The loudest voices against the Eugene Clean Energy Fund have it wrong. Here’s why I’m voting no.

Let me start by saying I’m an “eat the rich” kind of guy.

But the Eugene Clean Energy Fund ballot measure misses the mark.

Most opposition collateral is designed to scare you with hallucinated receipts and exaggerations. But the more realistic impacts are concerning enough to vote no.

Measure 20-388 is a progressive cause with regressive funding that will be passed onto consumers. Look no further than credit card transaction fees on many of your receipts and local surcharges at the end of your cell phone bill. If you argued — rightly — that Donald Trump’s tariffs on international goods would increase consumers’ costs, this is no different. Whether the Eugene Clean Energy Fund’s cost becomes a line-item or is bundled into the price, it will be passed on to consumers. Digital price tags at box stores make this increasingly easy to do in specific localities.

We all purchase roughly similar amounts of staple, nonexempt goods like socks, body wash, cellphone service. On such goods, this fee will be calculated, and passed on, regardless of the income of who makes the purchase. This is the core of regressive tax policy.

But further, the selective application of this fee further disproportionately places its burden on the working poor. 

Many well-intentioned voters — perhaps even you, dear reader! — recognize they could pay more into the system, and are happy to bear the passed-on costs. But voters that can afford higher costs are more likely to already shop at local, boutique, exempt stores (my fellow boutique-store owners and I thank you!).

Such voters are more likely to travel outside Eugene for luxury purchases and take shopping trips to, say, the Woodburn Outlets. Those local, boutique transactions and purchases outside our jurisdiction will not bear the cost of the fee and won’t contribute to the clean energy fund.

But the working poor don’t trek to the Woodburn Premium Outlets. They’ll pay the fee on clothes at Walmart. Someone who has to save every penny they can at WinCo will continue to shop there, because the cost will not increase enough to make local shops more competitive.

Goods will still be cheaper at the big box store. Costs will only increase enough to be a bigger burden on already over-burdened households. I lose no sleep over the future of the Walton family, but we can’t deny that the poorest households are dependent on their stores’ more affordable goods.

I’ll save talk about lack of clarity and inequitable outcomes by industry, as the regressive impacts are concerning enough to make the point. Opposition collateral doesn’t present alternatives, but here is mine.

I want Jeff Bezos to pay for our solar panels, but I don’t have standing to send him the bill. Eugene cannot tax billionaires and reclaim the wealth they’ve extracted, like California and New York City are attempting to do. They don’t live here. Trying to bill them via their local business operations gives us inequitable, manipulate-able solutions like this fee.

And let’s face it — Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and billionaires like them extract wealth from every facet of our lives and are destroying not just our environment, but our housing, roads, schools, local businesses and the very fabric of our communities. The dollars we scrape together and claw back are needed for more than strictly climate initiatives.

A truly progressive solution within Eugene’s borders would recognize what we can and can’t effectively accomplish as but one 170,000-person city. It would start with those locally who can afford to pay more, and give us the flexibility to use the funds on everything the billionaire class is destroying.

It would reward businesses of all sizes that invest in our community and align with our values through internal, cost-effective clean energy projects, better wages and expanded workforces.

We all want green jobs with good wages, a reduced carbon footprint and energy-efficient improvements to the homes of our most housing-burdened. But people already pinching nickels shouldn’t bear the cost. This measure will make life immediately harder for working class people in Eugene with a hope that as-of-yet-undetermined projects will roundabout put that money back into their pockets.

I plan to vote no. I look forward to collaborating on, and supporting, truly progressive solutions to climate change and income inequality locally and in this country.