In her campaign for State Senate District 16, Clatsop County Commissioner Courtney Bangs is arguing that Oregon needs to cut back on spending to lower costs for residents and streamline regulations to attract and retain businesses.
Bangs, a Republican, said that she would also prioritize repealing or amending the state’s corporate activity tax to stimulate economic growth and try to shift the state government’s general disposition to one of collaboration with businesses if elected. Above all, though, Bangs said her biggest goal would be to advocate fiscal pragmatism when new programs are proposed and seek to bring the state’s spending in line with its means to prevent negative impacts to constituents.
“I think we've hired above our pay grade and now we're sitting in a crisis situation, financially,” Bangs said. “And who pays the price? It's the people who need the money the most. It's our schools. It’s our social services. It's our, our older population.”
Bangs enters the November campaign with strong momentum coming off a three-way primary victory in which she received 60% of the vote after garnering the endorsement of incumbent Senator Suzanne Weber, a Republican ineligible for reelection following a 2023 walkout. Since the primary, Bangs said that she has been traveling and meeting with constituents to learn local concerns across the district’s width and breadth, and that the number one issue across the board is affordability.
To address this issue, Bangs argued that the best approach is creating a more business-friendly environment to increase job opportunities and wages, while controlling government spending to prevent the need for further tax and fee increases.
Two opportunities stand out to Bangs to create an environment more conducive to business formation and growth: simplifying permitting processes and repealing the state’s corporate activity tax (CAT).
Currently, Bangs said that there are duplicative permitting processes across state agencies, naming the Department of Environmental Quality and Department of State Lands as an example, and that she hoped to bring officials from different agencies together to create unified permitting checklists. “So, rather than having a developer have to bounce between agencies in order to complete their build out, it would be nice for those agencies to just align themselves with each other,” Bangs said. “The goal being making Oregon marketable again.”
Bangs said that she would favor the repeal of the CAT, approved by the legislature in 2019, arguing that it is a “hidden sales tax” that is passed on to consumers. Bangs acknowledged that there might not be legislative appetite to repeal the tax and said that she would be willing to compromise by raising the revenue threshold for businesses to be subject to the tax.
When looking at the government spending side of the equation, Bangs said that the state government needs to tighten its belt before asking taxpayers to shoulder higher taxes and fees by cutting down on “bloat,” which she defines as funds going to costs not associated with services. Bangs pointed at proposed gas tax manager positions that would have been created in the voter-rejected transportation pacakage passed by Democrats last year as an example. Given past hiring that outpaced the growth in tax revenues, Bangs said it would also be necessary to right-size future budgets by using natural attrition and retirement to consolidate agency leadership and to bring similar departments together under unified management.
Policies should receive the same scrutiny, Bangs said, arguing that the benefits of certain objectives, like achieving net-zero carbon emissions needed to be evaluated against the cost of achieving them
Education is an area of particular interest for Bangs, who has a long background as a teacher. Bangs said that two of her top priorities would be returning authority to enforce truancy laws to school districts and crafting policy around artificial intelligence.
Bangs said that artificial intelligence needs to be regulated for both teachers and students. For teachers, Bangs said that she favored a ban on using open-source large language models to create lesson plans, given their lack of factual accuracy, though she said the state might want to invest in proprietary models based on accurate data. For students, Bangs said legislators need to promote statewide conversations on how to stimulate students’ critical thinking through classroom exercises.
“There is a need for our legislators to recognize how fully functional the tools are that our kids have access to and then help protect and prevent them from losing critical thinking skills,” Bangs said.
On transportation, Bangs said she opposed any increase to the gas tax and felt that the Oregon Department of Transportation needed to rein in its spending and take a maintenance-first approach to roads. Bangs said it was “disheartening” to see problem areas like the bump on Highway 26 and slides on Highway 6 repaved without addressing underlying geotechnical issues while money was invested in new projects elsewhere.
“I think the state of Oregon needs to rein in our growth in our roadway system and in our bike paths and sidewalks and so on and so forth and go to a maintenance first methodology until our current infrastructure is bolstered,” Bangs said.
Bangs said that she would take a similar approach to reducing permitting hurdles for housing construction as she proposes for businesses, streamlining the process to reduce costs and stimulate new development.
Other issues Bangs said she would aim to address are repealing the bill requiring farmers to pay overtime to employees and increasing reporting requirements for nonprofit agencies receiving grants from the state to rebuild trust with taxpayers.
Bangs said that in addition to increasing affordability, she wanted to bring accountability back to Salem, whether it be through returning truancy enforcement or further updating or repealing Measure 110 to deter drug use.
“What happens when you remove consequences to something,” Bangs queried. “You remove the need to stop doing it. And I would just like to be able to bring consequences back in style a little bit, you know, from school districts to drug use. Consequences are what prevent bad behavior.”
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