Transcript
Automatically generated transcript. It may contain errors and includes testimony in languages other than English that is not individually marked up for assistive technology.
Sameer Kanal
Good morning.
I call this meeting of the Portland City Council Committee of the Whole to order.
It is Wednesday, October 8th, 2026, at 9:30 AM.
Rebecca, will you please call the roll?
Rebecca Dobert
Good morning.
Clark?
Olivia Clark
Here.
Rebecca Dobert
Green?
Mitch Green
Here.
Rebecca Dobert
Zimmerman?
Avalos?
Candace Avalos
Present.
Rebecca Dobert
Dunphy?
Jamie Dunphy
Here.
Rebecca Dobert
Smith?
Loretta Smith
Here.
Rebecca Dobert
Pirtle-Guiney?
Ryan?
Koyama Lane?
Murillo?
Angelita Morillo
Here.
Rebecca Dobert
Novick?
Steve Novick
Here.
Rebecca Dobert
Canal?
Sameer Kanal
Here.
Christopher, will you please read the statement of conduct?
Welcome to the meeting of the Finance and Governance Committee of the Whole.
To testify before this committee in person or virtually, you must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at www.portland.gov/council/agenda/committee-whole or by calling 311.
Information on engaging with the committee can be found at this link.
Registration for virtual testimony closes 1 hour prior to the meeting.
In-person testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard.
Rebecca Dobert
If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for 3 minutes unless the Chair states otherwise.
Your microphone will be muted when your time is over.
The Chair preserves order.
Disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others' testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed.
If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given.
Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting.
Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass.
Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually.
Your testimony should address the matter being considered.
When testifying, State your name for the record.
Sameer Kanal
If you're a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent.
Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name.
Thank you.
Thank you both.
Colleagues, today at the Committee of the Whole, we have a chair's update as per usual, and then we have a single item on the agenda, which is the amended business license law code to include new compensation ratios and increase the CEO pay ratio surtax and gross receipts exemption amount, amend Code Sections 702, 400, and 500.
We have now gotten to over 40 folks signed up to testify.
I believe that still means we'll have enough time to hear everybody without shortening at all.
But that does mean that depending on the way that the conversation goes with City Council, well, Committee of the Whole today, we may not finish this item today and we may have to carry it over to next week.
But we, that's the council part of it.
The testimony will still be today.
So just wanted to flag that so that people are aware.
All right, Rebecca, could you please call item 1?
Rebecca Dobert
Item 1, committee chair updates.
Sameer Kanal
All right, well, we have a Chair's Update today as per usual, and everybody's got a copy and it's also getting posted if it's not online.
Next week is the Fall TAO, and as we heard yesterday in the work session, we have split that into, well, there are 3 legislative items related to that.
The TAO, the Technical Adjustment Ordinance itself, the business license tax policy that was previewed yesterday, and then the budget calendar that was also previewed yesterday.
Although it says confirmed that we are doing that, um, broader conversation on street renaming code 17.93, which is the system by which we rename street renaming, that may not have enough time to, to actually be heard.
It's confirmed for being on the agenda.
Um, the other things that I think, uh, may be of interest to folks, we have a bunch of appointments on October 21st with the Home Forward board being first on that list.
Um, and then the rest of the appointments have now been bundled on November 18th.
Um, The last thing that I think was not confirmed last week is the span of control and management layers oversight hearing.
That's currently on December 16th.
Depending on when the auditor's report is ready, it might get moved to December 10th.
Those 2 are fungible.
Everything on the second page of unscheduled items is probably January and beyond at this point.
But I am— if something gets filed, we'll do our best.
And everything else you've pretty much seen before, but is on record.
So I will, um, I will not belabor that point.
Any questions on this before I go to Chair Avalos for her update on the Housing and Permitting Committee?
All right, I'll pass it over to Chair Avalos.
Candace Avalos
Thank you, Chair Kanal.
So, um, yeah, I am excited to give you just a brief update on the last quarter of what we have been up to.
We've covered a pretty wide range of issues over the last several months, from things like housing production and tenant stability to permit homelessness oversight, and long-term housing strategy.
So in July, we received an annual report on North and Northeast neighborhood housing strategy and had a substantive conversation about displacement, affordability, homeownership, and whether those investments are reaching the Black Portlanders they were originally intended to serve.
We also held a 90-minute public oversight discussion with Portland Solutions and Urban Alchemy in response to concerns that had been raised about shelter operations.
That conversation is ongoing.
Um, the goal there was to better understand how complaints are investigated, what accountability tools the city has, and what changes have been made in response.
We also invited Metro Council President Juan Carlos Gonzalez to committee for a broader conversation about the future of regional housing and homelessness policy.
Uh, I thought that was a really good opportunity for us to step outside of individual city programs and talk about how Portland Metro, the county, and the state can better align on our work and rebuild public trust around major housing investments.
And the committee also proactively sent feedback to the Planning Commission as it worked on housing-related zoning changes.
In August, we worked through a package of city foreclosure actions, advanced a new federal Section 108 housing financing tool, and invited housing and design experts to talk with us about single-stair buildings and what changes to building codes, zoning, and permitting might unlock additional mid-rise housing on smaller sites.
And that is part of something I want this committee to keep doing, not just moving legislation, but bringing experts into the room to help us understand ideas that may shape future policy.
In September, we heard the data center transparency resolution from Councilors Koyama Lane and Green and I, including testimony and expert perspectives, I guess, and everybody, 'cause everybody's a co-sponsor now, and expert perspectives on the infrastructure, energy, water, and public process questions raised by large data centers.
We also brought the city's mandatory relocation assistance policy back to committee to look at how it is functioning today, how changes in state law have affected it, and whether our tenant protection tools are still accomplishing what council originally intended.
We followed that discussion by hearing directly from Portland renters about the issues they believe this committee should be paying attention to.
And then just this week, we had our first major committee briefing on the climate and health standards for existing buildings proposal, along with land use code changes required by recently adopted State law and changes necessary to continue the city's property tax exemption for low-income housing.
Those were referred out of committee, so we'll hear those at council soon.
And I suspect there might be some further conversation we'll have at council.
The climate and health standards will return at our next meeting for public testimony and committee discussion.
And then as far as the biggest body of work I want to update council on is the unified housing strategy and give you an update on that as that continues to move.
So as you know, when council adopted UHS last year, the purpose was to stop treating Portland's housing work as a collection of disconnected programs and start building one coherent roadmap.
And so that means looking across production, preservation, tenant stability, homeownership, social and non-market housing, funding, infrastructure, and permitting.
And then actually making choices about what we prioritize, how we measure success, and where the city should lead versus where we need partners.
So over the summer and early fall, we completed a series of deeper working sessions with practitioners and subject matter experts.
Those conversations focused on preservation, production, long-term funding, and innovation, including the recommendations coming out of the social housing study.
Participants were asked not just what they support, but what should rise to the top, what barriers exist to implementation, and what partnerships would actually be necessary to get the work done.
And so now that the expert phase has been incredibly useful, we're already seeing some clear throughlines around stabilizing the affordable housing we already have, strategic acquisition of land and buildings, growing cooperative and community ownership, creating more sustainable housing funding, reducing infrastructure and permitting barriers, and then making sure that the different levels of government are actually pulling in the same direction.
So now we're moving into the next phase, which is broader community engagement.
And our first district-based community event is next Tuesday, October 13th at 6:00 PM in District 1 at the Rosewood Initiative.
And there will be opportunities across the city for Portlanders to participate.
If you Google Unified Housing Strategy, you'll find a page that PHB is hosting, and you'll see all of the district events.
They're all happening within the next 2 weeks.
So we'll be in District 1, 2, 3, and 4, I think in that order, or 1, 3, 2, and 4.
And so these conversations have a different purpose than the expert sessions.
Practitioners can help us understand implementation and feasibility, but the broader community needs to tell us what matters most in their lives and what housing stability actually means to them and where they think that the city should prioritize limited resources and to tell us what they think we're missing.
And I'll end with one framing that from PHB that I think is particularly useful in how all of this work connects.
The social housing study has given us lots of tools and ideas.
The Keep Portland Housed ordinance that we passed a few months ago has put real investment and action behind housing stability and preservation and acquisition.
And homelessness prevention.
And now the Unified Housing Strategy is the roadmap that connects those efforts and gives us a long-term direction.
So that is ultimately what I want UHS to become, not another report that sits on a shelf, but the framework that council can use when we make housing policy, budget, land use, and investment decision— decisions over the coming years.
So there is still a lot of work ahead, and the strategy is gonna come back to council as it develops.
But I'm really encouraged by how much substance we have built over the last several months, and I'm excited that we're now opening the conversation up broadly to more Portlanders.
So thank you, Vice Chair Green, all of the committee members, PHP in the SEDSA service area that does a lot of work with us, and just everyone who has spent time helping us build this work.
That is my report for now, and happy to take questions.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Chair Avalos.
If any colleagues would like to get in the queue and ask Chair Avalos a question, now's the chance.
Seeing none, that'll conclude the chair's update for this week.
Thank you.
And Rebecca, could you please call item 2?
Rebecca Dobert
Item 2, amend business license law code to include new compensation ratios and increase the CEO pay ratio surtax and gross receipts exemption amount.
Amend Code Sections 7.02.400 and 7.02.500.
Document number 2026-348.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you very much.
I'm going to just pass this over to start with the 2 primary sponsors, Councilors Green and Murillo, and then we'll hear from the other co-sponsors and move into the presentation.
Um, so with that, I'm not sure who would like to go first, but Councilors Green and Murillo, take it away.
Mitch Green
I, I'll kick us off here.
Uh, thank you, Chair Kanal.
Um, we've got a lot of folks signed up for testimony, we've got a formal presentation, so I'll keep my, my opening remarks fairly brief.
I just want to provide some framing statements, and I'll hand it over to Councilor Morillo and the rest of the co-sponsors.
But I just want to say that in the 2 years— the 20 months I've been in office, we've had 2 austerity budgets.
We've had a declaration of fiscal crisis at the beginning of this calendar year.
And that's not going to get much easier for the next 3 to 5 years.
We're going to have a cuts budget for the next 3 to 5 years.
And so I think as early as February, my office started asking and reaching out to the revenue department, the CFO's office to ask what would changing the pay ratio surtax look like for our revenue over time.
And that's in the context of, if you look at the data, if you make your decisions based upon evidence, the Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes corporate profits after tax numbers on a quarterly basis.
In the Q2 2026 numbers show that corporate profits after tax as a share of GDP is the highest on record going back to 1947.
So I'm going to say that again.
Large corporations have never been more profitable, even after taxes, in the United States of America than they are right now.
And the other side of the coin, one might argue, well, how are they so profitable?
Well, wages are the lowest on record.
Okay.
There's a distribution between profits and wages.
And so those are the stakes.
And, you know, the City of Portland obviously cannot determine sort of federal-level policy, but we are embedded in it.
We are conditioned by the consequences of our, of, you know, federal government's failure to tax these corporations appropriately.
And so we must lead, and we must ask the question of, are we going to continue to just exist within that world?
Are we going to try to change it a little bit?
It's not directly within our budget scope, but, you know, Portland Public Schools is closing 14 schools.
Parents are upset, and they don't understand why it is that in a country where corporations have never been more profitable, their local leaders are saying there's simply nothing we can do about this.
And so this measure while it doesn't solve all the problems, is an attempt to address that problem head-on.
And we're gonna get into the particulars of it as we get into the presentation.
But at this moment, I'd like to pass it over to Councilor Murillo, who is my chief co-sponsor on this.
Thank you.
Rebecca Dobert
Thank you, Councilor Green.
I kind of wanna set the stage for the conversation here because when I've been talking with people, I think that it is incredibly difficult for us It's hard for us to imagine such large numbers and to imagine what it means for someone to be a billionaire or a trillionaire when we're having these conversations.
It is something that is so unfathomable to most of us who have had to work every day that we can't even picture what that actually means tangibly.
So in 1978, startups as a percentage of Portland area businesses have fallen by nearly half.
Over that same period, CEO pay at the largest US corporations exploded by 1,094%, while a typical worker's pay grew only 26%.
And if you want to check my math, you can look at the Economic Policy Institute.
That's where that came from.
You're going to hear this figure a lot today, but in the 1970s, CEOs of successful U.S. corporations made roughly 20 to 30 times more than their workers.
Today, CEOs at the largest 350 US publicly owned firms make 290 more times than their average paid worker.
And these modern tenfold increases in CEO median pay, median worker pay ratios typically exclude the outlier pay packages received by people like Elon Musk, who is now one of our first trillionaires.
When we talk about business burdened by— businesses burdened by taxes, we need to qualify that statement.
Small businesses for decades have been struggling through red tape, high taxes on thin margins, and token gestures and valorization by politicians with very few material gains, while at the same time mega corporations have never had it better, realizing incredible gains under Trump tax cuts, with studies finding that 10% of the benefits from President Trump's tax cuts flowed to just the top 5 executives, and no benefit went to the bottom 90% of workers in this country.
This is a system that has created a trillionaire while schools are closing, TriMet buses are being cut, and people are quite literally dying on our streets.
We could imagine a different world.
We could imagine a society where we actually have state capacity, and some of the greatest times in this country were under governments that actually worked.
Governments that delivered services and delivered on their promises and used the power of the state to uplift everyone instead of a select few.
We can uplift 2/3 of small businesses in Portland today while also securing the future of beloved programs like violence prevention, parks programs, Portland Street Response, anything.
We have engaged extensively with businesses, stakeholders, and the public, and the feedback we receive on this proposal is that It's common sense.
That it's a no-brainer.
We all know that small businesses are what make Portland great.
They are the artists and the people who create the culture of our city, and they also need real relief.
This proposal is a straightforward tax break.
Small businesses are tired of having to go through complicated programs and the bureaucracy and apply for grants and wait 10,000 months to hear back.
Under this policy, The tax relief applies automatically for 18,000 small businesses.
We need to find a way to support our city services without doing that on the backs of working-class people by perpetually increasing fees that they pay and perpetually increasing the fees for small businesses.
So why not use an existing policy that's been on the books for a decade to ask mega corporations that are thriving under Trump tax cuts in the wealthiest country in the world to pay a reasonable amount.
And we have to talk about what a reasonable amount is, because again, in the 1970s, CEOs made 20 to 30 times more than their median worker.
When polled most recently, most Americans think that CEOs should only make 5 to 10 times more than their median worker.
But right now, they are making, on average, 300 times that of their median worker.
Elon Musk makes 5,000 times that of his median worker.
This problem is getting worse year after year, and our sense of what is reasonable is getting distorted over time.
Modern-day CEO-to-medium-worker pay ratios of 300 to 1 are a choice.
Increasing the ratio from 20 to 30 to 1 is a choice.
Creating the first trillionaire with a pay ratio of over 5,000 to 1 is a choice.
We can also choose a different path.
We can build a city that delivers on its promises and services.
We can deliver tax relief to 18,000 Portland small businesses, and we can do that while presenting a choice to the largest thriving corporations in the wealthiest nation in the world.
You can either pay a small tax that represents a small, small fraction of the benefits you receive from doing business in Portland.
Pick between increasing your median worker pay such that they can actually afford to live there, or you can decrease your own pay.
And when we say decrease, we aren't asking for a CEO-to-worker pay ratio that we saw decades ago.
Megacorporations could avoid this mild tax while maintaining a CEO-to-worker ratio that nearly doubles the ratio we saw in the 1970s.
This is a common-sense policy that will uplift small businesses.
It will uplift the working class.
It will help us save some of the precious services that Portlanders are begging us to fight for.
So I hope that we will, you know, go through this presentation, go through the facts, and that we will have the political courage to do what's right in this moment, because we can't keep producing budgets that are austerity for the poor and keep giving millions of our taxpayer dollars to the rich.
Mitch Green
Thank you, Councilor Morillo.
And then I'm just going to go down the line.
Councilor Koyama Lane, do you want to offer any remarks as a co-sponsor?
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Sure.
Rebecca Dobert
I first want to thank my colleagues, Councilor Morillo, Councilor Green, for your vision and leadership on this ordinance.
I'm proud to co-sponsor.
Just last Friday, I was at a Better Portland small business event talking to small business owners, and it was a great conversation with many passionate, smart, kind business owners who care a lot about Portland.
And I know it's, it's hard out there.
For small businesses, it's always hard, and it's, it's particularly hard right now.
I've taught for many years, everyone knows that.
And so I— what that means is I've taught, um, many kids of small business owners in District 3, from Away Days Brewery to No Name Pho to Oblique Coffee Roasters to Greco Jewelry and more.
And what I keep hearing out there is that our small business community is doing well despite the city, not because of the city, which is one reason that I'm very hopeful about this ordinance, because it would relieve business tax for 18,000 small businesses.
