News Archives - Brighter Oregon

Gov. Brown: Oregon Will Be Cautious, Need Proof Of Safety Before Reopening

April 14, 2020 | OPB | by Lauren Dake

Gov. Kate Brown says she won’t reopen Oregon’s economy or ease restrictions until she sees a declining rate of active cases of the novel coronavirus and public health data that suggests a return to normalcy is safe.

In a press conference Tuesday, Brown outlined what needs to happen before the state is ready to reopen for business: she wants to ensure the state has a robust testing, tracing and isolation strategy, and she needs to feel confident the state has enough hospital beds to treat any surge of COVID-19 cases and enough protective gear for healthcare workers.

In addition, she said, the state is working on strategies to help prevent and respond to the virus among the state’s most vulnerable populations, such as nursing homes and those experiencing homelessness.

The governor didn’t give a specific timeline.

“While we have to be careful, we also cannot stand still,” she said. “We all know this is a global problem and leaders across the world are struggling how to approach this.”

A shuttering of the economy on this scale has never happened before, Brown said, and neither has a reopening strategy on this level.

To prepare to reopen the economy, the governor said she would be reaching out to industries affected by the shutdown, such as restaurants and hair salons. Brown suggested she could ease restrictions in certain parts of the state first, and that she might mandate that some currently shuttered businesses adopt new safety standards — like using masks or installing plastic shields — in order to reopen. She emphasized that the process wouldn’t happen overnight and would likely occur on a sector-by-sector basis.

“It’s not going to be easy, and it will take longer than we want,” she said.

One early step toward restarting the economy, state epidemiologist Dr. Dean Sidelinger said, should be allowing nonessential procedures to begin in hospitals once again. Those procedures were restricted by Brown in March as a way to preserve bed space and PPE, but have led to financial difficulties for hospital systems reliant on elective operations.

Brown didn’t offer specific details on how much protective gear — gowns, masks and gloves — would be necessary before she felt confident Oregon was prepared to reopen for business. But she said she is working on a step-by-step plan to offer more clarity in the future.

Under current modeling, Oregon is expected to have enough open hospital beds to weather the crisis. That could change if social distancing measures are eased prematurely, officials say.

Brown and other West Coast governors announced on Monday that they plan to take a coordinated approach to the “incremental release” of their stay-home orders. The announcement came shortly after President Donald Trump tweeted he had the authority to unilaterally re-open businesses around the country. Brown said she is working with the West Coast governors to finalize guidelines to reopen the state, but she said that doesn’t mean every state would be opening on the same time frame.

Washington’s stay-at-home order currently runs through May 4. Oregon has not put an end date on its order.

As one key component of Oregon’s reopening strategy, Sidelinger said Oregon also needs the ability to significantly ramp up its testing capacity. He set a goal of roughly 15,000 test per week, almost double the rate Oregon is currently testing people. Sidelinger said that amount of testing should give the state leeway to test people in order to better detect the disease in the community, rather than just testing people with symptoms.

The state also needs a more robust way to trace the contacts of the people who have tested positive for COVID-19, Sidelinger said. But neither Brown nor Sidelinger gave more specifics on what that increased ability would look like or when it could happen.

Oregon, Washington and California have recently been praised for managing to avoid the toll the coronavirus is taking on New York City and some other areas. The three states have shipped spare ventilators to cities on the East Coast.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Oregon health officials announced 1,633 confirmed cases in the state and 55 deaths. California had reported 21,794 cases and 651 deaths as of Saturday. Washington had reported 10,411 confirmed cases and 508 deaths as of Saturday.

Brown first ordered Oregon schools to cancel in-person classes on March 12, and shuttered many bars and restaurants in the state days later. She issued a more widespread “stay home, save lives” order on March 23, the same day as Washington and four days after California.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announces framework, no dates, for loosening coronavirus restrictions

April 14, 2020 | The Oregonian/OregonLive | by By Rob Davis, Contributor Shane Dixon Kavanaugh

The Oregonian/OregonLive | April 14, 2020

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown on Tuesday announced the state’s initial framework for lifting statewide closures affecting millions across the state, saying she would take a slow, science-based approach to deciding how to move forward, without specifying when it would happen.

“I’m not going to put a date on this,” Brown said.

The governor said she wants five things to be in place before gradually lifting the unprecedented stay-at-home restrictions: A declining growth rate of active cases, sufficient personal protective equipment for healthcare workers, surge capacity in hospitals, increased testing capacity, tracing and isolating positive cases and strategies to protect vulnerable communities including nursing homes and the homeless population.

