The state of Oregon has launched its shame policy aimed at getting delinquent taxpayers to pay up.

The state is now posting a list on the Department of Revenue website of people and businesses who owe at least $50,000 in unresolved delinquent debt. You can find it here: tinyurl.com/Ortaxdelinquents.

We looked it up and filtered it for people and businesses with addresses in Bend. There were more than 50 on Thursday.

The Legislature passed this list of shame plan in 2019. It has just been rolled out. State Sen. Betsy Johnson, who later ran for governor, was the force behind the bill. A taxpayer shame policy has helped in other states. And when Oregon’s Department of Revenue did a test with a Top 100 delinquent list of taxpayers, some paid up.

“For those of us who honorably discharge our responsibility of paying our taxes it makes me pretty fill-in-the-blank mad to know that they are scofflaws that don’t,” Johnson said during a hearing on the bill in 2019. “And the rest of us carry their burden.”

The questions about the bill then were much the same as they are now. Then-state Sen. Cliff Bentz, who now represents Oregon in Congress, wondered how well shame would work.

Taxpayers are allowed to be delinquent on paying their taxes. There are all sorts of reasons that they may be. It could be a divorce, a bankruptcy, a loss of job. And the policy has protections in place that are supposed to ensure if taxpayers are in a bankruptcy or on a payment plan that their names will not go on the list.

We like the policy. As of the close of the 2022 fiscal year, the state was owed some $785 million in delinquent tax debt, the Oregon Department of Revenue told us Thursday.

But we think legislators should insist on an update on how often people are placed on the shaming list by mistake or if people have paid up or made other arrangements and are not removed from the list in a timely way.