Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek supports using $1B ‘kicker' tax returns for wildfire costs
Gov. Tina Kotek has thrown her support for using Oregon's 'kicker' tax refund to infuse $1 billion into fighting wildfires.
Lawmakers have struggled for years to come up with a new stream of revenue to pay for fighting the growing number of wildfires that burn each summer.
In 2024, the Oregon Legislature held a special session to approve $218 million to cover unpaid wildfire bills from the record-breaking season.
At a news conference May 19, Kotek opened the possibility of withholding a large part of next year's $1.65 billion 'kicker' to help cover wildfire costs in future years.
'I do think this conversation — on a one-time basis — of supporting rural Oregon by potentially using a portion of the kicker tax break would be a beneficial approach," she said. "I think that's the right conversation to be having, and I would urge legislators to continue with that.'
Kotek later clarified, through a spokesperson, she only supported holding back the piece of the kicker that would go to 'high income earners.'
The kicker is a quirky part of Oregon tax law. It is triggered when income taxes in a two-year budget cycle come in at least 2% higher than lawmakers projected when setting the budget. In those cases, the extra money is given back to taxpayers.
Lawmakers have generally been loath to use it for anything other than sending it to taxpayers, but in the absence of other options, it appears to have started gaining support in the Oregon Legislature.
Kotek's statement was a de-facto endorsement of a bill — Senate Bill 1177 — authored by state Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, that would use 'surplus revenues (the kicker) for wildfire funding.'
Golden told KGW how the bill would work.
"My number one priority is passing a bill to redirect the income tax kicker one time — it only happens once — into a permanent wildfire trust fund, where you never spend the principal. You only spend the interest earnings," Golden said. "Using rough estimates and figures that would provide us every biennium ... about $165 million, which is about half of what we need for wildfire.
"If we do it this one time that will keep generating that fund, we'll keep generating that interest 'til long after I'm gone."
Oregon Republicans, however, balked at the idea.
"Republicans do not support taking the kicker for this purpose," House Republican Leader Christine Drazan, R-Canby, said in a statement. "Oregonians are struggling under the weight of the cost of living in this state. And the kicker absolutely supports them, absolutely helps them. And there are a lot of ways to fund wildfires in Oregon."
To use the kicker for wildfire costs, lawmakers would need a two-thirds majority vote.
Zach Urness has been an outdoors reporter in Oregon for 18 years and is host of the Explore Oregon Podcast. He can be reached at zurness@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6801. Find him on X at @ZachsORoutdoors and BlueSky at oregonoutdoors.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: Oregon kicker tax return could cover wildfire costs under bill
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
4 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Republicans reject ranked choice voting nationwide. Why?
The conservative backlash against ranked choice voting grew to over one-third of U.S. states last week as Iowa became the 17th Republican-controlled legislature in less than four years to ban the alternative voting system. Besides Iowa, states prohibiting ranked choice voting this year include Arkansas, Kansas, North Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming. These states follow on the heels of Florida and Tennessee that turned against the once-popular voting system in 2022. Unlike Utah, none of these 17 states ever implemented ranked choice voting, which is marketed by its cheerleaders as a way to give voters more options, incentivize centrist election outcomes and turn down the temperature of political rhetoric. But the Beehive State, too, may be seeing enthusiasm wane for its experiment with ranked choice voting. Some municipalities that tested the unique process have reported unintuitive election results, voter confusion and decreased turnout. There is also a partisan element. Along with mail-in ballots and voter roll cleanup, ranked choice voting has been thrown into the middle of a nationwide debate over how to increase trust in election results. 'It's gotten caught in the political division that's in our country right now,' said Kelleen Potter, the executive director of Utah Ranked Choice Voting. Now, as the Utah Legislature's seven-year ranked choice voting pilot program comes to a close, Potter hopes lawmakers will allow local governments leaders who like the voting program to continue using it indefinitely. Over the past three municipal election cycles, two dozen Utah cities have used ranked choice voting. But after an initial burst of interest, the craze might be fizzling out. In 2019, two cities utilized ranked choice voting. In 2021, that number shot up to 23. In 2023, it fell to 12. And this year, only four cities plan to have ranked choice elections: Salt Lake City, South Salt Lake, Millcreek and Midvale. Ranked choice voting differs from America's traditional 'first-past-the-post' process, where each voter casts one ballot for one candidate. Instead, voters are asked to arrange candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of votes in the first round, the lowest vote-getter is eliminated and ballots are redistributed based on subsequent rankings until a candidate receives a majority. Advocates argue the process encourages candidates to seek broad support, opens the door for third parties and removes the pressure to vote for the lesser of two evils. 