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Ore. Voters to Wealthy, Corporations:
Pay Up for State Services

February 1, 2010

The campaign received broad grass roots support.

With 11 percent of the state’s workers unemployed and facing a $727 million shortfall in the current two-year budget, Oregon was at a crossroads. State voters had two options. They could maintain their dug-in opposition to raising income taxes—the last voter-approved increase was in the 1930s. Or they could vote an increase to protect budgets for schools and other public services that were facing drastic cuts.

On Jan. 26—after a sharply-contested public campaign that pitted a large coalition of labor and community groups against corporate lobbyists—Oregonians voted 54 percent to 46 percent for two tax increases.

One measure raises income taxes on residents who make over $250,000 a year.  The other increases the minimum tax on corporations and boosts the tax rate on higher-level profits. Both were passed by the state legislature last summer, but were pushed into a referendum by corporate interests.

“I was really surprised by the margin of the vote,” says Joe Esmonde, political coordinator for Portland Local 48 and Oregon who helped marshal grassroots efforts to turn back media messages, paid for by companies like Nike and Columbia Sportswear, threatening that the tax increases would hurt the state’s economy.

The largest coalition  in Oregon history composed of over 250 unions, small businesses, community groups and organizations including the Oregon Bus Project—which reached out to younger voters—spoke up for the need to protect teachers and other public service workers and their services.

Local 48’s leadership sent a letter to all members informing them that if the state budget shortfall was not filled, reconstruction and maintenance projects on state buildings would be cancelled, putting more electricians on the street.

Tom Chamberlain, president of the Oregon AFL-CIO, has compared data from the Oregon vote and the recent U.S. Senate race to fill the seat of the late Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.).  Says Chamberlain:

The issues are the same—jobs and unemployment.  Voters understand the value of their public services. They feel the growing gap between the top 2 percent of wage earners and the rest of America.  They want to move forward and see the wealthy step up and pay their fair share.

The victory party, after the vote was announced, was full of young activists from the labor and environmental movements, says Esmonde. “The game changed in Oregon in 2008,” he says, when Democrats won a super-majority in the state’s House and increased their numbers in the Senate in the wake of President Obama’s election.

As the Oregon vote is dissected and analyzed nationally, neighboring states are paying particularly close attention.  The Washington State AFL-CIO Web site states: “The opposition had a hard time finding their ‘poster child’—in other words, a business that could show real, demonstrable harm caused by taxes.”