The legislative session kicked off this week, with over 1,600 new laws and rule changes proposed by Oregon’s representatives. I’ll be doing roundups of the laws relevant to Portland on the blog all weekend and next week.
Remember the scandal last summer when the state fair had to cancel its 22nd-annual homebrew competition?
The legislature is considering three separate bills to nix the long-unenforced Oregon Liquor Control Commission laws requiring people who brew at home to get a license if they serve beer in public. Lax enforcement of that rule over the past decades has given rise to brewing competitions, public tasting events, and homebrew parties across the state.
“There are lots of homebrew competitions in Oregon,” Chris Hummert, a member of homebrewing association the Oregon Brew Crew told the Mercury last summer. “I’m aware of 14 that will be affected by this.” The OLCC taxes sales of Oregon craft breweries, many of which started as homebrewing operations.
The three bills (HB 2588, 2262, and 2913) are pretty similar, all of them exempting homebrew from the OLCC licensing rules if it’s being shared (not sold) for any sort of competition.
On a related beverage-regulation note, public health advocate Mitch Greenlick (who raised a storm earlier this week with his “no babies on bikes” bill) is also pitching a soda tax. The soda tax would levy a .005 cent sales tax PER OUNCE (that’s .08 cents on a regular Pepsi) on any drinks sweetened with sugar, which means soda, juices and energy drinks.
It would not apply to drinks that are 100 percent fruit of vegetable juice, drinks sweetened with “noncaloric” sweeteners (like a lot of diet drinks and, ugh, VitaminWater), and any dietary aid.
Why is .005 cents actually .08 cents on a Pepsi? Is that first one actually a percentage?
If anyone could use a diet drink (and maybe a ball-gag), it’s Mitch Greenlick…
I read it as 8/100ths of a cent. That math works out if you assume the Pepsi is around a $1.50, anyway.
Time to start selling Mitch Greenlickmyballs t-shirts. Apparently he’s the Democratic rep from NW Portland. I don’t care who he’s running against, I’m sending that person $100.
btw, a cup of apple juice or orange juice has more calories than a Coke or Pepsi. There is nothing redeeming about 100% juice. Even the vitamins that they have, including vitamin C, are largely added, not natural.
I don’t think taxing soda pop is the right way to go about what he’s trying to do.
This is a common mathematical error. I think the bill actually reads it as $0.005 per ounce (that is, .005 DOLLARS, or half a cent per ounce).
Hence, on a 16-ounce Pepsi, 8 cents.
For a hilarious look at confusion about the difference between cents and dollars: http://tinyurl.com/y45chh
They need a fat tax. $100 for every pound of body fat each year. It will be fun to see all the naked people weighing in at the Multnomah building.
Sorry for the confusion — it’s a .005 cent tax PER OUNCE. I’ll add that in now, seeing as it’s supremely unclear.
Sarah – thanks for adding in the per ounce.
But to RE-clarify – the rate is not .005 CENTS per ounce, it’s .005 DOLLARS per ounce. That is, it’s 0.5 cents per ounce — “at a rate of $0.005 per ounce.”
Converting between dollars and cents — and you’re changing by two orders of magnitude, hence you have to move the decimal point over by two if you want to talk in cents instead of dollars.