That's huge.
This is something we can do to provide some relief while we continue to work on other ways to make things easier for our small businesses, like streamlining, streamlining permitting, providing financial support like grants or fee waivers, and other connected issues like transportation and community and public safety.
And I know that everyone up here cares about and supports and loves our small businesses at all of our different districts for many reasons.
And one of those is also that— one that's really important is that small businesses keep money local, keep it in Portland.
We know that a dollar is more likely to remain in each of our districts And multiply its impact when it's spent at a locally owned small business rather than at a chain or out-of-state company.
And that's because of the local multiplier effect.
And it's really interesting.
If anyone wants to talk more about that later, we can talk about it.
So I love that this fair share tax directly supports small businesses who we know put money directly back into our local economy and communities.
Thank you.
Mitch Green
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos
Thank you so much.
Yeah, um, I think what I want to start with today is just something that I hear when I'm knocking on doors constantly in East Portland.
People are working hard, they're doing everything that they're supposed to do, and they're still struggling to get ahead.
I knocked on one person's door a couple weeks ago, and the first thing that I that she said to me, um, was, I don't know much about city council other than I don't like y'all.
And I was like, you know what, we get that a lot.
Um, but I was like, but tell me why, you know, tell me why you specifically don't like your city council.
And what she told me was what we all hear, that people are worried about affording their rent and their groceries.
She said that she is going to school and doing everything right, paying her rent, and she only has $300 left in her paycheck.
And now her bus is getting cut.
And so this is what is at stake here.
Small business owners are watching every single dollar, trying to figure out how to keep their doors open and keep their employees paid.
And meanwhile, we're being told that the solution to Portland's economic challenges is to ask even less of the wealthiest corporations.
And I fundamentally disagree.
Because here's the question that I keep coming back to: who are we building this economy for?
Rebecca Dobert
Thank you.
Candace Avalos
The fair share tax is one way we can start answering that question differently.
By providing those 18,000 small businesses with tax relief, we're saving them an average of $900 a year.
And we're asking these large publicly traded corporations that are doing business in Portland, not necessarily headquartered here, with these enormous CEO-to-worker pay gaps to contribute more.
And I want to emphasize something about those small businesses in East Portland, because many of them are immigrant-owned, they're BIPOC-owned businesses operating on incredibly tight margins.
They're neighborhood restaurants and family businesses and local entrepreneurs who have invested everything they have into building something for themselves and their communities.
$900 might be a rounding error to a multinational corporation, but to a neighborhood business, that's real money.
That's a chance.
At a time when we're struggling to fund the basic services that Portlanders rely on, we have an obligation to examine how we're generating revenue, not just how we're cutting spending.
And I recognize that there are different revenue projections that we're, I'm sure, going to debate very soon.
But uncertainty about that dollar amount should not stop us from having a much bigger conversation about fairness, because we cannot keep balancing our city's financial challenges on the backs of working people and small businesses while treating the wealthiest corporations as though they're— asking them to contribute more is somehow unreasonable.
It's not.
So I'm proud to be a co-sponsor.
Thank you so much for the leadership of Councilors Green and Murillo, and I hope that my colleagues will approach this proposal with the same question that I'm asking, which is, how can we make sure that we're not Who are we asking to sacrifice and who can actually afford to contribute more?
So that is what this tax is about, and I look forward to the conversation.
Thank you.
Mitch Green
Thank you, Councilor Avalos.
Councilor Dunphy.
Sameer Kanal
Well, thank you.
You know, I'm proud to be a co-sponsor of this legislation.
Portland is a small business town.
9 Out of 10 employers in our city employ 10 or fewer employees.
But those small businesses are struggling.
They're suffering under the weight of inflation, the cost of operating your business, and including local taxes.
As a former small business owner myself, I know firsthand how punishing Portland's business license tax can be on already tight margins.
I'm co-sponsoring the Fair Share Tax because it's going to eliminate the tax for over 18,000 small businesses who make less than $500,000 per year.
I cannot simply stand by and watch as we are losing beloved restaurants and bars and coffee shops, retailers and small neighborhood businesses that define Portland's identity while mega corporations suck billions of dollars out of our community.
How many times have we heard about food cart— uh, food carts being kicked out of their, uh, spaces in order to build a fancy hotel that immediately fails?
I don't care how well Starbucks is doing.
I care about how well Parkrose Coffee is doing.
Now is the exact right time to uplift those small businesses and give them the tax relief that they deserve.
We have no cranes in the sky today.
Megacorporations are not investing in Portland.
But every single day, there are individuals still trying to open new businesses in Portland.
And if we don't fight to preserve what we already have and create a path for success for the only people who are actually investing in our community, then there won't be a Portland to save.
So I'm eager to get into testimony, so I'm going to leave it there.
Mitch Green
Thank you, Councilor Dunphy.
So at this time, colleagues, I'm going to give an overview of what the policy does.
And then we will move to 2 invited speakers, and then we'll move into public testimony.
So I'll jump right in.
I might move a little faster because I think we're running a bit behind time.
Okay, I think you guys can see my screen.
All right, fair share tax.
What does it do?
Okay, so colleagues, the policy has been carefully crafted to serve several purposes.
The first is sort of address the great scourge of our time, which is inequality.
Actually, the second great scourge of our time.
First great scourge of our time is ICE.
Addressing inequality between both high-income and lower-income households, as well as small and big businesses.
We also have designed this to raise revenue to protect the city's core services and do so in a way that is a progressive tax structure rather than heap a larger share on those with the least ability to pay.
And finally, we want to send a price signal.
We want to send an incentive to create better business practices by discouraging exorbitant executive pay and encouraging higher wages.
So those are the primary purposes of the tax.
So what does it do?
It does 2 broad things.
First of all, it increases the business license tax exemption from $75,000 to $500,000 in gross receipts, which will result in, by our modeling and partnership with the Revenue Department, a tax exemption for 18,000 small businesses who will no longer have to pay the business license tax in the City of Portland.
And the other part of it is then it changes the pay ratio surtax structure, which is something we've had on the books thanks to Councilor Novick's— then Commissioner Novick's leadership since 2016.
It adds new brackets, and it affects the rates for approximately 405 large publicly traded corporations that have a Dodd-Frank reporting requirement for their CEO-to-pay ratio.
Moving right along.
So here we just want to contextualize this with some data on the business climate in Oregon.
So what we know is that Portland small businesses are struggling.
This is Bureau of Labor and Statistics data.
So what this is showing is that more businesses are shuttering than new ones opening.
Those closures outnumber openings by 6,000 during the first 9 months of 2025.
And if you guys are in the small business, small business business in the city of Portland, then you know that.
That's the thing you think about every single day.
If you live in neighborhoods where you see a vacant storefront, You feel that, right?
And so we have to let the data drive our policy.
And what we see is that our local economy is becoming increasingly dominated by large multinational corporations that can take more market share and have a differential advantage relative to small businesses, which makes it really difficult to compete.
So what are we gonna do here?
What are the basics?
So the change that we're proposing to the business license tax and the pay ratio does the following.
It affects— so any business doing business in Portland, irrespective of where they're headquartered, pays the business license tax.
So I think one of the things that you're gonna see, one of the kind of, I think, false talking points that you'll see throughout this debate is, This will just drive businesses out of Portland, especially these large corporations.
Won't they just move to Tigard or Tualatin?
Won't they just take their business out of Portland?
And the answer to that is, if they were to move their business, say, let's say there's a Fortune 500 firm in Portland and then they moved it to Beaverton, unless they abandoned the Portland market, they still have to pay the tax, right?
So Amazon.com pays the tax right now.
They're not headquartered in Portland.
Target.
Target pays the tax.
They're not headquartered in Portland.
And if they were to pull all their stores out, they still have online retail, right?
So that's the thing.
So we actually have a sort of bulwark against tax flight.
All those businesses are required to pay a business license tax of 2.6% on net income, but it's only those publicly traded corporations that have yes.
CEO pay ratios that are exorbitant that pay this extra surtax.
Currently, that's 100 to 1 or more.
So what we're going to do is propose to raise that surtax.
And right here we've got a table that shows essentially the first column would be the current surtax rate.
You'll note that for Fortune 500— or I keep saying Fortune 500, but publicly traded corporations that have a 100 to 1 or up to a 250-to-1 CEO-to-pay ratio surtax or ratio will pay a surtax of 10% on the business license tax.
So that takes it from 2.6% to an effective rate of 2.86%.
That's currently ours, then sort of ratchets that up.
And we're sort of saying, we're saying, look, not only are we going to start this impact earlier at 50-to-1, Once you get to 100 to 1 and up, we're just gonna tie the surtax to the rate at which you overpay your CEO relative to your median worker.
So if it's 100 to 1, guess what?
That's 100% surtax.
If it's 250 to 1, guess what?
That's a 250% surtax.
And if you're 500 to 1 or greater, if you're the Elon Musks of the world, or if you're, you know, if you're CEO of Live Nation, you're going to pay a 500% surtax.
And so that's not a 500% tax.
This is just a percentage on a tax.
So the, the column on the right-hand side just shows you the effective tax rate.
Um, so that's what they would pay after the change.
All right, so how does this all work?
Um, we, we estimate that 18,405 small businesses would receive an exemption.
97.8% Seeing taxes go to zero with an average saving of $900.
And so folks will say, well, that's only $900, that's not, that's not a lot.
But I'll remind folks that when we raised the BLT from 50 to 75, it wasn't a lot either, but it was meaningful and it was an important signal that we sent.
I was proud to support that one too, and I thank you for your leadership, Councilor Zimmerman and Mr. Mayor.
But $900 on average times 18,000 is about $14 million that stays in the economy, that stays in the private sector to spend on other things, increase wages, provide that Christmas bonus, pay that other fee that we just raised, right?
So these things matter, and it's a net impact to the local economy of $14 million.
By increasing the pay ratio surtax based upon, you know, the counterfactual of fiscal year 2024, We estimate with the revenue department that that would've produced an incremental increase of $72 million.
Now, our city economist has done some analysis with the CFO to say, well, these are— this is a volatile income source, and then that extra income would fall on a few large corporations that could see their profits fluctuate with the stock market.
And so applying some pretty conservative assumptions, You know, we can safely assume that an extra $33 million a year would be something that we would forecast going forward.
That's still more money than we have today after we provided relief.
So we'll get into that discussion, and it's a worthwhile discussion to have.
And then we just talked yesterday about a BLT reserve policy.
I think this pairs very well with that BLT reserve policy.
So we can fill up that reserve very quickly once this tax goes into effect.
Thank you.
And we certainly wouldn't want to assume $72 million in our forward-looking budgeting.
Okay, more context.
So since Reagan, and Councilor Morillo, you got to this a little bit here, but CEO pay just skyrockets.
You know, there's sort of Thatcherite Reaganomics stuff just basically juices up the power of the CEO.
They pick the boards of the corporations.
They give the board votes to give them exorbitant packages.
They engage in stock buybacks, which then drives up their compensation packages, all at the same time that the effective tax rate or top marginal tax rates are going down.
That tax cut has been used to purchase stocks back for the firm, which drives the CEO-pay ratio.
So this is a deeply broken system that is driving inequality in America.
And more recently, following Trump's 2016 election, before he took office, the signal of the stock market was Donald Trump's going to come in and cut taxes for the wealthiest in the United States.
And so market participants anticipated that and started bidding up the price of stocks, and it basically went through his whole term.
So the effect of that tax cut was to drive up stock prices, which drives up CEO compensation, which worsens inequality.
And it's notable that these taxes on profits mainly impact the shareholders and the executives.
So another thing you might hear is, won't this get passed on to consumers?
Generally speaking, a profit on taxes, a profit on net income is borne by the executives and the shareholders 'cause the pricing decisions are made earlier in the production process.
I already said that just now, but basically, you know, unlike a sales tax, these are generally not passed on.
But I think the piece that's important here is I'm gonna use an example to make the point.
Let's compare Starbucks with Parkrose Coffee, or hell, let's compare Starbucks with Dutch Bros Coffee, which Dutch Bros would pay some surtax on it, but not as much as Starbucks.
So Starbucks said, you know what, we don't like a 15% tax on our profits.
We're willing to leave profits on the table by just taking our ball and going home.
They would then cede their market share to Dutch Bros, and they would cede their market share to Parkrose Coffee, which would then increase their sales and increase their profits.
And so if you're a CEO that gets paid based upon your ability to deliver profits to your shareholders and increase shareholder value, then you would be in violation of your fiduciary responsibility by saying, I'm going to leave and stop doing business because I'm doing slightly less profits after taxes.
And that's an important thing to keep in mind.
If we're to believe that CEOs are paid so large because they are masters of the universe and they are impeccable allocators of capital, then they would never make such an error.
Okay?
All right.
So just to make the point here, this creates an incentive too.
So there's 3 options that we've sort of modeled here to reduce the pay ratio surtax.
So the example here is the Starbucks CEO who makes 1,800 to 1, $31 million while the median worker makes $17,000 a year.
Let's just sit with that for a second.
Mm-hmm.
This would be an effective tax of 15.6% if you assume $100 million in revenue.
You could reduce it by paying workers enough to afford a 2-bedroom apartment.
That would reduce your liability by $435,000.
You're saving $435 by raising your workers' salaries.
You could reduce the pay ratio to an average of a large— so just bring it to the average, which in the United States the average is 280 to 1.
That would then also produce the savings for the firm of $435,000.
Thank you.
And then if you were just to reduce it to pre-Reagan levels of CEO compensation, the firm would become more profitable by $871,000.
So the point here is that if we were to assume that CEOs are wizards and they're profit optimizers, then we have an opportunity to provide an incentive to increase the profits of these firms by reducing their CEO salaries and helping Portland out too.
Research indicates that executive— excessive executive pay is associated with lower firm performance and lower worker morale.
We don't allow applause or audible reactions from the audience, but nod your head if you feel like you've lost morale at your company when you heard that your CEO got paid more and you just got— your buddy got cut from the line.
Yeah.
I'm not sure I'm on board with that.
I'm feeling that right now.
Large pay ratios are the result of CEO power and big business market control, not productivity and innovation.
So this ordinance just pushes back on that a little bit.
I feel like I'm running long, so I'm going to try to get to the point here.
Businesses in general are not overtaxed in Portland.
I know that there's a talking point that suggests that's true, but it's, but it's not.
But small businesses do need relief.
For all the reasons we've already discussed, it's hard to do business in this city.
On average, businesses in Oregon pay $7,900 per employee in taxes versus $8,600 nationally versus $11,400 in California versus $10,400 in Washington.
And we're always comparing Vancouver with Portland in terms of our competitiveness, but businesses pay on average a higher share of taxes.
Per employee in Washington State than they do in Portland, in Oregon.
Oregon ranks 8th lowest in terms of business share of state and local taxes, not including sales taxes, and it's largely because we don't have a sales tax.
All right, just another chart to give you a sense of new business openings that have been declining decades nationally and in Portland.
So what this means, folks, is that as businesses get bigger, corporations get more profitable, They consolidate market share and there are fewer firms.
Okay?
Like more monopolies means fewer firms, right?
And then I just want to leave you with this.
We've done some extensive outreach with the small business community and community-based organizations and labor unions.
And so we've got a selection here.
The Division Midway Alliance has come out in support of this.
Parkrose Coffee Shop, Jobs with Justice, Thrive East PDX, Bold Coffee and Books.
We got the Welcome Home Coalition, Historic Parkrose, Portland Businesses for All, and CPPW and Pro-Tech 17, and the list goes on.
So thank you for your attention.
At this point, I'll just leave you with this before going to our invited testimony that, you know, we've talked about being in a doom loop.
Well, we have been in a doom loop of corporate tax breaks and low wages for workers for decades, and it's time to stop that.
This is not the magic wand that cures it all, but it is a it's planting a flag in the ground, and I hope that we can start to claw back the Trump tax cuts and invest in our city.
Thank you so much.
So at this time, if Tim Shaw is in the audience, I would love to invite you up to provide some remarks.
And once you get up here, if you've never done this before, introduce yourself for the record, and you've got about 5 minutes.
And I want to thank you for thank you for being out here today.
Sameer Kanal
Awesome, thank you.
My name is Tim Shaw, and I'm here to represent Bold Coffee and Books.
We're located in the Goose Hollow area.
So, uh, dear Committee of the Whole, thank you all for allowing me to speak today.
I would like to come out and directly ask you to vote in favor of the fair share tax ordinance, which Councilor Green and Councilor Murillo are bringing to the table to be voted on.
As the co-owner of Bold Coffee and Books, my partner and I pay over $7,000 annually in taxes and licenses.
These include picnic table area for our customers to be able to enjoy outside seating, a chalkboard sign that lets everyone know what our specials are for the week, a building fee, a license to operate, a branding fee to let the community know what our cafe is called, And a you-name-it tax.
