Tax Vote Fallout: Oregon Businesses leaving, closing
Think Oregon reports that the construction industry is being hit hard by the recent passage of Measures 66 & 67:
The passage of Oregon Ballot Measures 66 and 67 means either lay-offs, pull-stakes and leave the state or outright shuttering for some Portland area contractors who are bearly hanging on in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
In an interview with Ryan Frank of The Oregonian on January 20th, Bart Eberwein, a vice president at Hoffman Construction, said the prospects for new work are “very bleak through the end of 2012. … There’s no light at the end of the tunnel. None. Zero.”
The Portland Business Journal reports that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is trying to entice Oregon businesses to relocate to Illinois:
Less than a week after Oregon voters passed a tax increase on businesses, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley says he wants to start poaching Oregon companies.
An article in Thursday’s Chicago Sun-Times called the taxes “head-scratching” and said Daley plans to send economic development officials to Oregon to recruit businesses.
“It will help (Chicago’s) economic development immediately,” Daley told the Sun-Times. “You’d better believe it. We’ll be out in Oregon enticing corporations to relocate to Chicago. I’ll be very frank. I make no bones about that.”
Daley has a track record of recruiting Pacific Northwest businesses. In 2001, the Fortune 500 company Boeing Inc. moved its headquarters from the Puget Sound area to Chicago.
Victoria Taft has been getting numerous letters from Oregonians impacted by the tax increases, including one business that is having to cut employee hours and pay, and another who determined, after crunching the books, that it would be better just to let her employees go and work from home.
Meanwhile, the Oregon Watchdog is reporting that the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) is deeply in debt and unsustainable, and demanding a bailout by Oregon taxpayers.
Another prime example of what happens when corrupt public employee unions are able to take control of a state and suck the life out of every hard working taxpayer that pays for their perks!
That’s really what Measures 66 & 67 were about: a struggling private sector forced to pay for a public sector that refuses to make ANY cuts or sacrifices!
Cross posted at ThoughtsFromAConservativeMom.com