11 Ideas for Senate District 11
Over the last decade, as a mom, a member of the Salem-Keizer School Board’s budget committee, a City Councilor, a candidate, and a neighbor, I have spoken with thousands of community members, advocates, and leaders. One thing is true across all of those conversations: it is getting harder and harder for people to thrive. The following policy concepts are a product of hundreds of hours of listening and a shared goal to create a community that cares.
For all of us. Para todos.
Economic Prosperity
State Bank of Oregon - Investing in Oregon’s Future:
A State Bank functions much like any other financial institution with one primary difference: the wealth generated by a State Bank stays in the State’s budget, helping to meet needs across the state. A State Bank can also help us address our housing crisis. Many working people across Oregon want to downsize their home after raising kids, but want to keep their low mortgage rate. Others want to invest in their property to create more housing like an apartment in their garage, basement, or backyard. An Oregon State Bank, like North Dakota has, can allow for Portable Mortgages and Small Loans for Housing Investment, so we can grow and stabilize our housing market. An Oregon State Bank can also offer affordable Small Business Loans to grow our local economy, and allow businesses barred from federal banking to operate more easily and safely in our state.
Lower Taxes for Small Businesses, Raise Taxes on AI Data Centers and Multinational Corporations:
The Corporate Activity Tax (CAT) is a tax on commercial businesses that gross more than $1M annually. The revenue generated by this tax goes to supporting our public schools. About 11% of the revenue generated from the CAT comes from small businesses; but at a time when our small businesses are struggling to stay afloat, they can’t afford more taxes and fees. In today’s economy, $1M in business activity is not a large corporation, it’s your locally-owned roofing company or the coffee shop that has a handful of locations around town. I propose that we increase the threshold for paying the Corporate Activity Tax from $1M to $1.5M and make up the lost revenue by increasing the tax rate for AI Data centers and the top 1% of businesses in Oregon.
Capital District - Payment for Emergency Services:
Every year, Salem misses out on millions of dollars of property tax revenue from State-owned buildings. Salem police, fire, and EMS respond to emergencies at these buildings, but the city does not receive any property taxes to help offset those costs. This means that Salem homeowners and renters are on the hook to pay for the state to receive these services. This simply is not fair. Creating a special Capital District would allow the city of Salem to receive payments from the State to help cover the cost of one fire station and additional staffing.
Consumer Protections
Fan First - We all deserve to have Fun:
Oregonians deserve to have access to fun and recreation! Dozens of sports, entertainment, and music venues in Oregon receive State funding and Oregonians should be able to afford to enjoy those venues. As a part of this policy, event venues that receive State dollars would have to offer a lottery of low-cost tickets to residents and concession costs would be tied to street pricing. Just like at Portland International Airport, if a vendor in a venue has a brick-and-mortar elsewhere in the State, they can’t charge more for the same products at the venue than they do at their brick-and-mortar. A beer that costs $7 dollars outside the stadium shouldn’t cost $14 inside the stadium! The data shows that these policies actually increase revenue for venues and increase access to recreation for low and middle income families. Let’s put a little bit of JOY back in politics!
Surveillance Pricing Ban - Fair pricing for all:
If you’ve gone to order groceries and seen that the price of milk changes day to day, you may have been a victim of surveillance pricing. Large corporations are using data such as your age, gender, zip code, and even what time of day or year it is to determine how much they can charge you for certain goods. At a time when these corporations are posting record profits while working people are living paycheck to paycheck, we cannot allow algorithms and AI tech to nickel and dime Oregonians. The price of milk should be determined by the cost of producing that good, not how much a company thinks you are willing to pay based on the season, time of day, and your socioeconomic demographics.
Renter Protections and Affordable Housing:
Step 1 – Freeze the Rent:
I am proposing a 3-year rent increase moratorium. When the State Legislature imposed statewide rent control, loopholes inadvertently caused rents to rise for thousands of Oregonians. Right now, rents can go up by up to 10% per year, but the average cost-of-living wage increase is only 3%. That means Oregonians are effectively taking pay cuts year after year as costs rise and their wages do not. With seniors, young people, and families being priced out of their homes, and our ongoing struggle to end homelessness, it is critical that we give working people a break. That’s why I am proposing a 3-year moratorium on rent increases. People need a chance to catch up - and even get ahead - while Legislators create a system that actually works for working people.
Step 2 – Cap the Rent:
The rent is too damn high! Past efforts to fix this have failed and Oregonians have paid the price! It's time we close the loopholes that drive up the cost of housing and limit all rental units to a 6% annual rent cap. Currently, a landlord can increase rent 10% every year, which is unsustainable for working families and those on fixed income. This 10% cap does not apply to newly built housing and allowing new builds to raise rents indiscriminately counteracts the stability that building is meant to create. Mobile home parks are often the final frontier of affordable housing for many people. Recently, the Oregon Legislature placed a rent cap on mobile home parks of more than 30 units at 6% annually. I believe we need to make this 6% annual rent cap universal on all rental properties, regardless of unit size or type.
Step 3 – First Right of Refusal:
It’s no secret that a huge part of the affordability crisis has been caused by private equity buying up housing, to hike up the rents, and reinvest that money out of state. To combat this, I think tenants should have the first right of refusal when the property they rent is being sold. After all, it is their hard earned dollars paying the mortgage on that property. Tenants should have 60 days to explore the option of buying the home, apartment building, or mobile home village that they live in. Oh, and if we had a State Bank, the State could offer financing options for tenant co-ops and back those loans; wouldn’t that be cool!