This is all on top of the federal, state, county, TriMet, and city taxes too.
This might not seem like much, but the difference in my bottom line would far outweigh the loss in the pocket change that the CEO of a large conglomerate corporation would feel with this tax ordinance.
I hear people say all the time that they're so glad that Ali and I have decided to open this cafe and book bookstore in the Goose Hollow area, and it fits the community perfectly.
Excuse me.
But we simply cannot continue to meet the demands of rising prices, utility bills that continue to climb monthly, the taxes that demand such a large portion of our bottom line.
During this last month alone, every single bill that we pay increased in cost.
Our total increase for the month of September from the month of August was a plus 5%.
Wow.
When this continues to happen month after month for all local small businesses, we simply cannot continue to operate.
Something we will have to get— something, something will have to give.
Meanwhile, large, large companies like Starbucks continue to pay CEO 1,800 times the amount in which they pay their median worker.
That's outrageous.
Ours is about 1 to 1.
We should want our city to be what it once was before the pandemic.
My friends tell me all the time that they still don't want to come downtown.
Well, let's give them a reason to come back.
Let's bring back small businesses, give the city back to the people.
This used to be a place where my generation was proud to go.
Portland has so much to offer.
It's so beautiful.
It's so nice.
Thank you.
And that is because of businesses like Fingers and Toes, Blue Star Donuts, the Hoff Cafe, the Goose Hollow Inn, and now Bold that make our community in the Goose Hollow area so wonderful.
You have the opportunity to bring back small businesses and allow this community to thrive.
What choice will you make while everybody is watching?
I already know what the people want.
Do you?
Yes.
Mitch Green
Thank you so much, Tim.
And then I think our second and last presenter is online, Sarah Anderson, with the global— she's a global— Sarah Anderson is a global economy director at the Institute for Policy Studies.
So thank you so much for joining us, Sarah.
Please introduce yourself for the record.
Sameer Kanal
Yes, I am Sarah Anderson, the global economy director at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Rebecca Dobert
And for over 30 years, I've conducted research on executive compensation and corporate tax policy at the Institute for Policy Studies, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, D.C. And I really appreciate this opportunity to once again engage with the Portland City Council.
Back in 2016, Councilor Steve Novick invited me to Portland to share my analysis with other members of the council before the vote on his proposed CEO pay ratio surtax.
And my analysis of that original surtax was that it would deliver multiple benefits.
One, it would incentivize corporations to narrow the pay gaps that are a key driver of the skyrocketing inequality that's undermining our economy and our democracy.
Number 2, it would generate much-needed revenue for public services.
And 3, it also encourages sound business practices because extensive research shows that extremely wide pay divides undermine productivity.
There's a Harvard Business School study, for example, of 1,500 firms that found that companies with huge pay gaps saw significantly higher levels of employee dissatisfaction and turnover and lower sales.
So now, 10 years later, I'm so pleased to see that this tax has functioned very well.
The main measurable impact has been in revenue generation, which has averaged about $5 million a year.
And, you know, it's hard to provide evidence that it's had an impact on narrowing pay gaps.
Our grossly unfair compensation system is deeply entrenched.
Even I was shocked when at the height of the pandemic, corporate boards showered CEOs with bonuses to protect them from the crisis while so many low-wage workers were on the front lines risking their lives to keep our economy going.
But I know that Councilor Novick's main intent back then in 2016 was always to do something historic that would spark similar reforms in other jurisdictions that could eventually build sufficient pressure to make our pay system much more equitable.
And the Portland tax has undoubtedly inspired similar efforts.
San Francisco adopted a pay ratio tax in 2018.
2020, And legislators have introduced similar bills in at least 10 states and also in the U.S. Congress.
And so at this moment, after 10 years of Portland bravely experimenting with an innovative approach and proving that it works, I think expanding on this success by adopting the fair share tax proposal makes a great deal of sense, and I'll give you 5 reasons.
One is the need for revenue is great.
You all know the data on Portland much better than I do, but your city is not alone in facing budget challenges, especially as the federal government slashes spending.
Number 2, large corporations today in general have a lot of money.
While working families are struggling, U.S. corporate profits reached a record annualized rate of more than $4 trillion in the second quarter of 2026.
And one reason large corporations have such high profit rates is that they're paying relatively little in taxes.
The 2017 tax reform slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.
That reduced federal revenue by an estimated $1.3 trillion over a decade.
And while corporations promised to use their tax windfalls to raise worker pay, instead they've gone on a stock buyback Stock buybacks are a previously illegal financial maneuver that artificially inflates CEOs' stock-based pay while siphoning resources that could be going towards worker wages and other long-term investments.
One study by economists with the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation found that the corporate tax cut of 2017 sharply boosted executive compensation while doing nothing to boost wages.
I repeat, nothing to increase wages for workers in the bottom 90%.
So number 3, expanding the Portland surge tax to include more brackets, I think makes sense.
This would capture more revenue from the very largest corporations with the very largest pay gaps.
In other words, those with the greatest ability to pay.
The adjusted rates and brackets would also bring the Portland tax more closely in line with the federal minimum wage.
Thank you.
Federal bill called the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act introduced in the U.S. Senate and the House.
Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, is the co-sponsor of this bill, and Senator Bernie Sanders is the lead sponsor.
In both the fair share tax proposal and in this federal bill, the surtax kicks in with a fairly modest rate on companies with pay ratios between 50 and then there are several more brackets, with the top one being for companies paying their CEOs more than 500 times their median worker pay.
And just to be concrete, I'll rattle off an incomplete list of companies that operate in Portland and had pay gaps in 2025 far in excess of 500 to 1.
You've already heard about Starbucks, but it's also Best Buy, Chipotle, Dollar Tree, McDonald's, Target and Wells Fargo.
And I just think if they can afford to pay their CEOs hundreds and sometimes even more than 1,000 times their typical employee, they can afford this modest tax on their Portland profits.
And keep in mind that this is really a voluntary tax, right?
They—.
You're giving companies a choice.
They can either hang on to their huge pay gaps and contribute more to your local public services Or they can narrow their gaps by lifting up worker pay and reining in CEO pay so that the ratio is below 50 to 1, and then they wouldn't owe another dime.
Also keep in mind that the surtax only applies to companies that are turning a profit in their Portland operations.
And so I think as Councilor Green said, if they responded to the tax by leaving the city, they would be forfeiting profits.
And as Steve Novick wrote back in 2016, it would be absurd for Wells Fargo to close profitable branches in Portland just because they become slightly less profitable.
The introductory presentation also addressed the concern that corporations would pass on this tax to customers by raising prices.
He made some very good points.
I'll just add that, you know, if Starbucks tries to do that, I wish them good luck.
In competing against the many wonderful independent cafes in Portland, like the one run by the, the person who just testified.
Number 4, expanding the Portland surtax would be popular, very popular.
One national poll asked people their views on a tax hike on corporations with pay gaps of more than 50 to 1.
Overall, 80% of likely voters favored such taxes.
Including 89% of Democrats and 71% of Republicans.
So this is not a partisan issue.
And then finally, I think the proposal's tax relief for small businesses is a practical addition that would help level the playing field with large corporations that can hire armies of lawyers and accountants to exploit every loophole in our tax code, including hiding profits in overseas tax havens.
And that's something that small businesses obviously can't do.
And so for all these reasons, and, and maybe some I've left out, I would strongly encourage support for this proposal.
I think through the fair share tax, Portland would have more revenue to invest in a healthy community while also emboldening the kind of action we need around the country to tackle the dangerous levels of inequality that are fraying our social fabric and undermining our economy.
And I'll end there.
Thank you very much.
Mitch Green
Thank you so much for your time, Sarah, and your dedication to the middle class and working class in America, internationally, frankly.
Okay, so at this time, I think we have a couple minutes for technical questions, and then we move into a large volume of public testimony.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you for the presentation to the primary co-sponsors here.
Colleagues, please feel free to jump in the queue for technical questions.
Um, this is also time to float any amendments you may have.
I'd like— ask you to keep it to those 2 things because we do have a high volume of testimony.
Um, we'll go to Councilor Smith followed by Councilor Zimmerman.
Rebecca Dobert
Thank you.
Loretta Smith
Uh, quick question, are we going to reduce the, the amount of time for testimony?
Is that going to go from 3 minutes to 2 minutes?
We have such a large group of folks to speak.
Sameer Kanal
Uh, no, as, as mentioned at the top, uh, that's not the plan at So how many minutes are they going to speak?
3, As per usual.
Candace Avalos
Okay.
Sameer Kanal
Thanks, Councilor Smith.
Councilor Zimmerman, followed by Novick.
Um, thank you, Councilor Green.
Thanks for the presentation.
I—.
There was one point I, I lost track a little bit that you were making, and it was, I think, on the slide about— you were talking about the fiduciary responsibility to not leave Portland, and I, I kind of got mixed up in your—.
What you're—.
Can you just say that again?
Because it sounded important.
Mitch Green
Yeah, no, I appreciate that.
Sometimes I can go a little fast on some of those points.
Sameer Kanal
As a non-PhD holder, I do need the MBA version.
Mitch Green
Okay, here's the MBA version.
Um, corporate governance, generally speaking, corporate governance, the principles of good corporate governance is that your CEO, and frankly your board of directors, has a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder of the firm to increase shareholder value and to protect the the assets of the corporation, because the shareholders are the ones that own the corporation.
And so if you do something that reduces profits, then you're not working in the interest of shareholders.
And so the argument that we're making is that because these are taxes on profits, that even if it's a 5% profit or 10% or even a 15% tax, they're still profits.
Yeah.
Right, so even if there was a dollar profit left after this, which would be kind of a reductio ad absurdum example, technically speaking, you're reducing profits by saying, you know what, we're gonna take our ball and go home because we don't like the tax.
Sameer Kanal
This is about leaving, the idea of leaving Portland.
Mitch Green
Yeah, sort of turning the app off for Portland for Amazon would be a concrete example.
So if there's profits to be made, they should be staying in that market even if they're making fewer profits.
And that's— that was the point I was trying to make on fiduciary responsibility.
Sameer Kanal
Great.
And the slide before that was talking about the 25%, the 100% based on those ratios.
And I want to make sure I understand.
Mitch Green
I think it was toward the end you made it clear, but it's 25% additional on the 2.6%.
Sameer Kanal
Am I understanding that?
Mitch Green
Yeah, it's a 25%.
So if I'm looking at the 50 to 75 tranche, the first one, It would say if you're in that bucket, then your business license tax goes up by 25%.
So that goes from 2.6% to, um, an effective rate of 3.25%.
Got it.
Sameer Kanal
Not a 25% tax?
Mitch Green
Correct.
Rebecca Dobert
Great.
Sameer Kanal
And then the last technical question, um, you used Starbucks and the median income there was $17,000.
It—.
I hadn't thought of it until I saw it, but, um, the language around the way that this is written, it's based on employee and not based on full-time employees?
Because I'm kind of making an assumption in that, that there's a lot of part-time.
So can you just clarify so I'm working from the same set of numbers here?
Mitch Green
It's a, um, so when you report to the SEC your 10-K filings and whatever sort of K filings you'd have under Dodd-Frank as a publicly traded corporation, um, if you're subject to that regulation, you have to report your CEO to median so those ratios are reported just directly to the federal government.
And if the firm employs wholly part-time employees, it's just the total cost of their labor divided by their number of employees.
And so, yeah, I mean, you might— of course, you can have part-time, low-wage employees, sort of casual employees drawing that down.
Yeah.
But that's still the median.
Salary for those workers.
And for some firms that are vertically integrated where they're reporting labor income from overseas where people are making a couple dollars a day, that would then pull that down as well.
Okay, thanks.
Sameer Kanal
That's all the technical.
Mitch Green
Appreciate it.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Councilor Zimmerman.
Councilor Novick.
Thank you, Mr. President.
So I don't know if it's possible to answer this question, but I was— we can't know how much in tax any individual company paid.
But I'm curious if we know, like, how much in the current business license tax, like, each of the top 10 companies paid or something like that without identifying them.
And the reason I'm asking that is that recently there was a— San Francisco tried to increase its pay ratio tax and went to the ballot and it lost.
We're not talking about going to the ballot, but I'm just kind of wondering, will the top payers be paying enough extra that it might be worth their while to refer it to ballot and fight it out there.
Steve Novick
You know, I, I wonder if Peter might— I don't know if you're allowed to talk about this, but there was some part of your analysis that I think looked at some potentially large firms kind of exiting the tax liability that might be able to get towards Councilor Novick's question.
Rebecca Dobert
And Councilor Green, I just want to flag that Sarah is also still online, available to answer questions.
Okay.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you for the question.
For the record, Jonas Beery, the city chief financial officer, and Peter can help answer as well.
I will just start by saying first, there probably is broad litigious risk.
We know there's currently some revenue-related litigation out there.
So that's just something to be aware of.
We also want to also just say that per legally, we're not allowed, I think, as you know, to talk about specific taxpayers.
But we do have some analysis, at least of kind of the top level of the distribution of potential payers.
And it is heavily, heavily weighted towards the higher end of those larger companies.
So we can talk a little bit about numbers.
I would just say generally, I think that is a realistic possibility that those large folks, as was referenced, that have access to large legal teams could choose to take action, but we don't have any lens on obviously the probability of that happening.
What I was wondering is, can we say that there's like 10 companies that currently each pay $1 million in the business license tax, so their tax increase would be X billion apiece?
Yes, we can.
And we can get you the more detailed numbers like bracketed such that it doesn't let things out.
In the memo that you likely received, We pulled out just the top 2 projected payers based on like what they would be paying.
And it is a significant portion of the total is basically their liability of just a handful of payers.
It means that their year-to-year liability is north of $5 million.
Mitch Green
And so when you multiply it by 5, it makes up—.
Candace Avalos
$25 million.
Sameer Kanal
I'm sorry, I confess I didn't read the memo.
You're saying that there's at least 2 taxpayers that currently are paying $5 million a year currently?
Mitch Green
Yes, that on any given year we—.
Sameer Kanal
And it may not be the same taxpayer year to year, but last year we had 1 taxpayer pay over $20 million.
Good Lord.
Thank you.
Yeah, and sorry, I just wanna make sure to be clear about that too, that as Peter mentioned, that matrix of who pays what changes and is a source of volatility, right?
So the individual taxpayer behavior last year may be significantly different than individual taxpayer behavior next year or in the future.
And that obviously is felt much more, the impact is much larger at that higher scale.
Mitch Green
Thank you.
And oh, were you—.
Sameer Kanal
Actually had another sort of technical question.
Do we know how many people those 18,000 small businesses employ?
And I have to say, I have no idea.
For all I know, it could be 300,000, it could be 18,000.
Mitch Green
I, I don't have that number.
It's at least 18,000 though.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor Novick.
That Councilor Zimmerman, then we'll go to— Chair, because you asked about like amendments and ideas, I just— there's a question about the volatility that is in the room a little bit.
And what is on mind for me, and I'm just kind of thinking through, is what a phased-in approach of the reduction for those 18,000 would look like so we could understand the predictability of that volatility a little bit more.
So I wanted to pose that out there, not for a response now, but like thinking through, like you did a big chunk of who would get reduced at the same time who would get increased, and that's inserted some question marks.
But I'm thinking through in terms of what that would mean if we phased in the reductions as we understood in the trend line.
Mitch Green
So I just wanted you to know that as the sponsor.
Yeah, I actually am glad you asked that question because it's a It's a detail I didn't put in the presentation.
We've structured the ordinance to say we don't phase in the exemption until the year following when we start to collect the incremental new revenue.
So that mitigates that risk.
And then just add a finer point on Peter's piece there.
His analysis got us down to $33 million net rather than the $72 that we initially estimated because he did pull out those 2 highly volatile ones and say, let's assume that these ones somehow are not paying that tax.
So that, that does take a risk-adjusted approach and say, in the absence of perfect information in the future, this is a reasonable way we might want to think about that risk.
There's other risks, of course, too, and that's our job to evaluate.
So I appreciate the question.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Rebecca, will you please call the first panel of testifiers?
Rebecca Dobert
I will call testifiers in groups of and just a reminder to everyone, when you hear your name, you can approach the testimony table.
There is a 3-minute timer that you'll see on the screen in front of you on the floor, and you'll hear 2 chimes.
The first one means you have 30 seconds left.
The second one means your time is up.
And let's get started.
We have first up Brian Frank, Jenna Golden, Michael Yurkovsky, Ali Badoine, and Tyler Fellini.
Sameer Kanal
All right, now as folks are coming up, just a couple quick housekeeping notes.
If you're not sure who goes first, whoever's, uh, whoever hits the seat first, please go first.
