Surprisingly, support among unions to stop gas tax

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

Governor Kotek’s $4.3 billion gas tax/wage tax bill is so unpopular that even Oregon union members are supporting the referendum petition to stop this gas tax.

Former Democrat State Senator Rick Metsger of the popular Political Center newsletter (12/2) mentioned, “One labor union business manager told us their surprise that so many of the union’s members were talking about signing the referral petition.”

He even mentioned how backwards the gas tax proposal had become when he commented, “Interestingly, Democrats successfully cited their focus on affordability as the key to recent election victories in New Jersey, New York, and Virginia. In Oregon, Republicans flipped the script, using affordability to upend the Democrats’ tax plan.”

Signature gatherers across Oregon reported examples of people signing the petition and mentioning that they are union members.   They simply do not want to pay this tax.

The union support for the stop gas tax referendum could also be felt when the state’s largest union, SEIU, put out an alert asking their own members to spy on signature gatherers for mistakes and faced immediate backlash.  SEIU 503 board member Charlotte Kreftmeyer told reporter Jeff Eager that this call was “deplorable” and a violation of everyday Oregonians “using their constitutional right to disagree with government choice.” (read more).

Polling showed that 80% of Oregonians favor the referendum petition’s goal of giving voters a right to vote on this tax.  Reaching 80% shows that there is a lot of union support.

In a way, it makes sense for union members to oppose overly harmful tax increases like Kotek’s $4.3 billion gas tax/wage bill that will hurt taxpayers and the economy that funds union jobs.   Unions read the same newspaper headlines that taxpayers do, so when ODOT made a billion dollar accounting error earlier this year, they know that ODOT is mismanaged and is in desperate need of accountability.   Unions also know how much a 15% gas tax hike, 300% DMV fee hike and 100% transit wage tax hike will do to hurt their families.

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