Stimson Lumber Co. said Friday it will lay off 60 workers at its mill near Forest Grove, attributing the cuts to the rising “cost of doing business in Oregon.” Stimson said it will reduce Forest Grove operations by 40%.

“The environment in Oregon is becoming more challenging in a very competitive industry,” said Stimson CEO Andrew Miller.

The cost of producing lumber products is 5% to 7% lower in Idaho and Montana, Miller said, which he blames on state policies — in particular the state’s 2015 clean fuels bill. He said the state’s pending business tax increase, which aims to raise $1 billion a year by taxing companies’ sales, makes the state less appealing to companies like his.

“Oregon has become an urban state, and urban voters and legislators set the agenda,” Miller said.

Stimson Lumber employs 780 altogether, a little more than half of them in Oregon. Miller said the mill near Forest Grove employed 225 before Friday’s cuts.

The company supplies 2x4s and other lumber products to Home Depot and other retailers across the country.

A longtime donor to Republican causes, Miller also blamed layoffs on the state’s business climate in 2010.

Oregon businesses have long enjoyed the nation’s lowest tax burden, owing largely to the absence of a state sales tax. Businesses have complained during the current legislative session that the new tax for education, coupled with new family leave laws and a prospective carbon reduction bill, are substantially increasing their costs.

The business community is split, though, on how to respond.

Some employers, particularly in the Portland area, favor policies that benefit the environment and schools. The state’s largest business organization, Oregon Business & Industry, agreed not to oppose the new tax on business sales in exchange for concessions on the structure of the tax.

Oregon continues to enjoy a historically low unemployment rate of 4.3% and joblessness is down sharply, even in rural parts of the state. Wood product manufacturing jobs in the state are stable over the past year, with total employment of 23,600, according to the latest data from the Oregon Employment Department.

Though Stimson is the first to blame a recent cutback on Oregon’s public policies, the state’s job growth has slowed in recent months and sporadic layoffs have continued as they have throughout the long economic expansion.