Uh, and, uh, if we— everyone were to take the full 3 minutes, we'd be a little over time.
So take your 3 minutes if you want it, but if you don't, don't feel the need to fill it.
Uh, if you got 15 seconds left, we'll, we'll take them back.
And make sure that someone at the end of the list has their full time.
Take it away, person to my right.
Thanks.
Members of the committee, my name is Brian Frank.
I live in Northeast Portland and have been a resident of D2 for 23 years.
I'm also an accountant who has the privilege of working with hundreds of Portland businesses, filing thousands of the tax returns we're talking about today.
I'm down with the BZT, if you know what I mean.
My experience working with our incredible small business community inspired me to co-found Portland Businesses for All earlier this year.
We're a new all-volunteer group.
In the last few months, we have more than 60 local businesses who've joined us advocating for an inclusive, compassionate, and effective city.
So on behalf of my business and Portland Businesses for All, I'm here in support of the fair share tax.
This proposal would reduce burdens on the type of businesses I work with every day— microentrepreneurs who are just getting started, craftspeople, carpenters, makers, Health and wellness providers, nannies for our kids, and a host of content experts and service providers that give Portland its special flavor.
So I'm wondering, how many of you here have friends or neighbors running businesses that will benefit from this change?
Seriously, I'm guessing every single person in this room.
How many of you know one of the 405 wealthy CEOs whose skyrocketing wages are driving this additional surcharge?
I'm guessing not more than a handful of people here, if anyone.
What a stark choice.
We can reduce one of the many burdens on small businesses here and have a more sustainable budget supporting fire departments, parks, city programs that help actual Portland-owned and operated businesses.
Or we can keep on ignoring wealth disparities that would make the robber barons of the Gilded Age blush for fear of being punished for seeking a dime of accountability from big businesses.
Thank you.
Multinationals like Tesla corrupting our politics, companies like Starbucks that are pushing out local coffee shops and bakeries, and monopolists like Amazon, who is most likely the number one company we're talking about earlier, who have been crushing Main Street businesses for most of our lives.
These same companies just got a massive permanent windfall from Trump's corporate tax cuts.
Here too, y'all, our city's conformity with federal changes, particularly the expansion of bonus depreciation, Just gave these same big businesses a huge tax break here in Portland, $33 million annually according to the city's budget director report, which I read last week.
Today you're going to hear opponents say this tax will lead to businesses leaving Portland.
I hate to get all accountant speaky on y'all, but do you understand that this tax code uses market-based sourcing?
So it's based on your volume of sales in Portland.
Having a regional office here has little to no impact on subjectivity.
Do you seriously believe Coca-Cola and PGE are going to stop selling soda and power here to save a buck on taxes?
You might want to talk to an accountant before fearmongering.
The claim that the fair share tax will hurt the local economy is at best long-debunked trickle-down economics, and at worst a betrayal of 18,000 local businesses that help make Portland so special.
D2 reps, Councilor Ryan, please be a champion for local biz rather than Reaganomics.
I'll leave it there.
And thanks to you 2 reps.
Candace Avalos
Thank you to the council.
My name is Jenna Golden.
I've been in Portland for 25 years and I live and work in District 1.
I've been a small business owner in Portland for almost 15 years.
I own an accounting firm that prepares taxes for hundreds of businesses in Portland, the majority of which will have relief from this proposal.
And we also have 3 employees ourselves.
I am also a coordinating member of Portland Businesses for All.
I have to say, this is the first time I've felt that myself and my clients are being seen by City Hall.
Portland is a city of small business owners.
We are the reason people visit, but we are not treated as such.
This is part of why we formed Portland Businesses for All, to have a seat at the table in local decision-making.
So special thanks to Councilors Green and Murillo for seeing us.
I support the fair share tax because it, it not only relieves truly small businesses of a tax burden, but more importantly, it puts the responsibility of generating tax revenue on the businesses that can afford it.
As an accountant, I've seen that those who have the least give the most, while those who have the most spend their money on lobbying against paying their taxes rather than contributing to the common good.
Not because they don't have the means to pay, but because they want us all to have less so they can control us more.
Their lobbying efforts have worked.
For the past 5 years, corporations have shown the highest profits in history.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Candace Avalos
Average CEO pay ratios have gone from 26 to 1 in the late '70s up to 280 to 1 in 2025.
They even have us believing that taxing them will make things worse.
Where does that leave the rest of us?
Lower prices?
Higher paying jobs?
A robust social program?
No.
Worker productivity is up while wages have stagnated.
Prices are at record highs.
In Oregon, more than 70,000 Oregonians lost SNAP benefits this year, and nearly 600,000 and we have people in the room who will say that this tax isn't fair.
What's not fair is that up to 14 schools in the Portland area are in danger of closing.
What's not fair is that TriMet service has been adjusted for 34 lines.
What's not fair is a medical clinic in District 3 having to pay up to $8,000 for a permit to build a wheelchair ramp.
What's not fair are the hurdles that small businesses have to jump through to get funding while Prosper Portland ignores its own guidelines to give a $7 million low-interest loan to a risky sneaker village that failed.
Councilmember Herbold.
What's fair is reducing the tax burden on working people.
What's fair is investing the $72 million in our public schools, public transit, healthcare, affordable housing, and local small businesses.
What's fair is to make corporations pay their fair share.
Sameer Kanal
Hi there, my name is Ollie Bodwin.
I'm a business professor.
I'm also, also running for city council Councilmember, District 3.
So I've been spending a lot of time with my counterparts there.
Mitch Green
I want to take my remarks—.
Sameer Kanal
So first thing is, I think you should pass this.
Mitch Green
I think this is a good strategy for small businesses.
Sameer Kanal
But some of the concerns I have is $900 is not enough.
When I think about operationally with firms I work with, it is like 4 hours of labor collectively for an organization, or it could be the cost of goods for that day.
What we really need to do is to take the idea of us going from a positive tax rate To a zero tax rate, to a negative tax rate.
And one of the ways we do this is we do it through a small business tax credit for firms under revenue— we can look at the data and figure out, is it under half a million dollars?
That will take the charts that we saw earlier today where we see decreases in business openings, lifting them up the other direction.
And that will really spur a really inspirational growth path.
Thank you.
We will reduce vacancy.
Mitch Green
We will not have to have police go into these places that are abandoned.
We will have people working.
We will have communities thriving.
Sameer Kanal
This investment, based on budget, could look like, in my mind, up to $10,000.
And there is a flight path of the credit.
So in my world, it looks like $100,000 at a $2,000 credit, $500,000 at a $10,000 credit, and firms can grow their way out of the credit.
And that they become much bigger firms.
The things you do want to think about is, you know, I have some different opinions than Councilor Green.
I'm trained as an economist as well.
Pricing is very flexible.
The, the thought that how an economist thinks of pricing and how a business person thinks of pricing, they're very different.
Pricing can be adjusted in 10 seconds.
That's just how it is.
That's the world of data we live in.
There's but if you build a strategy where we say let's go from zero to negative, that we incentivize businesses to come here, that when I'm working with my clients at the end of the year and say, hey, you don't owe the City of Portland $5,000, you're getting $5,000, and they will take that and say, cool, I need to buy a coffee machine, I need to hire this consultant, I need this payroll service, this gives me that flexibility to do that.
And, you know, large businesses may or may stay contained into Portland Metro, but the real strategy should be, could we grow these small businesses to become medium and large businesses, and that our loyalty by investing into them drives that?
Um, and then a few remarks I do want to make.
Uh, you made a point about fiduciary responsibility.
You know, in my time as being a business professor, I have seen very little fiduciary responsibility, like, from a legal action when publicly traded companies fail.
Mitch Green
Um, and there I see it my whole career.
Sameer Kanal
So, like, I don't think that's really a defense mechanism for the most part.
Um, so, but I do trust that if we invest in our business owners, they will invest back to us.
Time.
Thank you.
Good morning, Chair Kanal and councilors.
I'm Tyler Fellini.
I'm the executive director of and a registered lobbyist for Portland Jobs with Justice, and I'm here for the working people of the city.
They're the ones who drive the bus, stock the shelves, and clean the offices.
And right now they're squeezed from every side.
And I don't have to read you a report to prove it.
Over the last 18 months, I've watched small businesses around my neighborhood in D3 close their doors.
And if you ask any of those owners why, you'll hear the same thing: everything costs too much.
Supplies cost more, especially after Trump's tariffs.
Wage and— wages and job growth have stalled out, so customers have left less to spend.
Utilities are skyrocketing along with countless other unforeseen costs.
Those owners are doing everything right and they still can't keep the lights on.
And meanwhile, the city is talking about a potential budget gap again next year.
Uh, Portlanders don't want to see our taxes go up, but we also don't want to lose the services that we count on— services like public safety, parks, programs for our kids, services that you all champion every time we talk about the budget.
And we also all say that we want a business-friendly city, especially many of you up there.
Um, but no business wants to operate in a city that's cutting services and falling apart.
The fair share tax answers both of those concerns.
It's a right-sized solution.
About 18,000 small businesses— our incredible food carts and cafes, vibrant tattoo shops and hair salons, and all of the artisan shops on streets like Hawthorne, Alberta, Mississippi, etc.— would stop paying the business tax license tax that's a real relief for the people who are actually struggling, and it's paid for by about 400 of the largest publicly traded corporations, which would pay more based on one thing: the gap between what they pay their CEO and what they pay their typical worker.
We're talking about companies where the boss makes 100, 250, even 500 times what the average employee does.
I don't think we need to feel empathy or sympathy for those corporations.
Thank you.
They've had decades of tax breaks while their workers' wages went nowhere.
And it's a tax on profits earned right here in Portland, not on things like groceries or paychecks.
A company that doesn't like the bill has an easy fix: pay your workers more.
That's tens of millions of dollars a year to keep services running without cuts or new taxes on working families.
So today I'm asking you to do one thing: move this out of committee and onto the full council.
Let's choose a Portland that works for workers, small businesses, and everyone who calls this city home.
Thank you.
That's my time.
Rebecca Dobert
Connor Smith, Zach White, Thomas Cavanaugh, Steve Cheesborough, Lydia Kiesling.
You can go ahead at the table.
Sameer Kanal
Good morning.
My name is Connor Smith.
I live in Southeast Portland, and I am a small business owner in the Central East Side.
Portland is home to many unique small businesses, giving our city a more vibrant feel than many of the other cities in the United States.
It's one of the reasons I moved here from Chicago when looking at other West Coast cities to escape the bad weather.
Opening a new business can be difficult, especially in the bar and restaurant scene, which is especially known for a high rate of failure in the first few years.
Many of these businesses barely make ends meet in their beginning stages.
Thank you.
But it is not because they have a poor concept or are run badly.
They just need time.
The businesses that succeed and go on to thrive are often the ones that had enough startup money available to them to weather the early years.
The fair share tax ordinance would be a boon to these new small businesses in the city that are trying to make it out of those early struggling years.
Even a small amount of relief can mean the difference in a small business shuttering their doors after 18 months or not.
I believe this ordinance would not only help existing small businesses reach maturity and more reliable future tax income for the city, but also encourage more people to start businesses in Portland.
Under the Trump administration, we have seen massive tax cuts for the biggest corporations.
A modest local tax increase on these large corporations is a drop in the bucket.
Compared to how much they are saving thanks to these Trump cuts.
The idea that any of them would stop doing business here is ludicrous and an empty threat.
We can grow the Portland economy by building from the bottom up and the middle out, not by begging giant corporations to move their headquarters here with the promise of low, low taxes.
Thank you.
Candace Avalos
Hello, I'm Steve Chesbrough.
I'm a transportation activist.
And a working musician and a tax accountant, and I support this proposal.
Sameer Kanal
As Gershwin says, it's wonderful, it's marvelous, exactly what we should be doing here.
Candace Avalos
Big corporations are not hurting, okay?
Working people are hurting.
If the corporations can afford to pay 50 or 500 times what they pay their workers to a CEO, then they can afford I can't afford to pay this little tax.
And the money's gonna go back to them anyway, right?
We all know that trickle-down is nonsense, right?
It's gonna—.
They're gonna sell us stuff and they're gonna get this money back anyway.
So let's not feel sorry for anyone who's gonna pay more in this tax.
And maybe as far as me personally, as a musician, maybe some of the money that the small businesses will save, the coffee shops and the pubs and restaurants, Maybe they can start putting more live music back into public places in Portland, which is something we used to hear all the time.
Have you noticed we don't hear much live music in Portland these days?
So maybe they can put some of this money to good use doing that, which of course benefits everyone, not just the musicians, if we have more music in town.
And shifting the tax burden to corporations, It's something this city did a few years ago with PSF, right?
And everyone loves PSF.
I don't hear anyone saying, and saying let's overturn PSF.
So we know that shifting the tax burden from working people to corporations is a very effective and just way to raise money for this city.
So let's do it, please.
Thank you.
Sameer Kanal
Zach, you're in front of me, or should I go ahead?
Uh, hi, members of the committee.
Thank you.
I value your time greatly.
Uh, my name is Thomas Cavanaugh.
I live in Northeast Portland and have been a resident of D2 for 5 years.
I bet I'm the newest business owner testifying today, so I actually have not even seen the, uh, business license tax come my way.
I've been a software developer for a decade, but in the face of potential layoffs at a former employer, I agonized over the choice to go independent.
Consulted with my partner and peers in the industry.
Everyone told me it'd be tough, that I'd wake up every day with self-doubt and anxiety, and I definitely had a little bit of that.
But I've never felt alone in this journey.
As a volunteer with Portland Businesses for All, I'm grateful to be in community with smart, hardworking entrepreneurs.
Together, we want to use our voices to realize a more inclusive, compassionate, and effective government.
Knock on wood— I think something's wood here— I hope to be in business and testifying again this time next year.
Maybe I'll even hire my first employee.
That feels funny to say out loud, to imagine a transition so quickly from worker bee to job creator.
What I can't imagine, what I feel embarrassed even thinking about, is interviewing my first candidate and telling them, for every $1,000 I make, I'll pay you $1.
Make me a millionaire, and then maybe you can make your first car payment.
I have plenty of confidence in my abilities.
I value my time.
I value yours.
But I couldn't possibly think that my time is 1,794 times more valuable than that of any team member I would bring on.
But apparently this grotesque disparity in wage is not sufficiently undignified for the board of Starbucks, who authorized a $96 million payout this year to their CEO for just 4 months of work.
For reference, a barista making $20 an hour would have to work 4 million hours to make that much.
In the '90s, the average CEO— when I was born, the average CEO-to-worker ratio was 100 to 1 for the top 350 firms.
Now it's over 350 or 300-ish, I guess it is.
Corporations will always prioritize shareholder profit over the health of communities they serve and the workforce that delivers them value.
The Trump administration and the deeply pocketed business lobby have made this problem worse, gutting corporate taxes to further centralize power in the hands of the wealthy elite.
I heard someone mention the word right-size.
I think it was Tyler.
When economic winds become unfavorable, these big firms love to use the term right-sizing to downplay the hardships that massive layoffs bring to the average wage earner.
The fair share tax brings some sanity back to our tax policy by right-sizing the contribution that these massive enterprises bring to Portland.
Councilors Pearl Guinea, Dan Ryan, and the rest of the council, I urge you to all support the fair share tax.
Thank you so much.
Rebecca Dobert
Zach White's online.
You can go ahead, Zach.
Sameer Kanal
Hello, my name is Zach White.
I was born at the Adventist Hospital and I live in Madison South.
Shout out Parkrose Coffee.
I'm a field organizer with NextUp Action Fund and a member of Multnomah Friends Quaker Meeting, testifying in my personal capacity.
I've been haunted by the wealth inequality gap graph.
The first 1/3 of wealth in America is owned by the 1%.
The top 10% own 2/3 of the wealth in America, and the 90% of us, we own That last third.
It's not rule of the people if we can't afford rent and food.
Democracy just becomes a word, a formality with that kind of inequality.
Trump's 2 terms have emboldened an already criminal corporate gangster class.
One of the titans— when one of the titans of Wall Street paid Jeffrey Epstein millions of dollars, what was it for?
What was the line item?
It was tax advice.
Kind of poetic, I think.
I have a feeling all 12 of you like the part about giving 18,000 local small businesses tax relief from the BLT.
I think the controversial part is about the 400 companies who pay their CEOs at this high ratio.
We heard from Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies in the great webinar Mitch and Angelita did with her.
She said that what she said today, not only does this poll well, Americans like the idea of a 50-to-1 CEO ratio tax, but she also said when Americans are asked, they think like 7-to-1 is a fair ratio.
And when I heard that, I laughed.
It's really sad to hear.
People have talked about the Starbucks CEO pay ratio is 1,800 to 1.
