Taxpayers Assoc. replies to Rep. Mannix gas tax vote

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

The Joint Transportation Investment panel just voted to the house floor the big gas tax/road tax transportation bill HB 2025 with Oregon State Representative Kevin Mannix (R-Salem area) voting yes after several no votes.  Mannix explains his change here.

Representative Mannix states that “other taxes were set aside” as an improvement to the bill.  Let us remember that the bill started out as 13 major taxes (not including dozens of smaller ones in the bill), making it the very worst and biggest list of taxes we have ever seen in a bill in Oregon history. It was so bad, that the Democrat majority did not have the votes to pass it.  By green-lighting this bill we are sending the message that all future negotiations should start from the absolute extreme worst point.  Furthermore, the details of the this massive road tax package were not made fully available until the the end of the final three days of testimony and at the final 14 days of the entire Session, making this one of the most deceitful, dysfunctional and anti-democratic schemes in Oregon history.  Again, this is rewarding and codifying the worst of Legislative politics.

Leaders of the Republican minority worked hard on many alternatives that didn’t include taxes and most of what they offered was rejected.  The last remaining power of being in the minority lies in unity and working together to wield a bigger voice and influence that cannot be done alone.  Breaking that unity cheats your fellow colleagues and robs them of their voice in the process — and even worse begins to unravel other legislative agendas down the road because the idea of going alone is temporarily rewarded at the cost of everyone else.  The minority voice just got smaller.

This tax represents everything bad in Oregon.  Both our gas tax and DMV fees were already in the top 10 most expensive in the nation and yet ODOT found themselves billions behind (they say).  Now they aim to jack taxes and fees up even further.  You simply cannot push our taxes and fees into among the highest in the nation and not suffer more businesses bankruptcies and families leaving Oregon (not seen in several generations as we are now experiencing).   ODOT’s recent billion dollar accounting error is a blazing red alert that the Department is wildly out-of-control, Governor Kotek is asleep at the wheel, lawmakers truly do not know where or how the money is being spent or where it is going, and the day of dealing with it just got pushed down the road for 10 years if this massive tax passes.  The damage of dumping billions on a financial disaster cannot be measured.

The 300% increase in the wage tax (transit tax) in HB 2025 for transit is an obscene and painful tax upon our paychecks for one of the most undeserving, unimportant and wasteful departments in government.  This current wage tax for transit is the only one in the entire nation!   This represents politicians dumping hundreds of millions upon transit, more generous than most other states, and yet transit ridership declines.   It is such a disaster and so unworthy to hurt our wages to reward this colossally failed program with a 300% tax hike.

NOTE: There is still time to stop this tax.  Polling shows the publci does not want it.  It has bipartisan opposition.  The bill has already faced several defeats in its final hour.  Please call your State Representative to oppose the bill by clicking here.

The post Taxpayers Assoc. replies to Rep. Mannix gas tax vote first appeared on Oregon Catalyst.