TOWN HALL MEETINGS
Legend: Black represents the state officials. Red represents Gordon Clay's comments. Blue means I am still working to confirm validity of the claim. Note: Virtually in all cases when either speaker says "They" they are referring to Democrats and any time they say "We" they are referring to Republicans. Disclaimer: I went to all three Town Hall meetings January 5th and was saddened because what they were were, clear and simple, Stump Speeches with almost total concentration on why "they" (the Democrats) are bad and "we" (the Republicans) are great. Krieger called for a concentration on honesty and integrity, which he claimed "they" don't have and then spent the better part of an hour making many statements that lacked honesty and integrity. I'm not a transcriber
by profession. I did tape most of all three sessions and I
goofed up and, while transcribing, I hit the wrong button
several times losing some of what was on the tape. It wasn't
intentional. The originals were a minimum of 75 minutes
long. It took over 5 hours to transcribe the Brookings "Town
Hall" meeting and I've got Gold Beach and Port Orford to go.
I didn't include "Ums", "ahs" and "okays" and edited
audience comments to the main question without all of the
data. Brookings/Harbor - 1/5/10 - About 50 people. Krieger: Can't take campaign contribution while in session but can before and after, including lobbyists. But while I'm in session, the Speaker of the House or President of the Senate can promise you all these things for your district. Unethical? They're buying your vote. This just shows the lack of honesty and integrity at the root of this country. You mean you haven't ever and don't currently negotiate with other members to get legislation you support? The media isn't doing investigative reporting to get to the truth. An example: The Pilot's Valliant Corley, is a staff writer. His assignment is to report on what he hears. If The Pilot had had an investigative reporter on the story, that reporter would, most likely, have checked out the claims made in the speech, especially the ones made about Nike and South Coast Lumber below. The All-Funds budget grew 9.3%. There were no cuts. Without the tax, the budget would grow 7.9%. Out of a $55 billion budget you can find that little bit to keep from raising taxes. (He refereed to a web document from Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes which is support by big business. They are the ones with the signs around the state. BTW: This web site was procured through DomainsByProxy.com. You use them when you don't want anyone to know who you are.) There's a corporations Gross Receipts tax. Kruse: Seventeen states have it. (Garble) Minnesota and New York have a sliding scale but it tops out at $5,000. Neither New York or Minnesota have a sliding scale and there is no mention of a $5,000 cap. In fact, both states have a higher corporate tax rate than Oregon www.taxadmin.org/fta/rate/corp_inc.html Krieger: You take 67 and 66, we're going to end up with some of the highest taxes in the United States. We have the second highest capital gains tax. Why would anyone want to come to Oregon to start a business? It isn't going to happen. We would be tied with Hawaii, going from 9% to 11% while New Jersey's current high is 10.75% and California's current high is 10.55%. There's no sales tax and 44M people moved to Oregon in 2009. A corporation with a gross receipts of less than $500,000 will pay the corporate minimum tax of $150. That's it. Corporations with gross receipts greater than $500,000 per year will pay a tax of < 0.1 % of gross receipts. Here's the exact breakdown: $500 if they they make
$500,000 to a $1 million In this case Intel will end up paying $100,000. Intel's gross annual revenue is about $35B. Many corporations that
do business in Oregon play a tax accounting game where they
move profits to the most favorable location, which may be
another state or foreign country. As a result, many
corporations -- especially the big ones -- end up claiming
that they made no profit in Oregon even though they did
millions of dollars in business in the state. As a result
they end up paying the minimum $10 corporate tax and no
income tax. The gross receipts tax is a way to get at least
some tax revenue from these corporations. That's why many
