Oregon Tax News,

 In the waning days of the 2009 Oregon Legislative session the Legislature attempted to address the state’s increasing water demand by passing House Bill 3369, titled “The 2009 Water Investment Act.” The bill directs the Water Resources Department to develop a state-wide, integrated water resources strategy. The state-wide strategy is intended to help Oregon meet its future water needs in terms of water quantity, water quality, and ecosystem needs.

 The Water Resources Department will manage the project team in consultation with the Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Fish and Wildlife. It also places additional requirements on the Department’s loan fund for the construction of water development projects. It establishes a new grant fund for the construction of water development projects and specifies requirements for the Umatilla Basin Aquifer Recovery Project to use the grant fund. The Umatilla Basin Aquifer Recovery Project is a test in using below ground water storage. (more…)

Oregon Tax News
6/15/2009

Pacific Ethanol’s subsidiary that operates the 40 million gallon Boardman ethanol plant was one of five subsidiaries that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy recently.  Company officials indicated that the plant would continue to operate.  The Boardman plant is the only one of Pacific Ethanol’s four corn ethanol plants still operating. Both of Oregon’s large ethanol plants are seeking bankruptcy protection from creditors.  Cascade Grain’s 100 million gallon plant in Clatskanie operated briefly in 2008 then filed for Chapter 11 protection in January.

Falling gas prices, increased corn prices along with expansion of ethanol capacity have curtailed the enthusiasm for ethanol not only in Oregon but across the nation.
(more…)

John in Oregon,

Humorist P.J. O’Rourke’s latest effort in the Wall Street Journal satirizes that “The fate of Detroit isn’t a matter of economics. It’s a tragic romance, whose magic was killed by bureaucrats, bad taste and busybodies.”

With a razor sharp keyboard O’Rourke drills down to the heart of the problem saying;

“We became sick and tired of our cars and even angry at them. Pointy-headed busybodies of the environmentalist, new urbanist, utopian communitarian ilk blamed the victim. They claimed the car had forced us to live in widely scattered settlements in the great wasteland of big-box stores and the Olive Garden.” (more…)

International Taxation:

In an effort to pay for its increased spending the Obama Administration is going after corporate overseas earnings.  This could mean diminished competitiveness for U.S. companies operating overseas.  Companies like Intel and Nike would suffer under new rules proposed by the Administration.  “The bottom line is they have proposed a tax increase of $190 billion on overseas activities of U.S. multinationals,” said Kenneth J. Kiles who has represented General Electric, Microsoft and others on tax issues.

The Administration has already factored in the new tax receipts calculating them into its budget figures for 2011.
(more…)

 At a time when ticket sales and attendance at sporting venues across the country seem to be plunging, the city of Portland is relying on its own counter projections of increased attendance and ticket sales in order to finance its new baseball stadium.  

As you may recall, the Portland City Council recently voted 3-2 to endorse a loosely defined agreement that facilitated the acquisition of a Major League Soccer franchise for the city while also providing a better home for the Portland Beavers Triple-A baseball team.

Merritt Paulson, owner of the Portland Beavers and Portland Timbers, announced that his family would buy a Major League Soccer franchise, throw in $12.5 million for construction costs and pay for any cost overruns, and would also guarantee bonds issued for the deal. (more…)

By Richard Leonetti,

The planning and costs for the Portland-Vancouver seem to be way off the charts.   Why should it take so long and cost so much?   The latest version is to replace two bridges now in place of about 3,150 ft in length. The new one will include 3 lanes each way but have available six lanes each way for a total of 12 lanes. Something over $3 billion covers the highway portion with another $1 billion for the light rail and bikes: a total of over $4 billion.

Now compare this to the recently completed St Anthony Falls Bridge near Minneapolis finished 9/18/08. This is about the same width as the Columbia Bridge, consisting of two bridges with 5 lanes each way plus 14 ft shoulders that can be later used for light rail or dedicated bus lanes. (probably more cost effective than light rail). The bridge over the Mississippi is only 1,223 ft long so the Columbia span needs to be 2 1/2 times longer.

But here the comparison astounds:  the Minneapolis bridge took only 47 weeks to build and cost only $234 million. We have already spent more time talking about the Columbia Bridge and are proposing to spend somewhere between 12 and 20 times as much building it. Even if our bridge were to cost twice as much per foot, it should barely top $1 billion–and it should not cost twice as much per foot to build.

What is wrong with Portland?

The Oregon Education Association letter to the editor (link) is another attack against the successful Oregon Connections Academy (ORCA) virtual charter school.   This campaign of misinformation will do serious harm to students and to one of Oregon’s successful schools.   The letter actually attempts to cast the public charter school in the same light as bailout money going to corporate bonuses.

The teacher’s union has long been opposed to public charter schools.  Charter schools are where innovation and flexibility enable public schools to escape the limitations of a system whose guidelines can fail schools for decades.   The union seeks to close the successful public, virtual charter school. No matter what it takes.

The letter postures as merely “fighting for accountability, taxpayers and students”, yet this war they wage is an attack on all three. The “out-of-state corporations who profit off of Oregon’s virtual charter schools” statement is no more different than public schools buying books or computers from “out-of-state corporations who profit”. (more…)

By Richard Leonetti,

The stimulus package being discussed, now, I believe is too much. Spending beyond just the “safety net” (unemployment, health payments) is not going to be cost effective. Great politics but lousy economics.

Tax rebates will be saved, not spent, just as they were with the earlier stimulus. No one will hire for a tax credit: they either have jobs available or not. In fact lower wages would take long periods to show up in lower prices and more hiring. Infrastructure spending given to states etc., are usually very slow to happen and then only with high costs from the states overhead and Davis Bacon requirements. Generally poor investments compared to what private sector entities would make if funds are not taxed away from them.

Protect the unemployed workers, but don’t try and spend to create jobs. It has never worked in a cost effective manor.   And lastly, keep in mind the increased debt service costs that all this increased spending would cause. Those amounts are significant and would crowd out other needed spending for years to come.

By Taxpayer Foundation of Oregon

12-15-08

Only 8 years after our last big financial boom ended in a bust we have an even bigger bust in the housing and debt markets that has brought us to the edge an entire collapse of the financial system. Millions have lost houses, jobs and Retirement savings and the carnage has only just begun.

Well what the hell happened? You’d think with that with our ever growing financial sophistication that we’d know better by now.   Every time this happens we think it will be the last.  But it never will be.   The 1979-80 oil and commodity spike offered many lessons about commodity bubbles.   Those who were victimized by it learned to be skeptical of “peak oil” quacks, and other forms of Malthusian analysis.   The 80’s saw the Junk Bond bubble. 

  (more…)

Oregon’s Big Land Use Swindle

By Margaret Goodwin

The Oregon Land Use Act required every city and county in Oregon to implement a Comprehensive Plan, and created a taxpayer-funded bureaucracy, the Land Conservation and Development Commission, to impose mandatory statewide standards with which all Comprehensive Plans must comply.  One of their goals was to prevent urban sprawl, so the LCDC mandated the establishment of Urban Growth Boundaries and restricted all new commercial and industrial development to within the UGBs . To enforce the perpetuation of the traditional economy, the LCDC required every county to “protect” any undeveloped land outside the UGBs by zoning it exclusively for forestry or agriculture, thereby precluding future development. (more…)