News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Representative Ben Westlund thinks he has a way to significantly boost funding for Oregon's public schools.
Westlund floated the idea of taxing the gross receipts of non-Oregon companies at a meeting with parents, students and teachers in Sisters last week. He thinks such a tax could realistically raise as much as $3 billion dollars.
It is not clear that such a tax would be politically viable, though Westlund thinks it could pass if proceeds are dedicated to solving the funding crisis that has left districts like Sisters facing budget deficits and cuts.
"It won't pass unless ... there's money to fix K-12 education," Westlund said.
A gross receipts tax for companies that operate in Oregon but are headquartered elsewhere would, under Westlund's proposal take somewhere between .5 percent and 1 percent off the top of a company's earnings.
Social studies teacher Jon Renner was skeptical.
"If a company doesn't earn any money, you can't tax gross receipts," he protested.
Westlund, however, thinks it would work -- and have added benefits.
"What this does is, in a state with no sales tax, it encourages companies to locate in Oregon," the representative said.
Westlund told his audience that he conceived of the gross receipts tax idea after an eye-opening visit to Sisters High School earlier this spring. Students grilled the representative about school funding and demanded to know what he proposed to do about tight school funding.
Westlund said he thought about a real estate transfer tax, which would raise money locally and keep it local. He rejected the idea as offering too little revenue.
He considered a corporate income tax, he said, but rejected that when he determined that to raise enough money, taxes would have to be quadrupled.
Westlund's meeting with community members was organized by Sisters High School student Andrew Hyde.
Westlund spent a good portion of the meeting explaining the state budget. He argued that, with "backfilling" for Measure 5 tax cuts and spending $1 billion to meet tough incarceration mandates from Measure 11, the state is operating in 2000 on a 1989-91 general fund budget.
There just isn't a lot to go around, the representative said.
According to Westlund, the state lottery has bailed out the budget to the tune of $700 million.
"I don't know where we'd be without the lottery," he said.
He acknowledged that there are some who don't like the idea of the state encouraging gambling. But he believes the state has become dependent on the money.
"It's fine with me if we get rid of the lottery -- if we have another revenue source," he said.
Westlund raised the specter of a budget catastrophe if either of a pair of new tax initiatives pass in November.
"The two most draconian measures ever presented to Oregonians are just around the corner," he said.
One, proposing a 15 percent cap on the growth of state government could force cuts of up to $3 billion per biennium from the state general fund, Westlund said.
That's because the state would continue to receive federal funds and "other" funds from fees and licensing, forcing cuts to come in the general fund to stay under the cap.
Another measure to allow the deduction of federal tax payments on state income tax returns "would cost us $1.8 billion," Westlund said.
"If both those things pass, we're hasta la vista, baby. It could happen."
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
Reader Comments(0)