other states have a similar tax. Phil Knight, I understood, again I heard yesterday, is talking about taking Nike to Washington (State). "Absolutely not true", says Nike's corporate communications office. And Wayne was the one opening with remarks insinuation that Oregon (Democratic) leadership lacks honesty and integrity. He pays $40 million a year in the state of Oregon, not counting his employees. Taking the 6% to 7.9% for business is not going to be anything that will cause us to be able to increase employment. No one's going to be employing new people. Yesterday, we (he and Kruse) talked about the long term negative effect on the state and Jeff would vote for a tax, (looking at Jeff), Right? If it was necessary. That's the key. It isn't necessary. You've got more money than you had before. We simply did not prioritize spending. We cut schools 4%, we cut Veterans over 17%. Haven't been able to confirm these percentages. Department of Corrections was increased. Oregon spends more per prisoner than any other state. As of a couple of years ago, the DOC was the fastest growing sector of state govenment. Kruse: While they were cutting those two, they increase Human Services by 30%. And there are 1,115 new employees in that one agency. Now, a few of them might be justified because of case load increases because of the recession. You have more abuse, and more drugs and alcohol and spousal abuse but not to the point of being that many. They will get most of the signatures they need to get these on the ballot but they will lie to the public and threaten that they will cut your schools and cut senior programs and public safety. None of those cuts have to be made. There is enough money there. We simply have to stop "growing government" at 9.3%. If taxes go down (Pro 66 and 67), it isn't the $733 million we'll be short, it's around $300 (million. Impact on the Brookings School District will be about $400M. They've already cut metal and wood shop, we don't have a Cross County or Golf coach on staff and fewer total sporting events.) In the last decade, our (Oregon) population has grown by 10%. The size of state government has grown by 60%. Is this indexed to inflation? Weren't the Republicans basically in controll of state government for the majority of the past 10 years? The session before this last session, the budget we created grew government by over 20%. We build our budget on revenue project. It's not actual receipts, it's what the state thinks it's going to get. Like most businesses do. It's called sales projections. Most Stimulus money out of DC had strings attached. We took a lot of Medicaid dollars, spending them, then backing General Fund dollars out of DHS and putting them in other places so we could balance the budget...They (the Democrats in this last legislative assembly) put an additional burden on the people of Oregon of $1.9 billion dollars. That's $1.9 billion they want to take out of the economy. We (the Republicans) had some independent economists run numbers just on these two taxes. Keep in mind that in this point in time, in the last year, the state of Oregon has lost 130M private sector jobs. (Haven't been able to confirm this number anywhere.) These two taxes will cost us an addition 70M jobs. So in the next two years' time, we will have 200M more unemployed workers. "More" implies 200M more than we have now, not 70M more. I have asked Kruse for the information on this economist or to get a copy of the report to check the methodology. No response. I heard, anecdotally, that the reason for the Cash for Clunkers program was that China didn't just want US dollars, they wanted steel, and virtually all those cars went to China. (My understanding is that the program had filled the recycle ability in the US and the recyclers couldn't handle any more cars,). We don't just say no. We offer alternatives. I site a couple of them and of course this was based on an entire biennium. We suggested, that state employees who currently do not pay for any of their own health care, and we're the only state in the nation where that happens. We suggested that they pay what state employees in Washington State pay. It would save the state $410 million. This is how it works. The small group of wealthy people asking the people making well less than $125M to use even more of their disposable income to pay for government services. I would hope that members of the legislature included themselves in this cut and didn't have some special fund that protected them from being included. We suggested that the governor not give state employees, this go around, pay raises. We would have saved $248 million. According to www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/01/ad_watch_tax_ad_misleads_voter.html there is no pay raise for state employees this year. In fact, state employees will not receive any cost-of-living increases in the 2009-11 budget and they must take between 10 and 14 unpaid furlough days. The state also deferred step increases for one year. The net of those changes is a $27 million pay cut for state workers. One little interesting side note in all of this, they (Democrats) were passing the bill to tax health insurance, the state health insurance program, PEB, decided to go self insured so they wouldn't have to pay the tax. They did it on their own and we had no control over, but what we did have control over, to become self insured, you have to have a certain level of liquidity to make it work, and so we gave them $80 million so that they could become self insured. We came up with a list of actions to come up with the $733 million. It has to do with employees paying part of their health insurance, raise, giving the department (?) $105 