“This is only a framework,” Brown said in a press conference. “We have to be cautious or it will backfire.”

The announcement was short on details, leaving it unclear how Oregon would define how much protective equipment it needs, how an effective tracing program would be staffed and funded as well as when testing capacity is expected to increase. Brown said she didn’t yet know how much PPE the state needed, something that needs to be determined before lifting the suspension of elective procedures statewide.

The Oregon Health Authority is currently drafting an operations plan that will fill in those details and be ready in “days, not weeks,” Brown’s chief of staff, Nik Blosser, told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

The governor said her next steps include soliciting input from local leaders, consulting with the most affected industries, including restaurants and hair and nail salons, completing metrics for reopening and creating plans for testing, tracing and isolation. Coordinating with other West Coast states, Brown said, she will finalize discrete steps and guidelines for a step-by-step plan to reopen the state.

“It’s not going to be easy and it will take longer than we want,” she said.

State epidemiologist Dean Sidelinger said to reopen, Oregon would need the capability to do 15,000 tests a week, 2,100 a day, not the ability to test every Oregonian. Former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb has said the country should be testing 1% of its population each week. That would put Oregon’s target at about 40,000 a week.

Both Sidelinger and Brown incorrectly claimed the state’s testing capacity has been growing when it has plateaued. Sidelinger said Oregon has “substantially and gradually increased our testing capacity in the state.” Oregon has been reporting test results for about 1,300 people a day — for the last three weeks.

A health authority spokesman, Phil Schmidt, said the flat testing “isn’t necessarily a function of capacity,” because the judgment call for whether to test Oregonians lies with medical providers.

But the health authority is still actively discouraging testing of asymptomatic people and those whose symptoms don’t require medical evaluation.

Brown backed away from earlier statements about lifting restrictions once Oregon reached a 10-day stretch with no deaths from the virus. She said she had been citing comments made by Dr. Deborah Birx, a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force.

“We’re using different metrics here in Oregon,” Brown said.

Modeling estimates the coronavirus’ transmission rate in Oregon has plummeted amid the statewide shutdown. But while Oregon’s latest modeling projects that cases have plateaued here, the state isn’t expected to see a drop-off in numbers for at least six weeks. As of Tuesday, 55 people had died from the coronavirus and 1,633 had tested positive.

Researchers with the Bellevue-based Institute for Disease Modeling wrote in an April 10 report that Oregon needs to maintain its current aggressive measures to decrease the number of active infections.

Even if Oregon returned to the moderate restrictions in place in mid-March, which included school closures and bans on gatherings of more than 25 people, “active infections will rapidly increase,” the researchers concluded.

Sidelinger and Brown said a far more robust system was needed to trace the contacts of people who test positive. They did not specify the numbers of new staff that may be needed, but Blosser said it could be between 100 and 150 and possibly more.

“Our assumption is that we need to staff up significantly,” he said.

Chunhuei Chi, director of the Center for Global Health at Oregon State University, told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Monday that to establish a program similar to one successfully used in Taiwan, Oregon needed between 400 and 1,000 people to administer testing and trace the contacts of known positive cases to effectively control the spread when restrictions are loosened.

By comparison, Multnomah County, Oregon’s most populated county, had a pre-pandemic staff of seven people to trace contacts and has since added 15 more. Lane County, which is about half of Multnomah’s size, has seven full time nurses who investigate coronavirus cases; two former staff are assisting in a volunteer capacity.

Oregon faces coronavirus recession; businesses want taxes suspended and new taxes postponed

March 17, 2020

By Mike Rogoway
Oregonian | March 17, 2020

Oregon’s largest business associations called on the state to enact broad, temporary tax cuts to help employers manage the coronavirus fallout, which already has triggered hundreds of restaurant closures and threatens scores of other businesses.

State economists issued an update to Oregon’s quarterly revenue forecast Tuesday, warning they now expect a recession – an event that seemed extremely unlikely just a few weeks ago.

“It is likely that until the public health situation improves, or at least the fears subside as health policy plans are announced, the economic damage will continue to mount,” they wrote.

With Gov. Kate Brown’s order Monday that restaurants and bars must close, except for takeout and delivery service, the number of layoffs statewide is surely already in the tens of thousands. Unemployment filings overwhelmed the Oregon Employment Department’s website for parts of Monday and Tuesday.

“People are really afraid right now. I have never heard this level of concern,” said Sandra McDonough, CEO of Oregon Business & Industry, the state’s largest business organization. She said businesses are anxious for tools the enable them to keep operating and keep their workers on the job.

