I generally appreciate attempts to bring outside experts into government conversations, because it’s generally good for politicians to have someone around who understands the issues at hand. In this instance, however, the effort to bring in a professor from Cornell to talk about real-world problems in Multnomah County was misguided at best and led to dangerously misleading conclusions at worst. Link to article

Commissioner Moyer’s Cornell expert said nothing whatsoever about Multnomah County or Portland, let alone offering “cold, hard data”. He mentioned a nationwide academic study showing little direct correlation between wealth mobility and small fluctuations in tax rates, which isn’t at all surprising. We know people are willing to pay a premium for quality of life. Manhattan is a prime example, with population growth despite some of the highest taxes in the nation. The more relevant question is what happens when taxes are sky high, while the quality of life has eroded?

In Portland, this is not an academic question that requires an opinion based on theory, but a real-life question that has been emphatically answered by, well, “cold, hard data”. ECONorthwest just looked at our local data and found that high-income earners have, in fact, left the region, taking with them over $2 billion in personal income in 2022 and 2023 alone. That’s the equivalent of 1000 millionaires leaving the region per year, if you want to put things in terms of millionaires.

And it’s not just the wealthy who are leaving. As most other urban cores across the country are seeing population growth, Portland is one of only a few major cities showing net out-migration. Although underneath that trend, some people do continue to move in, those coming in are often looking for jobs that yet another study has shown don’t exist, as downtown non-occupancy rates reach 30%, corresponding to a missing 30,000 jobs. Meanwhile, a larger number of people who have lived in the region for years, who have spent their careers and have homes and raised their children here, are leaving. With them go more than their tax dollars – we are losing community members, well-rooted neighbors and a ton of social and creative capital.

This is the story of a community in decline. Commissioner Moyer’s expert and the WW article extolling the expert’s irrelevant presentation, while neglecting the real data, just led people to believe that there isn’t a glaring problem with Multnomah County losing its tax base as it drives long-term residents away. I hope that there is more open and frank conversation about this topic that leads to urgency and action, because this should be deeply troubling to anyone who calls this region home.