SALEM, Ore. — Leaders in the Oregon Legislature are forming a temporary, bipartisan committee that’ll spend the next several weeks hashing out a business tax-overhaul plan that may go to voters for final approval in a special election.
In a memo Wednesday — coincidentally the same day President Donald Trump unveiled a sweeping-tax cut plan — House Speaker Tina Kotek and Senate President Peter Courtney, both Democrats, orchestrated the creation of the Joint Tax Reform Committee with the 14 lawmakers who handle the state’s money-making policies in the House and Senate revenue panels.
The new Tax Reform Committee will hold public hearings to flesh out final details of a proposal to overhaul Oregon’s current system of taxing corporate income. That revenue-boosting proposal — already “a couple-hundred pages” long, Sen. Mark Hass told the Associated Press — will serve as the second major component to a broader plan to address the $1.6 billion-deficit that looms over Oregon’s 2017-19 budget.
The other big piece was disclosed Friday — a plan to rein back the state’s spending through hiring freezes, revising collective bargaining rules with labor unions and curbing public employee health and retirement costs.