention to the trade-offs a measure will force. That's a disservice to voters. When measures, as these do, have clear, unavoidable and significant effects on vital services, the ballot itself should provide that information -- a surgeon general's warning, if you will.
The next Legislature should change the ballot title law to ensure that next time, Oregon's voters get that critical information upfront.
Such the man crush, have I! And why the hell not? The silver lining in not sending Steve to Washington is that as a result he stays here and Oregonians get to hog all the benefits of his advocacy. Send Merkley to DC, but let's keep the real ace down on the farm. :)
For the first time that I can remember, people who don't make enough income to file federal income tax returns have been included in a money infusion plan designed to stimulate the economy. Starting in May, the checks will begin rolling off the presses and out to homes across the country. The only hitch is that you have to file your 2007 tax return to be eligible.
But, uh, what if you don't need to file taxes for 2007? You still have to "register" with the IRS, or you don't get the money. VERY helpfully, Congressman Blumenauer is looking out for his low income peeps:
This Saturday, those of you who are eligible for the recovery rebate but do NOT normally file an income tax return will be able to claim your rebate. An IRS office near you will be open on March 29 so you can get help preparing your form.
So none of you miss out on the opportunity to receive your economic stimulus rebate, I wanted to share this information. Oregonians who do not pay federal income taxes may be eligible for a $300 payment if you have at least $3,000 in qualifying income. Many households also will be eligible for an additional $300 for each qualifying child younger than 17.
The following locations are open if you need help with your rebate form:
Office of CASH Oregon
2201 Lloyd Center #2010
10am-4pm
(Nice catch! Damn socialists! - promoted by torridjoe)
Hell is freezing, pigs are flying, and Bill Sizemore is proposing a tax increase. From the Mail Tribune:
"Bill Sizemore, one of Oregon's top anti-tax activists, is talking about raising Klamath County taxes to avoid cuts in public safety agencies.
Sizemore is a member of a task force of residents the county named to recommend how to cut $2.3 million from the county's $17 million general fund budget.
As in Jackson County and elsewhere, officials are struggling to make up for money the federal government used to send to timber counties.
Task force members said this week they would rather replace the loss of federal timber payments with new funds than cut the budgets of strained public safety departments.
"This isn't asking for more, just trying to make up for a loss," Sizemore said."
Bill - You should be happy about the increasing vacancies at your local county jail. You should be happy about the scaled back police force. Not only do these measures save taxpayers money, but they offer you the ability to exercise your second amendment rights more often. And of all people, YOU should know that ANY increase in taxes IS asking for more. Why can't you make due with what you have? Get creative! You wouldn't want to be responsible for increasing government waste in Klamath, would you?
I'm disappointed that a man as principled as yourself would turn into a hypocrite. How can you and Grover drown government when you're raising taxes? What will Oregon Taxpayers United think about this recent turn of events?
(C'mon, you knew Portlandia probably got it right when she wrote up her conversation with Merkley, but at least now we can dispense with the whole game of "does he or doesn't he," and move on to the importance of that position in the overall race (or for some, to suddenly discover a way to justify wage ineqaulity as a good thing). But we can now say:
Novick = Yes on tax equality; Yes on raising the Social Security cap
Merkley = No on tax equality; No on raising the cap - promoted by torridjoe)
Novick, who appears to face the toughest path to the nomination, was more willing to toss out ideas that could be a more difficult sell in a general election, such as getting rid of the lower tax rate for capital gains and raising the cap on wages subject to Social Security. Merkley said after their appearance before the Willamette Women Democrats that he thinks there should be a "modest" differential for capital gains rate and that he sees raising the Social Security cap as one option that he isn't ready to endorse.
So, I got my kicker check in the mail the other day. It seemed ENORMOUS. I imagined what the State of Oregon could do with all those resources if they got to keep the money.
Being human, I didn't obsess about ways to give the money back to the state. However, because I felt so guilty about getting all this money back, I did think about ways to spend/save/invest it in the hope of doing some good, and maybe even making our little corner of the world a happier place.
Last night I ran into Jeff Merkley at an event, and I was very pleased to be able to get a few minutes of his uninterrupted attention so I could ask him about two issues that I care a lot about: (a) marriage equality, and (b) reform of the Internal Revenue Code to tax capital gains at the same rate as wages.
