Update on Tuesday, June 24: Our fears are realized. At 11pm last night, an amendment was added to S.B. 106 that would kill Preschool for All, phasing it out by 2027. Willamette Week has the story this morning. The Senate Finance Committee will have a work session on this bill at 1pm today (they may change it to a public hearing at the last minute, to cut down on the number of people can submit testimony).  This is a wildly undemocratic betrayal of the Multnomah County voters, and of the thousands of families in Multnomah County who are planning their lives around the promise of universal preschool. We now have a version of this letter that goes directly to the handful of lawmakers who are directly behind this effort, as well as the Governor, district-specific legislators, and our City and County leaders. Please click all the way through and send the four versions--it will only take a moment.

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There is an existential threat to Preschool for All developing in Salem, and unless we can rally enough community outrage and response, the program could effectively be killed by the Governor’s backroom deals.

Friends of Preschool for All is hearing that in the last few weeks, Governor Kotek has been privately and publicly pressuring Multnomah County Commission Chair Jessica Vega Pederson to pause the Preschool for All tax for multiple years, which would make achieving universality on schedule impossible. Her efforts are fueled by false statistics and a pervasive myth that wealthy households are fleeing the county; census data shows that the share of wealthy households in Multnomah County has steadily increased since 2019. There are more people paying the Preschool for All Tax today than there were in 2021. Moreover, data from other localities show that increased taxation of the wealthy does not lead to a flight of wealth.

It has also been rumored that Governor Kotek is trying to ram a last-minute bill through the state legislature that would preempt Multnomah County from collecting the tax that funds Preschool for All. It's been introduced as a placeholder bill called SB 106, which had a brief, nonsensical, and infuriating hearing on Wednesday.

We know that Oregon's 1% have the Governor's ear. And what they couldn't do at the ballot box, they are now doing by private lobbying. Using false data, Oregon’s richest men are urging the Governor to take extreme, unprecedented, and undemocratic action against our local government.

The Governor's closed-door legislative maneuvering favors the wealthiest residents in our state over vulnerable families and children. It shows a complete disregard of the will of the voters. And the implications extend far beyond our groundbreaking Preschool for All program: If the Governor gets to decide how cities and counties raise and spend money, all Oregonians will lose our local power.

Tell Governor Kotek and the legislature: hands off Preschool for All!
Tell our City and County leaders: stand up to Salem!