As a kid, my mom would drive me to my grandma's house on Mount Tabor, and we'd pass what is now the Starbucks on Stark and 102nd.
I remember when it was a Coffee People, and I think that memory kind of tells the story of our economy in a really heartbreaking way.
So yes, it's good to incentivize corporations to pay their workers more.
But there's another side to this.
I watched your budget process this year.
I watched you vote over and over not to restore services the mayor had cut.
You made hard choices faced with a record shortfall of $160 million.
I quoted the New York mayor months ago, balancing the budget on the backs of working people.
I'm still seeing city workers pleading with you for a fair contract.
I think that budget process is something to keep in mind as you consider a policy like this, the top 10 wealthiest Americans who own 2/3 of our country's wealth never have to scramble like my city government has to scramble.
They never have to scramble like Portland Public Schools is scrambling.
They never have to scramble like half of Americans living paycheck to paycheck.
And I don't think any of you think that's right.
Candace Avalos
Thank you.
Rebecca Dobert
Lydia Kiesling's online.
You can go ahead, Lydia.
Good morning.
My name is Lydia Kiesling, and I'm a resident of District 3 and a member of Portland DSA.
The state of Oregon has the highest rate of unsheltered children in the United States, number one.
The city of Portland, which you govern, has around 9,000 people living on its streets and many, many thousands more people who do not have a place to live.
Those people, who are often not counted, live in cars or with relatives or acquaintances or in extended-stay motels.
Many of these people have jobs and go to work every day, just like you.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Bryan Goldstone, in his book There Is No Place for Us, meticulously details the way that working people in America are pushed into homelessness by a predatory economy that squeezes value out of them and then throws them away.
American companies collude to maintain a permanent underclass through low wages, unstable hours, and schedules that make benefits out of the question.
The private equity companies that buy up housing units and drive up rents also own the extended-stay hotels that people must turn to after they can no longer keep up with the rent.
Keep up with rent or pay the deposit for a new place.
These are facts, and there has been no social, legal, or material consequence for these corporate behaviors, even though they have directly contributed to the skyrocketing rates of homelessness in our country, both the kinds that is visible in our streets and the kind that is tucked away in mold-filled motels and is no less devastating.
The proposed fair share tax is an expression of economic justice that seeks to prevent CEOs from growing unimaginable wealth on the backs of people they don't pay enough to live.
It requires large companies to recognize the incredible resources of Portland's human, cultural, and built environment, which they have been happy to exploit without contributing to.
It bolsters our budget at a moment when so many of the vital services we need are being slashed, and it materially helps our amazing Portland small businesses, the same group that is always deployed by politicians to support policy or complain about taxes, and reduces the burdens upon them.
Our model of trickle-down philanthropy from people and corporations who want their name on a building will not restore our bus service.
It will not house people, clean our parks, fill potholes, or put money in working people's pockets.
We cannot wait for companies to do the right things because they will not.
They are beholden to their shareholders, not their workers, not their cities, and not you and me.
Government must compel them to contribute, just like individual Portlanders do, but at a rate that at least tries to approach fairness.
If you vote against this, you are choosing a billionaire who doesn't even go here over someone who owns your favorite coffee shop and sends their kids to Portland Public Schools.
Thank you.
You are choosing a billionaire who will use his wealth to meddle in our democracy over kids in Portland who need swimming lessons.
You are choosing a billionaire over the people who clean and care for the building you're in, whose commutes have gotten longer and whose bills are going up every day.
That's the choice you will make if you do not support this common-sense, incontrovertibly just piece of legislation.
That will be your political legacy.
Thank you.
Sarah Fisher.
Brian Kotlove, Dion Mensah, Jamie Partridge, Nicole Dubrow.
Sameer Kanal
We'll be taking a short break after this group of panelists.
Rebecca Dobert
Brian's online.
You can go ahead, Brian.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Uh, hi everyone, good morning.
My name is Brian.
I'm a resident of District 4, and I'm speaking in opposition to this misguided piece of local legislation that should be taken up in the U.S. Congress, not Portland City Hall.
Many councilors and testifiers are taking it as simple fact that companies will continue to invest in Portland with no change if this tax is implemented, but it ignores the tens of thousands of companies this tax targets who are not consumer-focused and can more easily avoid creating a tax nexus in Portland by simply not hiring Portland workers.
If this legislation passes, the people who ultimately lose aren't wealthy CEOs.
They're Portland workers.
We all want workers to earn better wages, receive better benefits, and enjoy better working conditions.
And the most powerful way to achieve these worker benefits is by making employers compete for their labor.
As an example, if you only have one potential employer, that employer has enormous leverage over you.
They can pay you less, offer fewer benefits, and provide worse working conditions because you have nowhere else to go.
But when 10 companies are competing to hire you, the dynamic changes completely.
Now employers have to compete for your labor.
Mitch Green
They have to offer better pay, better benefits, and better working conditions.
Sameer Kanal
And that's how workers gain true bargaining power— the ability to tell the CEO of your company, pay me more money or I'm going to work for the company down the street.
That's why I find this proposal counterproductive at the local level.
We're proposing to dramatically increase taxes on some of the very businesses we should want competing thank you.
Thank you, Mayor.
This ordinance would prohibit employers from competing aggressively to hire Portland workers.
Supporters say this will help workers, but discouraging potential employers from investing here, expanding here, or hiring here is absolutely anti-worker.
The best thing we can do for Portland workers is make Portland a place where employers compete aggressively for their talent.
So please don't undermine that competition.
Please reject this anti-worker piece of legislation and find an alternative avenue to get small businesses the relief Dionne's online.
Rebecca Dobert
Dionne, you can go ahead.
Candace Avalos
Hello and good morning, councilors.
My name is Dionne Mensah, and I serve as the deputy director of the Oregon Black Worker Center at Imagine Black, and I live within District 2.
Led by Imagine Black Futures and the Rosewood Initiative, the Oregon Black Worker Center is the only worker center in Oregon built explicitly for Black workers.
We are a statewide center building power, dignity, and a real shot at economic justice for Black workers across Oregon.
We organize, educate, advocate, and hold space for community care to build collective power for Black Oregonians.
We are in support of the Fair Share Tax, a pivotal step towards reducing the stark pay inequality between rich CEOs and their median worker.
While these exploitative companies continue to bring in record profits and higher CEO pay, Their workers are often left suffering trying to make ends meet.
CEO pay has continued to skyrocket since 1978.
CEOs at the largest US corporations saw their pay increase by 1,094%, while worker pay only grew 26% over the same time period.
For example, as we've talked about today, the CEO of Starbucks is paid at a rate of almost 1,800 to 1 compared to their median worker.
On the day-to-day basis, however, we know that the lowest paid workers are the ones taking on the daily brunt of the work that keeps the corporation profitable.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics September 2026 report, the jobless rate of Black Americans rose from 6% to 7% between August and September this year.
300,000 Black women were forced out of the workforce in 2025.
At a time when gas prices are off the charts, utility bills are only continuing to rise, and food costs are unheard of, folks are being forced into dire situations trying to get their basic needs met.
The fair share tax is an opportunity to incentivize CEOs at companies that pay 50 times or more than their median worker to raise wages for the workers to avoid paying the additional surtax.
These workers deserve so much better, and the fair share tax is a step in the right direction to getting them the pay that they truly need and deserve.
Bringing in an estimated $72 million annually in revenue for the City of Portland, the fair share tax can also serve as an important way to bring dollars in to support public services.
This is significant.
As you all know, large cuts were made to address the budget deficit this year, and working-class people are the first folks to feel these impacts of public services being reduced or eliminated altogether.
This additional revenue would be critical in ensuring that Portlanders have the services that they need, and this makes a difference between someone being able to make their normal TriMet commute home or a family being able to access summer programs for their children.
The Oregon Black Workers Center believes in the power of working-class people.
We stand in support of the Fair Share Tax today to join the call for a better Portland for folks to live, work, and play in.
We have an important opportunity here to change the systems that burden Black workers and working-class people from all walks of life.
We urge you all to see the benefit in not only reining in unreasonable CEO pay, but also lifting up worker wages and supporting our city's small businesses.
Thank you.
Rebecca Dobert
You can go ahead at the table.
Good morning, Chair Kanal and committee.
It's always an honor and a privilege to be with you.
I'm Sarah Fisher.
I'm an Episcopal priest and a longtime resident of District 3.
Over 40 years, I've lived in all 4 quadrants of our city.
I walk everywhere.
I shop local.
I know that neighborhoods are the backbone of this city and small businesses, like schools, are its beating heart and lifeblood.
Small businesses make our city strive.
Every small business I know struggles to make ends meet every day and every month.
Candace Avalos
Some don't know how they will keep the lights on from week to week.
Rebecca Dobert
One ice storm can ruin a small restaurant's whole year.
One of my favorite sayings is that you can count the seeds in an apple, but you cannot count the apples in a seed.
This elimination of the BLT, however small it may seem to many of you, is a seed for small businesses.
If anyone has stories about communities that thrive in a culture of austerity, Let me know.
When small businesses thrive, we all thrive.
As a pastor who advocates for our neighbors who are silenced by extreme poverty, I'm often accused of only caring about poor and unhoused people.
This is not true.
In addition to supporting small business owners throughout our city, I am deeply concerned about the spiritual and moral health of people who think it's okay to pay their employees such a tiny percentage of what they make themselves.
I don't want our city to follow the morally bankrupt path of the federal administration.
The fair share tax will help all Portlanders and everyone who does business here.
Please do the right thing.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Sameer Kanal
Hello, good morning.
I'm Jamie Partridge.
I'm a retired mail carrier in District 2, and I'm here to speak on, um, in favor of the fair share tax and on behalf of my favorite barista, um, Thank you.
Rebecca Dobert
I have a question for Councilor Herbold.
Sameer Kanal
I have a small business owner, a sole proprietor who is working right now, not able to come and testify for herself.
She runs a coffee food cart, Latina, single mother of 3, works 8 hours a day, 7 days a week to keep her coffee food cart afloat and makes $125,000 a year, which puts her above the level for the small business exemption for the business license tax.
If the exemption were raised to $500,000 like this proposal would do, she could take a day off.
It would make that much difference in her life.
And why in the world would we not raise taxes on the multi-billion-dollar corporations that have CEOs that make over 50 times their average worker.
Think of the average worker making $25 an hour, CEO making $2.5 million a year.
Who needs that kind of money?
I—.
My corporation, the US Postal Service, the CEO, 7 levels of management above the the postal workers makes $350,000 a year.
That's 6 times what the average worker makes.
That seems like too much to me anyway, but it's a lot less than what we're talking about here and certainly much more reasonable.
As someone suggested that the average person in a survey said that 7 to 1 seemed reasonable.
Rebecca Dobert
I don't know.
Sameer Kanal
But it's— what we're talking about here is really out of line.
And why wouldn't we want to bring in tens of millions of dollars to improve and secure the services that we all deserve, like expanding social housing?
Anyway, we deserve it.
Let's do it.
Thank you.
Rebecca Dobert
Nicole is online.
You can go ahead.
Hi, thanks.
I'm a Portlander in Dan Ryan's District 2, and I'm testifying in favor of the fair share tax on behalf of the lifeblood of our city, small business owners and their local employees.
The independent entrepreneurial spirit of Portland's DIY culture was one of the primary reasons I moved to Portland 20 years ago.
I love getting to know the local business owners in my neighborhood and the interactions I have with business owners and their employees is so innately ingrained into my sense of community in place.
When I moved out of my longtime neighborhood, I shared a tender moment of goodbye with the owner of the neighborhood pet shop, No Po Paws, because I grieved knowing she and her store would not be part of my daily fabric anymore.
I still think fondly of the local coffee shop, Red E, that always had a treat behind the counter for my dog and a smile and chitchat for me.
That made my latte way sweeter than anything union-busting corporate Starbucks could ever serve.
In fact, it was my former housemate from 2009 that's now a business owner that first alerted me, um, to, to the need to testify.
And then I met another business owner at Dead Moon Night, a free concert partially organized by local business Mississippi Records.
We waxed nostalgic about old Portland and the urgency of saving local businesses.
In order to save our local economy and beloved culture.
But a lot has changed in Portland, particularly affordability.
Instead of conversations deciding which new restaurant to try, I find my friends and I talking more about which of our favorite restaurants closed recently.
We even make our lists of like top 5 favorite restaurants and cafes and shops that we miss.
Shout out to Revelry, the best restaurant that's no longer here.
Um, Earlier this week, a friend of mine sent out a survey asking friends to brainstorm their next step because they had to shut down their business due to it not being profitable anywhere.
Meanwhile, Portland's healthcare and school systems are consolidating, our nation's media has further consolidated, and Live Nation seems to get more favorable treatment by the city than our beloved local music venue Doug Fir.
The city needs to do what it can to stop the bleeding.
Passing the fair share tax is one tangible way to do that.
The City of Portland must stand with the local business owners that are the pulse of our community.
The City of Portland must stand with the local employees whose livelihoods are dependent on the survival of our local business culture.
Failure to do so will erode the vibrancy of our city for the vast majority of us, just for the continued benefit of the faceless C-suites and shareholders who are the cause of the affordability crisis.
Please stand with local partner businesses and the vast majority of residents who love them, and not the corporate lobbyists whose interests are in stark opposition to our goal to have the sustainability of a thriving Portland for all, for generations to come, and not just sustainability for the top few.
Thank you.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, colleagues.
We're going to take a short break.
We'll be back at 11:24.
Please try to be back on time.
Thanks.
All right, thank you.
We are now back, and Rebecca, if you could please call up the, uh, the next panel.
Candace Avalos
Thanks.
Rebecca Dobert
Molly Hogan.
Bernabe Ruiz, Lauren Armony, Esther Leon, Jennifer Bitgood.
Sameer Kanal
All right.
Go ahead.
Um, hello, Council.
Thank you for this opportunity to speak.
My name is Molly Hogan, and I'm with the Welcome Home Coalition, a housing justice alliance in the Portland metro.
Candace Avalos
I'm here today to strongly encourage you to vote yes and pass the fair share tax.
This tax is so common sense and thoughtfully crafted, it should be easy to say yes.
Sameer Kanal
We live in insane wealth inequality, and it's literally making our society sick.
There's a popular story being told that the rich are suffering and that they make all the jobs and that they will leave all the cities if they have to pay their fair share.
This argument is tired and has been used over and over, and it fails to come true.
Corporations are not going to stop selling stuff to the people of Portland.
Let's ground ourselves in real dollar amounts of corporate salaries.
Starbucks CEO makes $31 million a year, and the average Starbucks barista makes $30,000 a year.
T-Mobile CEO makes $35 million a year.
The average customer service rep makes $42,000 a year.
Nike CEO makes $36 million a year.
The average retail store manager makes $60K a year.
Candace Avalos
If you spent $20,000 every day, it would take you 5 years to spend the Nike CEO's annual earnings.
Sameer Kanal
That is crazy to think about, spending $20,000 every day for 5 years.
Another beautiful aspect of this ordinance is if a corporation doesn't have— want to pay it, they can just pay their CEO less and their workers more, or have more money to hire more workers, which in turn means more people are thriving overall.
And if they don't, then they need to chip in to the society that they extract from, because thousands of people in our city are living in tents, cars, shelters, and waiting in long lines for plates of food.
And since I am often here asking you all to spend money on making sure housing is affordable and safe for everyone who wants it, I would like to ask that you ensure a portion of the funds created from this new tax be spent specifically on increasing affordable homeownership and rental housing in the city.
Candace Avalos
I hear you all discuss the housing crisis on and on, but when it comes to big investments in housing, this council continues to fall short.
Sameer Kanal
You literally had Housing Bureau funds that you returned to the general fund this year.
That is not the kind of intense focus and bold investments that is going to move the needle in the housing crisis.
We say no kings a lot lately in Portland, but do we really mean it?
By voting yes to the fair share tax, this city council can show us that you stand with working people and small business owners, and that you do not want to be ruled by the kings and queens of corporate royalty.
Thanks for your time, and do the right thing.
Candace Avalos
Thank you.
It's you, Barnaby.
Sameer Kanal
Uh, good morning, Council.
My name is Barnaby Ruiz.
Uh, first of all, I want to thank you for listening to me.
Um, 9 years ago, almost 10, I moved to Northeast Portland, and I'm a person with visual impairment, which means that I'm blind, and, uh, The reason I'm talking in favor of this proposal is because I would like to see some of that money invest in public infrastructure and transportation instead of those CEOs and corporations' pockets.
Through those 9 years, I've been catching the bus on the corner of MLK, Martin Luther King, and Failing.
And in the beginning, the bus just comes every 10, every 15 minutes.
And now it comes every 20 minutes, sometimes every 30 minutes, which makes sometimes impossible to get to our appointments or to our jobs on time.
