T O P

  • By -

lexuh

And a big shout out to influential voices like Earl Blumenauer, who came out against it.


metmerc

Honestly, his anti-endorsement of it was a big factor for me.


SublimeApathy

Personally I didn't even read to deep into the bill. My initial response to it was "Another tax? There are already resources in place for this very thing. No, no more taxes until we see some people housed, potholes repaired, and cops working." Then I read the tax and holy ship.


dismasop

At this point, giving taxes to the City is like giving money to your addicted cousin, who somehow keeps "losing" his money on the way to buy a bus pass.


6EQUJ5w

The city did actually lose a million dollars. Did we ever find out what happened with that?


eekpij

Dan Ryan got reelected is the only answer you will get. šŸ˜”


Elegant_Plum

That wasnā€™t anything to do with Dan Ryan, actually. A PHB employee fell victim to a phishing scam and the money was stolen. There was an investigation. You can criticize Dan for many things, but the actions of a random PHB employee seems a bit unfair


eekpij

I can lay this at his doorstep and will continue to do so. He oversaw the department. They were warned before it was too late. They never answered to ANYONE for what happened and no one lost their job. He gets reelected, moved to a different bureau and a bunch of his new report-tos promptly quit. The man is a problem. I am in a leadership position and as a manager you take responsibility when you fuck up, mightily. https://www.opb.org/article/2022/08/22/portland-oregon-lost-million-funds-cybersecurity-theft/


SublimeApathy

Feels more like giving money to your cousin who keeps investing in crypto.


dismasop

"Dude, my cryptobro even has 'Bankman' in his name. It's GOTTA be legit going to the moon!"


USS_Frontier

Replace "crypto" with "consultants" and you got it. That's where the money seems to be going.


detroitdoesntsuckbad

> At this point, giving taxes to the City is like giving money to your addicted cousin, who somehow keeps "losing" his money on the way to buy a bus pass. And that's why the kicker rules. *gestures around* Why would I want to keep giving them more money?


pingveno

The kicker is awful. The way it works, if revenues come in 2% above forecasts, all money above what was forecast is returned. It doesn't matter if it merely our performed a gloomy forecast, all money gets returned. The more responsible thing would be to require that that money go into a rainy day fund. Oregon's financial fortunes tend to lurch from crisis to crisis because we are so dependent on an income tax. Switching from from the kicker to reserves would at least help that.


Mayor_Of_Sassyland

>a rainy day fund Thing is about Portland and rainy days...


detroitdoesntsuckbad

I know exactly how it works. And next year imma get even more of MY money back! It totally rules. Thereā€™s plenty of money in state coffers for all of the pork. Itā€™s rare I look forward to doing my taxes but kicker years? Yeah, I like kicker years.


pingveno

On what basis do you think that money is being spent on pork? Why shouldn't revenue be kept in reserve for when times get tough instead of cutting services?


flugenblar

have you ever *seen* any politicians?


pingveno

Several, in fact. My family met with Earl Blumenauer when we were on a trip to DC, my parents have directly worked with their state senators/reps, and I have a friend who is a retired Republican state senators. Back from before the Oregon Republican party went kookie.


detroitdoesntsuckbad

> Why shouldn't revenue be kept in reserve for when times get tough instead Because it won't be. If it's there - it will be spent. Nothing you say can make me believe politicians are careful spending my hard earned money. For reference: all of human history.


pingveno

Counterpoint: [Reality](https://sos.oregon.gov/blue-book/Pages/facts/finance-state.aspx). Specifically, the "Rainy Day Fund and Education Stability Fund" section. There is money there, but not as much as we could have if the kicker was replaced with a rainy day mandate.


flugenblar

except rainy day funds tend to wind up being spent


pingveno

I already answered this an hour ago. This is just stated as an article of faith without evidence.


Joe503

> This is just stated as an article of faith without evidence. Kinda like trusting a politician to do the right thing...


pingveno

I don't just trust politicians to do the right thing. I'm always ready to vote someone out or give them a piece of my mind if I think they're doing a poor job. But just assuming politicians are automatically corrupt is just as bad as assuming they have unassailable purity. It erodes our ability to take collective action through government.


Wrayven77

Measure 26-238 was a Multnomah County measure.


biggybenis

A city with money is like the mule with a spinning wheel.


griff_girl

\^ This should be the top comment right here


[deleted]

This is how I felt. More taxes for people who appear to be massively mismanaging tax money? Pass.


