The cost of living for Oregonians is skyrocketing. Food, energy and rent take a growing chunk out of people’s wages. At the same time, government-funded educational community services (like libraries) are starved. And the rich get richer.

Income and wealth inequality are the greatest in our country’s history. The powerful and their giant corporations get tax breaks and subsidies. The rest of us pay for policies we oppose, like the war in Iran and mass deportation facilities, which may as well be called domestic concentration camps.

Corporations went from paying about 18.5% of all income taxes paid in Oregon to less than 7% in recent years, thanks to their well-funded lobbying efforts. Measure 20-388, the Eugene Clean Energy Fund, will shift some of this burden off Oregon’s families and back to the corporations who are sending their profits to out-of-state headquarters for their CEOs’ pay and Wall Street shareholders.

Measure 20-388 will put real money into community benefit projects in Eugene, like job training for workers in the clean energy economy, incentives for efficient electric appliance upgrades, public solar projects and more.

The small fee (2%) will be on the richest corporations, those with gross profits exceeding $1 billion nationally and $500,000 within Eugene. Many types of businesses would be excluded: construction, utilities, cooperatives, credit unions, groceries, healthcare, medicine and waste management.

The fee will be on “profits,” not “sales.” Therefore, the industry trade association’s claims that this is a “sales tax in disguise” is a lie. This claim backfired when Portland passed its widely approved and wildly popular clean energy fund, and it will backfire in Eugene.

Eugenians want the jobs, health and prosperity that come with the clean energy future. Vote yes on Measure 20-388.

Betzi Hitz
Springfield