'It's done exactly what it was supposed to do,' Potter said of the pilot program. 'Consistently in all the surveys that have been done, the majority of voters have liked using it.' A Utah Ranked Choice Voting poll in 2021 found that over 85% of voters who used ranked choice voting liked it. A Millcreek poll found that around 70% of voters also liked it. And a UVU analysis found support among around 60% of Utahns who had used ranked choice voting. But critics counter that in crowded contests, the process relies on an opaque algorithm that can be hard to understand, throws out incomplete ballots and fosters skepticism. Several years after Republicans brought ranked choice voting to Utah — former state GOP chair Stan Lockhart is a prominent proponent of the system — GOP lawmakers appear ready to ditch it. A 2025 bill that would have extended the voting program for another decade was killed before it ever came up for a vote. When bill sponsor Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, was asked whether he thought there was a desire among lawmakers to let cities continue using ranked choice voting, he said his last attempt showed the answer is 'a resounding 'NO.'' Even though some of this reaction is surely partisan — Trump has called ranked choice voting 'one of the greatest threats to democracy' — much of it is driven by legitimate concerns about introducing a novel election system during such a fraught political environment, according to Lisa Dixon, the executive director of the right-leaning Center for Election Confidence. 'People are seeing that, on the one hand, it introduces some new problems,' Dixon said. 'And then, on the flip side, we've also seen that it doesn't always deliver its promises of creating consensus candidates that are more in the middle.' Where it has been implemented statewide, it has sometimes produced 'unpredictable' outcomes, Dixon said, as in the case of Republican Sarah Palin's loss to Democrat Mary Peltola in Alaska's 2022 special at-large House race, where a large majority of voters preferred Republican representation. That same year, a ranked choice election for a school board seat in Oakland, California, declared the wrong candidate as the winner because of a programming glitch. But the wrong candidate was certified before a recount identified the error. And while the 2021 New York City mayoral race has been touted as an example of ranked choice voting electing a more moderate candidate — Mayor Eric Adams — this year, it appears that multiple progressive groups are attempting to game the system to elect a self-described socialist. 'Whatever the problem that we're trying to fix in our country, we shouldn't be abandoning what we currently do, and turning to a system that's going to introduce more problems,' Dixon said.


The Hill
11 minutes ago
- The Hill
Senate GOP unveil long-awaited SNAP proposals for Trump bill
Senate Republicans on Wednesday rolled out a suite of proposed changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as a key component of President Trump's 'big beautiful bill' – but it dials back some of the proposals sought by the House that drew intraparty concerns. The new legislative text from the Senate would require states to cover some of the cost of SNAP benefits, which are currently completely funded by the federal government, if they have a payment error rate above 6 percent beginning in fiscal 2028, while allowing states with rates below that level to continue paying zero percent. It also proposes states with higher payment error rates cover a greater share of benefit costs. If the error rate is 6 percent or higher, states would be subject to a sliding scale that could see its share of allotments rise to a range of between 5 percent to 15 percent. The House, by contrast, called for all states to cover 5 percent of the cost of allotments in its agricultural proposal passed as part of a broader plan to advance Trump's tax agenda last month, with states that had higher payment error rates having to pay anywhere between 15 to 25 percent. The softened proposal comes as Senate Republicans expressed concerns about how the House pitch would have impacted states. 'This bill takes a commonsense approach to reforming SNAP-cutting waste, increasing state accountability, and helping recipients transition to self-sufficiency through work and training,' Senate Agriculture Chairman John Boozman (R-Ariz.) said in a statement on Wednesday. 'It's about being good stewards of taxpayer dollars while giving folks the tools to succeed.' 'At the same time, our farmers and ranchers are facing real challenges,' he said. 'This legislation delivers the risk management tools and updated farm bill safety net they need to keep producing the safest, most abundant and affordable food, fuel, and fiber in the world. It's an investment in rural America and the future of agriculture.' Like the House bill, the Senate bill would also decrease the administrative cost the federal government is required to pay to help cover program operations in the states by 25 percent, but beginning in fiscal year 2027. The proposals in both chambers also seek to limit the federal government's ability to increase monthly benefits in the future and beef up work requirements, as well as farm provisions that GOP leaders have argued will make it easier to craft a bipartisan farm bill in the months ahead – although Democrats have said otherwise. Republicans on the Senate Agriculture Committee estimated the recent legislation would generate $144 billion in net savings in the years ahead as the party looks to ramp up cost-cutting measures in Trump's plan amid concerns about the overall deficit impact of his tax priorities.