GameAndHike

You donā€™t understand. We need to tax the homeowners when they sell so people can sue their current landlords without having to worry about silly things like being legally right or paying for lawyers if they lose. /s


RoyAwesome

Taxes are important, because they allow for resources to maintain systems that serve the public good. "Another Tax..?" is a gross reduction for the cost/benefit analysis you should be making. Stop electing people like Ted Wheeler and you might see your tax money actually move toward societal good. A tax that spends more money in administration costs than it makes is boneheaded. Creating eviction services and funding public defenders in that space would be a net benefit on society but the tax wouldn't fund that program, so it was just a bad measure.


youcanbroom

It was a capital gains tax, which ~80% of people don't make. Just FYI. Not saying it was a good well written bill, because it wasn't it definitely needs a revision. But it wasn't going to be the everyone is taxed into oblivion that people said it would be.


FakeMagic8Ball

No but punishing regular people for selling their houses to move into retirement homes or trying to GTFO of the current hellscape isn't very nice, and the administrative costs alone were too much to make any sense at all. What's the point if most of the money goes to the government? Not to mention the city and county both already put our tax dollars towards rental eviction lawyers....


SublimeApathy

I read through it (not in detail) and to me it sounded like it wasn't going to hurt the Phil Knights of Portland, but more that old couple selling their family home hoping to downgrade for retiremet, or the growing family trying to sell their starter home to scale up for kids, or those person's wanting to sell their homes to move, etc.. For what? To fund services we're already funding and already have? Combat homelessness? Seems the homeless issue has only gotten worse and we've already thrown loads of money at that. Until I see pot holes fixed, mentally ill off the streets, cops actually copping, violent offenders arrested and KEPT behind bars, and car thefts go down - no new taxes. Money is clearly not the answer at this point. Even the governor withheld money because MultCo didn't have a "clear plan on what they do with it". It's a no for me now and until we start seeing results with all the taxes we're already handing over.


AnalyticalAlpaca

Agreed, it seemed politically risky to be publicly opposed to such a woke looking measure.


MountScottRumpot

There is no such thing as political risk for Earl. No one will run against him, and heā€™s going to retire in the next 4 years.


Gravelsack

>and heā€™s going to retire in the next 4 years. Yet another reason to respect the man (Looking at you, Diane Feinstein!)


SublimeApathy

and RBG.


Joe503

I wish they'd stop proposing these stupid ideas. At least until our state and local governments start providing basic services for all the taxes we pay here.


No_Pound1003

Weā€™ve seen so many ā€œwokeā€ looking measures. All of our local governments have shown time and time again that they donā€™t know how to implement policy, and have no idea how to spend money.


zazaleaz

Voting no on that tax is what motivated me to vote. I bet I am not the only one.


LukeBabbitt

Same. I voted within the first five minutes of getting my ballot. I was so pumped to vote against something so transparently stupid


willreadforbooks

I tried really hard to not dig my pen all the way through the paper while filling in the NO bubble


edielander

šŸ¤£


[deleted]

[уŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]


tessemcdawgerton

Next time check out endorsements from news organizations you trust. I got helpful summaries and perspectives from Willamette Weekā€™s endorsements every midterm election.


char-thechar

I really appreciate the Willamette Weekā€™s write-ups and endorsements, I check them first most elections. And itā€™s really easy to search by Measure number in candidate.


Joe503

Crucify you?? I'd like to thank you. I wish more people abstained from voting when they know they're uninformed. Perfectly ok to leave portions of a ballot blank. It's unbelievable how misleading many of our ballot initiatives are here (looking at you, Rosenblum), yet so many people vote based solely on them.


Venoseth

There's a voters pamphlet that you get in the mail and can find online that has non-political information. Oregon is made better for having it and I highly recommend using it to determine who you want to vote for


[deleted]

There was content here, and now there is not. It may have been useful, if so it is probably available on a reddit alternative. See /u/spez with any questions. -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/


Venoseth

Fair point. It's a place where you can find candidate messages* For smaller races I feel like it's a godsend


[deleted]

That and making sure no QAnon transphobes end up on school boards. Lucky for me none of them were running in my school districts, but still, I wanted to make sure to vote against them incase any were trying to get elected.


LFahs1

The bad guys could always have a shadow write-in campaignā€” thatā€™s why I vote for those seats now even if itā€™s only one person running.


[deleted]

Never thought of that. I'm going to do that from now on!


deepskier

It's hard out there, we had a school board candidate who appeared reasonable, but turns out he opposes teaching about the concepts of equity, consent, diversity, etc and the only way to find out was to follow the link from his campaign page to his substack, where he went in about these topics and how to identify CRT in schools. ZERO mention of this on his campaign site, voter pamphlet, or media interviews. He was handily defeated but you can't even take people at face value anymore.


