Budget

Our Oregon is launching a signature gathering effort to qualify an initiative for the November ballot that would send money to K-12 classrooms by reforming the corporate “kicker” refund.

For more than a decade, school advocates, teachers, and parents have talked about the need for kicker reform. Reforming the corporate kicker and putting those dollars back into our classrooms is an idea that has broad support.
 
“The corporate kicker has long been described as costly and irresponsible,” says Our Oregon Director Patrick Green. “Initiative Petition 35 is an opportunity for everyone who cares about schools to come together and finally do something about it.”

Fareed Zakaria wrote an interesting piece in Time Magazine earlier this week examining America’s prison culture. A snippet:

Earlier this week, more than 1,000 people rallied at the state capitol to protect funding for schools, services for seniors and people with disabilities, environmental protections, and jobs.

The message was simple: "Legislators, listen up!"

What, specifically, inspired these individuals to come out in such strong force, despite the chill and rain? We'll let them tell you about their concerns in their own words. Check out our video below:

Two years ago today, Oregonians stood up and chose to protect our local schools, seniors, and the safety of our communities, all while making sure that large corporations and the rich paid more of their fair share.

In the two years since, the corporate lobbyists who opposed Measures 66 and 67 have unfortunately continued waging a fight they lost, making many false claims about the measures and damaging Oregon’s business reputation in the process.

So, as we’ve done before, we wanted to bring you the actual facts that disprove the constant negative chatter coming from the very lobbyists who SHOULD be selling Oregon to the rest of the world: