7 ways we debunk Kotek’s new bold save-the-economy plan

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

Yesterday, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek announced her big and bold Oregon’s Roadmap Prosperity proposal to help reverse Oregon’s  economic decline.  It is a blizzard of goals but no actual specific tax or law changes.

We debunk seven of her statements.

#1. KOTEK: “We face the same headwinds that many other states face today: sluggish job growth, elevated unemployment, and declining population trends.”

OUR REPLY: Other states do not “face the same headwinds” like Oregon. For the headwind of “declining population”, in 2023, only seven states saw a population decline like Oregon.  For “elevated unemployment”, 46 other states had a lower unemployment rate than Oregon last summer.  Kotek is trying to excuse Oregon’s failures by saying other states have the same problem, when in fact, Oregon only shares these problems with a handful of the nation’s worst performing states.

#2. KOTEK: “These challenges, compounded by business outmigration and underutilized state resources”

OUR REPLY: What does “underutilized state resources” even mean? Are businesses not grabbing enough free government hand-outs and services to prosper?

#3. KOTEK: “Oregon’s lower-cost West Coast location, offering direct access to the Pacific Rim, further strengthens its appeal as a hub for advanced manufacturing, clean energy, and global trade.”

OUR REPLY: Oregon is NOT A LOWER-COST LOCATION. Our state ranks among the top 10 highest cost-of-living states. High electricity. High gas prices. High taxes. High labor costs.

Kotek helped raise the gas tax 5% last year and again 15% this year.

Kotek helped double DMV fees last year and again this year.

You may not have heard, but there is a referendum petition to stop Kotek’s latest gas tax.

Kotek has been raising the cost of living across Oregon.

#4. KOTEK: “Catalyze job growth by investing in high-opportunity sectors”

OUR REPLY: When Kotek says “investing”, it means dumping tax cash on private corporations to see if it will make them grow.

Billions have been spent dumping tax cash on tech companies’ data centers which drained our water resources and our electrical grid, which in turn spiked electricity prices for middle-class families.    Kotek spent hundreds of millions of our tax dollars on solar companies that went bankrupt or were at the center of other scandals.

Our tax dollars have been spent on luxury hotels (Portland Ritz-Carlton, Portland Hyatt Convention hotel, The Nines Hotel) that often fail within the first year.

#5. KOTEK: “My office will introduce legislation in 2026 to remove barriers to growth and incentivize investment.”

OUR REPLY: Wow!  Our Governor waits until the 4th and final year of her term as Governor to introduce laws to help small businesses.  Could it be because of an election year?

The most significant barriers to growth are Kotek’s long history of taxes; the $4.3 billion gas tax (2025), $5 billion gas tax (2017), the largest tax in Oregon history with the Corporate Activities Tax (2019), and the $500 million health care tax (2025).

Governor Kotek approved 185 fees in 2023.

Kotek’s history of taxes and fees are what is holding business down.  Yet her report mentions the word “tax” only once, and it is tied to the phrase “targeted tax changes”.   You cannot revive an economy by cherry picking a few corporations to dump a pile of tax cash upon.  Tax cuts must be broad-based.

#6. KOTEK: “Review and update existing tools, such as enterprise zones”

OUR REPLY: Oregon does not need more “enterprise zones”, but the state abuses them.

In 2018, then Governor Kate Brown exploited the enterprise zone (then called Opportunity Zones) in the Federal 2016 tax cuts to declare almost all of central Portland an enterprise zone.   Look below at how excessive it was.

By calling everything an enterprise zone, it then qualified developers to receive enormous tax subsidies to build office buildings — even if they were not needed.

This triggered a massive office-building boom as developers cashed in on these once-in-a-lifetime lavish tax breaks.

Five years later, Portland overbuilt and was ranked as the nation’s #1 office vacancy city.

This over-building with no customers also caused the value of each commercial building to plummet in value.  This has sunk property tax revenues.  Oregon, in essence, wasted our tax dollars on a project that directly caused a steep decline in government tax revenue.

Government needs to stop handing out corporate welfare.   Other states that did not blow billions on failed solar companies, troublesome data centers, richy-rich hotels and declare half of their Downtown areas an enterprise zone are thriving in a positive business climate.  We repeat, a state can prosper without corporate welfare and government meddling.

#7. KOTEK :“I have been reaching out to business,labor, and community stakeholders as continued federal uncertainty and projected budget cuts have come to the forefront in recent months. I directed Business Oregon and my Regional Solutions team to do the same. This roadmap reflects the collective wisdom from hundreds of businesses and business organizations, data and research, and our current state revenue picture”

[Then the report ends with this call to action ] … Direct Business Oregon to complete a state economic development strategy … Direct the Chief Prosperity Officer and Governor’s Prosperity Council to develop recommendations”

OUR REPLY:  Kotek accidentally contradicts herself.  She praises herself for collecting volumes of wisdom from both her meetings and Business Oregon agency’s meetings with hundreds of businesses.  Then she asks her same Business Oregon agency to develop a “economic development strategy” and then directs her own office to “develop recommendations”.    If Kotek actually met with businesses and gleaned wisdom (as she praises herself for) then those recommendations would actually be in this very report.   The conclusion to all her magnificent wisdom is to direct agencies to come up with recommendations.

Notice how Kotek’s Roadmap to Prosperity report is not telling you specifically what she will do.  The report has no concrete laws to pass.  The report lacks details because she has no plans to actually do it.

Governor Kotek has been too focused on raising taxes and fees to support government jobs while local jobs bleed out.

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