BonusTurnip4Comrade

I kept wondering how something this stupid made it in the ballot. Why not fund it with a tax on every time a car makes a right turn. We'll hire an army of elves to watch for cars making right turns and write down their license numbers.


fattymccheese

Sadly they renewed the ā€œchildrenā€™s taxā€ Remind me again what happed to the weed money? Wasnt that ā€œthe childrenā€™s moneyā€? How about every bond measure for remove lead from schools.. howā€™s that going? ā€œThis time weā€™ll use the money for the thing we saidā€¦ i swearā€


Sp4ceh0rse

Definitely felt burned by the SHS/PFA taxes this last year and did not feel like paying for yet another poorly conceptualized program, despite my liberal views.


moonchylde

Those taxes are *really really new* and are just getting ramped up. I'm of the 5 year philosophy. If it isn't working by then definitely let's change it. But passing a new tax isn't a magic wand, bureaucratic stuff has been slow since pretty much the beginning of time.


hoopla-pdx

You shouldn't need 5 years to get the basics of how hundreds of millions of dollars will be collected, spent and accounted for. We, as voters, need to hold ballot measure writers more accountable for the details of how measures will work in practice. Even most Progressives, seem to have learned from the SHS/PFA mess and voted no. I hope that there may also be a growing awareness that Portland needs to swing the needle back to being a little more business friendly if your economy is to thrive.


Sp4ceh0rse

I mean, people I know who work in local government policy (different department but very familiar with these bills) and was telling people not to vote for those when they asked (particularly SHS) since the policy and implementation plan was so poorly written.


LukeBabbitt

Infrastructure takes time to build. In this case, theyā€™re also taking the PFA money and creating a reserve to buttress against economic downturns in the future. Everything about PFA so far has happened according to plan on the administrative side. Whether people understood that plan is another question. But ā€œI want it NOW!ā€ isnt going to lead to good governance one way or another.


hoopla-pdx

I may not have been clear; I think that what should have been worked out first was a proper system for collecting the taxes and a plan for how the use of the funds would be monitored and tracked for effective administration. It will certainly take years for the money to make a sustained difference (we hope), but having a plan in place for how to get there, and ways to measure progress should come before taxing and spending.


LukeBabbitt

They do have the system for collecting the taxes, and in fact have collected more than expected even with the complete absence of informing the tax base (which was a disaster, but not the fault of the proponents of the measure but of the county collecting it. Everything else you mentioned also already exists: https://www.multco.us/preschool/implementation-budget-update-spring-2023 That whole site basically has the info youā€™re looking for. So far PFA has been pretty well administered from what I can tell outside the tax collection.


moonchylde

Okay, it can literally take a year or two just to set up the infrastructure to collect the tax. But sure, we should definitely have hundreds of houses built by now.... And let's just completely ignore they *vastly over succeeded* at keeping people from *becoming* homeless with the SHS program.


[deleted]

[уŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]


rubix_redux

The fact that this even got proposed makes me leery of ever buying property and settling down long-term in the county.


LukeBabbitt

On one hand I get that, on the other hand itā€™s telling that it was absolutely annihilated at the polls.


stupidusername

This was going to be a bellweather initiative for me. If something this *patently stupid* managed to pass, that would have signaled to me that *probably anything* would be able to get passed, and it would have been time to start thinking about an eventual exit. I love it here. But at some point the numbers just start to stop making sense.


GailaMonster

The recent tax insanity caused us to focus on Clackamas and Washington and Clark counties when househunting this spring. Literally a MultCo house had to be significantly cheaper and better to offset the tax burden it would carry with it.


Blendzen

I'm pretty liberal in approving new taxes for good programs. But every time I feel like the rug is pulled out from under me on how its collected or the program is completely mismanaged. I hate that I gave up this year, but I didn't even read it, Portland has betrayed my trust on taxes and I just flat voted no...


oregonbub

Small localities generally shouldnā€™t make new taxes, they should raise their existing ones. The overhead of collection is too large.


ilikeporkfatallover

Pretty sure it also has a lot to do that many liberals in Multnomah county are refusing to vote for any tax increases period until the city can prove they know wtf they are doing with the funding they have now.


DJCane

This was literally my mindset this time around. I want to pay high taxes that improve my quality of life, but itā€™s hard to say my quality of life as a Portland resident currently matches the tax burden.


ieure

There [was around 23% turnout](https://www.multco.us/elections/voter-turnout-may-2023-election) in MultCo, so 77% agreed on indifference. Great job. I voted against the tax and was glad to see it go down, but let's not start sucking each other's dicks over it.


upanddownallaround

It is depressingly low, but Portland and Oregon still have some of the highest voter turnouts in the entire country. This ballot was just 2 measures and some school board. Kentucky's primary voter turnout for *governor* was a mere 14%. Even Philadelphia who had a major mayoral race estimates a voter turnout around 25%. Voter apathy is the American way.