Brown indicated Monday she expects to call a special session of the Legislature to deal with the crisis but hasn’t set a timetable for doing that.

The governor agrees with the business groups on shoring up unemployment insurance and taking other steps to protect workers and employers, according to Christian Gaston, workforce and labor policy advisor to Brown.

However, he said her office wants to protect employees affected by the downturn, too.

“We need to have a broader conversation about the balance that we need to strike here between the need for critical, social safety net programs..and flexibility to ensure that businesses can remain open,” Gaston said.

In addition to OBI, organizations that signed the letter include the state’s largest business organization, Oregon Business & Industry, the Portland Business Alliance, the Oregon Homebuilders Association and the Oregon Farm Bureau.

Among other steps, the business associations want Oregon to suspend its new, corporate activity tax that took effect at the start of the year. The tax aims to raise $1 billion for schools and early childhood education – money schools have already begun spending.

The businesses also want local governments to postpone consideration of other new taxes but didn’t identify any proposals specifically. Regional government Metro plans to put a $250 million tax on May’s ballot to pay for homeless services. Other large taxes in the planning stages would pay for transportation improvements in the Portland area and would remodel Portland schools.

“We are encouraging elected officials to work together with employers to build a plan that protects the future of jobs in our state and region,” said Andrew Hoan, CEO of the Portland Business Alliance. The PBA endorsed the tax for homeless services Monday and Hoan said his organization is maintaining its support for that measure.

However, several other regional business groups said Monday they want the homeless tax measure pulled from the May ballot.

Other recommendations the business organizations made Tuesday include:

· Transferring last year’s corporate kicker tax rebate to the state’s unemployment insurance fund and making it easier and faster for workers to claim benefits.

· Suspending payroll taxes for small businesses.

· Create a tax credit for restaurants and hotels.

· Establish tax credits when businesses spend money to retain jobs or award time off.

· Extend tax filing deadlines.

· Offer low-interest and no-interest loans.

· Lift restrictions on manufacturing workers’ hours.

On Tuesday, McDonough said she had spoken with the governor and believed Brown is open to making changes.

“She didn’t reject anything out of hand. She knows businesses are hurting,” McDonough said. “What I’m hearing is an openness to a discussion about all this.”

Voters guide: What’s on the ballot for Oregon’s Nov. 5 special election?

October 20, 2019 | KGW 8 | by Jared Cowley

PORTLAND, Ore. — What measures will be decided by voters in Multnomah County, Clackamas County and Washington County during the upcoming special election on November 5?

Wading through the voters pamphlet is a necessity for informed voters, but the length of the guides can be intimidating. Multnomah County’s is 36 pages long; Clackamas County’s checks in at 32 pages; and Washington County’s is 24 pages.

Here’s some basic information about the ballot measures that impact the entire Portland metro area, as well as some measures specific to each county.

Editorial: No kicker tricks this time, lawmakers

August 31, 2019 | Bend Bulletin | by Editorial Board

Bend Bulletin Editorial Board | August 31, 2019

O regon’s tax kicker will be a record-breaker next year. The state’s latest — and last, for the 2017-19 biennium — revenue forecast shows the state will be required to send $1.6 billion back to the taxpayers.

The kicker law, which is part of the state constitution, is unique to Oregon. It works this way: When state income tax revenues exceed initial budget forecasts more than 2% in the two-year state budget cycle, everything above that first forecast must be returned to taxpayers. Today, the extra money is applied first to taxpayers’ income taxes, and if they owe less than what they’d get from the kicker, the balance is mailed out in a check.

The idea behind the kicker is to put some kind of control on spending. It prevents lawmakers from spending what amounts to a windfall that comes from having a strong economy and the resulting higher tax revenues than expected.

Not surprisingly, some lawmakers have toyed with the idea of changing the kicker provision. They’ve talked of using kicker dollars to pay off some of the state’s whopping $23 billion-plus unfunded liability in the Public Employees Retirement System. They’ve permanently diverted the kicker for corporations, a move approved by taxpayers.

And, already this year, they’ve changed the 2017-19 budget to reduce the kicker for the biennium that ended June 30.

They must leave the balance of the kicker alone. Only under the most tortured legislative logic is the excess tax revenue something the state of Oregon is entitled to. Lawmakers can be remarkably good at torturing logic, to be sure. This time, however, they must let the constitutional kicker provision play out as voters intended when they added the kicker to the constitution in 2000.

