Isaac Laquedem

Endorsements 2: NO on the Metro transportation tax

Who has not had the temptation at an all-you-can-eat buffet (remember them?  They're a pre-Covid thing) to take some of everything, on the reasonable ground that once you've agreed to pay the fixed price for the meal, all the food is free.  The food is even more delicious when someone else has to pay for it.

A long time ago Metro's transportation wage tax proposal, Measure 26-218, started life with good intentions, and then its planners discovered the buffet line.  Metro proposes to tax private employers with more than 25 employees up to 0.75% of their payroll.  Metro put the measure on the ballot without committing to a specific tax rate.  At the maximum allowed rate, an employer with 26 employees who are paid an average of $50,000 each would pay $9,750/year in additional taxes.

Metro has designed its proposal to appeal to the voters as much as possible:  first, by scattering the gravy far and wide across the region, promising not just light rail to Tigard (the main consumer of the future revenues) but also to highway, bike, and sidewalk projects from Cornelius on the west to the near edge of Gresham on the east, and second, by designing the tax in the spirit of that old verse from the 1930s:  "Congress, Congress, don't tax me; tax that fellow behind the tree."  (Senator Russell Long later popularized a slightly different version of the idea.)

The measure's proponents boast about that feature, pointing with pride to the fact that "91% of our region's businesses are exempt from the tax."  What is not to like about a tax that provides goodies for nearly everyone and puts the bite on hardly anyone?

Well, for starters: 

1.    The tax marks Metro's entry into the field of big-ticket transportation, a new venture for the agency.  The field is already occupied by many other jurisdictions, including cities, counties, the Oregon Department of Transportation, and TriMet.  On a deep level Metro's request tacitly acknowledges that those units of government are failing at dealing with transportation issues, or that they have simply decided that issues other than transportation are more important to their citizens.

2.    Related to point 1, Metro plans to spend a significant part of the funds to remedy the deficiencies of those other units of government, for example, by building sidewalks for students that the City of Portland has not seen as a priority, by improving pedestrian crossings on state highways that ODOT has messed up, and by stepping into the minefield of reducing gentrification in Portland's Albina district.

3.    Metro won't say what the actual tax rate will be, nor how long it will keep the tax in effect.

A cynic (who, me?) might surmise that Metro included the other suburban projects in the measure as inducements to voters to make their bosses chip in to pay for a light rail line to serve a corridor that already has two major arterials, Interstate 5 and Barbur Boulevard.  The more fundamental reason that I'm voting against Measure 26-218 is that until Metro demonstrates a compelling reason for the voters to let it enter the field of big-concrete transportation, it should focus on improving its current services.

Vote NO on 26-218.

Endorsements 1 (The Portland City Council): Wheeler and Mapps

A wise man I knew used to say that it's good to know a senator, but it's much more useful to know the mayor.  With that in mind, I'm starting endorsement season with the Portland city council. 

The Mayor's race is not about whom to vote for so much as it is about whom to vote against.   Mayor Wheeler came to the position with a record of accomplishment as a county commissioner (think of the Sellwood Bridge) and as state treasurer.  Unfortunately for his reputation he then took on the mayoralty of Portland.  His four years in office reminds me of Warren Buffett's famous line, "When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact."

Portland's City Hall has fairly earned a reputation for the civic equivalent of bad economics, as a government that can barely govern itself.  Mr. Wheeler's record met City Hall's reputation, and at the end of his term it is the reputation of City Hall that has remained intact.  Against a candidate with a modicum of business and political experience it would be an easy call to give someone else a chance to try and fail and to endorse the challenger.

And yet this year's challenger, Sarah Iannarone, falls short of the mark.  She proposes platefuls of ideas, some good, some unusual, and some simply out of the city's realm.  She identifies the pressing need to bring the police department back under city control, and then wanders off into creating standards for the lockdowns of public buildings, including schools, which are not under city control.  She proposes to "get big money out of politics" (a quotation from her website) but also to establish a public bank, an instrument for patronage politics.  If Mr. Wheeler has done too little in facing the challenges of 2020, Ms. Iannarone's agenda is too much.  I reluctantly favor giving the Mayor another term.

By contrast, the other City Council race is an easy call.  Incumbent Chloe Eudaly faces a strong challenge from the hypertalented Mingus Mapps.  Commissioner Eudaly's signature accomplishment of her term has been to impose local rent and eviction control and levy annual registration fees on landlords, a measure on its face designed to protect tenants that has had the predictable effect of encouraging owners of rental houses to sell rental houses to homeowners and get out of the rental business.  It's also had the effect of steering apartment builders to friendlier cities.  (One prominent apartment developer has shut down its Portland operation entirely.)  Construction is still continuing, but in a different form -- in the past two years nearly half of the new condominium projects in Multnomah County have four or fewer units.  Instead of building rental duplexes and fourplexes, developers are replacing rental houses with owner-occupied plexes.

Commissioner Eudaly's other major misstep was to propose sweeping changes to reduce the voices of neighborhood associations in land use planning decisions.  Although after the fact she said that she intended her proposal to bring more voices to the table, her proposal was directed at reducing neighborhood voices - most egregiously in providing that neighborhood associations would not have to abide by open-meeting laws.  The strident voices of neighborhood associations are why a freeway doesn't run next to Division Street.  Portlanders may confidently vote to replace Commissioner Eudaly with Dr. Mapps.

Endorsements Zero: a general thought on taxation

If one of the three main selling points of a request that you approve a new tax is that you won't have to pay the tax -- it's a tax entirely on other people, or on businesses, or on sales of things that you don't buy -- then the promoters are tacitly admitting that the cause isn't good enough to spend your own money on -- or theirs either, if the promoters are all exempt from the tax themselves.  I'll be elaborating on this thought later in endorsement season.

The Laquedem Plan for the second presidential debate: Scrabble

The debate between President Trump and Vice President Biden earlier this week told us nothing new about the candidates.  The president criticized Mr. Biden for not proposing any specific plans for his term in office, and then talked over him whenever he started to give specifics.  Mr. Biden was more restrained, but eventually gave up trying to address Mr. Trump's disconnected thoughts and spoke directly (and effectively) to the American people.

A second debate in the same format won't tell us anything new or interesting about the candidates.  Let's admit that we are tuning in mainly to watch for gaffes and blunders, with the same morbid attraction that we have for seeing tightrope walkers and trapeze artists put themselves in danger. 

If Messrs. Trump and Biden are going to meet again to do battle, it should be in a novel format.  Hence the Laquedem Plan to Rework the Second Presidential Debate.

Let them play three games of Scrabble on national television.

Let us see how they interact over a game board, what words they choose, how becomingly they achieve victory, and how gracefully they accept defeat.  Let us read what we can into their choice of words, their game strategies, their use of bonus squares, and their inventiveness with J, Q, X, and Z.  Do they open up new territory on the board with long words that leap to the borders?  Or do they play conservatively and defensively, filling squares in ones and twos?   Do they challenge each other's words? 

It's said that you can learn a lot about a man's character by playing golf with him.  Let's bring the character test to the table.

Game on!