FILE - State Rep. Ed Diehl, R-Scio, is a key figure behind a campaign that would give voters a say on whether federal tax breaks should impact Oregon state taxes.
Eli Imadali / OPB
Oregon Republicans just notched a major win, allowing voters to have a say on — and overwhelmingly reject — a hike to gas taxes and other fees passed by Democrats.
Their next tax-blocking effort is far less assured.
With a deadline fast approaching, a campaign that would place another Democratically approved tax bill on the November ballot is showing little likelihood of success, its backers conceded Tuesday.
“It’s a steep hill,” said state Rep. Ed Diehl, R-Scio, a chief petitioner of the No Tax Clawback campaign currently collecting voter signatures throughout Oregon.
Diehl and another petitioner, Nick Stark, offered little confidence that the campaign will amass the necessary 78,116 signatures by the June 4 deadline. Meeting that goal would mean voters get a say on whether the state’s tax code should contain tax breaks that are favored by Republicans, but which Democrats killed earlier this year.
Stark and Diehl had reason to be optimistic as they began the signature-gathering push. Last year, Diehl helmed a similar ballot referral campaign aimed at tax and fee increases Democrats passed to fund road maintenance and public transit in the state.
That campaign stunned observers, quickly gathering more than 250,000 signatures. It resulted in Ballot Measure 120, which was opposed by around 83% of voters in the May 19 primary.
But explaining a gas tax increase to voters is easy. Walking them through the nuanced tax “disconnect” they are opposing in the current petition is anything but.
“A lot of our circulators either get lost trying to explain it or they don’t understand it themselves,” said Stark, executive director of the Oregon Freedom Coalition, a group that works to make conservative policy change via grassroots action. “We’ve had to adjust the message, which is it’s a tax on business, which raises costs for everyone.”
The No Tax Clawback effort targets Senate Bill 1507, a bill Democrats passed earlier this year they said was necessary to balance the state’s budget.
Among its provisions, the bill blocked three tax breaks passed last year by Congressional Republicans from the Oregon tax code. That ensured that the breaks will not impact filers’ state taxes – and that more than $300 million will flow into state coffers than Oregon could have counted on without the bill.
Democrats said the move was a prudent step to block what they called “tax loopholes” passed by the Trump administration, while responsibly funding state services. Republicans despised the bill, arguing it amounted to a tax hike on businesses and others who would benefit from the tax changes.
The No Tax Clawback campaign launched April 10, right after Gov. Tina Kotek signed SB 1507. If successful, it would offer voters a chance to salvage two of the tax changes Democrats blocked with the bill: a provision that allowed businesses to immediately claim tax breaks on large purchases, and a tax deduction for interest paid on new car loans.
Beyond being difficult to explain, Stark and Diehl say some people who signed the anti-gas tax petition see signature gatherers for the current effort and assume they’ve already helped.
“I keep getting reports that people just drive by and wave and honk and think they’ve already signed it,” Stark said.
Diehl said the campaign had not gotten as much media attention as the gas tax push – and that his attention had been occupied by the GOP gubernatorial primary in which he was a candidate. Diehl came in second in that race, and based much of his campaign on his success blocking the gas tax increase.
Neither Stark nor Diehl provided an estimate for how many signatures the No Tax Clawback campaign had gathered as of Tuesday morning. Both men said they were waiting to be briefed on signature gathering over Memorial Day weekend. They also both acknowledged success was far from certain.
“It’s doable by next weekend, but we’ve got to unite the whole conservative movement behind it now that the primary is over,” Stark said. “If we had a little more time to circulate, we’d get there.”
Should the campaign’s fortunes improve before the June 4 deadline, a coalition of progressive political groups have vowed to fight a ballot measure in November.
