Editorial: Let voters decide

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, July 3, 2018

It appears Oregonians may be asked to vote on at least three tax-related ballot measures in November.

One deserves opposition. The other two deserve your support.

Initiative Petition 25, the Corporate Accountability and Transparency Act, would require publicly traded companies, which are regulated by the federal government, to disclose tax, ownership and other information that would become part of the public record. Oregon’s unions of public employees have backed the idea as a way of making it easier to push through higher taxes.

The measure would not apply to most businesses in the state. But it would hit several Oregon-based businesses, including Nike and Columbia Sportswear, with rules that apply in no other state. Think of the motto for this measure as being: Make Oregon less business friendly.

Initiative Petition 31 would require a three-fifths majority vote by lawmakers to increase taxes and fees. Supporters have already turned in roughly double the signatures required to place it on the ballot.

If approved, the measure would end the game-playing that we’ve seen the last few years by which lawmakers have managed to avoid the existing constitutional requirement for a supermajority when raising revenue. The measure makes sense, and approving it would serve to tell some lawmakers Oregonians are not as dumb as they seem to think we are.

Initiative Petition 37 would ban taxes on groceries. It’s a direct result of Measure 97, the corporate tax measure defeated by nearly 400,000 votes in 2016. That would have fallen hard on grocery stores and likely raised the cost of groceries for all Oregonians. The new measure already has been certified for the ballot. It does promise that taxes would not be a factor in the cost of feeding one’s family.

Voters likely will have the final say on all three measures, and no doubt the fights over them between now and November will be both loud and expensive. In the end, however, voters should support only IP 31 and IP 37, and defeat the anti-business IP 25.

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