41. Our Oregon (coalition of ~31 labor/community organizations and individuals, incl. SEIU Oregon, Oregon Labor Federation, OCPP)
41. Our Oregon (coalition of ~31 labor/community organizations and individuals, incl. SEIU Oregon, Oregon Labor Federation, OCPP)
1 May 18, 2026 Governor Tina Kotek 900 Court Street NE Salem, OR 97301 Prosperity Council Co-Chairs Renée James and Curtis Robinhold Members of the Oregon Prosperity Council RE: The Prosperity Council’s Final Recommendations Must Deliver for Oregon Workers Dear Governor Kotek, Co-Chairs James and Robinhold, and members of the Oregon Prosperity Council: The Prosperity Council's draft recommendations confirm that this Council has set out to deliver prosperity for corporations and the wealthy, not working families. The framing, the agenda, and the voices given the most weight have consistently pointed in one direction: tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy, deregulation without accountability, and the same corporate incentive packages that have been failing working people for decades. We have seen this before. It does not work. Before we get into the specifics, we want to name something. When politicians, academic journals, and business leaders talk about “the economy” they usually mean GDP numbers and business rankings. We think the real question is simpler: Can a person working in Oregon pay their rent? Do they have health insurance? Can they retire with some dignity? For more than forty years, Oregon and the nation have run the same economic experiment under different names. Cut taxes at the top, reduce regulations, and wait for prosperity to trickle down. We’re still waiting. Since 1979, wages for the top 1% have grown nearly three times 1 faster than wages for workers at the bottom . The workers who produced that growth saw a fraction of it. The public investments that were supposed to be replaced by private sector growth — schools, childcare, healthcare, infrastructure — were cut and hollowed out instead. The results of that economic structure are not ambiguous, and they are visible in every Oregon community: underfunded schools, a behavioral health crisis that fills our streets, jails and emergency rooms, a childcare system so broken that parents are priced out of the workforce, and infrastructure that costs more to fix every year we delay. Here is what makes this especially important for this Council to grapple with: Oregon has been an extraordinarily generous business partner. We’ve given Intel billions in property tax exemptions and direct funding as well as special legislative authority, while Nike received a custom tax deal worth over $2 billion across 30 years, all with minimal requirements for 1 https://www.epi.org/blog/wages-for-the-top-1-skyrocketed-160-since-1979-while-the-share-of-wages-for-the-bottom-90-shrunk-time-t o-remake-wage-pattern-with-economic-policies-that-generate-robust-wage-growth-for-vast-majority/
2 environmental stewardship, community benefits, or workplace protections. Oregon kept its end of both bargains, and both companies laid off thousands of workers anyway. When public dollars flow to private companies without enforceable conditions, it isn't economic development — it's a transfer of wealth from Oregon's schools and communities to corporate shareholders. The Trump administration has run this experiment twice — in his first term, the largest corporate tax cut in American history, followed now by even more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, shredded federal budgets, gutted worker, and environmental protections, tariffs that are driving up costs for Oregon businesses and families, and the dismantling of the education and research investments that Oregon’s innovation economy depends on. Wealth has concentrated further. Oregon is already absorbing the fallout. We cannot add our own version on top of it. And yet, that is precisely what the emerging recommendations from the Prosperity Council propose to do. The current outline proposes cutting Oregon’s top marginal income tax rates in 2 the same year Oregon’s wealthiest residents recorded the highest incomes in state history . It proposes vaguely “streamlining” the corporate activities tax that funds our children’s schools. It proposes cutting regulations by an arbitrary 20% without naming a single one. It explores a sales tax that Oregon voters have rejected nine times. These are not new ideas. Every one of them has been on the corporate wish list for years. Repackaging them as a prosperity agenda does not make them one — especially at a moment when the federal government is already gutting Medicaid, education, research funding, and environmental protections that Oregon families and employers depend on. Our community is losing people to immigration enforcement. Our exporters are absorbing the chaos of an erratic trade policy. Our universities and research institutions are watching federal funding disappear. We are about to see our hospitals and providers lose Medicaid funding. Oregonians, especially those most vulnerable, will be sicker because of federal rollbacks of clean air and water protections. The last thing Oregon needs is to layer our own version of trickle-down economics on top of that damage. Meanwhile, the jobs Oregon is actually growing — in healthcare, home care, childcare, and 3 behavioral health , are performed overwhelmingly by women and people of color — are barely mentioned in this Council’s work. These are the workers holding Oregon’s communities together right now. When they are paid poverty wages, they leave. Programs collapse. Parents exit the workforce because they cannot find or afford childcare. People in behavioral health crises end up in emergency rooms and on our streets. These are not just social problems — they are economic failures with real price tags that fall on all of us. Treating these workers as an afterthought is not an economic strategy. It is a choice about whose prosperity counts. 2 https://www.oregon.gov/das/oea/Documents/appendixb.pdf 3 https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2026/04/one-industry-is-propping-up-oregons-job-market.html
3 Oregon can do better. We know that the leaked draft is still being discussed, however we also encourage you to fundamentally reshape these proposals to be about Oregonians' prosperity. We believe Oregon can build a genuinely strong economy that creates good jobs with real wages, real benefits, and a real voice at work. One that competes for advanced manufacturing, clean energy, and innovation employers by investing in the workforce pipelines, schools, and quality of life that those employers actually care about. One that stabilizes our tax base without shifting the burden onto working families. One that treats the education continuum from preschool through apprenticeship and higher education as the economic foundation. We cannot build that economy by repeating the mistakes of the last forty years – cutting taxes at the top, deregulating, tax subsidies without accountability, and waiting for prosperity to trickle down. These policies have been tried. Oregon workers have been living with the consequences of trickle-down economics for forty years and our federal administration is doubling down Governor Kotek, you charged this Council with delivering prosperity for all Oregonians — not just the wealthy few. There is still time to insist that the Council actually deliver on that promise before it presents final recommendations to you. Oregon’s workers and communities are not the obstacle to prosperity. We have always been its source. It is time for Oregon’s economic strategy to be built on that truth. Sincerely, Organizations: 1000 Friends of Oregon 350PDX AAUP Oregon American Federation of Teachers - Oregon Basic Rights Oregon Building Power for Communities of Color Building Resilience Climate Solutions Consejo Hispano For All Families Oregon Friends of Family Farmers Human Services Coalition of Oregon Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center Next Up Action Fund Oregon AFSCME Oregon Center for Public Policy Oregon Education Association Oregon Environmental Council Oregon Federation of Nurses & Health Professionals (OFNHP) Oregon Labor Federation, AFL-CIO
4 Oregon Just Transition Alliance Oregon League of Conservation Voters Oregon Nurses Association Oregon Working Families Party Our Oregon Pineros Y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN) Rogue Climate SEIU Oregon Silverton Progressives Verde Women's Foundation of Oregon Individuals: Khanh Pham, State Senator, Senate District 23 Jeff Golden, State Senator, Senate District 3 Lesly Muñoz, State Representative, House District 22 Farrah Chaichi, State Representative, House District 35 Anthony Estrada Chuck Sheketoff, Tax Policy Advocate Deborah Kay Warren Elise LaVanaway Jason Freilinger, Mayor of Silverton, OR Jennifer Wilder, Oregon Farm Owner Joe Craig John Mullin, Human Services Advocate Laurie Chadwick Lori McEachern Matt Newell-Ching, Member, Governor's Racial Justice Council Robbie Earon Steve Wright Tristen Edwards, Member, Racial Justice Council
Parent: Appendix E: Submissions & Feedback · PDF: pp. 365-368