Yahoo
12 minutes ago
- Yahoo
'Incredibly petty': Sen. Rand Paul says he was 'uninvited' to White House picnic over breaks with Trump
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he was "uninvited" to an annual White House picnic typically attended by members of Congress and their families, framing the move to reporters Wednesday as retribution for his opposition to key components of President Donald Trump's agenda. 'They're afraid of what I'm saying, so they think they're going to punish me, I can't go to the picnic, as if somehow that's going to make me more conciliatory,' Paul said. 'So it's silly, in a way, but it's also just really sad that this is what it's come to. But petty vindictiveness like this, it makes you — it makes you wonder about the quality of people you're dealing with.' Paul, who said he attended picnics hosted by Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, told reporters he called the White House on Wednesday to secure tickets to the annual picnic but was told he was not invited. He said he had family members flying to Washington to attend the event, including his son, daughter-in-law and 6-month-old grandson, who he noted owns a "Make America Great Again" hat. 'I just find this incredibly petty,' Paul told reporters. "I have been, I think, nothing but polite to the president. I have been an intellectual opponent, a public policy opponent, and he's chosen now to uninvite me from the picnic and to say my grandson can't come to the picnic." The White House did not immediately respond to a series of questions, including whether Paul was ever invited to the event and whether Trump was directly involved in the decision to "uninvite" him. As Trump pushes Republicans to pass a package of measures to fund much of his domestic agenda by Independence Day, Paul is among the Senate Republicans poised to make that milestone unreachable, joining fiscal hawks in the party to balk at legislation the Congressional Budget Office estimates said would add $2.4 trillion to the national deficit. In addition to his belief that the funding package would "explode the debt," Paul has criticized spending cuts in the bill as "wimpy and anemic," called planned Medicaid changes in the legislation "bad strategy" and proposed cutting billions of dollars for Trump's border wall from the bill. 'In private, there's quite a few people in there who actually do think we could save some money and are open-minded to it and believe the administration should justify the numbers,' Paul told reporters after a two-hour meeting on the bill Wednesday. 'Even if you're supportive, and I am supportive of border security, but I'm just not supportive of a blank check.' Paul said this week he plans to vote no on the legislation and speculated Wednesday that that might be among the reasons the invitation was rescinded. 'I'm arguing from a true belief and worry that our country is mired in debt and getting worse, and they choose to react by uninviting my grandson to the picnic,' Paul said. 'I don't know, I just think it really makes me lose a lot of respect I once had for Donald Trump.' Trump has frequently lashed out at Paul in response to the sustained opposition, deriding him on Truth Social for his criticisms. "Rand Paul has very little understanding of the BBB, especially the tremendous GROWTH that is coming. He loves voting 'NO' on everything, he thinks it's good politics, but it's not," Trump wrote last week. Paul has emerged as a chief critic of Trump's fiscal policy, and he has intensely criticized his decision to impose tariffs on major U.S. trading partners, arguing they will push the country into a recession. Paul, a libertarian conservative, was one of four Republican senators to back a Democratic resolution to block the implementation of Trump's Canadian tariffs, predicting at the time that the import penalties would "threaten us with a recession" and calling Trump's decision to impose tariffs on major U.S. trading partners "a terrible, terrible idea." The effort has so far stalled in the House. Paul also joined Democrats in introducing a bipartisan resolution to undo the 'reciprocal' tariffs Trump imposed on dozens of countries, this time by terminating the national emergency he declared to implement the global penalties, arguing that Trump had exceeded his presidential authority. 'Tariffs are taxes, and the power to tax belongs to Congress—not the president. Our Founders were clear: tax policy should never rest in the hands of one person,' Paul said in a statement about the bipartisan effort. 'Abusing emergency powers to impose blanket tariffs not only drives up costs for American families but also tramples on the Constitution. It's time Congress reasserts its authority and restores the balance of power.' That effort failed to pass the Senate. Paul's differences with Trump even extend to the military parade taking place Saturday, which he likened to parades in countries led by dictators. "I wouldn't have done it," Paul said Tuesday. "The images you saw in the Soviet Union and North Korea, we were proud not to be that." But still, in the face of his criticisms of Trump, Paul appeared to view the rescinded invitation as a shock, noting that even Democratic lawmakers remain invited to the White House picnic. "I think I'm the first senator in the history of United States to be uninvited to the White House picnic,' Rand told reporters. "Literally, every Democrat is invited, every Republican is invited, and to say that my family is no longer welcome, kind of sad, actually.' This article was originally published on