Scott Bruun: Working Oregonians Hurt By State Policies

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Scott Bruun, GoLocalPDX MINDSETTER™

Cliff Bentz lives as far away from Portland as one can live, and still be an Oregonian. He lives in the town of Ontario, roughly a 5-iron away from the Idaho border. An attorney by trade, Bentz serves in the Oregon House where he represents Ontario, Baker City, Burns and many other smaller towns in his sprawling eastern Oregon legislative district.

The first impression you have when you meet Rep. Bentz is that he is intelligent, good-natured, competent and dependable. But you know how we can be fooled by first impressions, right? How people are not always what they seem?

That’s how it is with Bentz.

After you’ve known him and seen him in action for a few years, you’re finally able to see Cliff Bentz for what he truly is: highly-intelligent, super good-natured, uber-competent, and always-dependable. In politics especially, we tend to overuse the term “good guy.” Nevertheless, Cliff Bentz is absolutely a good guy.

Yet recently, I’ve also seen him mad. Mad at Oregon’s Portland-centric economic policies. Mad at the careless havoc those policies wreak on the people and communities in his and every other part of the state – from Astoria to Ashland, Beaverton to Burns.

Bentz is proud that his town was recently able to persuade a large Idaho onion processor to move its operations - and jobs - to Ontario. This was not easy. It was a long courtship made more difficult by the fact that Idaho’s minimum wage is $2.00 per hour less than Oregon’s. For a business like the onion processor, which employs about 250 people, this means another $20K-or-so in additional weekly operating costs. Nevertheless, Ontario and Malheur County were able to provide other inducements to bring the company in.

If the Portland-centric mindset prevails and the legislature raises the minimum wage next year - something that now seems a fait accompli, Bentz has little doubt that Ontario’s new onion processor will move back to Idaho.

In a distant corner of the state, one less company and 250 fewer jobs.

On a statewide level, no one knows for sure how many jobs will be lost when the legislature raises the minimum wage. Just as no one knows how many new jobs will never be created in the first place. What is beyond doubt is that those Oregonians with the least job experience, the least job skills, will be the most harmed when employment opportunities shrink.

There is no question that working Oregonians need and deserve wage increases. The growing disparity between rich and poor, the haves and the have-nots, is no myth. Wages for working Oregonians and Oregon families have been stagnant for years. People are working harder for less; while food, housing and tuition costs have skyrocketed.

Over time, this erodes people’s confidence and sense of personal progress. It tears at the social fabric. It’s certainly torn at Oregon’s.

For a very long time we’ve heard that the problem in Oregon is that our minimum wage (second highest in the nation) is too low. We’ve heard that wage stagnation is the fault of “greedy” businesses or individuals rather than the predictable outcome of really bad economic policies. We’ve heard that if we just pass more laws that raise people’s wages, add more laws that raise taxes on business and investment, then everything will get better.

Not only has this plan been advocated over the years, it has largely been implemented by law. And what has it brought us?

It’s brought us some of the nation’s highest tax rates on workers, on savings, on property, on business income and on capital investment. It’s brought punitive regulations. It’s brought us class warfare and resentments. And despite the nation’s second highest minimum wage (on its way to the first), it’s brought us stagnant wages, higher unemployment and fewer opportunities for career advancement.

It’s made Oregon the Mississippi of the West.

A reasonable person might think that if we have been on one path for a long time, and are not getting where we want to be, then maybe it’s time to change paths. Maybe for once try pro-growth policies that might just result in more jobs, better jobs and higher wages.

At least give it a try, right?

But instead, those Portland-centric interests want to double-down on bad policy. They have us heading toward a 2016 ballot measure which would increase business taxes in Oregon another $3-4 billion. In other words, billions more for state government. And billions less to invest in the kind of jobs that expand opportunities – and wages - for working Oregonians.

No wonder a good guy like Cliff Bentz is mad. Just as hundreds of thousands of other good people - working Oregonians and working families - should also be mad.

Mad enough, let’s hope, to make real changes at the ballot box next November.

Scott Bruun is a fifth-generation Oregonian and recovering politician. He lives with his family in the 'burbs', yet dutifully commutes to Portland every day where he earns his living in public affairs with Hubbell Communications.

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Process Server

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Health Inspectors:

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Bill Collectors

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#4

Canvasser

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OLCC Agent

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Predatory Tow Truck Driver

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Parking Enforcement Officer

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