million additional to collect the taxes. Graper Industries (? garbled) got a whole bunch of new programs for a million dollars. The government Ethics Commission, which has been a pure disaster, is over collecting by about a million dollars. We suggest to suspend part of the BetC (?) which is the Energy Tax Credit which you all pay that goes to a private sector which gives it out to whomever they choose. That program started out at about $35 million, now collect about $150 million a year. It's a really incredible unholy alliance between environmental community and big business but most of it goes to folks like Fred Meyer and Walmart and those folks. Republicans talk about smaller government and turning stuff over to private industry yet promote against it when it happens. We suggested we take them back to $35 million and take the $150 million additional on that and give it to schools. This would actually be only $115 million if the previous statement that they only collect a total of $150 million is correct. We're also planning in this biennium to spend another $5 million on vehicles and air craft and I think that's unnecessary. There is a time in a vehicle's life that it is more expensive to keep up than replace with a more efficient vehicle. Where is the money going to come for the additional repair expenses? Neither of these taxes are dedicated funds. They go into the general fund. So those who say that if these taxes go down we're going to cut schools, we're going to cut public safety is absolutely wrong. It is not true. I thought that these budgets for schools, public safety, etc. were set mid-year and the approved tax proposal was going to cover that. If they do pass, those budgets wouldn't be altered because these funds would then be available and no budget cuts would be needed. However, if they don't pass now, those budgets would have to be reduced by those amounts, wouldn't they? And why is the Brookings School District is currently looking a where $400M is going to be taken from in the next school year. The legislative assembly will decide what adjustments need to be made. But keep in mind, we're talking about a $100 bill, this is 3 cents. Adjustments can be made. They (the Democrats) waste more money in a month than that. We need to do something to get the real economy going again and these measures go directly against what that would do. And, trust me, if these pass, the next legislative assembly will come back and ask for more. Because this is all about growing government. Actually, it's about improving our children's education experience, keeping them, as well as adults, our elders and our veterans, safe and health,. As a state, we 're not doing a very good job at that. We created a new agency this session. It's called the Oregon Health Authority. And it's being carved out from the Department of Human Services. We are creating an agency to control all aspects of Health Care in the state of Oregon. You've heard about the bills that Senator Reed and Nancy Palosi have passed in Congress. Oregon is a step ahead of them at this point in time. On the surface, they don't look that bad right now. But if you know how to read these things, and I do, they are bad. The one example I'll give you is in the original version of the bill HB2009 sponsored by Representative Rich Greenlick of Portland, who pretty much had full control over this process, in the original version of the bill there was a provision that basically said once this authority is established, if they looked at a way a medical enterprise was operating a hospital to a clinic to a sole proprietorship, if they did not like the way they were running their business they had the ability to take them over. They took that out, but what you need to know is that that's the direction they want to go. Apples and oranges. Talking not about the actual bill as written but there are adjustments to virtually any bill and Senator Kruse points out what's not in the bill versus what is. More insinuation on intent. If the purpose of these taxes was strictly to get us through the crunch we are in now, they (the Democrats) would have made them temporary, but they didn't. They are permanent. He's not specific on "these" bills so implies that all provisions in both bills are permanent. The increase in income tax is not permanent. What you need to know that individual tax is, they say, it's just a tax on the rich. You need to understand that 70% of the people that file in that category are going to be paying these taxes are small businesses. That is the rich they are talking about. Any small business which is making enough to pay the owner $125 or $250M on taxable income (after expenses) if filing jointly, I'd say is doing pretty well. Having the owner pay more income tax doesn't directly affect the business, unless the owner chooses to pay themselves more. The Corporate Minimum Tax ($150), I know a lot of mill owners, I know a lot of dairymen, I know a whole lot of other folks who are not making money right