[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 83 (Monday, June 14, 1999)]
[House]
[Page H4131]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   QUALITY OF LIFE IN PORTLAND, OREGON, IS KEY TO GOOD JOBS THAT STAY

  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I came to Congress with a goal to help 
the Federal Government be a better partner working with State and local 
governments, the private sector and individual citizens to promote 
livable communities. In that capacity I am used to people who are 
confused or are perhaps even hostile to looking at doing things 
differently. Change is not easy. Some have difficulty imagining 
different patterns of development in our community.
  The latest example of either confusion or hostility was an article 
that appeared in the New York Times this weekend entitled The Scourge 
of New Jobs. It was taking my community, Portland, Oregon, to task for 
supposedly discouraging new jobs by having a modest surcharge on 
potential increase in jobs as a result of an agreement with the high 
tech company Intel. The article was replete with errors.
  First and foremost, Portland does not limit building permits, 
although it does, I think very logically, focus on where building and 
development should take place. In fact, we have seen over the better 
part of this decade dramatic increase in building and development in 
our community. Our area does not limit jobs; in fact, to the contrary. 
We have had rapid growth in employment in the Portland metropolitan 
area; over 180,000 jobs since 1990. But what we have found is that the 
quality of life is the key to attracting good jobs and keeping them in 
our community.
  Mr. Speaker, the sad fact is that development seldom entirely pays 
for itself through increased sales or property taxes. Indeed, in our 
community, as in many, when you have industrial expansion like Intel, 
the strains potentially on schools, public safety, roads and the 
environment far exceed a modest increase in the property tax. In this 
case, the local government had agreed to place a limit on the amount of 
property that could be collected for the new development. In exchange 
for this limitation there was a thousand-dollar surcharge that was 
going to be assessed against Intel if it exceeded an additional 
thousand jobs.
  But put that in perspective. We are talking about $12.5 billion of 
new investment. We are talking about a $200 million tax break. If 
somehow the company increased employment by more than a thousand, that 
would only be a million dollars to help the local community defer the 
increased costs. It was clearly a good deal for the company, which is 
why they jumped at it, and it reflects the fact that we want to have 
balanced growth, not deteriorate the quality of life for the businesses 
and the individuals who already live there.

  At a time when suburban dwellers are increasingly concerned about the 
erosion of their quality of life, at a time when small towns across 
America are struggling to be economically viable and retain their 
unique identities, when central cities are struggling to come back from 
years of economic decline and decay, when a town like Atlanta wakes up 
one day and looks at the price of its unplanned growth, losing job 
opportunities, for example, in high tech, it makes what we are doing in 
the Portland metropolitan area worthwhile not just to look at, but to 
carefully examine.
  Mr. Speaker, I would be the last to suggest that this ought to be a 
cookie-cutter approach that everybody ought to apply, but at a time 
when the American people demand and deserve more livable communities, 
we ought not to ignore any good examples.

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