Novick: If Street Fund Doesn't Pass Now, Progressive Tax in 2016 Has to Be "Viable Option"

Portland Mercury:

A final vote on Commissioner Steve Novick and Mayor Charlie Hales' $46 million "Portland Street Fund" plan has been moved back to December 17, in light of a handful of amendments put forward this morning with several more potentially due before next week. The new date was announced before the Portland City Council unanimously agreed to make two substantial changes to the plan—an income tax and business fee meant to fund paving, maintenance, and safety fixes. The council agreed to consider a "sunset" clause long-sought by some opponents and potential supporter Commissioner Amanda Fritz. It also agreed to weigh firm assurances that the city won't use the new money as an excuse to cut its current paving spending. And a few more changes could be in the offing, due for a hearing next Wednesday, December 10: • Novick is working with Commissioner Nick Fish on an amendment giving relief to "micro-businesses." • Novick's working with Fritz to tweak the income tax—it's based on brackets that levy a flat amount for everyone in a given income range, and Fritz has suggested shifting to percentages for each range. That would alleviate a criticism that people at the top of a range, paying a flat amount, would pay a smaller percentage of their incomes than people at the bottom of a range. That also could lead to fewer brackets overall. • Novick also says there's some discussion about making sure it's clear and written in stone that both sides of the street fund must not only survive a council vote this month, but also a likely ballot challenge by oil lobbyist Paul Romain and the Portland Business Alliance. That's not a light threat, in light of polling (which you could quibble with) showing voters strongly supportive of a vote, but also with deep reservations about the substance of the plan. And Novick tells the Mercury he's got some other thoughts about how to proceed if that ballot challenge should come to pass and then prove successful. Given that groups advocating on transportation and poverty issues have already called for a more progressive option—along the lines of a tax on wealthy Portlanders that received 60 percent support in a city-funded poll earlier this year—Novick says he'd have to take that "logical" option "extremely seriously." And if he did, he said, it would land on the November 2016 ballot, in the heat of a presidential campaign that would draw the most progressive electorate possible. "We will keep hammering and hammering at this," Novick said of himself and Hales, calling them both "committed" to solving Portland's transportation funding shortfall. (The city would need to spend $91 million a year on paving every year for a decade to catch up on its maintenance backlog—not including making other improvements.) "If we're not going to get there in any other way," Novick says of raising street money, cautioning that he was now just speaking for himself, not Hales, "then going with a progressive option that polled at 60 percent support has to be a viable option." "I've told the PBA I don't want to re-fight Measure 66[, a 2010 measure that raised state income taxes on the wealthy]," Novick says. "But if we have to, we have to." [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

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