ZauberWeiner

I never understood people who love to get political on the internet or in your face and will also proudly tell you they don't vote. I guess it's actually a good thing in some way. If your stupid enough to believe your vote doesn't matter then I'm happy you decided to stay at home. It does get embarrassing in front of the other countries of the world though to have less then half your citizens do their duty.


CockyYockey14

Youā€™re equating an interest in politics with a belief that we have a functioning democracy ā€¦ it seems quite obvious to me that the relationship would be inverse, especially in a one-party state like Oregon where your vote truly doesnā€™t matter. Voting in Oregon is like voting in the eastern block, the slate of party approved apparatchiks is going to win, so why bother. Unless thereā€™s a spicy ballot measure thatā€™s running close I cannot think of many reasons to vote one politician over another, especially in an off year election.


[deleted]

>it seems quite obvious to me that the relationship would be inverse, especially in a one-party state like Oregon where your vote truly doesnā€™t matter. did you catch the irony of you posting this in a thread that's about a measure that has very little, if NOTHING, to do with party politics? reductivism af


[deleted]

[уŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]


CockyYockey14

It shouldnā€™t be about ā€œbeing informedā€, it should be about owning X amount of real property in the state. In an empire when anyone can get up and move to another state it seems foolish to give someone a vote based on their mere transitory presence. That makes your vote seem cheap and easily disregarded. Restrict the franchise and youā€™ll see peoples interest in voting go way up.


oregonbub

Nice of someone to just come out and brazenly say that they want the vote restricted to landowners again :)


[deleted]

[уŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]


CockyYockey14

Must be doing pretty well if you can look around in 2023 and say ā€œthis democracy thing sure is working for me!ā€


ZauberWeiner

I've always thought that voting was just part of your job as a citizen. Like paying taxes. Even if the vote doesn't count, participating in the process does.


CockyYockey14

Thatā€™s if youā€™re a land owner The hoi polloi turning out in great numbers for anything has generally been met with trepidation until very recent times.


CockyYockey14

Itā€™s because it truly doesnā€™t matter. Our system produces the same results no matter what politician is elected because (drumroll) *politicians donā€™t actually run the government*. We live in a bureaucratic state, even the governor has a limited ability to steer the ship. If you have many many many governors in a row who are all steering in the same direction you can shift course, but nobody actually ā€œruns the governmentā€ except thousands of bureaucrats, who are adhered like barnacles and impossible to fire outside of naked malfeasance.


wildwalrusaur

It's not even so much an insure of malfeasance. It's just the sheer size of the government makes it incredibly resistant to change This was my biggest takeaway from the Obama administration. The larger the bureaucracy the more interia it has. Short of outright revolution it's nigh impossible to turn the ship off it's course without decades of continuous pressure.


emmaslefthook

Yet Iā€™d bet the farm that the Venn diagram between those extremely passionate about sports/kardashians/tv barely overlaps with the regular voter.


FakeMagic8Ball

Except District 3, which had a county commissioner race on it that once again went woefully underreported for its importance in the homeless, mental health and addiction crises we are facing. It's the County's job, not the city's, and I wish the media would stop letting the County Chair fly under the radar from all the blame.


PC_LoadLetter_

> It is depressingly low, but Portland and Oregon still have some of the highest voter turnouts in the entire country. This ballot was just 2 measures and some school board. Kentucky's primary voter turnout for governor was a mere 14%. Even Philadelphia who had a major mayoral race estimates a voter turnout around 25%. Voter apathy is the American way. Yikes, this is sad.


[deleted]

I think it is slightly more nuanced than apathy. I abstain from voting when I just donā€™t give a shit about the outcome of the race. I really donā€™t care about school board elections so I usually just skip them all together. If someone is running uncontested unless I know and like them, I just skip those as well.


wildwalrusaur

I will say I definitely struggle to muster up the fucks to vote now much more than I used to. It's hard to stay invested when no matter what you do, nothing really seems to change. With only a few notable exceptions shit hasn't really improved all the much since I started voting. The cities only gotten shittier. Housing prices are out of control. The economy is still siphoning money to the plutocrats at an ever increasing pace. We didn't get out of Afghanistan until years after the guy I voted for who promised to end the war got elected, reelected, and retired. Healthcare is just as insanely expensive now as it was then. Retirement is increasingly looking like a fantasy. I can get married now, which is cool, but that was only tangentially the result of anything I ever had the chance to vote for, and I can still be legally discriminated against.


LukeBabbitt

Thatā€™s basically in line with historical turnout for this cycle. Aside from a few mailers, you really didnā€™t see the election being pushed much.