EDITORIAL: Tax kicker economics

August 30, 2019 | Baker City Herald | by Jayson Jacoby

By Jayson Jacoby | Baker City Herald | August 30, 2019

Oregon income taxpayers are in line to receive the biggest refund next year due to the state’s unique tax “kicker” law. State officials said this week that tax revenue exceeded by $2.6 billion the state’s projection from 2017. Under the kicker law, the state returns taxes, in the form of credits, when revenue surpasses projections by at least 2%.

Some state lawmakers and officials — Democrats, mainly — probably will try to divert at least some of this money. They might propose to pay down the state’s public employee retirement system shortfall or bolster the rainy day fund as a hedge against a future recession.

But another announcement this week, this one from the federal government, highlights the economic benefits of keeping money in Americans’ wallets rather than in government coffers.

Reports show that although the national economy slowed this spring, with the gross domestic product growing by 2%, down from 3.1% in the first quarter, an increase in consumer spending to the highest level in nearly five years partially offset that slowdown.

This is vital because consumer spending is responsible for about 70% of economic growth.

Oregon’s reserve funds already are at an all-time high of $3.7 billion. Making sure residents receive their full kicker credits — the average is estimated at $739 — would stimulate the economy and, potentially, reduce the need to dip into that reserve.

Oregon kicker: Taxpayers set to get a $1.6 billion rebate next year

August 29, 2019

By Hillary Borrud | The Oregonian/OregonLive and Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Oregon taxpayers will receive an astounding $1.6 billion “kicker” tax rebate next year, up from the already record-shattering $1.4 billion rebate economists had predicted just three months ago. The state depends heavily on personal income taxes and an unexpected surge in those payments in recent months pushed up the rebate figure. State economists delivered the stunning news Wednesday morning to House and Senate lawmakers during a meeting in Salem.

“We’re trying to get our heads around this,” state economist Mark McMullen said.

The outsized kicker reflects an unexpected jump in state revenue. At the same time, though, the economists warned Wednesday that Oregon’s long-term outlook is showing “cracks” as growth slows and the trade war introduces new uncertainty into the economy.

Economists attribute some of the increase in tax payments to taxpayers changing their behavior in response to President Donald Trump’s 2017 federal tax law, but they don’t yet know whether the change is temporary or potentially permanent. They also haven’t ruled out other factors, such as taxpayers receiving additional retirement income.

The August revenue and economic forecast is the final word on the size of next year’s kicker. Under Oregon’s unique rebate system, the kicker is triggered when tax revenues for a two-year budget cycle come in more than 2% above economists’ forecast made at the start of the cycle. The state must return the full amount above the forecast to taxpayers.

Earlier this year, Democrats including Gov. Kate Brown toyed with proposals to change the kicker rebate or divert some of the windfall to policy proposals or the state’s financial liabilities, such as the $27 billion shortfall in the state’s public pension fund. However, they didn’t move forward with any such changes.

The size of a taxpayer’s kicker depends on the amount of tax she or he pays, and the state’s highest earners will receive the largest kicker rebates: Around $15,000 for taxpayers in the top 1 percent. The median taxpayer, with an income of $37,000 to $38,000, will receive a $346 kicker, according to state economists.

Oregon paid out its last record kicker on the eve of the Great Recession, and the latest record rebate is now locked in at a time when there are concerns about a slowdown in the state’s economy — and therefore the funding stream for state programs and services.

While Oregon’s economic expansion is now the longest on record, state economists warned Wednesday that the outlook is cloudier than it has been in many years.

Oregon’s jobless rate remains at 4%, a historic low, wages are rising and private sector employment continues to grow. But the labor market is expanding at an annual rate of just 1.6% – about half the rate it grew at the start of 2018. And while the state’s broad economic indicators remain strong, state economists said “cracks may be forming.”

They pointed to a drop in the number of manufacturing hours worked in Oregon, which are falling more than twice as fast as the national rate. The state’s chip industry remains robust, with outputs surging, but other markets are considerably weaker.

A downturn in shipments to China, Oregon’s largest export market, has helped pull down manufacturing, agriculture and timber exports.

“Bad behavior and policy mistakes” mean that the risk of recession has been rising in recent months, the state economists wrote, with new economic data showing the recent growth wasn’t as robust as analysts originally thought.

“The trade war escalation is spilling over and weighing on the economy to a larger degree as well,” the report found. “Businesses are wary as they delay investments and slow their pace of hiring.”

