Community Forum on the 2012 Legislative Agenda - 10 November 2011

Community Forum on the 2012 Legislative Session

• Date: Thursday, November 10 2011
• Time: 6:30 PM
• Location: Portland Building, Room C, 2nd floor, 1120 SW 5th Ave
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Purpose

Participate in a Community Forum regarding the upcoming 2012 State of Oregon Legislative Session.

Other details
This event is designed to inform the community about the City’s process for developing the legislative agenda, provide an overview of the upcoming 2012 legislative session and have the opportunity for community members to share the issues that their neighborhood and communities are facing with the Commissioner.

Please RSVP to Portland Information and Referral at 503-823-4000

Ideas that the occupation might talk about:

1. Feed in Tarriff- requiring power utilities to buy solar and sustainable electricity from local generators
2. Stronger campaign contribution disclosure laws- all significant gifts must be subject to disclosure, and all donors to PACs must be transparent to public examination
3. Conflict of interest law- regulators working for state agencies must sign to a contract agreeing not to work for businesses regulated by their agency, or businesses owned by subsidiaries thereof, for a certain period of time after their employment with the state agency.
4. Investment firm tax- tax on brokerage firms
5. Stock transaction tax- tax on the exchange publicly traded stocks. This will act to cool rapid trading and promote more sober and long term investment strategies.
6. Public investment credit union- the creation of a publicly owned credit union aimed at the mission of encouraging small business and worker collectives in the state of Oregon
7. Automatic default of voter eligibility- selective service registration at the age of 18 also serves as default voter registration, making Oregonians registered voters by default. Widens the voter pool and decreases the need for voter registration drives.
8. Instant Runoff voting- GA ENDORSED- allows voters to rank their preferences on the ballot
9. Public campaign financing- candidates able to collect a certain number of donations qualify for public funding to run their campaign, weaning our elected officials off of the need for corporate money
10. Fair and balanced coverage- requiring OPB to provide fair and equal amounts of coverage time to political candidates
11. Community solar- specification of reform NEEDED
12. Limited duration charters of encorporation. Alters the default so that a corporation chartered in Oregon is chartered for a temporary duration subject to renewal rather than of permanent duration.
13. Statutes of dissolution- empowers the Attorney General to dissolve corporations, removing the rights and protections therein, in circumstances of repeated labor or environmental intransigence.
14. Non-sustainable goods tax. A tax upon foods (for example, bluefin tuna) and goods that cannot be grown or harvested in a sustainable manner (another example: harvestable doug fir trees would be exempt, sequioa hardwoods would be taxed).
15. New tax schedule for the state income tax- currently, there is a class of $100,000 and up. We wish to see new schedules, like a $200K-500K schedule, a 500K-1M$ schedule, to redress Oregon's tax and infrastructure woes, with new minimum taxes for certain levels of income.
16. Long legislative session- 2012 is scheduled to be a short session. The people of Oregon our in a profound economic crisis, and we need a legislature with a long session to address our many issues.
17. Ending corporate personhood- there are many in the 99% who favor a legislative challenge to the doctrine put for in Citizens United v. FEC

The next Solutions Committee meeting will be Sunday, November 13th, at Noon, in either Terry Schrunk Plaza (if not raining) or at the Strategy Tent.

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