And the building I lived on has no wheelchair access, which means that being blind, I can live there, but A person with wheelchair is not— there is not allowed, but it's impossible for them to live in that building.
The sidewalks doesn't have— they do not have ramps for wheelchairs to get around.
On top of that, they are— they got cracks because of time, and sometimes I trip on those cracks.
That's how I know.
Okay.
Some of my friends live in the streets.
They are homeless.
They are not as fortunate as me.
They don't have a place to live.
And because of that, I would like to see some of that money as well invest in housing.
And because one of my friends in particular just got housed last week after 4 and a half years living in the streets.
Thank you.
A lot of them are not as fortunate as him as me, you know, and I would like to see some of that money invested in that too.
And on top of that, I lost my favorite taco cart because they can't afford to rent in there anymore, you know.
And I'm Mexican and I love Mexican food, and now I have to go away, too far away.
But at least there's a list of the problems I would like, and I encourage you guys to support this.
Thank you.
Proposal today for we to see better infrastructure, better transportation, and overall a better living for the people of Portland that I love so much.
Rebecca Dobert
Thank you, councilors.
My name is Esther Leone.
I live in the Brooklyn neighborhood where our local business scene is struggling.
Currently, I am running for a seat on City Council, and in that journey, I've been hearing directly from Portland's small business— small business owners about the extremely tight margins they are working with.
Many break even just enough to keep their doors open, but never enough to take a day off.
We are living through the most egregious wealth inequality since the years leading up to the Civil War.
With 1% of our national population owning more wealth than 90% of us combined.
This is not a result of merit.
It is not the result of hard work on the part of the rich, nor is it a result of poor work ethic on behalf of the rest of us.
It is a manufactured state directly enabled by government leaders who provided tax break after subsidy after loan forgiveness after bailout to mega corporations funding their campaigns.
Last month, Fortune magazine reported that Amazon's workers receiving food stamps have tripled since 2020 despite record revenue.
Uber and Lyft continue to raise rideshare costs without providing their employees benefits.
Starbucks continues its union-busting efforts while capitalizing off of Pacific Northwest pride.
Companies like these have clearly demonstrated that they in fact have no intention to reinvest consumer dollars back into the pockets of the working class.
It's time to stop being afraid of what they will do if we rise up and instead make them pay their fair share.
The beauty of this amendment is that it only targets companies whose CEOs are making 50 times or more than their median paid worker.
And for once, the folks I know are pouring their heart and soul into our community get a well-deserved break.
My neighbors remember a time when all you could find in Portland were mom-and-pop shops.
It's how Keep Portland Weird was born.
We have a moral obligation to reverse the pathological wealth hoarding that is literally putting Portlanders out of house and home.
This tax would not only change the lives of 18,000 small business owners, but it would revitalize every neighborhood in the city we love.
I urge you to pass the fair share tax.
Your vote on this amendment sends a clear signal of whose interests you are truly working for.
I sincerely hope it is for the overwhelming majority of Portlanders.
Thank you.
Hello, city councilors.
Good morning.
My name is Lauren Armony, and I have the privilege of being here because I work with Welcome Home, but I was born in D4, raised in D3, and have lived in D2 and D1.
I love Portland, and that's why I'm urging you to vote yes to move forward with the fair share tax.
I'm so glad to hear other folks bring up right-sizing and coffee people because that's what came up for me too.
And I'm so glad that other people brought up a lot of great facts because then I can just talk about me and my friends and my neighbors, right?
So right-sizing is usually used to rationalize the trimming and cutting and gutting of our social and public services.
But you all have the opportunity to right-size a policy to increase local funding and resources.
That's incredible.
How often has that happened in the last couple years?
Uh, I've testified in front of you before to share what it was like to grow up here and how it has felt to be priced passed out and homeless in your hometown.
Where I've said I have to choose between retirement, having a child, or owning home.
And you can add owning a small business, starting a small business to that.
I grew up around the corner from the Coffee People on Hawthorne.
Sameer Kanal
Shout out, if you know, you know.
Rebecca Dobert
And back in the day, they would put gummy bears for free on the, the hot cocoa lids for little kids.
Sameer Kanal
So I would go there and be like, I'm getting my gummy bears, I'm getting my hot cocoa.
Rebecca Dobert
We're going to Kids at Heart across the street.
And I cannot tell you how much my young life was filled with so much simple joy and magic just from being able to do that.
We didn't even buy stuff at Kids at Heart.
Let's be real.
We were still working class.
And although there are still plenty of small businesses on Hawthorne, not many of them actually serve children.
And if they do, their margins are far too slim to put those gummy bears on the hot cocoa lids.
Small business owners are actually really busy donating to nonprofits like Welcome Home Coalition, filling service and kindness gaps to people in our city.
And yes, keeping Portland weird.
This is not a panacea.
I'm not naive, but it's an easy step in the right direction.
And although $900 doesn't sound like a lot, it can still buy a lot of gummy bears and a lot of hugs.
Thank you.
Even in this economy.
So thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak.
Please make the common sense choice to vote yes to pass on the fair share tax.
Thank you.
Amy Thomas, Chris Gustafson, Devin Ruiz, Kalen Channing, Noah Bernstein Hanley.
Rowan Harvey.
Sameer Kanal
Good morning, councilors.
Uh, my name is Christopher Gustafson.
I live in District 3.
I am a— the treasurer of the City of Portland Professional Workers Union, and today I have the pleasure of addressing you as a representative of thank you, Council President.
I'm going to speak on behalf of my union rather than a private individual, as I usually do.
I would urge you all to support the amendment to the fair share tax for 3 specific reasons.
One, this is a progressive tax policy that acknowledges the excessive CEO compensation and the extractive nature of the large corporations that operate in the city of Portland.
Local economy, and particularly for those businesses that are run by owner-operators.
This is a great way to incentivize those folks to continue to operate those businesses and to keep that labor value that is earned within the City of Portland as opposed to being extracted and hoarded by wealthy shareholders.
Third, we urge you to support this because this directly affects my membership, the City of Portland Workers.
We are everyday Portlanders, and we provide those essential services that the city, the citizens of the city of Portland rely on.
And it would be thrilling if we could avoid having a third year in a row, this being the second year in a row where we are currently undergoing a strike authorization vote to ask for fair compensation for our members so that they can live and thrive.
Thrive in the city they support, they live in and work for.
And finally, I really appreciate one of the earlier speakers mentioning something that has been high on my mind, and that is that with any luck, we can avoid a repeat of what happened in the spring TAO where we took $8.6 million of money that was programmed for affordable rental housing to fill a general fund gap.
So thank you very much for the opportunity, and I urge you to support this amendment to the ordinance.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
Thank you, Council.
My name is Noah Bernstein.
Some of you may recognize my name as a member of the Financial Stabilization and Recovery Workgroup, co-led by Councilors Green and Zimmerman.
Others may know me as your friendly D2 bagel guy heading up Bernstein's Bagels on North Russell Street.
I'm also a working musician, resident of District 2, stepfather to a rad 22-year-old Portlander, and I'm here today to give my emphatic support for the fair share tax.
In the Financial Stabilization Workgroup, we talked about how roughly 80% of the general fund comes from property taxes and the business license tax.
A full third of the discretionary budget comes from business license taxes.
Property taxes are capped by Measures 5 and 50, something that many here see as a political nonstarter to amend.
So I think if you're against the proposed CEO pay ratio surtax, you need to ask yourselves if you're really going to fund Portland's financial recovery by grinding down small businesses and the working class, or are you just hoping for mega corporations to become more ubiquitous and profitable?
Thank you.
And working class be damned, because we can't keep cutting.
We're talking about closing 14 schools, and I think that's utterly shameful as a society.
At a certain point, we need to find more money to put into the budget, and I think every single person in this room knows where the money is.
Portland prides itself on being a small business town, and I'm sure all of you champion us when talking to your constituents.
We are 94% of all Portland businesses and employ 35% of the workforce.
Our street-level shops are the literal face of the city.
We are also the front line when Portland pulls back core services for our houseless neighbors.
My employees and I give out free bagels and coffee every day to folks in need.
We're a place to warm up and get out of the rain, use the bathroom without needing to purchase anything.
We are trash service and street cleaning, crisis response.
Amazon just moved into a flex warehouse next door to our shop and didn't provide bathrooms for their employees, so delivery drivers come and use ours.
I don't ask for anything or get anything in return for all of this, but today I'm asking for the huge corporations doing business in Portland to pay their share.
Giant corporations are enjoying a raft of tax breaks at the federal level while our local funding dries up.
CEO pay packages skyrocket and average workers' wages are stagnant in the middle of a citywide economic crisis.
The consolidation and mergers at the top have annihilated any chance of competition.
It's time.
You all didn't get elected to get reelected.
You're here to do the hard thing, which I think sounds pretty easy, and tax the rich.
Yes to the CEO pay ratio surtax, and yes to the BLT exemptions for small businesses.
It's a small but important first step that City Council can make to show you're actually on the side of small businesses and the people of Portland.
I thank Councilors Green and Murillo for putting forth this proposal.
Thank you.
Thanks for your time.
Hi, my name is Kaylin Channing.
I use she/her pronouns, and I'm here to ask the council to vote yes on the fair share tax.
I'm a resident of District 4, and like the majority of Multnomah County residents, I've chosen to make the proud state of Oregon my home after being born elsewhere.
In my case, I moved to Portland from my home state of Louisiana last year to take a job as an ICU nurse at Providence, St. Vincent.
Since moving, I've enjoyed higher wages and a higher quality of life than I could have ever found back in Louisiana.
I bring all this up because for my entire life, Louisiana has had some of the most generous corporate tax subsidies in the country.
Louisiana has slashed corporate taxes more than Oregon, has cut government services more than Oregon, and has shifted the tax burden to consumers with high sales taxes.
And surely Louisiana's economy is thriving, right?
Yeah.
Over my lifetime, Louisiana, like Oregon, has outpaced the national average in GDP growth.
But while Oregon has also outpaced the average in GDP growth, they have also increased— outpaced the average in worker productivity growth, per capita personal income growth, and wage growth for our lowest paid workers.
Louisiana has ranked near the bottom in all 3 categories.
Wages are low, Corporate profits are high, and small businesses in Louisiana struggle to compete.
That's why young college-educated professionals like myself, and frankly most of the nurses I've worked with here, have fled failing states like Louisiana in droves for progressive, productive cities that are willing to stand up for their workers.
So I will conclude by inviting the members of the council to vote yes on the fair share tax ordinance.
To learn from the lesson of my home state.
And I'll also finish with a warning to any councilors who are reluctant to do so.
This is an election year, and across the country, voters are turning out in record numbers for candidates running on platforms of taxing the rich.
It is not just Zohran Mamdani.
It is Troy Jackson in Maine.
It is Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
It is James Talarico in Texas and Josh Tuurek in Iowa.
Purple and red states and blue states alike, the writing is on the wall.
Americans are demanding that our leaders tell wealthy corporations to pay their fair share.
Voters are turning out for those electeds who have the courage to rise to the moment, and we're tossing out electeds who would rather protect large corporations than their working-class constituents.
I'm pleased that one of my District 4 councilors, Councilor Green, has already expressed support for this measure.
And I hope my other councilors, Councilors Clark and Zimmerman, as well as the rest of the council, will do the same.
Candace Avalos
Thank you.
Rebecca Dobert
Okay, good morning, councilors.
My name is Rowan Harvey.
I'm a District 3 resident and organizer with NextUp Action Fund, a political home for young people, and I'm here in support of the fair share tax ordinance.
I was born at St. Vincent's, actually.
I've lived here my whole life.
I have watched the city change a lot, as a lot of us have.
And as working young people struggle to get out of the ruthless check-to-check cycle, CEOs are raking it in.
While young people are deciding between food and rent, and parents are worried about what their kids are going to eat at school or if their school will even be open, billionaires are artificially inflating the price prices of our groceries and gas to make more money.
I want more for us.
I want more funding for our schools, for our transportation and infrastructure, for PSR, for the services that take care of us.
Updating the fair share tax helps us get there.
I recognize that today is just the first step, but it's one that gives us the opportunity to learn how we can not only decrease the tax burden on our small businesses, which could in turn encourage more young entrepreneurs to start their business, something I've heard councilors on the dais express grave concern over, but also increase a revenue source for public services we depend on without further burdening working Portlanders.
Yet we have councilors calling for oppositional testimony.
What exactly is there to oppose?
Taxing corporations and CEOs while giving small businesses a tax break?
Is it funding our budget without passing the cost on to Portlanders only to shrug and say sorry, this is the only way?
Opposition to no longer doing the dirty work of the wealthy and their lobbyists by repeating the falsehood that they will leave if we tax them?
Or is it the opposition to Portland leading the way on an issue that has bipartisan support nationally?
That's weird.
For too long, millionaires and billionaires have benefited from the myth of their extraordinary individualism, making them more deserving of every dollar low-wage workers earn for them.
Devin's online.
Devin, you can go ahead.
Candace Avalos
Good morning, Council.
My name is Devin Ruiz.
I live in D2, and I'm a registered lobbyist for NextUp.
We are a nonprofit organization that works to amplify the voice and leadership of diverse young people to achieve a more just and equitable Oregon.
Nearly every time I've stood before this Council, it has been to plead with each of you To consider the affordability crisis that young people are facing as they build their lives in Portland.
We are at a point where it's considered a splurge if people go out for dinner or have a night out with friends.
There are so many societal impacts that come from reducing your life to working, sleeping, and repeating.
When young people don't have money to spend, that cuts off support for our local economy.
And today, before council, we have a simple solution that benefits workers, small businesses, and the local Portland economy.
Thank you.
Young and working-class Portlanders are already consistently asking for safety nets and investments in this city.
I see no reason why councilors elected by Portlanders should be more concerned with the pockets and wealth concentration of CEOs and billionaires instead of supporting the fair share tax.
The fair share tax will support small businesses, bring more revenue to the general fund, and will act as a motivator for companies to reconcile that gross disparity between CEO pay and median wage, something that disproportionately impacts young workers.
If this council gives in to fearmongering to rally people against taxing those with the most ability to pay, I'm afraid of what our city will lose as we step into the 2027 budget session and beyond.
We have a revenue problem because we refuse to look at how we can target corporations that are the biggest drivers of inequality.
New business openings have declined for decades nationally and in Portland.
And while the growth wealth disparity of CEOs has exponentially grown, it is insulting to ask small businesses and median wage workers to accept this reality so that corporate lobbyists can use our elected council as pawns for wealth hoarding.
The best interest of Portlanders is being pushed aside as we watch councilors call for opposition testimony to a policy that only benefits people who live, work, and build in our city.
While people in Portland and across the country are paying more for gas and groceries than ever before, corporations like Shell reported their profits more than doubled to $8.9 billion— sorry, $9.8 billion.
Those profits are not reaching the consumers or workers.
Wages are lower than ever, clearly showing that when you lower corporate taxes, it only benefits the people at top.
We urge Portland City Council to unanimously support the fair share tax.
This policy has existed for over a decade, and we are far beyond the time of a needed adjustment that speaks to how wealth disparity has grown in that time.
It's time for the city to work for Portlanders, not lobbyists and corporations.
Thank you for your time, and thank you for allowing the people to use our full testimony time today.
Rebecca Dobert
Irina Solomon.
Sherry Jamison, Jordan Lewis, Carrie Koch, Joe Squires, Lorena Mora, and Francesca Barini.
And you can go ahead at the table when you're seated.
Good morning, councilors.
My name is Sherry Jamison, and I'm the co-chair of Music Oregon's Music Advocacy Council.
Here in Portland.
I'm here on behalf of the hundreds of musicians and music industry workers who live and work in our city and who are constituents in every district.
I'm also a former music venue operator at a venue based in Northeast Portland, so I understand firsthand the challenges that small music businesses face.
I'm speaking in support of the fair share tax because music Uh, the music economy here in Portland depends on small businesses.
Our music ecosystem includes independent venues, recording studios, rehearsal spaces, ticketing companies, sound engineers, recording record stores, labels, managers, booking agents, touring bands, and many other small operators.
These businesses often work with narrow margins while facing rising rents, insurance, labor, equipment, and operating costs.
And these businesses have economic impact that extends well beyond the music industry itself.
They bring people into our neighborhoods where they spend money at other local businesses too.
Raising the business license tax exemption would provide meaningful relief to many of them.
I understand the city estimates the average savings of $900 and for a small venue or studio, that is not insignificant.
That could cover a month of utilities, pay for an equipment repair, or cover several shifts of a part-time worker.
And the benefit isn't just money.
It also means less paperwork and compliance time for owners who are already wearing many, many hats all at once.
That gives them more capacity to focus on running their business.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Rebecca Dobert
Supporting Portland's music economy also means investing in city infrastructure that makes that economy possible.