now. But they're keeping their businesses going. A gross receipts tax basically says we don't care if your making money right or not, if you gross receipts are at this level. A C-corp is going to have to keep two sets of books. If you make money, great. We're going to tax you at a higher rate on what you make. If you don't make money, great, we're still going to tax you. Under the current corporate tax system, two thirds of Oregon businesses pay only $10 per year in taxes, a level that hasn't changed since well before World War II. Under the new system, 88% of Oregon businesses still will pay only $150 per year in taxes. Even those businesses that will have to pay tax on gross sales will not be hard hit - a business generating $1 million in sales will write the Oregon Department of Revenue a check for only $500. No business will cut jobs because its tax bill goes up by $140 or even $500. In fact, we need Measures 66 and 67 to have jobs in Oregon. My thought. If your can't afford to pay the $140, maybe you need a new business plan or you're in the wrong business. $150 is not much to pay to do business in a no sales tax state. The Corporate Minimum Tax was a filing fee established in 1936 that was paid to the state of Oregon that was $10, who cares. Since that time, there is now another filing fee paid to the Secretary of State for the privilege of operating a business in the state. $50 this year, it was raised to $100...So, for them (the Democrats) to tell you that businesses are only paying $10 is, they know it's a lie. They know it's a lie. Some C-corps do pay $10. Again, insinuation. The proponents talking in favor of 67 are talking about taxes in 67, not filing fees. Again, twisting irrelevant information to cast dispersions on these measures. They've been trying to get at this issue for a decade now. And every time they tried to increase the corporate minimum, they looked at what it would do to the non-profits and they backed off. This time they didn't. So non-profits get hit with this as well. ($150.) The sole purpose of this and the permanent nature of it is to continue the expansion of the government, even during the recession. Krieger: We're going to be about $3 billion short when we go back in January of 2011 and that's if the economy grows. If it doesn't grow, we're even in worse trouble. If you give them taxes now their going to want more later. It's time to tell them "No" and it's time to tell them "Prioritize your spending just like I have to." Kruse: What Phil Knight (Nike) is talking about doing now is outsourcing his jobs to Washington because it's a better tax structure. Washington's Business and Occupation tax, for example, is almost 5 times higher than Oregon's new corporate minimum tax and will remain among the lowest (48th) in the nation in corporate taxation and will still have the lowest taxes on the West Coast. Even with the new tax provisions, Oregon will still be a very attractive place to do business. Krieger: People who lost 30 and 40% of their retirement in the stock market (Too many listened to President Bush that the stock market was a better place for their money than Social Security), you're going to want to tax those people more so you have less in your retirement? That doesn't make any sense to me either. If people make more than $125M taxable income currently, they should pay more of their disposal income. Those under $125M lost equally and may have lost their job and home. Krieger wants them to take the brunt of the recession and have an even lower level of disposable income Hardly any Oregonians will be affected by personal income tax increases - 98% of Oregonians will see no change in their personal income taxes. If your family has taxable income of $260,000, your taxes will only go up by $160 for 2011. And that amount will be cut in half in 2012. Kruse: Nike never made their shoes here. They started making them in Japan. What Nike has in Oregon is their corporate structure, their R&D departments, their marketing departments. I mean, it is massive. I think there's 40M employees in Washington County that work for Nike. Another scare tactic. Nike's corporate affairs person told me they have around 5,300 employees in Oregon. Sheriff John Bishop: Garbled. A couple of weeks ago we were told if these don't pass, they will cut the force down to 3 days a week, will lay off 39 troopers that they just hired, will abolish the criminal division of the state police, which means about a 102 of those detectives would come back on the road, to replace the newer ones that have just been hired...Curry County took a huge hit in July. The state had promised, in a contract, to pay for four weeks (garbled) Cut us 36%. They are now cutting us another 20%l With that, they want to release 4,000 inmates which would come back into the cities of Oregon (about 100 back into Curry County). I have one probation officer who supervises 118 people. The state average is 40. Can't do it, yet house the prisoners from the state with the minimal amount of