— Hillary Borrud | hborrud@oregonian.com | 503-294-4034 | @hborrud

— Mike Rogoway; twitter: @rogoway; 503-294-7699

Telfer: PERS pension debt clouds Oregon’s fiscal future

August 21, 2019

By Chris Telfer
Pamplin Media Group

A recent opinion piece carried by Pamplin Media about public employee pensions (“Ballot measures would make PERS problems worse”) misrepresents the purpose and effects of Oregon pension reform initiatives that our coalition may ask voters to consider in the November 2020 election.

There’s no question that the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System’s (PERS) $26 billion unfunded pension liability is draining public budgets — forcing layoffs of teachers even when school budgets are rising, raising tuition for students attending Oregon colleges and universities, and forcing local governments to cut essential services like police and fire.

Ultimately, it’s taxpayers who are carrying the added cost caused by past mistakes by public officials. In 2010, PERS pensions cost each Oregon household about $600 a year in state taxes. PERS now costs the average Oregon household more than twice that at $1,600 a year in taxes. Over the next few years, the cost per household could exceed $2,200 every year in taxes and keep climbing.

The executive director of the national pension lobbying organization for public employee unions who submitted the opinion piece distorted specific details in the Oregon PERS Solutions initiatives:

It is impossible to say whether a 401(k)-style plan is better or worse than a pension plan without knowing how much is being contributed to the former and how lucrative are the terms of the latter. The insufficiency of retirement balances in defined contribution plans across the nation is, more than anything, a function of relatively tiny employer and employee contributions. Our initiatives, which would establish a 401(k)-style plan at 12% of pay (6% paid by employers and 6% paid by employees), would be generous by comparison to most private plans and would be sufficient to generate lifetime retirement incomes equivalent to Oregon’s current pension plan for new employees.
Pension plans like PERS have built-in subsidies for career employees and those who experience significant salary growth over the course of their employment. That’s because pension benefits rise with salary increases. But a significant share of higher pension benefit costs is borne by PERS payroll assessments applied to lower-income and short-term employees. Even worse, short-term employees who never vest in the pension plan are left with nothing to show for up to five years of participation in the plan. By contrast, defined contribution plans are a fairer way to balance costs and benefits across the workforce. Because they are more portable, they can be more valuable for those who move in and out of public sector jobs.
The 80% funding level is misleading in two ways. First, it includes billions in borrowed funds (via pension obligation bonds) that are still being paid off by public jurisdictions. Accounting for the debt service still to be paid for these bonds, the funding ratio declines to closer to 73%. Not including this “second credit card” in assessing the funding level would be like taking out a home equity loan to pay off a car loan and claiming to have wiped the debt on your car. Secondly, Oregon’s pension program is more generous — and therefore more costly — than most if not all other state plans, making the amount of underfunding disproportionate to our tax base and the state’s economy. As the most recent study of state pension plan liabilities compared to each state’s total personal income shows, Oregon’s pension debt is third highest among the 50 states, behind Alaska and New Mexico.
Finally, the criticism of defined contribution plans ignores the fact that the Oregon Legislature and the state treasurer have enacted and are promoting a 401(k)-style retirement savings program for private-sector workers (Oregon Saves). Why is that appropriate for private-sector workers but not those in the public sector?

It is possible to reform PERS, maintain adequate and competitive retirement benefits for public workers and free up funding to improve our schools and maintain essential public services. These are our goals in promoting a new approach to retirement benefits for public workers.

Chris Telfer, a certified public accountant and former state senator from Bend, is a chief petitioner on initiative petitions 22, 23 and 24, submitted by Oregon PERS Solutions to reform Oregon’s public pension system.

Editorial: School money, PERS reform joined at hip

May 14, 2019 | Corvallis Gazette Times | by Mike McInally

One of the common themes you heard last week as teachers across Oregon rallied for a proposed tax on business that’s projected to raise $1 billion a year for K-12 schools was this: It’s not about Oregon’s Public Employees Retirement System, the state’s badly underfunded pension system.

“This isn’t about PERS,” was a typical comment from education officials. “It’s about educating the kids.”

Legislative leaders unveil a short term pension fix

May 13, 2019 | The Oregonian | Oregonlive | by Ted Sickinger

At the heart of Democratic leaders’ plan to rein in the costs of Oregon’s public pension system is an accounting ploy. It provides short-term cost relief to public employers, but at the cost of further underfunding the system and leaving it more vulnerable to future market downturns.

Democrats unveiled a series of concepts designed to hold down pension costs in the Ways and Means Capital Construction subcommittee on Friday. As previously reported by The Oregonian/Oregon Live, the overwhelming majority of those savings would be generated by extending the payback period for the system’s $27 billion deficit.