In the interest of full disclosure, I told him upfront that I was a Novick supporter but that I was also sincerely interested in his positions on those two issues specifically, yes or no.
I should say at this point that Jeff Merkley seems to be a true gentleman, bright, and a very nice guy. He didn't have to give me the time of day once I had identified myself as a Novick supporter, but he was very cordial. I had met him only once before, very briefly, more than a year ago, and there was no way he would have remembered me. He was just being kind, which I appreciated.
But after I told him I was a Novick supporter and asked him my two yes-or-no questions, what happened next was interesting. He locked those big brown puppylike eyes onto mine (also brown, somewhat smaller and less puppylike) and proceeded to tell me why in his view "those are not 'yes or no' issues."
Since to me both are matters of principle that lend themselves readily to a binary yes/no approach at the most fundamental level, I was a little surprised, but I thought, hey, show me the nuance, maybe I'm missing something.
Smith smacks Dems and a tax by The Oregonian Wednesday November 14, 2007, 3:07 PM
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., works hard to cultivate an image as a lawmaker who will work with the enemy to get things done. His affiliation with liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy recently on several issues only reinforced the image.
On Wednesday, however, Smith assumed another role -- partisan attack dog.
In a mid-afternoon news conference designed to shred Democrats, Smith took the stage with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Trent Lott, Charles Grassley, and John Kyl -- all Republicans -- to condemn Democrats for not yet renewing legislation that would shield 25 million middle class taxpayers from an unintended tax.
Now that Measure 50 has failed, we can all agree to pass the taxes Republicans want, starting with a cigarette tax in the Oregon Revised Statutes, not the Constitution, that goes directly and entirely toward smoking cessation and tobacco prevention programs. That way, when the dangerously unsustainable tobacco tax leaves us with enormous revenue shortfalls according to RJ Reynolds' unique and invalidated math, it will be because people completely stopped smoking and no longer need the services that the tax goes to fund. It's a win-win: no more smokers, no more taxes.
Then, we can have a separate tax, one we all pay. This will fund the Healthy Kids Program, the Oregon Health Plan, the Healthy Kids safety net, and rural health clinics. These were all to be funded by Measure 50, and Republicans would have supported these programs, had Measure 50 not been such a jihad on the poor's right to an extraordinarily-expensive-but-not-too-expensive suicide.
I call on all Democrats to join with Republicans in passing these bipartisan taxes in the 2008 supplemental session.
I know exactly why this is being done; it's a fairly weak counterthrust by Beaver Boundary to make an equivalency of Steve Novick's argument that Jeff Merkley can't beat Smith on Iraq, by claiming Novick's pro-tax positions would suffer the same fate in an anti-tax Oregon. BlueOregon picked it up and left it on the front page all day, and every time I've gone back and seen it still up at the top there, I think the same thing--does this mean Merkley does NOT want tax equity between work and wealth, or just that he plans to keep quiet about it and make voters continue to be suspicious of any tax increase at any time by doing it all on the downlow?
BB must find itself in a bit of an ideological pickle trying to make the comparison between taxes and Iraq if he thinks about it, because when Novick calls out Merkley on Iraq, he does so from a position to the left of Merkley. When BB calls out Novick on taxes, it does so to his right--closer to Gordon Smith on taxes. At a minimum, the lesson appears to be "shhhh...if you say taxes too loud you'll lose."
Has the Merkley campaign vetted this line of articulation about Novick, and where it puts his own position by implicit comparison? In other words, against tax equity reform between wages and investment income--or at least for it, but very quietly during the election?
{more from the damning with high praise file, below}
Today I renewed my call to end the special tax treatment of income from buying and selling stock and other income from wealth, highlighting an analysis in today's New York Times as proof of the utter failure of George Bush/Gordon Smith economics.
I plan to be blogging regularly to help highlight the issues that are at stake in this election and give you updates from the campaign trail. I hope you enjoy it!
So for the last couple of weeks we've been running blog ads saying "First Wellstone ... Then Tester ... Then Novick." We learned today exactly who was reading those ads: the editorial board of the state's second-largest newspaper.
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