Musicians, venue, and music workers depend on safe and accessible public spaces, reliable transportation, public safety, and the other services that allow people to live, work, gather, and participate in cultural life.
Our audiences depend on these services too.
The fair share tax would help maintain and strengthen that foundation by asking more from the largest corporations while providing relief to small businesses.
The resulting revenue can support the public investment that Portland's creative economy relies on every day.
So when we talk about sustaining music in Portland, we should think beyond grants and beyond cultural programs.
We should also support the small businesses that make that music possible and the public systems that allow them to thrive.
For these reasons and more, Music Oregon's Music Advocacy Council supports the fair share tax and I encourage the council to pass it.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Candace Avalos
Good morning, I'm Irena Solomon and I've lived in District 2 since 2007.
I've done small business taxes since 2008 and I support the fair share tax.
Um, I love taxes.
Literally, my, my new manicure, if you can see, says 1040 on this hand and 1120-S on the other hand.
So, um, I love helping small business tax owners navigate the potentially complex maze of tax compliance, which is a good thing because, fun fact, Portland has one of the most complex tax business compliance landscapes in the country.
Even the smallest business here can owe up to 8 different taxes, which jumps to 14 for an S corp, paid to up to 7 to 9 different taxing authorities.
Using at least 4 different definitions of taxable income.
For a large company with a full-service accounting firm, that's an annoyance.
But for the micro businesses that I serve, many with low incomes, it's an unfair burden.
And mistakes are expensive.
If I pay my business license tax 4 months late, the penalty is 25%.
Rebecca Dobert
For the same late payment, the IRS will charge me 2%.
Candace Avalos
Okay, so who actually pays this?
Rebecca Dobert
Because I'm a nerd, I pulled the most recent year's numbers from my own practice.
Candace Avalos
My clients average $160,000 in annual income, but about a third are under $90,000.
About half of my clients in Multnomah County had business income, and of those people, a little less than half had to pay.
Of my clients that owed this tax, Half of them were under 120% of the median family income for their family size.
A third of them were under 80% of the median family income, and 1 in 10 was under 200% of the federal poverty level.
That's—.
That means they're living on $32,000 for 1 person, less than $43,000 for 2.
This proposal and its increase of the exemption amount will make a huge difference to the smallest businesses trying to survive, thrive, grow, and support families.
One case study I'd like to share with you is myself.
I'm a single parent to my 2 kids who are here with me today.
For the year cited above, my own income was just about 100% of the median family income for my household size, and my business license tax in that year was almost 1.5% of that income.
But at least I didn't have to worry about paying a tax pro to help me figure it out.
Raising the exemption helps with the actual tax paid, of course, but it also helps to greatly simplify the compliance burden for those who can least afford it.
I urge you to support the fair share tax.
Thank you so much for your time today.
Rebecca Dobert
That was so good.
Um, my name is Carrie Ko, president of the City of Portland Professional Workers Union.
We represent 800 workers all across the city of Portland.
And I will keep it very simple.
You've heard incredible testimony today.
Um, everybody on this council talks about themselves as a progressive representative of the city of Portland and of the people of Portland.
And now this is, uh, the fair share tax.
You have an opportunity to back up those words with meaningful action.
The top shareholders and the CEOs of these corporations are not your constituents.
The Portlanders who work for them are.
Um, but beyond that, you have a responsibility to figure out stable revenue for this city so that the City of Portland can be a model employer too.
And this isn't a silver bullet, but it's a good start.
Um, my union, the City of Portland Professional Workers Union, is supporting the fair share tax because it makes sense that corporations— that if corporations are going to siphon money out of their workers' pockets to put that money into the top person Um, otherwise, the workers who otherwise would go out into our communities and spend that money, that the—.
Candace Avalos
That we need to figure out a way for them to pay their fair share in a different way.
Rebecca Dobert
So whether you're a worker at a mega corporation or a worker here at the City of Portland, you deserve fair compensation, respect on the job, and a stable future.
That's what we're fighting for.
That's what we're fighting for in our contract right now.
That is why we launched our strike authorization vote today, and that's why I am I'm speaking here today to encourage you to pass the fair share tax.
Thank you.
Sameer Kanal
Hey, good morning everybody.
Mitch Green
I'm Joe Squires.
I'm, uh, uh, District 2, the fighting, the fighting 2.
Sameer Kanal
Uh, I'm born and raised here in Portland other than a stint in the nuclear Navy when I was young.
Mitch Green
And, uh, I'm a business owner, have been for 20 years, and I came here to talk about that.
Uh, from afar, I mean, you know, as a business owner, our, our, our beloved city has a tax problem, has a revenue problem.
As mentioned before, 75% of our revenue comes from property tax and from business tax.
John Batitis, the Multnomah County appraiser, came in and spoke last October and warned of double-digit property tax compression since COVID that's 5 or 6 years in a row of double-digit revenue decreases that comprises about 45% of the overall $800 million budget.
If somebody told me I was having that kind of problem, I would definitely put my thumb on the pulse of that.
And then you're talking about the same thing, about 35— 25-30% of your revenue comes from the business tax.
Well, I'm pretty sure all of us have walked by a vacancy sign on our way to the meeting today.
Vacant storefronts and empty buildings do not bode well for business tax.
And they don't bode well for compression in property tax, i.e., we are hemorrhaging budget top-line revenue.
Steve, you asleep?
Sameer Kanal
You doing good?
Rebecca Dobert
Okay.
Mitch Green
Sorry, I just saw you drifting off there.
Don't use your left hand to hold that.
So, I mean, there's a problem and that's not being addressed.
We have a revenue problem, but I don't think taxing businesses, making Portland additionally not business-friendly, is the solution.
Thank you.
I looked up really quick what businesses would be affected by this, and it's just a pretty cursory search.
Sameer Kanal
I mean, PG has been mentioned, Northwest Natural has been mentioned, AT&T, Comcast.
Mitch Green
Sorry, I don't have a PhD in economics, so I'm not sure which one of those, you know, I mean, that's just, you know, listed businesses.
Gas stations, Target, Home Depot.
I think that's a pretty good list.
Uh, Kroger's grocery-wise, it's Kroger's, Subway, or Safeway, Albertsons, Home Depot, Target, Amazon, which is mentioned, what I'm sure was on the list.
Sameer Kanal
Uh, banking, it's Wells Fargo, it's Comcast.
Mitch Green
If they pass 100% of this tax on to the consumers, which most businesses do, that would equal about a $500 surcharge for a family of 4 in Portland, which kind of—.
Sameer Kanal
Yeah, I can share my math with you.
Mitch Green
Sorry, I don't have a PhD either.
Councilor Green talked about more austerity, and I, you know, as a business owner, if there's a revenue problem, you can either raise prices, you can cut costs, and raising prices, i.e., more taxes, isn't putting Portland out there as very business-friendly.
So I just—.
That's it.
Rebecca Dobert
Thank you.
Sameer Kanal
Go ahead, Jordan.
Hello, City Council.
My name is Jordan Lewis.
I'm a D4 resident and a volunteer lobbyist for the Portland Democratic Socialists of America.
First, I want to thank Bold Coffee for speaking in support of this policy and for opening a business in the Goose Hollow area.
I moved there in 2021 and lived among several vacant storefronts for 5 years.
It takes a lot of courage to move into a space, start a business, and that is how our society runs.
It gets us outside of our houses, gets us talking to other human beings, and it keeps money inside our communities rather than crossing state lines, which is the case with large corporations.
I want to stress that in the competition between large publicly traded corporations and local business, it's not a level playing field.
Large corporations operate on economies of scale and have access to legal and legislative counsel, which local businesses simply do not.
The proposed policy simply levels the playing field just a little bit so that local businesses, which we prefer, have a fairer chance at competing on the quote-unquote free market.
Our world and economy is changing fundamentally.
The pandemic accelerated this, but we're seeing fewer and fewer brick-and-mortar retail operations, and we were well before the pandemic as people made more purchases through apps and on websites.
If you know me, I joke often that the American economy doesn't really make goods and services anymore.
We just shuffle money between accounts and fiddle with tech stuff that no one really understands.
A cornerstone of our economy is artificial intelligence, which is largely fake, and no one wants I actually work in manufacturing, and I joke that our product is, quote, too real for AI.
But I digress.
The American economy has become more K-shaped, which means that it consists of high earners who earn and spend all the money and low earners who make or spend very little.
With this coming age of neo-feudalism, to stand still is not neutral.
We have to respond to a changing environment just to survive.
And I want to thank Councilor Novick for recognizing this and passing the original CEO pay surtax in 2016.
Thank you.
It was the right move.
Unfortunately, that was on the eve of the first Trump administration, which was a historic stripping of American state capacity for parts.
We suffered that huge wound to our country.
And then we had a Biden administration that made some modest reforms and efforts in the other direction.
And then we had a second Trump administration which went even further.
The time has come to adapt to this new economy, not to ignore it and keep business as usual.
Vote yes on the expanded CEO pay surtax.
Thank you.
Finally, I appreciate the testimony which talked about Louisiana and asked whether generous tax rates for corporations resulted in more vibrant economies.
As a born and raised West Virginian, I can express that same sentiment.
West Virginia has been thoroughly disinvested in and suffering my entire life.
This has persisted through years of tax cuts for the wealthy.
Storefronts are empty there too.
Services are being cut there too.
What does West Virginia have to show for all those tax cuts?
And lastly, when someone comes to testify on a turnkey solution for lower taxes, for small businesses while raising revenue from publicly traded companies, and they say Congress should be doing it instead, they're speaking in code.
Congress will never do this.
Congress won't do anything.
That's the point.
It's a rhetorical strategy to seem aligned while getting in the way of our supposedly shared goals.
Don't fall for it.
Candace Avalos
Thanks.
Rebecca Dobert
Lorena, you can go ahead online.
Good morning, members of the committee.
Candace Avalos
My name is Lorena Mora, and I'm the programs and partnership manager at Division Midway Alliance.
We're a nonprofit organization located in District 1, and I'm here today to share my support for the fair share tax.
Through my work at Division Midway Alliance, I work closely with small businesses in East Portland and along the division corridor.
I've seen how important these businesses are to our communities who live there.
They are not just places where people shop or work, but they are places where people build relationships, access access culturally specific services and goods and feel more connected to their neighborhoods.
For many small business owners, especially those who are just starting or operating on a small— smaller margins, every expense matters.
Rising costs, rent, staffing, and other business expenses can make it difficult to keep a business open and continue investing in it.
Exempting 18,000 small businesses from the business license tax would give these small businesses more room to invest in their business, keep their employees, create jobs, and continue serving the community.
We see this connection through our Workforce Navigator program as well.
At DMA, we help community members connect to employment opportunities, and many of the local businesses we work with are an important part of that workforce creation ecosystem.
When small businesses are able to stay open and hire, They create more opportunities for people in our communities to find work and build economic stability.
Local small businesses reinvest into the local community in a way mega corporations simply do not.
Asking the largest corporations with CEO-to-worker pay gaps to contribute more, more helps generate revenue for the city services that Portlanders depend on, such as parks, public safety, and other community programs that are important.
This is about creating a fair system and providing relief where it can make a real difference in the community.
For these reasons, I strongly support the Fair Share Tax and encourage the committee to support this.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Rebecca Dobert
Francesca's online.
You can go ahead.
Hi, my name is Francesca Barini, and I live and work in District 2.
I've been working full-time as an independent art business in Portland for about a decade and a half.
I want to share a quick quick story.
16 years ago, I worked for a beloved local corporation then valued at $80 to $100 million.
This company is still so beloved by most Portlanders that I'm not going to mention it by name.
I worked directly in the C-suite assisting top executives with day-to-day tasks and crafting basic marketing.
One day, my task of the day was to help the 5 top executives receive lump sum payments of between $14.4 million and $28.8 million.
At this time, I was making $16 an hour, which was the standard wage there.
Although this was a manufacturing facility, the production floor was not unionized.
The CEO would often say that if his workers ever wanted to unionize, it would break his heart.
My boss would also often say that he thought that unions for public employees, such as teachers unions, were a total scam.
In fact, the thing that sticks with me the most from this period of employment was the feeling of whiplash I would get from the many small lectures I would get in the office.
Lectures that would pair the myth of the good, hardworking person with small angry tirades against regulations, taxes, and ordinary labor protections.
Half of my job was making sure my bosses never had to break a sweat printing a piece of paper, and the other half was managing the public personas of these men so you would never know that their life was any different than yours.
Outside of massive pay packages, top CEOs have teams of skilled and educated people resolving all the regular life issues while working to hide their personalities from ever being truly known by you.
You cannot depend on the generosity of these top 1% people to provide basic services for people in our city.
Here's the thing.
If people could still afford food and housing here in the city, this would not be such a big deal.
In 2010, making $16 an hour, I would stop at New Seasons on my way home from work and buy all the groceries I wanted without looking at the prices or worrying about more than spending— spending more than I had in the bank.
In 2010, you could still buy a decent house with a salary in the low $30,000s.
Councilmember Herbold.
2026 Is different.
In the past 5 years, I've had to completely change the nature of my business operations to stay independently employed.
I have watched large corporations expand and grow richer and thrive.
I watched Jeff Bezos wear a cowboy hat and rocket into space while his Amazon delivery vans, hey, drive around town tearing up the streets with out-of-state registrations.
I say goodbye to fellow artists who move away to find cheaper workspaces.
Despite generous executive pay, the company that I used to work for would not be touched by this new tax today, but thousands of Portlanders' lives would be improved.
Would you rather see our city filled with thriving independent storefronts or thousands more Amazon delivery vans?
This fair share tax has my straightforward and wholehearted support.
The wealth gap is growing.
Let's not miss the chance to support a healthy community and fight inequality together.
Thanks for your time.
Councilmember Smith.
David Blue, Tobias Forsberg, Jim Rice, Margaret Thomas, Kaylee Roll, Ryan Sotomayor, Edith Gillis, Vicki Payne.
Sameer Kanal
Just to be clear, those are the 8 folks who are left on the testimony that are signed up in person, so we'll be, uh, we'll be making sure we get through at least those and then figuring out the rest based Good afternoon, council members.
Candace Avalos
My name is Kaylee.
I'm a tenant in District 4, a registered nurse that works in District 3, a member of Portland DSA, and a very strong supporter of taxing the rich.
Portland's working people are constantly being asked to tighten our belts while the wealthiest corporations and executives in America are doing the exact opposite.
Workers are struggling to pay for rent, food, utilities, childcare, healthcare, and patients are getting sicker and sicker while avoiding the care that they need because they cannot afford it.
Meanwhile, corporate executives are raking in hundreds of millions of dollars on the backs of working people that create all that wealth for them.
This inequality is not an accident.
It's the result of decades of operating under a rigged system that has allowed wealth to flow upward.
While workers are told that there simply isn't enough money for the things that our communities need, like fully funded parks and schools, housing, transportation, Portland Street Response, and services that we all benefit from.
It's way past time to rebalance the scales and help support the working-class people and small businesses of Portland by enacting this fair share tax.
I also want to address the idea that corporations will leave Portland if you tax them fairly.
Businesses don't choose where to operate based on taxes alone.
They need workers, they need customers, they need infrastructure, suppliers, and thriving communities.
We should not allow the wealthiest people and largest corporations to hold our community hostage by saying, give us everything we want or we'll leave.
That's exactly what we witnessed with the Moda Center fiasco that handed hundreds of millions of our tax dollars to billionaire Tom Dundon while our city faces budget shortfalls year after year.
A nurse can't threaten to move an entire hospital.
A TriMet driver can't take the city's transit system with them if they go somewhere else.
Working people are rooted in their communities, and we deserve a city government that is equally rooted right here with us.
This is your opportunity to show the people of Portland that you are committed to our city that you are ready to address the austerity crisis created by billionaires head-on, and that you care deeply about generating revenue to fund dignified lives for all of us.
Please support this fair share tax.
Thank you.
I think so.
Rebecca Dobert
Good morning.
Candace Avalos
Um, my name is Margaret Thomas.
I live in District 4.
I've lived here since 1978.
Sameer Kanal
I'm also a proud member of DSA, obviously.
I am here to—.
In support of the fair share tax.
It will exempt 18,000 small businesses from paying the business license tax.
This can make a big difference to a small and new business, as well as maintaining services that Portlanders rely on.
Thank you.
Currently, we're looking at a budget shortfall which, if it isn't addressed, will cause service cutbacks affecting parks and public safety.
Here's a chance to add at least a little new revenue and to maintain what gives Portland its vital neighborhoods and unique character.
Shout out here to Mother Foucault's Bookstore, which is an important part of the local art scene, while preserving crucial public safety jobs with this.
Mitch Green
Thank you.
Candace Avalos
If we pass this.