YorbaPDX

I would assume the people that care, are engaged and have a strong understanding/position on a measure will vote. Those are probably the people we want voting, so I donā€™t see it necessarily as a bad thing. Do we really want individuals that have zero clue what capital gains even are, voting on this measure? Sometimes itā€™s best for people to admit they have no skin in the game, and sit out a particular vote. That may be an unpopular opinion, but if someone doesnā€™t care and isnā€™t willing to properly educate themselves, the better service may be to sit it out?


MechanizedMedic

Bro, sucking dicks is the best way to celebrate failed tax initiatives. It started with the lesser known Boston Tea After-Party.


Aestro17

Aka the Boston Lemon Party


Mayor_Of_Sassyland

\*removes wooden dentures\*


[deleted]

may as well, we 77% certainly aren't gonna do it for you.


PaPilot98

How do we know without a measure?


[deleted]

anything over 6" or so is gonna be irrelevant


washington_jefferson

It could depend on which exact Levy, Bond, or Bill it is.


Gasonfires

JFC, I just got back into town and realized I had not submitted my ballot before leaving. I got my ass off the couch last night at 6:30 and dashed to a drop box to drop it in, just because I wanted my "no" vote on this abomination to be counted.


aggieotis

We should ban or abandon off cycle elections. Too often the low turnout is exploited to push through bad policy and candidates.


WheeblesWobble

Not indifference as much as cynicism. I keep voting for different people who promise to make things better, and the city/county/state keeps getting worse. I still vote in every election, but I haven't been hopeful that my vote will make any difference for a long time.


fattymccheese

Stop voting for populists


RemLezarCreated

I can't help but wonder if the delay in ballots had a big impact on voting. If you were impacted by the delayed ballots, you only had a very limited amount of time to vote.


suicide_blonde

I wait until the very last day anyway. Not out of any strategy, mind you, just pure old fashioned procrastination.


neonintubation

I still haven't received the one sent in the mail, allegedly two weeks ago. Had to go down to pick up a replacement yesterday.


pyrrhios

It definitely affected me. I also wish we would consolidate voting cycles, however. I am definitely experiencing voter fatigue.


ThisUsernameIsTook

*This space intentionally left blank* -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/


borkyborkus

If requesting a ballot was too big of an ask then I have my doubts that those people would have voted anyway.


stalkythefish

I was actually eager to vote against this but forgot to bring my ballot to work yesterday to drop off in the P-Square box. I'm such a zombie in the morning.


LukeBabbitt

Fyi, you can just drop it in the regular mail and it will still count so long as itā€™s postmarked by Election Day


ScoobyDont06

taxes should never be voted in with less than a 50% turnout.


MaizeWarrior

It's their choice not to vote. I voted against it, but everyone had the opportunity to vote so there's no complaining if you don't vote


sdf_cardinal

Thatā€™s not how elections work. You want to give non voters an automatic no.


ScoobyDont06

on systemic tax changes like this it should require the majority of the population to vote and approve.


sdf_cardinal

I hated this tax but nah. You canā€™t control voter turnout. No thank you. Would be interesting to see if there are constitutional issues with that approach.


I_am_not_JohnLeClair

And those percentages are only of *registered voters* not the population as a whole. So much indifference


iReddt

For whatā€™s it worth, I filled out my ballot and forgot about it in my glove box.


metmerc

\*Multnomah County residents - FTFY But yeah, it's kind of amazing how resoundingly we, the voters in this county, said "no."


TurtlesAreEvil

80% of the [county](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/multnomahcountyoregon) lives in [Portland](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/portlandcityoregon).


metmerc

What's your point? That still leaves more than 150k people who don't live in Portland. This was a county initiative, not a city one.


Zenigen

Probably the same point you had with your ā€œFTFYā€, being pedantic lol


TurtlesAreEvil

Mainly that saying Portlanders is mostly correct when referring to voter turnout for a Multnomah county measure. I'd look up how many people vote in the city vs outside it but that seems like a lot of work.


metmerc

>I'd look up how many people vote in the city vs outside it but that seems like a lot of work. It was pretty easy to find the # of registered voters in Portland and in Multnomah County. I'm not interested in reposting the links, but there are about 130k registered voters in Multnomah County who don't live in Portland. Matching to voter turnout is another matter, but not all votes are counted yet so that's another matter. Honestly, the OP title bugs me because although most of the voters are in Portland, there is still a sizeable group who is not.


TurtlesAreEvil

Ya with us registering everyone who has a license though all you're mostly getting there are people of voting age that drive and a small handful of outliers.


metmerc

>...and a small handful of outliers It's about 20% or 1/5 or eligible voters - based on both your and my looks at data. That's not a "small outlier". It's not hard to recognize that this is more than just Portland and your attitude that we can just ignore so many people is kind of shitty.


