Monday night’s special meeting to ‘discuss’ providing a $1M tax abatement to Oregon Resources revealed an astonishing level of irresponsibility on the part of Coos County’s business community. Not one member speaking on behalf of the abatement even attempted to quantify how the local taxing districts or the county were better off without the tax revenue.
Not one presented any formula showing the return on investment to the taxpayer. Not one prepared a business plan that demonstrated how higher salaries to ORC employees, especially after individual write offs, resulted in more income tax revenue to support school districts and public safety. Not one person was able to quantify just how much the local taxpayer was paying for the privilege of ORC jobs.
Not one did a side by side comparison of the net benefits of doing without the tax revenue or the benefits of ORC paying their taxes like everyone else.
Neither did the two commissioners who, encouraged by the irresponsible rhetoric espoused by so called business people, made a million dollar decision, effectively a $1M investment of public funds without any idea what the return is. How many financially responsible people would invest $1M without first quantifying the benefits? Elected officials should be held to account for their decisions and a yard stick available to the voters in order to measure their performance.
Coos County is a resource rich and does not have to pay a resource extraction company for jobs. A better tax dollar investment than tax abatement is to improve the infrastructure necessary to support businesses. Statistically, good roads, public safety and community support services do more to stimulate the economy and offer a much higher return on public dollars.
Coos County’s business community was happily outvoted Tuesday with the election of Andy Jackson by common sense, fiscally responsible working class people tired of failed promises and corporate welfare. While not a clean sweep, hopefully, Bob Main and Andy Jackson will engage in the real statistical analysis and due diligence million dollar decisions require and make informed choices to curtail the reckless local spending of these last several years.
