Multnomah County Commissioners Fight Preschool For All “Preemption”

An effort to phase out the voter-approved Preschool For All program in Multnomah County at the state legislature was unveiled late Monday. Critics, including Multnomah County Board of Commissioners Chair Jessica Vega Pederson, called the move an attempt to strip local control and ignore the will of the voters. 

“Right now we are serving primarily low-income children of color,” Multnomah County Commissioner Meghan Moyer said during an informational session with the state Senate Committee on Finance and Revenue Tuesday. “They will likely be unable to access preschool without Preschool For All (PFA).”

PFA was passed by voters in 2020 and is funded by top earners in Multnomah County, with a 1.5% personal income tax that kicks in on taxable income that exceeds $125,000 for individual filers and $200,000 for joint filers. An additional 1.5% is added on taxable income that exceeds $250,000 for individuals and $400,000 for couples. A rate increase of 0.8% had been delayed until 2027.

In a June 10 letter to Vega Pederson, Gov. Tina Kotek expressed her belief that data “suggests that the PFA tax is creating an environment that discourages higher income earners, and any businesses that may be associated with those earners, from staying or locating in Portland.”

At the time, Kotek cited an overall decline in the total number of taxpayers filing for the PFA tax, which at the time she understood to be a drop of about 1,700 total filers since 2021 – evidence of either a decrease in taxable income or of filers who had left the county. It turned out she was referring to old figures, and in fact the number of taxpayers subject to the PFA tax had grown in that time. 

Last-Minute Add-On

The rebuttal to PFA came in the form of a proposed amendment to Senate Bill 106. The amendment was posted late Monday, but dated May 7, as Jessica Vega Pederson, chair of the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners, noted. 

“Long ago enough that there could have been a public hearing on this proposal,” she said. “So it is perplexing to me that this is being brought forward in the last days of session.

"There has been no public process, no public hearings, and limited ways for us to hear from the thousands of voters who approved this measure.”

Critics of the bill took issue with what they saw as the amendment’s language targeting Multnomah County specifically: The amendment only applies to counties with populations exceeding 700,000 – of which Multnomah is the only one – and it forbids such jurisdictions from imposing any income taxes to fund preschool or early childhood learning services “that are not in alignment, as determined by the Department of Early Learning and Care, with the standards and criteria required of state preschool or early learning programs.”

Sen. Mark Meek (D-Oregon City)During Tuesday’s session, Sen. Mark Meek (D-Oregon City) said colleagues in the Senate had requested the committee discuss Kotek’s letter and the county commissioners’ plans to adjust the program. 

“We do not want, as a body, to have to pre-empt a county or any other entity or sovereignty within the state of Oregon from levying taxes, but we also want to make sure we’re not duplicating services,” he said. “The state is investing a lot of money in our Dept. of Early Learning, and if we are duplicating those monies or those monies are being wasted in certain communities, we may have to make different decisions.”

“When we modeled out the number of seats we would need to create in order to provide universal access, we also considered the fact that there were already programs – Head Start, Preschool Promise, Oregon PreK – within Multnomah County,” Vega Pederson said. “So this was a system that was designed to work in parallel with the investments that were already happening at the state and federal dollars.” 

She said Kotek had already received upwards of 19,000 emails in support of the PFA program. 

A Unique Program In Oregon?

Moyer called the proposed amendment “deeply undemocratic” and pushed back against the idea that PFA duplicated state programs.

“Multnomah County PFA gets right what state preschool programs get wrong,” Moyer said.

“Offering full-day hours allows families in Multnomah County to work. Offering three- to six- hour programs, which is what the (state) early learning division does, makes it incredibly difficult for working families to participate. But Multnomah County understands the needs of our skilled workforce, and we meet that need head-on.”

The PFA program is structured as early education stabilization: By supporting providers and recruiting new ones, the county aimed to counter the 20% decrease in childcare sites that existed at the program’s launch, a decrease largely attributed to the pandemic. Key to this is providing livable wage jobs for teachers and staff. It is also a resource for families who don’t qualify for free preschool due to income restrictions, but who still struggle to pay the soaring costs of childcare. 

The PFA program’s goal has been to achieve its universal status of 11,750 openings by 2030, meaning it would expand its scope beyond children of low-income families, who currently have priority. Still, lawmakers criticized the program for failing to means-test. 

Moyer testified that her family pays $1,650 a month for preschool for her son. 

“The cost of preschool on working families – and I mean middle- and upper-middle-income families – is crushing,” she said.

Economic Investments

Moyer took issue with the idea that a preschool tax for high-earners undermines the city’s economic vitality by deterring wealthier residents. 

“People are not leaving Multnomah County because of Preschool For All,” she said. “That is not my opinion, that is based off of polling. The biggest reasons families leave Multnomah County are the high cost of housing and the poor performance of our public schools.

"Universal preschool attracts a young, skilled workforce and their families to Multnomah County.

"Tax breaks for wealthy individuals do not.”

She added, “Universal preschool is the way for Multnomah County to differentiate itself from competing urban communities and attract the workforce necessary for businesses to start and grow.”

Multnomah County Commissioner Vince Jones-Dixon agreed.

“Thirty-seven percent of the (PFA) seats are in my district, and we’re one of the poorest districts in the region and the most diverse,” he said. “We are on a mission to build America’s favorite county.”

The bill and amendments have yet to come to a vote, and its passage looks unlikely as the legislature prepares to end its current session by its Sunday deadline.