Decoding Kotek’s 7 big ideas to fix Portland

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

Oregon Governor Tina Kotek has been holding closed door meetings with Portland leaders to find a way to repair Portland, and after much secret discussions the Official Portland Central City Task Force has released their 6 bold ideas.

Although there are some good ideas, the problem is that these ideas are just enough to make politicians look good ahead of a big election this May and not enough to bring permanent or real change to the crisis we are living in.

#1. State trooper help for the city. Kotek has agreed to let Oregon State Police be re-assigned to help Portland, since Portland defunded police by $12 million and 100 positions.  Portland can’t refund the police by too much, lest the liberal anti-police lobby fight back.  Remember, Wheeler defunded police and then gave millions of tax dollars (economic development funds) exclusively to pot shops.

#2. No new taxes: Kotek’s task force admits Portland is the second highest taxed City in America. The City/County lost a billion in tax revenue from people fleeing the area.  No new taxes doesn’t cut it — you must cut taxes across the board to revive the City.  By the way, Gov. Brown and then Speaker Kotek played a big role in raising taxes since 2015 on businesses.   Kotek’s finger pointing at Portland’s high taxes is hypocritical.

#3. Remove plywood from windows: Having government pressure or pay store owners to replace windows misses the problem. Store owner’s can’t replace their windows because insurance companies know they operate in a riot zone, and therefore the cost to replace windows through insurance is extraordinary. Kotek and Wheeler need to restore order and lock-up vandals.   Below is a scene from a serial window smasher in Gresham. He’s been arrested four times and is wanted for a 5th arrest.   You cannot out-pay business owners faster than this one man can break windows.

#4. Program to help Portland pick-up trash and graffiti. The State already dumped millions of extra dollars to clean up graffiti in Portland alone. Yet, it doesn’t work, unless you actually arrest the vandals and make them serve time. Kotek wants to spend $20 million of State tax dollars cleaning up the City of Portland.  But wait! If Portland is the second highest tax City in America, where are the city taxes going?  They should have the nation’s second biggest pot of tax revenue to do anything they want. Here is the point. Portland has raised sky-high taxes, and used those high taxes to create a bureaucratic blob of a government that doesn’t work, that doesn’t clean the streets, and that doesn’t arrest criminals properly.  Don’t forget that Kotek has set a timetable of next May (during hotly contested primary) for these ideas like the clean-up to be in effect.   We reported on how graffiti is so bad, that shops and restaurants like the one below graffiti themselves to ward off vandalism.

#5. Making it a crime to use drugs in public. The liberal politicians and the pot lobby want to keep drugs as legal as possible, as their aim is to reduce the appearance of drug problems but not actually address the bigger issue of reducing  drug use or drug deaths or drug crime. The grand liberal compromise is to get druggies out of public view and have them commit crimes (and consequently die) behind the scenes where the public cannot see it.

#6. Declaring a 90-day fentanyl emergency: If Kotek can’t be bothered to call a special session to ratify Portland’s ban on public fentanyl use (Portland’s ban, passed in summer, legally requires State approval to go into effect), then her emergencies mean nothing.  State emergencies have become nothing but nice sounding public relations stunts. When it comes to emergencies, Governor Kotek, you act first, and do your job first by calling a special session to pass the law to ratify Portland’s ban.

#7. More shelter space. As we previously documented, Oregon raised $1.3 billion (mostly from brand new taxes) for affordable housing and homeless shelters and we got 22% more homeless when the rest of America got less than 1% more homeless without raising taxes.

— This Kotek Decoding is exactly what you need to understand what is going on behind the scenes!

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