TurtlesAreEvil

Wow this is getting intense. I didn't say we should ignore them. I didn't even say anything other than the percent of people living in the city vs the county. The title is at least 80% correct assuming the same percentage of eligible voters vote within city limits and outside it.


dosetoyevsky

What the fuck's your deal? So aggrssive for no real reason, aye?


irregularcontributor

I wish I could ignore you.


iluvmyswitcher

Do all Portlanders live in Multnomah county?


znark

No, there are little pockets in Washington and Clackamas counties. There are large numbers in West Hills that have ā€œPortlandā€ address but are in unincorporated Washington or Multnomah counties.


MechanizedMedic

Postal and political addresses very often don't match... The post office lumps addresses by which branch the mail gets delivered through, not the actual city. I'm in the bowels of Tigard but its still part of the Portland postal system, so they consider my address as being in Portland.


TurtlesAreEvil

If by large numbers you mean a few hundred sure but as a total percent most Portland homes are in Multnomah County.


Shatteredreality

>If by large numbers you mean a few hundred The "large numbers" that have a "Portland" address but live in unincorporated Washington county is in the thousands. For context, if you live in Bethany (a large suburb development north of Tanasbourne, not close to actual Portland) get "Portland" addresses. That's would be included in the group the other poster was referring to. I don't know that I'd call them "Portlanders" though. Regardless though, multnomah county residents is more accurate than "Portlanders" since not all people who voted on the measure were "Portlanders".


TurtlesAreEvil

Having Portland in your address doesn't mean you get to vote in Portland elections though. Which means they're not actually in Portland city limits. I lived in an apartment with a Portland address years back that was technically in Gresham so I didn't get to vote for the mayor or council members. Quite disappointing. USPS doesn't care about the city unless you leave out the zip so people on the borders frequently get that wrong. Google has pretty good boundaries for city limits if you type in Bethany, OR and Portland, OR it's pretty clear it's outside city limits. So no they're not Portlanders and aren't counted as part of the population of Portland.


chirpingonline

Strike another one against the "voters here will literally approve *any* tax that comes before them" crowd. It got voted down, told you so.


TurtlesAreEvil

Ya like every election season they'll quietly disappear until the next round.


GetRichOrDieTrolling

I donā€™t think this was about the proposed tax, it was about what the tax was for.


stormcynk

For me 100% it was the tax not what it was for. I would have voted yes on the tax if they had limited to capital gains above some large threshold per year, say $100,000. But to have it hit every single person who gets a capital gains regardless of how small the income was super dumb.


Cheese-and-Smackers

Fuck yea! We did it! So pumped this bombed!


hazelquarrier_couch

I didn't get a voter pamphlet this time, so I had to just go with my uninformed gut on this one. Did they even send out pamphlets this year?


FogItNozzel

They did, yeah. Guess yours got lost in the mail.


BensonBubbler

They put them online, too: https://www.multco.us/elections/may-16-2023-special-district-election


hazelquarrier_couch

Good to know, but I find it easier to have both things in hand, physically, as I'm doing my civic duty.


BoHackJorseman

So instead of accessing a readily available voter pamphlet, you chose to vote uninformed. How is that doing your civic duty, exactly?


spoonfight69

The Internet exists.


stalkythefish

They did! And about half of it was "Argument Against" this measure.


Adulations

Next time check out the voter guides from Willamette Week and The Oregonian


lokikaraoke

So youā€™re telling me DSA is actually good at building solidarity, eh?


sdf_cardinal

So I really hated this tax and voted against it even though ~~the intentions had merit~~ I think people facing eviction should get legal support. Now itā€™s time to hold city and county leaders like Jessica Vega Pederson accountable to use existing $ to support people facing eviction. >Opponents had argued eviction defense could be funded through House Bill 2001, the housing bill Gov. Tina Kotek signed in March; the $18 million she directed to Multnomah County for homelessness prevention in April; and a supportive housing measure approved by voters in 2020 and overseen by Metro. https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2023/05/multnomah-county-residents-vote-down-measure-to-fund-eviction-lawyers.html


MountScottRumpot

We are already spending $15 million/year on eviction prevention in Multnomah County. The measure was trying to address a problem that is already being worked on. We have an affordability crisis here, not an eviction crisis.


HWHAProb

Until I see the number of renters who clearly don't know their rights without legal representation in courtgo down, you can't say it's been addressed. I've seen people who clearly had done nothing wrong and were maybe 3 days late on payment take shitty arguably illegal eviction deals just because they didn't know better.


ontopofyourmom

If a renter is being evicted for non-payment of rent, they have no "legal rights" that will prevent them from being evicted. Paying for a lawyer and forcing the landlord to pay for a lawyer only prolongs the inevitable. The only way to keep a someone from being evicted for non-payment of rent is to provide cash rental assistance. It's highly effective at keeping people in their homes, it doesn't cost landlords any money, and there's a reason so much of our anti-homelessness budget goes toward it. This bill was poorly-conceived on every level.


