Bill aims to end tax oversight group

Agency backs its own bill to revise funding

By Shannon Wells

The Gresham Outlook, May 5, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

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A Senate bill backed by three East County cities that ultimately seeks to eliminate a long-standing tax supervision commission is working its way through the Legislature while the commission is pushing a House bill to restructure its funding structure.

Prompted by Fairview city officials and sponsored by Sen. Laurie Monnes Anderson, D-Gresham, Senate Bill 748 would pave the way to dissolve the Tax Supervising & Conservation Commission, a Multnomah County agency created by the Legislature in 1919. If passed, it would not kill the agency outright, but provide the county Board of Commissioners the statutory authority to eliminate it.

The bill recently passed the Senate by a 20-10 vote and has been assigned to a House committee.

Sponsored by the tax commission itself, House Bill 2074 aims to divide funding responsibility across the county’s 29 tax districts. That would remove a chunk of the approximately $280,000 annual burden for which Multnomah County is currently responsible.

No other Oregon county has such a supervisory committee, which provides Multnomah County tax districts a layer of oversight and guidance in addition to budget committees composed of citizens and elected leaders. That additional layer is one of the reasons leaders of East County’s “small cities” would like to see the group dissolved, said Fairview Mayor Mike Weatherby.

“Here is an opportunity to do away with a piece of government. Why is it that every other entity in Oregon manages to do quite well, thank you, without the TSCC?” he said of the commission. “What would really replace it is (more) citizen involvement. How could you not want that?”

Calling the agency outdated and ineffective, Weatherby cites the Reynolds School Board budget crisis as an example of how the group has failed to execute a proper “watchdog” role. Reynolds was forced to cut school days and freeze spending after district officials found its 2008-09 budget didn’t include between $3 million and $4 million in needed funds.

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