In the bloodbath that always comes with the final weeks of a legislative session, meaningful tax reform saw the guillotine early.
On June 22, leaders in the Oregon house and senate announced alongside Governor Kate Brown that their best attempts for hiking taxes on corporations had died a dispiriting death.
Facing pushback from the business lobby and the mounting rancor of a phalanx of unwilling Republicans, the goal of forcing big companies to pay a larger share—a central focus given the defeat of high-profile Measure 97 last November, and a centerpiece in the quest to fill a $1.4 billion budget gap—simply didn’t have the two-thirds majority required to raise revenue.
“It has become clear that the Legislature will not have the necessary support to achieve structural revenue reforms this session,” Brown said in her June 22 statement, issued jointly with House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland, and Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem. What’s more, the leaders have signaled this kind of large-scale reform won’t be a priority in a special legislative session, or next year’s “short” session of the legislature.
Why should you care? Well, beyond the funding hole lawmakers are going to have to paper over partly with service cuts, the failure means you’re likely going to be pelted over the head with the issue of corporate taxation for at least the next year.