I appreciate your printing the article on Lane County’s property tax give-away (“Low Taxes, No Oversight,” Sept. 20). It was refreshing to see a story that sourced actual numbers and attempted to offer some amount of context. I hope that your own writers might follow suit, as the piece does beg for a follow up.
While I mostly disagree with the writer of “Just Livid” (Letters, Sept. 27), he does have a point about the tax subsidies existing within a larger framework of business revenue and taxation. How much payroll tax are these companies paying? What are they paying in other city or state taxes? Had the buildings in the enterprise zone (those receiving the benefit) been sitting idle. If so, for how long? What do our City Council members have to say about all this?
And speaking of City Council, don’t we have an election coming up? Does EW have any plans to print any information regarding the various ballot initiatives? Anything?
Editor’s note: Michael Tobin’s story was written through Eugene Weekly‘s work with the Catalyst Journalism Project and he is a contributing writer. Read info on ballot intiatives in this issue.