Skip to main content
The Portland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America said today that it will fiercely oppose any attempt by Gov. Tina Kotek to pause collection of Multnomah County’s Preschool for All tax, or reduce the tax rate on the Portland region’s highest earners.
”Governor Kotek is declaring war on preschool. She is sacrificing the future of Oregon’s children so that her rich friends stop yelling at her,” Olivia Katbi, co-chair of Portland DSA, said in a statement. “This is an unacceptable capitulation to the demands of Oregon’s rich and super-rich, whose feelings have been hurt by being required to contribute to the society that made it possible for them to get so very rich.”
In Kotek’s letter to Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson, which WW first reported on Wednesday, the governor expressed concern that the county taxpayers shoulder the second-highest tax marginal tax rate in the nation. She pointed to a three-year decline in tax revenues from high earners as a signal of taxpayer flight that could hamstring an economic rebound for the city and the state.
She suggested the county consider a three-year pause in collection of the tax, or reducing the tax rate and scaling back the program to its initial aims. (Whether the universal preschool program has expanded beyond its stated objectives is itself a matter in dispute.)
In a Wednesday response to Kotek, Vega Pederson disputed that high earners were leaving Multnomah County. County spokesman Ryan Yambra tells WW that one of the numbers Kotek cited in her letter—a drop of 1,700 Preschool for All tax filers since 2021—were not accurate. Based on updated data from around May 20, which came after the city intensified its collections, Vega Pederson says the number of taxpayers actually grew by 5,429.
Roxy Mayer, Kotek’s spokeswoman, says the governor’s office is reviewing Vega Pederson’s letter. “The governor remains firm in her position,” Mayer says.
Over the past two days, Kotek’s letter has sparked alarm and outrage among progressives, who have described it as a betrayal of working-class families to pacify the wealthy.
For the DSA, Kotek’s letter represents a threat to what is arguably the flagship policy achievement of a political movement that is gaining power in Portland City Hall.
The Portland DSA had long pushed for universal preschool in Portland, and as WW has reported, the chapter qualified its own measure for the ballot before Vega Pederson brought a compromise version to voters in 2020. It passed with 64% of the vote. The program, meant to build universal capacity by 2030, raises funds through a marginal income tax (1.5% of income over $200,000 for joint filers, and another 1.5% on income over $400,000 for joint filers).
The business community has long opposed it, with a recent effort testing voters’ appetite to repeal the tax.
Andrew Hoan, the president and CEO of the Portland Metro Chamber, said Wednesday that Kotek’s move was appropriate given job loss in the county and a “structural economic crisis.”
“We have years of clear and irrefutable data that indicates the PFA tax is having an impact on our highly mobile middle class and higher-income earners who are choosing to leave,” Hoan said. “While we fully support the idea of early learning, the tax mechanism threatens the very funding source that propels the program.”
But the DSA’s release says that sentiment “hinges on the tired myth that Portland is a city in decline, burnt out after so much conflict.” Kotek’s move, they say, is a capitulation to the “moneyed elite.”
The chapter adds: “The reality is that Portland is a vibrant, thriving city that the rich want to live in, along with the rest of us—in part because of its social programs, not in spite of them. Working-class voters won this social program and will defend it—and Portland DSA is proud to be a part of that fight."