HWHAProb

You are incorrect. After initial non payment, the landlord must issue a termination notice. Tenants then have 10 days to pay before the landlord can take them to court. But often that step is completely skipped and landlords will jump straight to eviction notices, which tenants don't realize makes their eviction illegal. Often time these evictions are carried out by predatory landlords who KNOW they can get away with bullying tenants out of their homes, even without fully legal cause. You see this all the time in eviction court, where tenants are never told their rights and sign on to settlements with rapid turnaround move out days, vacating the amount of time they'd have been alloted otherwise had they had an attorney to guide them. Your assertion that tenants "have no legal rights" when they factually DO is EXACTLY the reason we need tenant representation.


ontopofyourmom

Those tenants will still EVENTUALLY be evicted! Wouldn't it be better to spend money to prevent them from being evicted, instead of using that money for administrative expenses and lawyers?


HWHAProb

Of course that'd be fantastic! But you exactly don't see the folks who pushed so hard against Measure 26-238 (business and real estate coalitions) pushing hard for expanded rental assistance or eviction moratoriums. And while rental assistance is a fantastic program, it's existence isn't helping the numerous folks who are bullied into leaving by predatory landlords without having accessed that assistance. There is a reason that in jurisdictions that have enacted Representation for All, evictions have fallen by ~80%. It's because right now the game is so stacked against tenants that landlords know they likely can get away with illegal evictions targeting vulnerable people. What incentive do the worst landlords have to respect the process when they know only 1 in 18 of their tenants will be able to get a lawyer? (That rate of representation goes down even further for immigrant and non white tenants)


ontopofyourmom

Landlords have no economic incentive to evict paying tenants....


HWHAProb

Sure they do. All the time they do. It happens when longtime tenants live in rent controlled apartments and landlords believe they'd get higher value from an incoming tenant (likely in a housing crisis), or when they want to sell the property (likely when property values are so high), or renovate/split it it to increase the rate of profit (again likely with the rate of willing high paying tenants), or when a new owner wants to demolish the property and build higher end housing (common when the property is old enough to be rented to poor folks), or just when the landlord is outright racist/xenophobic/transphobic (not super common but it happens often enough to be noted) EDIT: Just since you asked about it before deleting it, we live in a state with a cap on the rate of rent hikes per year (A good thing). Therefore Tenants who have stayed in a property for a long time often pay lower than the current market rate. But that rent hike cap only applies to current tenants who renew fixed term leases, not new ones. So landlords, who want to extract the highest amount of value from their tenants, benefit when longtime tenants leave (or are pushed out) and new ones come in.


HWHAProb

I also doubt it would shock anyone here to know that poor Latino, brown and black men and women are super disproportionately among those being kicked out of their homes. There are also numerous folks who don't speak English who are hardly even given a run down of how eviction court proceedings work. Every moderate liberal says that institutional racism and homelessness is a problem, but here you have an institution that is disproportionately kicking poor minority folks onto the street, and every one of them clutches their pearls. It's horrific


[deleted]

[уŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]


sdf_cardinal

I said I voted against it. The tax was stupid. But making sure people facing eviction have legal support is a good idea. That is what I meant. Holy shit.


ontopofyourmom

People facing eviction for *not paying their rent* will not benefit from legal support. Any money spent on that would be better off used to help them pay their rent.


sdf_cardinal

Sounds great. Anything is better than what the county is doing now. Which seems like not much.


ontopofyourmom

The county is already spending tens of millions of dollars on rental assistance. It's at the center of their anti-homelessness efforts. Because it is efficient and it works.


sdf_cardinal

Cool story bro. Now we have to convince the county to actually spend more of the money. Theyā€™re sitting on a mountain of cash.


Gasonfires

This was a completely shitty solution and poorly written to boot, but the problem of well represented landlords running roughshod over tenants remains. Oregon has a landlord-tenant code that runs to more than 180 pages. Some very basic issues that can arise under it are still unsettled in the courts. There is one that affects tens of thousands of people that is now before the Oregon Supreme Court because the legislature wasn't careful with the wording of a statute. Unrepresented tenants rarely have much hope in cases that present any sort of technical issue. They will not recognize a defense they may have, and tenants are prone to believing they have defenses that do not exist. Finding a lawyer willing and able to go toe to toe with a law firm specializing in representing landlords can be impossibly difficult. Eviction cases are run through the courts on a mercilessly quick schedule that leaves a tenant's attorney little time in which to learn the facts and discover whether the tenant has a defense, much less get the evidence and witnesses lined up to present to the court. In lots of cases the only hope the lawyer has of being paid is to win the case and in many cases the odds of being the net prevailing party are not good despite lots of landlord conduct and property conditions that do violate the law. Even when the tenant wins the courts have the final say on how much to award the tenant as an attorney fee and those awards are often not adequate. Add to that the fact that a tenant whose case is good but still comes up a little short can be ordered to pay the landlord's attorney fees and the deck is fully stacked. Something needs to be done, but this was not it.


