With less than a month remaining in the 2025 session of the Oregon Legislature, lots of critical programs helping Oregonians are on the cutting room floor. This is largely due to the session’s final revenue forecast, which was disastrous. This report informs the legislature how expected revenue compares to the state’s existing financial commitments. The final forecast was $756 million lower than late February’s. Many leading legislators are now warning of “tough” choices on the horizon. To the contrary, the path forward is simple: Now is the time to increase taxes and address the state’s long-running need for revenue reform.
The status quo in Oregon is that the state is unable to robustly fund essential services. A few examples:
- Thousands of defendants regularly go without a lawyer, despite the Sixth Amendment and the Oregon Constitution granting a right to an attorney when a defendant cannot afford one, because the state has not allocated enough money to pay public defenders.
- The Bureau of Labor and Industries stopped hundreds of wage theft investigations because their investigation and enforcement teams are underfunded.
- The Employment Related Day Care program’s waitlist has grown to 10,000 households, having proven itself critical in subsidizing childcare, but unable to meet demand because, in large part, a lack of funding.
Last, consider how the state funds the University of Oregon, the economic engine powering its second-biggest city. This issue is close to my heart as a fifth-year PhD student in physics and an elected student government representative for half the graduate student body at UO. For the last decade, state appropriations have composed on average only 6.4% of UO’s revenue. To compensate for this paltry share of public funds for public higher education, tuition at Oregon public four-year institutions is the highest of any state west of the Dakotas. Higher education is a prerequisite to a career with our state’s largest employers in the healthcare or semiconductor industries. The legislature wants these jobs, but predominantly places the burden for funding its higher education infrastructure on the students it seeks.
The consequences aren’t just decades of interest payments. Students can’t afford basic needs today. For the past two academic years, 40% of UO students surveyed reported food insecurity, 10% of students needed a textbook subsidy, and hundreds more have accessed university-subsidized (but not state-subsidized) childcare. However, the latest revenue forecast portends doom for the solutions to Oregon’s poor higher education funding this biennium. They do not have the money to grow the Public University and Community College Support Funds, nor pay for student basic needs support via House Bills 3182 and 3183.
That is, unless lawmakers are willing to create revenue. The simplest short-term solution is the Rainy Day Fund, but the state’s inability to fund all its services in standard financial weather means Rainy Day Fund usage must be paired with true revenue reform. Our neighbors in Washington showed us this is possible, adding over $9 billion in short-term revenue and passing a landmark wealth tax out of its Senate this spring. Oregon should follow and create new income tax brackets this session for earnings over $250,000 for single and over $500,000 for joint files, and at $500,000 / $1,000,000. We should be taxing multinational corporations based on their total worldwide profits, not the portion they claim is solely due to Oregon. We should end Enterprise Zones, especially those for data centers, which shower large corporations in millions so they might bring tens of jobs to the state. And, while lawmakers will need to prioritize changes that raise revenue now, they should put repeals of the kicker, Measure 5, and Measure 50 on the ballot and aggressively campaign for these reforms’ passage.
We shouldn’t be fighting over whether college students can afford food or defendants get attorneys. It’s time for lawmakers to be the leaders we elected them to be and fund our future.
Andrew Ducharme is a PhD candidate in the Department of Physics at the University of Oregon, a member of the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation (GTFF, AFT Local 3544), and the chair of AFT-Oregon’s Policy & Legislation Committee.