resources that Curry County has. That's what the Governors office told us. According to a nation report, Oregon Sheriff's Department has growth considerably less than Oregon's population and, compared to all other states, is 31% lower than growth. The next closest state's growth is 18% less than population growth. Krieger: Let me take a stab at it. After the session, I told my wife "They're going to blackmail and threaten them with schools, public safety and human services. You know why they won't do what they say they are going to do? They won't make across the board cuts. Because we would control the legislature the next time because they know the Republicans would use that folly, that totally unacceptable ray (?) of just across the board cuts against them in a campaign and we'd get the House and Senate back and we might even get the Governor. You need to call their bluff. You need to make them prioritize their spending. It still grows 7.9%. They're not going to turn a bunch of people loose, their not going to cut school days and if they do they're not being responsible and you need to vote them out of office. Bishop: They've already cut. Krieger: You have people who are in elected positions at the state level, who lack the honesty and integrity and the forthright conduct what I see up there, and I'll tell you folks, its the Democrats right now, I'll come right out and say it, for the first time in nine years we have to hold them accountable. Half my family is Democrats, half my friends are Democrats, but the ones that are Democrats out of Portland, in my mind, are not Democrats of my family or of years ago, they belong to the Socialist Party and they run as Democrats because they couldn't get elected as a Socialist. Finally, there it is, the "socialist" card. Krieger became very agitated at this point. Of course, if you compare virtually every "socialist" health care system in other industrialized countries, they have better health care, lower child deaths, lower mortality rates, at less expense to their citizens than the US There's nobody who, in that building, in my mind, that doesn't want to properly fund education and yet it becomes the biggest football and political thing because you don't support children. Let me remind you that this session the Democrats cut funding for schools 4%, they cut Veterans 17%. Last session, when Jeff talked about all the extra money we had, 21% almost, they gave schools 18%. Why didn't they get, in their sense of priority (?) of education, why didn't they give them the 21%? In '97, '99, and 2001, we controlled the house and I think the Senate. The budgets from the Governor were increased for K-12 education by $100 million. Soon as they get in, they cut it. And yet they say, we're all for kids. What people say and what they do seem to be different things. That's what I'm talking about, honesty, integrity seem to be lacking in that building. Claiming superiority and they, so far in this Stump Speech, don't seem to have demonstrated a lot of honesty and integrity themselves. Kruse: You have legitimate reasons to be concerned because at the bottom end of the trough, they don't care....we did a town hall in Roseburg last night, and somebody asked a question..."Why are they cutting services" and my response was, they don't care about services. Let me kind of splain that a little bit. I've been through a couple of minor recessions and this major one and at no point in time, whenever they talk about cuts, they are always out in the field on the local level. At no point in time (garble) HDS has two major buildings in Salem and over 1,500 employees that never leave the building. At no point in time has any one of them ever lost a job. What they cut is A&D programs, they've cut program money, they've cut counselors, and it's by design for two reasons, number one that's what public employee unions tell them to do. That's number one. But number two, they want the result of a "No" vote to be absolutely painful as they can make it. It's by design. What I think they're going to do, one potential scenario for this February is to come in and do some drastic cuts and blame it on us. We are working very hard to setup a scenario where they can't do that. But they can't blame it on us. To where if they do those cuts, the blame comes back on them. And, if we're successful at that, they'll do other cuts...It's a game. I wish it wasn't but it is a game. The fact is, it may be a game, but the Republicans are playing hardball and trying to undermine support for education, health and public safety and going around the state doing Stump Speeches to make it look like this is the Democrats doing. It is clearly the Republicans doing. Comment: Who is "them". Kruse: "Them" is the Democrats that control the legislative assembly. Comment: I hear you. (Malfunction of recorder.) Don't you represent all of us. Kruse: Absolutely. I represent all, everything. I've never voted a straight party ticket. And I get just as made at my own party as I do at the