World-Class Education for our Modern Era
End Addiction Through Education:
Our kids are struggling. It’s time we do what the DARE curriculum of the 2000s set out to do and failed. We need real, data supported, scientifically backed addiction education for our students. In a society where attention is currency, corporations are profiting off of our students becoming addicted to social media, gambling, vaping, and other harmful things designed to suck people in and develop dependencies. If we want to give our kids a fighting chance, we need an addiction curriculum that addresses all of the things that can snowball into addiction, shame free ways to recognize and get help with addiction, and how to develop safe and healthy habits.
Year-Round School for Educational Excellence and Future Prosperity:
In the United States, our school systems have always been designed to produce graduates capable of entering into the workforce. At one time, that meant that we needed to increase literacy rates to keep up in the global economy. Our school year is designed to support students participating in the growing season over summer. School lunches were developed to nutritionally shore up our young people to prepare them for war. But our public education system can no longer just be a means to producing workers. Our kids need more. They need to know how to think critically and they need a school year that supports learning. Every year, kids return from summer break having regressed academically, teachers spend the first several weeks of instructional time reintegrating children into the classroom, and families are struggling after having to accommodate summer childcare. Oregon students receive a full 15 days LESS instructional time than the majority of the country. It is no wonder our students' performance is lagging. We need to increase our instructional time. I am asking the State to study the viability of year round school; a new school calendar, made for this moment, with shorter breaks spread throughout the year for families to still enjoy significant quality time together without our students losing critical learning.
Public Safety
Domestic Violence Registry:
Just like how we have a sex offender registry so that members of the community can be aware when a person who is potentially unsafe works or lives nearby, we need the same for individuals convicted of domestic violence. Especially with the prevalence of dating apps, where people are meeting strangers online, we should have a way of knowing if a person has been convicted of sexual or domestic violence related crimes.
Name Change Notification:
A few years ago, here in Senate District 11, a harrowing news story broke about a woman whose husband had been stalking her college-aged daughter and friends. The story detailed how the woman’s now ex-husband had planted cameras in her daughter's apartment. After pleading to a lesser charge and not needing to register as an offender, the man was able to change his name, unbeknownst to his victims. This is not acceptable. We need to expand victim protections and notification laws to include name changes of their perpetrators.
Letter from Cathy to the Community
Dear Community,
Right now perpetrators of stalking, sexual assault, and domestic violence can change their full legal name. This means that survivors of these crimes may not know the current name or location of their perpetrator. For many survivors, this can manifest as constant fear. At any given moment you might run into your abuser in a public setting. If your abuser remarries, their new partner may never know about the skeletons in their closet. They may be their next victim. They may be exposing their children to a predator without ever knowing it.
In 2013, my daughter and her friends were stalked and filmed without their consent in their own home. I was horrified when I found out the perpetrator was my husband at the time. I divorced him, and supported my daughter and her friends through the trial and the passing of House Bill 2356, named for my daughter: Ashley’s Bill. This bill reclassified the unauthorized secret video recording in private places (where individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy, such as homes or bedrooms) as a felony offense. We passed the bill, but it did not change what happened next.
My ex-husband changed his full legal name. He remarried. He has new stepchildren and a new family. This name change has allowed him to live a new life, free of the consequences that should already be in place. It is unacceptable to me that the law does not do a stronger job of protecting survivors.
I am working with Virginia Stapleton and her future colleagues, to draft and submit a bill to require the state of notify victims of stalking, sexual assault, and domestic violence if their perpetrator changes any part of their legal name. I trust Virginia with my story and as my advocate. I know she will always stand with survivors. I am urging my community to stand with me and cast your vote for Virginia Stapleton for State Senate this November.
I look forward to attending the signing ceremony for Cathy’s Bill.
Cathy McInnis
Keizer, Oregon
Senate District 11 Resident
Environment and Climate
Tom McCall Civilian Conservation Corps:
Our young people need opportunity and purpose now more than ever. In a nod to my favorite former governor of Oregon, Tom McCall, I am introducing a bill to kickstart a program called the Tom McCall Civilian Conservation Corps. Tom McCall was a conservationist first and understood the need to maintain our most prized possession in Oregon: our beautiful environment! This program would be designed for young people ages 18-26. In exchange for two years of service to the state of Oregon, they would receive two years of higher education. Individuals could participate in wildland firefighting, controlled burns, forest management, campground repairs, trail maintenance, and beach and waterway cleanup. They could also work for local governments in public health, libraries, parks and recreation, or our public schools. Through community learning opportunities, our young people will have the opportunity to address the unique needs of Oregon and receive an immersive civics education like none other.
Dark Sky State - Bring the Stars and Tourists Back to Oregon:
Eastern Oregon is the largest dark sky sanctuary in the world. This designation brings thousands of tourists to the Oregon “Outback” every year to witness meteor showers, observe the stars, unplug under a majestic dark sky, and spend money at local businesses. I would like to see Oregon become the first State in the US to be certified as a dark sky sanctuary. This means transitioning to down lighting, nightlighting, and motion activated lighting in our major cities to reduce our light pollution output. This would be a way to not only support our local ecology but also the economy in tourist destinations all over Oregon. It would also save the State and our cities thousands of dollars in electricity bills.