About

This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on May 28, 2009 4:31 AM. The previous post in this blog was Recession? What recession?. The next post in this blog is Creep Suzette. Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

E-mail, Feeds, 'n' Stuff

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Salem debates Paulson income tax giveaway this morning

Our spies tell us that the Oregon House Revenue Committee is scheduled to hold a public hearing and possible work session today on House Bill 2531A, which expands the 2003 baseball stadium fund. Under the bill, the state would dedicate income tax revenues from soccer team members to financing, developing, constructing and furnishing the proposed "major league" soccer stadium makeover for PGE Park.

We're told that the proceeding, which is to start at 8 a.m., can be watched live at http://www.leg.state.or.us/listn/ by clicking on Hearing Room A. The audio portion only can be played later using the same web site (see audio archives).

It's an interesting bill. If we are reading it correctly, the proposed rehashing of PGE would be allowed to suck up not only the extra income taxes that "major league" soccer would bring Oregon -- over and above what the Timbers bring in now. No, it would be allowed to take all the income taxes attributable to professional soccer, including what the Timbers bring in now. The bill calls the dedicated funds "incremental soccer tax revenues," but "incremental" is a pretty misleading word given the way that quantity is defined.

Included would be the taxes paid by anyone who makes more than $40,000 a year rendering service to a professional soccer team. The taxes are so sketchily defined that even those paid by independent contractors such as outside lawyers and accountants could be included. And if somebody decided to crank up a "minor league" pro soccer team in, say, Medford, their taxes would probably go to the Paulson stadium project, too.

Shame on the sponsors of this bill -- Representatives Read, Hunt, Bruun, Roblan and Schaufler, and Senators Devlin, Monroe, and Morse. May it die on the vine. Two of the sponsors are on House Revenue, but let's hope they get outvoted by more sensible folks. The full roster is:

Representative Phil Barnhart, Chair
Representative Jules Bailey, Vice Chair
Representative Cliff Bentz, Vice Chair
Representative Scott Bruun
Representative Vicki Berger
Representative Chuck Riley
Representative Sara Gelser
Representative Tobias Read
Representative Nick Kahl
Representative Sherrie Sprenger

Comments (4)

Who's Paulson hired to carry his water on this? Eventually, the campaign contributions data ought to include some interesting items.

Bruun and Devlin are my Rep/Sen. Forget it - These guys are about as open0-minded as Randy is.

Welcome to the future, parasites like Paulson can feed at the host while schools get worse and we still have no jobs.

Not that it matters, but I'm sure the sponsors didn't read the bill.

Representative Kim Thatcher was the only member on the House Committee on Sustainability and Economic Development to vote against letting the bill out of that committee. Kudos to her.




Clicky Web Analytics