The proposal looks a lot like the rough draft floated during a public session last month, with changes largely based on the months citizen and business groups spent this year dismantling and reassembling Hales and Novick's original plan—which was tabled in the spring amid outcry. (The new plan is detailed at OurStreetsPDX.com.)
Businesses, facing hundreds and thousands in monthly fees under a plan built around how many trips they generated, would now pay dramatically less, from $3 to $144 a month. Those fees, once paid through utility bills, now would be tacked onto business license tax accounts. And residents, initially facing flat fees capped just below $12 a month, now will pay a graduated deductible income tax (with credits for children) meant to spread the burden to Portlanders who earn more money.
Revenue would be split evenly between the two collection methods. About $15 million would be spent annually for the next three years on paving, with millions set aside for safety projects including new sidewalks and crossing improvements. Overall, 56 percent of the cash raised would go toward paving and maintenance, officials said. And there are no plans for a sunset or public vote.
But what's emerged, officials made clear, is hardly the stuff of angels' horns. It's an amalgamation of compromises meant to muster just enough love from supporters—and sap just enough discontent from critics—in hopes of dissuading anyone from mounting a campaign to kill the proposed revenue plan at the ballot box next spring.
Novick budged on a $200 monthly cap for wealthy Portlanders, settling on $75—which is much closer to the $50 Hales wanted. Both agreed to spend a little more than half of the new money on maintenance, bowing to the concerns, as we reported this morning, of the Portland Business Alliance. The PBA had wanted three quarters of the money spent on paving.
"This is something they can accept," Hales said of Portlanders, "even if it's not something they love. This is a much more bearable proposal."
That acceptance, however, is anything but certain—and with not much time before a public hearing November 20 and a vote in early December. Hales says he hopes he wins five votes. But Hales and Novick don't yet have a third vote and may have to make some further changes to their plan if they want that to change.
And there's the threat of a legal challenge, if not the threat of a fluoride-style ballot referral. The city has insisted it can pass an income tax without going to voters first. Not everyone agrees, as the Mercury was first to report this morning.
“We are looking into legal issues with these taxes. The Portland City Charter requires a vote of the people to implement any new tax. See Section 7-110," Paul Romain, lobbyist for the petroleum industry, told the Mercury in an email. Romain helped kill a 2008 effort to raise transportation money led by then-Commissioner Sam Adams. "Both of these assessments are taxes, and a vote is required.“
Update 3:30 PM: Romain is now telling reporters the city is correct. About its ability to pass the income tax absent a referendum. More importantly? He's also promising we'll have a referendum on the transportation revenue proposal whether Hales and Novick want one or not.
Also as we reported this afternoon, the Portland Business Alliance has said it "cannot support" the fee as currently constructed. But that's a step or two from saying it will actively work to oppose the fee or push for a referendum.///
Update 3:50 PM: Dana Haynes, spokesman for Mayor Charlie Hales, noted that Romain's threats of referral, as reported by Willamette Week, mentioned unnamed clients.
"For whom was he speaking? Who were those clients?" Haynes said.
Whoever they are, he went on, Hales would "love to meet them" and talk turkey. He said Hales poked his head into his office "not five minutes before" to make that clear.
"We're not in the business of not telling people about this plan," Haynes says. "We're excited about this plan."///
“We have worked closely with the city attorney's office and they have not identified any legal concerns about the proposal," replies Dylan Rivera, spokesman for the Bureau of Transportation.
But none of that will matter without support from the rest of the council.
Commissioner Amanda Fritz, positioned as the third vote for the original plan, hasn't said she'll support this new idea yet, even though she allows it's "much improved" and is "glad" an income tax has been cooked in. She's worried about "burdensome" taxes for people who make the least and says she wants to see if Portlanders would support adding some higher-end, "truly progressive" brackets to the tax formula—maybe, she says, charging more for people who make $400,000 and $1 million.
"As usual," she says, "I'll be waiting to hear what Portlanders have to say about it."
It's also unclear whether the new plan will win support from Commissioners Dan Saltzman and Nick Fish, both of whom irked Hales and Novick in May by insisting on a public vote. Saltzman wasn't available for comment. But Fish, after the press conference, said he hadn't even seen the new proposal yet.
"My guess," he said, after hearing from reporters what was announced, "is we're still in a position of this should be referred."
Hales sounded hopeful tones during the press conference when asked if he'd lined up votes yet.
"We hope there will be five votes to pass it," he said. "No one has made a hard commitment that we're prepared to translate here today. But we believe there will be support on the council."
Novick and Hales, joined by Transportation Director Leah Treat, made a familiar case for the new revenue, citing the $91 million the city would need to spend every year for 10 years to catch up on its deferred paving maintenance—not including money for safety improvements and other livability nhancements also captured in their plan.
Neither the state nor the federal government have raised their gas taxes in years (although Salem might finally be in a position to do so next year, with a stronger Democratic majority). And Portland, Hales said, let recessions and Measure 5's tax limit drain its own allotments for maintenance. (Hales, of course, was on the council from 1993 to 2002 and helped preside over much of the period of disinvestment he now laments.)
Treat said the new money spent on paving would save the city $650 million in future road rebuilds, most of that on busy streets. And Novick read from a list of some of the safety projects expected to be funded in the next three years, including fixes to NE/SE 122nd that would presage frequent bus service upgrades by Trimet. Some 40 percent of the money on safety projects in the next three years would be spent in East Portland.
Hales also reminded everyone that he's proposed, in this fall's budget adjustment documents, puring an additional $2 million from the city's general fund into PBOT's capital budget for maintenance work. He's also suggested paying the startup costs for the new plan from the city's general fund.
But he stopped short of promising more ongoing money in next year's budget, pointing to hope the state and the feds might step up.
"We're here because we have to be here," Hales said. "We own these streets and we own these unmet needs and it's time to get on with it."
—Dirk VanderHart contributed to this report.