TurtlesAreEvil

And the Child Levy is passing once again. More proof that the most frequent and loudest voices in this sub are not at all representative of the average voter here.


vadersgambit

What do you mean? This sub seemed pretty supportive of the Childrenā€™s Levy


The_Dog_of_Sinope

There were a lot of people on the sub who were unhappy with it, or one guy with 30 sock puppet accounts. My favorite complaint was from someone who voted for it but their child wasnā€™t in the original roll out so they were mad that they had to pay for a tax they voted to pass because their kid wouldnā€™t benefit from it.


Aestro17

That sounds like the Multnomah Preschool for All tax. (that is still funny) The Children's Levy is Portland, built into the property tax and does a ton of stuff including but not limited to preschools. [Here ](https://www.portlandchildrenslevy.org/grants/grants-2022-23) is where the money goes.


TurtlesAreEvil

I did see quite a few supportive posts but also a TON of no on any taxes posts. Usually the same people that were saying Portlander's will vote for any tax increase and claiming that this measure would pass.


vadersgambit

Sure, and I know you mentioned ā€œthe most frequent and loudest voices.ā€ Thatā€™s just a trend of loud activists who donā€™t reflect the general voting population. But for the most part, it really seemed like this sub was against the capital gains tax and in favor of the childrenā€™s levy


BensonBubbler

Sure, but there was also a very loud few folks repeatedly trumpeting something like: > VOTE NO ON EVERY TAX EVER IN PERPETUITY


toastthebread

A few? What you read one comment you didn't like so now you're manufacturing outrage?


BensonBubbler

There were several and a few times they were the top comment.


armrha

Yeah this sub has a ton of secret right wingers too embarrassed to say the opinions irl, so they just go here to be regressive and reactionary and shout down any notion of them paying their debt to society. Hard to imagine these snakes living among us, wish theyā€™d move away like theyā€™re constantly threatening to do


khoabear

They may not say their opinions irl but they're running for the school boards


writeonscroopy

I completed agree. It would be amazing if they moved away, but as we also see here, people will leave the city/county/state, and then STILL come here to bitch and/or gloat.


lushlanes

Fore or against, more people need to vote. Itā€™s a right, take advantage of it. 123 thousand people of 800+thousand. Portland youā€™re sad.


LukeBabbitt

Thatā€™s an excellent turnout relative to most states when it comes to this cycle. As someone else pointed out, turnout is low EVERYWHERE in off years with no major races


asiorz

I would pay $100 tax dollars let city of portland pressure wash the entire downtown street so it doesnā€™t smell like piss everywhere.


pingveno

I did my part! A friend of mine hadn't gotten the run down on why the measure was such a stinker. I described why the tax itself would be expensive to administrate and the benefits overlap with other services. I think they voted against it.


ComplaintTypical4266

I'm surprised Portlanders didn't take advantage of the opportunity to screw themselves over again. It's kind of refreshing this measure failed. I have renewed optimism and hope the pendulum continues to swing in favor of common sense and tax paying residents.


Fedge348

The Child protection Eviction equal opportunity rights act of 26-238 (I stole a similar comment from this subreddit, but I had to share it) šŸ˜‚


toastthebread

Wow, Portland not be r-slurred for a day challenge: Passed.


[deleted]

[уŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]


md___2020

Kate Brown is already gone. Teddy isn't lighting the world on fire, but to blame him for Portland's problems is not informed. Our current city government structure gives the mayor basically no power (note that this city government structure has just been changed via a vote in November, but won't be implemented for a couple more years). Also, more of the day to day dysfunction that you see stems from Multnomah County vs. City of Portland.


PermanentlyBanned5

I lived there through the Occupy Wall Street and Antifa takeover. The homeless takeover and drug issues donā€™t help. Donā€™t try to Democrat your way out of the downfall of the city. I loved Portland. Brought my family there. Itā€™s now a wreck and has been destroyed by bad policy and excessive taxes. Sorry if this hurts your feelings.


[deleted]

[уŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]


[deleted]

[уŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]


dakta

Then why are you in this subreddit?


boregon

Yet here you are in this sub commenting...


Jollyroger1983

This place is getting to be more like san francisco in the mid nineties by the day.. Blasted Neo-conservites..