Sameer Kanal
Also, this bill will allow us to keep our commitment to assisting low-income Portlanders to keep their housing.
Candace Avalos
The proposed surtax raises approximately $88 million in new revenues while cutting taxes for small businesses and startups.
This is why I urge you to pass the fair share tax.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Ryan is online.
You can go ahead.
Hi, are you able to hear me?
We can.
Wonderful.
Uh, my name is Ryan Sotomayor.
I use he/they pronouns.
I'm a resident and renter in District 3.
I'm a parent of 2 children, and our neighborhood public school.
My spouse works for the county as an indigenous librarian for young people, and I'm here as a business manager of Laborers Local 483.
Laborers Local 483 represents workers in the Port of Portland, both at the airport and at the port, Metro, at the zoo, and in natural area land management.
And parks and nature throughout the tri-counties.
We represent folks that do landscaping at Resource Relay Resources, both on the east and the west side.
We also represent folks in Silverton and Mount Angel.
We have a small contract up at the zoo with Levy Restaurants, and we represent workers at the City of Portland, the Portland City Laborers contract, which is currently bargaining with the City of Portland, the recreation contract.
Which is currently bargaining with the City of Portland, and the seasonal maintenance worker contract, which is with the City of Portland.
And then we also are representing new groups at the Portland Japanese Gardens.
I really appreciate all the public testimony from organizations and from people in the public that have come out, so I'm not going to belabor all the points that people have talked about.
I just want to mention as a legislative policy that we love this.
Want to acknowledge Councilor Novak's work in the past to get this passed.
This is a beautiful piece of legislation.
We love to see that it's being worked on, not only for the budget, because for the City of Portland contracts that we represent, it's budget, budget, budget, but it also generates revenue, which is what we need in the City of Portland.
And beyond that, it supports Small local businesses.
Many of our folks that work at the City of Portland also have small businesses on the side.
I also want to shout out the work that's been done, the policy input, the outreach that's been done by councillors, the feedback that they've taken from labor and from many other groups, the partnership building and coalition building that they've done, and the outreach.
I really appreciate it when.
Council offices reach out to our union directly, particularly when we can provide feedback that would be helpful.
I just want to offer our support.
This is a great thing.
This would be a great thing for all the districts.
I live in District 3 in the southeast Foster-Powell, Mt.
Scott-Arleta neighborhood, and there are so many empty storefronts that would start to fill up and it would revitalize the neighborhood and the renaissance that is talked about.
Working people have not experienced could begin to happen.
Please support this.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Rebecca Dobert
Tobias, you can go ahead online.
Tobias Forsberg, you can unmute and testify.
Sameer Kanal
Go ahead.
All right, good morning.
Uh, my camera's not working, but my name is Tobias Forsberg and I live in Southeast Woodstock, District 3.
I'm a native Oregonian, a husband, a father, a PTA member, a small business owner, and a former elected official.
I'm not here to urge you to reject the proposed tax on large corporations.
I'm glad you're acknowledging, uh, and using high business taxes in Portland as the reason you believe we need yet another Tax on businesses, businesses in many cases that employ many people in Oregon, and in many cases with higher wages and better benefits because of economies of scale.
It's an interesting argument.
And again, I'm not here against the premise.
In fact, there are huge disparities, but you're acting as if we need this in order to protect small businesses when there are other solutions.
If we were an undertaxed city, this would be a solution.
If we were one— if we weren't one of the slowest to recover, And it's not because of large corporations.
It's because we were sleeping at the wheel during the pandemic and for years thereafter.
Then I'd be here supporting it and not asking you to take a step back and look at it from a longer-term holistic approach.
But Portland's still recovering from the pandemic and the riots.
We've lost employers and families who've left because of safety concerns, visible disorder, and rising costs of living.
In fact, in the 2 years following the pandemic, when other cities were recovering, we lost thousands of families and over $1 billion in tax Taxable revenue from hardworking families.
We already carry one of the heaviest tax burdens in the country, and adding another tax on businesses that provide jobs sends the wrong message at the worst possible time.
Because when a company decides where to locate or to expand, it compares costs, and every new tax makes the choice to leave or to never come or to scale back that much easier.
And when large employers go, we lose more than their tax revenue.
Thank you.
We lose the paychecks associated with them.
We lose the small businesses that depend on them and the downtown foot traffic that keeps our city alive.
The City Council just approved the largest operating budget in Portland's history at $8.6 billion, and that doesn't include Multnomah County's $4 billion budget or Metro's $2 billion budget.
Residents are being asked to pay more at every level of government and in the private sector.
So the problem isn't that we don't have enough.
It's that we don't prioritize what we spend.
Other cities handled the post-pandemic period responsibly.
They reviewed their budgets, trimmed programs that weren't delivering results, and returned to spending levels that the economy could support.
Portland hasn't done that.
To put things into perspective, Denver, Colorado, and Boston, Massachusetts, cities with the same population, around $5 billion.
No one's talking about budget bloat or making cuts.
Only raising taxes in a community that has the 2nd highest marginalized tax burden in the nation.
So I think the first thing we should do, and what I'm asking you to do before we add another tax, even if it's popular, is to audit current spending levels and cut underperforming programs, streamline permitting, provide business tax credits.
Fact of the matter is we have enough money, and perception is everything.
Adding another tax now, even if it's justified, isn't the first step.
Rebecca Dobert
All right.
Thank you.
Edith Gillis, you can go ahead online.
Thank you.
I'm Edith Gillis, District 3.
I was a young child in Portland.
In the last 43 years, I've lived in each of the 4 quadrants as a volunteer providing essential services our city and corporations failed to provide.
If you don't pass this excellent fair share tax ordinance, you will continue to make Portland worse.
Making more Portlanders furious at you, losing city money, destroying our local economy, making more Portlanders increasingly poorer, homeless, sick, and enraged.
You are required by law to be fiscally responsible for the city budget, required services and democracy, as well as local economy.
And if you pass this, you will be helping everyone.
If you pass this, you will be helping the unethically, unfairly wealthy CEOs.
Whoa.
Who need this passed so they will have the customers and services they need and a strong and healthy, hopeful community able and willing to spend money, to volunteer, to work for them.
Passing this increases employee morale, employee productivity, and corporate health and the corporate goodwill.
Passing this helps small local businesses and nonprofits which provide more and better jobs, benefits, services, livability, economy, security, safety, climate justice, social justice, and disaster resilience, as well as community strength and hope, than do all the large corporations with large gaps between the pay of CEOs and median workers.
The kinds of employers, businesses, and nonprofits that we want in Portland treat workers right.
Treat suppliers, customers, neighbors, the environment, and the city government with justice, respect, and compassion.
And by passing this, you can only succeed if you pass.
Large corporations hold policies and practices that prevent local managers from acting ethically, practically, compassionately, while local good businesses pay a hidden additional tax By providing the goods, services, advertising space, and money needed to make our communities and cities strong.
Passing this fair share tax gives us the needed hope and ability we need to survive.
While I think this EO fair share pay tax should be much larger, but at least pass this.
Yesterday, I had someone living with me who's lost his housing because his wife just died.
He can't be in assisted living.
And before that, someone who was suicidal.
Thank you.
Lost their job and their housing because people are depressed.
The economy, the justice is denied them.
When you pass this, you give people more of a reason to stay alive, stay committed, still caring for each other.
We need this passed.
And yes, you can cut the bloated budget for the cops.
Pass this, and thank you.
Vicki, you can go ahead online.
Hi, my name is Vicki Payne.
I'm speaking on my own behalf today against this absurd proposal.
I'm by no means stumping for big corporations, but we have to stop thinking that local taxes and fixes are somehow going to stop a wealthy corporation from packing up and leaving or lowering their prices or paying employees more.
We are one city of 600,000 people in a country of millions.
We aren't solving the wealth inequality of our country as a single city.
We need to push these things at the federal level or else you get another Elon I live in a low-income neighborhood in Portland near Delta Park and Jantzen Beach, and I have watched these big box stores closing.
Elmer's closed their Delta Park location not because they weren't busy, but because they were sick of having to replace broken windows and deal with theft and illegal camping.
Of course, taxes play a role combined with these issues when they are so high, but it's not the sole reason businesses are leaving or choosing not to open up in Portland.
I hear you bragging that even if the company leaves, they still sell products here, so we still collect the tax.
Well, that sounds nice.
You're completely leaving out the part about losing jobs.
You all keep mentioning Starbucks but have failed to mention how many Starbucks stores have already shuttered in Portland and how many that are left that don't have the option to sit down inside anymore.
Not only are you taking away jobs, you are taking away third spaces for our community.
Most people go to Starbucks for convenience because they're on busy roads and often have drive-throughs.
This isn't going to redirect them to their local coffee shop that isn't on the drive into work.
They will just start making coffee at home.
Everyone loses, especially if they buy their beans from Amazon.
All of the people who have time and money to spend so often at their local mom-and-pops are really showing their privilege to have spoken today, as many of us cannot afford higher prices at our local shops regularly versus losing all of the Walmarts of Portland— in Portland a few years ago, for example.
I often saw my elderly neighbors shopping at the one that used to be near me.
We are likely about to lose many of our Dollar Tree stores next another lifeline for our low-income neighbors.
I'm also really concerned about manufacturing jobs in Portland.
We lost Daimler and Keane.
I have a friend who works for Coast who recently expanded their production facilities.
Will they be next to relocate, and will my friend be out of a job next?
I saw this happen in my home state of New York in the mid-'90s when they raised taxes on large businesses.
Our best-paying manufacturing jobs moved south or completely out of the country, and my home county suddenly became very poor, forcing people to commute Up to an hour away to find similar paying jobs.
We've already seen grocery stores closing.
I'm very nervous my North Interstate Fred Meyer will be the next to leave following similar threats that eventually lost us their Gateway store.
Will the gas stations close next?
You fail to realize these evil corporations are some of the only people who are hiring and willing to hire our neighbors coming out of homelessness.
I know Councilor Zimmerman had a job at McDonald's once.
How many of the rest of you have held a position in fast food?
Guessing not many of you.
Councilor Zimmerman.
Poor white trash like myself have had to rely on these evil corporate jobs to pay our bills, however, because we aren't well connected.
So instead, we see formerly homeless people driving around delivering for DoorDash and Uber instead of riding transit to a local steady job.
You are failing to attract new businesses to Portland, so instead you are threatening to tax the ones who remain.
The problem is partially taxes, but again, it's more so lack of public safety, which affects foot traffic to our beloved small businesses.
I'm starting to think you all own stock in Amazon.
Excuse me.
Please stop playing games with the economy.
Sameer Kanal
And I think we have one panel left.
We've been given the chance to go a couple minutes over.
Uh, this is one panel of 5 folks, so I would love it if we could maintain quorum through that, and then we'll get through it.
We'll have one quick wrap-up, and then we'll end for the day.
Thanks.
Rebecca Dobert
Adam Murray, Skyler Cruz, Ty Gordon, Brandon Mullen, Oh Nguyen.
Adam, you can go ahead.
Candace Avalos
Thanks.
Sameer Kanal
Uh, good afternoon, Council.
Uh, hello, Chair.
Thank you for letting me speak today.
My name is Adam Murray.
I'm speaking on behalf of myself today.
Um, you know, there are a lot of preconceived notions about this body, and, um, there are a lot of folks who view you all in a certain light.
They view one side as though you see the other as intransigent, and they view the other side as though they see the other as recalcitrant.
I don't find that to be true, and that's because I've had the pleasure of, you know, working with you all and meeting you in some capacity or another, and you've all impressed me very much with how much you actually love this city.
You know, you have disagreements regularly.
That's normal for any legislative body.
And as a public, I want us to just have more faith in your ability to be mutable.
I honestly, there's a couple things I want to address.
One is that during testimony today, a really inappropriate comment was made about Councilor Novick.
I just want to repudiate that attitude.
I know that as Portlanders, we're better than that.
Another thing I want to say is, Councilor Dan Ryan, I'm actually really thankful for you.
Thank you.
You know, I know a lot of people who give you a rough time because they don't know you very well, but in the time that I've worked with you, you actually have shown me to have quite an open mind and an open ear.
And so on this particular issue, I think what we're really facing here is a battle of perceptions and how you work together.
I think it's very clear that this is a very popular piece of legislation, and there may be opportunities to make it better.
There may be opportunities through the incentive pathways that Councilor Green and Councilor Murillo have carved out very intelligently in this legislation to create further incentives that actually may inspire change in organizational approaches, potentially nationwide.
There's a lot to consider here, but I think what you should consider is pathways towards conscientious amendments and a process in discussing those amendments and having faith in one another.
To make the necessary concessions and, and to just find a way to yes.
I believe you can do that, and I think that this is very important legislation.
And I think we all acknowledge the critical need to, to build revenue right now.
And, you know, folks have feelings about taxes being the way we get there.
I encourage you all to continue to brainstorm, but to vote yes on this until you find other ways to drive that revenue.
Thank you so much.
I yield.
Thank you.
Hello, City Council.
My name is Skylar Cruz.
I'm a resident of District 4 and a member of Portland DSA.
I'm in support of the fair share tax as I believe our small businesses are the lifeblood of our communities.
Growing up lower class in Longview, Washington, my family has held many jobs in small businesses.
My mother works the box office of a local theater, and when I was a small child, she worked at the local roller rink.
Visiting Oaks Park Roller Rink is actually one of my favorite activities here today in Portland.
If you haven't been to Oaks Park Roller Rink, you should support them and shred the rink— shred on the rink with me.
It'd be really fun.
But my mother's employment history hasn't always been so rosy.
In the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis, my mother faced her own employment struggles, but ultimately was lucky enough to land a job.
But unfortunately, it was kind of the most demoralizing job of her life.
She worked as a clerk for a payday loans company.
She got to know her regulars, people struggling to make ends meet by taking out advance loans on their paychecks with high interest rates.
These loans ultimately pushed them further into debt on each visit, all while my mother serviced them with a smile.
And this time she began drinking heavily.
She felt lucky to have a job and be able to financially support her 2 children, but that didn't erase the human suffering she had to witness.
It was one of the hardest times of my young life and certainly caused me trauma I'm unsure I fully unpacked.
The same story is happening today with families all over the city.
As our small businesses struggle, hours are cut, and Portlanders' wages can't pay rent.
The doom loop doesn't start with corporations leaving.
It starts with small businesses struggling, storefronts closing, and wages declining.
One business closes, the wages lost from its employees, which could go to supporting other businesses, are lost.
Councilmember disappear and other businesses follow suit.
I've been happily sober for 4 and a half years now.
I ask that you pass the fair share tax.
Don't be the reason I start drinking again, just like my mother did.
Thank you for your time.
Good afternoon, councilors.
My name is Ong Nguyen.
I live in District 3.
First off, I'd like to thank Councilor Novick for pushing through the last version of this tax, and I'd like to commend Councilor Green Thank you, Councilor Dan Ryan.
And Maria for pushing forward this current iteration.
So I strongly support the fair share tax.
We are living in an age of historic wealth and income inequality.
The big guys at the top are doing better than ever while everybody else are struggling more and more just to get by.
But the fat cats at the top Did not get there with just the sweat of their brow.
No, they relied on many public good things that are paid for by all of us.
Amazon wouldn't be able to deliver their things in record time if it weren't for the highways and roads paid for by taxpayers.
Tesla and SpaceX would still be wobbly startups.
Thank you.
If it weren't for billions of dollars in subsidies and tax credits from the government.
Google, Facebook, and probably the entire internet ecosystem would not exist today if it weren't for DARPA projects funded by U.S. taxpayers.
So to say the wealthy need to pay their fair share is perhaps too mild.
I think this proposal really should be called the Suck It Up Buttercups proposal.
Thank you.
That concludes testimony.
All right, so first off, uh, thank you for validating the faith that I have in Portlanders who sign up to testify, for helping us get that done early and not taking time you didn't need.
Um, quick housekeeping note from, from Councilor Green.
Mitch Green
Yeah, just really quickly, uh, while we still have quorum, I just wanted to, uh, after the volume of testimony we've got, um, hearing that it's very popular, uh, reaches a lot of folks, uh, large, um, deep outreach, uh, I just want to extend co-sponsorship to any of my colleagues, uh, on City Council.
If, if you want to add your name to this before next week, uh, we'd love to have you.
So, um, for folks who've already left, I hope that your staff is letting you know that this offer is on the table.
Rebecca Dobert
Thanks.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Councilor Green.
Uh, so this is going to wrap up our meeting.
2 Quick housekeeping notes: we, uh, do not have council later today, so pick up, uh, obviously committees next week.
And the next meeting of the Committee of the Whole is next, uh, Thursday, um, morning.
And, uh, thank you so much.
So we'll wrap it up at 12:35 PM.