False premise in column about Google and school funding

To the editor,

I am writing in response to the article: “Tax Breaks, Water Use, School Cuts: The Real Cost of Hosting Google in The Dalles”.

For the supposed school cuts, to say we are missing out on $2,764 in per student funding is a false premise. Your readers deserve a more accurate understanding of school funding. School funding in Oregon is controlled at the state level and has been since the passage of Measure 5 in 1990 that centralized school funding with the State of Oregon.

The measure created statewide equity in funding districts to make up for variations in local wealth. No matter how many development taxes Google or other data centers in Oregon would have paid, it would not have enriched District 21.

Our District is already allotted the full measure of local property taxes allowed under Measure 5 and the rest of our budget is granted by the State. District 21 did benefit from the most recent negotiated incentive package when $750,000 was classified as a “fee” and allowed to flow to the District annually for the next 15 years. Beyond development incentives, once data centers become operational, the real benefit is that they are subject to normal business taxes including the Corporate Activity Tax.

The CAT tax pushes over a billion dollars into State education programs which District 21 benefits from directly.

-Betsy Hege, The Dalles