other one cause Republicans can be idiots too. Okay. Having said that, I listen to everybody, but if you're in politics, one rule of thumb is, if nobody's mad at you in means you're not doing anything...There are people in my Senate district who truly believe that the solution to all of this is to let government do it. Honest to God they believe that. They have every right to believe that. But I have to weight that against what I think is best for the people I represent. My contributors? I probably work with Democrats in the legislature as much as I do Republicans. I've got an incredible body of work I've done in the last decade and you don't do that just wearing your party hat...But there are issues that come down to a matter of principle. And there are issues that come down to, not the issue itself, but the politics behind the issue. And when it comes down to the politics behind the issue, it offends me. Quit simply. It offends me that we do things for political reasons rather than what's best. And this is one of those times. I think what "we" are doing here is for political reasons. Does "we" mean Republicans this time? If so, I agree. I don't think it's what's best for the people and so I'm going to stand up for what's best for the people. My contributors? I don't know any other way to do it. Comment: How many of the people out there wear one party hats? Kruse: It goes issue by issue to a degree. At the end of the day...for all of the tax measures that were passed they were passed on straight party lines. And I know there were Democrats that objected to them but voted for them because they were told to. And the way that happens is, you're not going to vote for this then we're going to take your committee away from you. It's hard ball. Krieger: Or appropriations. Kruse: Or you aren't going to get something Of course that never happens within the Republican contingent. Everything single Republican in the current Oregon House and Senate believes, realistically, that neither of these measures will work and that, if 66 and 67 fail, that they can get legislation passed that will not negatively impact the public sector with no loss of programs or personnel so they have rallied enmass against 66 and 67. Boy, would I be surprised. Comment: They've covered this whole situation with the "Rainy Day" fund. Kruse: No Comment: There's not enough Kruse: No. There's not enough in there. But, like I said, we've come up with a plan for a little bit here and a little bit there. But we've still got an ace in the hole which we discovered last session. Cause you get into this concept of other funds which are fees, and interagency transfers and a whole lot of stuff. We know for an absolute fact that if you take all of the agencies, and there is a lot of them, (50 plus the 13 in the Legislative Branch) and you look at their other fund ending balances, there is available to be taken and spent $4 billion right now. $4 billion that could be taken right now without having a negative impact on the current biennium program delivery. We know that for an absolute fact. We gave some agencies fee increases that had reserves that would run the agencies for two years. How much sense does that make? (Discussed terms limits) Comment: (Question shortened for brevity.) If 66-67 passes, how are they going to spend the money? Kruse: It is pure general funds, there are no dedicated funds, whatsoever in either measure. Comment: We elect people to serve but yet they ignore us and want to control us. And what is the motive behind that? I can't get my mind around that attitude that they want to control, because if they go too far, they're going to get thrown out of office. Kruse: I'm going to give them, I'm going to say it's legitimate on their part. And what I'm going to say is that they have bought into concepts like business is evil, that if somebody's making a profit it's because they're screwing somebody else, and they basically think number one that we the people are stupid and .... they can do a better job of it. Wow. This is the Kruse/Krieger version of a Town Hall meeting. (Short discussion regarding the Brookings water treatment problem. Then they closed the meeting and headed for Gold Beach.) Talk is easy. Basing it on facts is much more difficult. I wish "my" legislators would take their own ethics seriously and live up to at least the level of honesty and integrity that they were complaining were lacking in Salem. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gold Beach - 1/5/10 - About 21 people (Yet to be fully transcribed - my impression is that it was pretty much the same as Brookings, stump speeches, except more like a Tea Party with several people actually reading speeches.) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Port Orford - 1/5/10 - About 23 people (Yet to be transcribed - my impression is that it was pretty much the same as Brookings stump speeches, yet the members at the meeting asked more questions.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
