text: PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — The Oregon Legislature is considering a new bill that would add a tax on coffee beans and ground coffee, officials say. 
   
   But the chair of the Committee on Revenue said it’s not going anywhere. 
   
   House Bill 2875 would impose a tax of five cents per pound on wholesale coffee. It’s sponsored by the Oregon House Committee on Revenue. 
   
   Funds raised from this new tax would go toward establishing the “Alternative Education Sustainability Fund.” Half of those funds would go toward the Oregon Military Department to be used in the Oregon National Guard Youth Challenge Program. The other half would fund grants for Oregon school districts that operate alternative high school programs, as well as primary schools. 
   
   Schools that operate alternative high school programs and primary schools would be able to apply for those grants from the Oregon Department of Education. If awarded, the grant money could be used for “cost of operations and capital construction” of alternative high school programs and primary school reading programs. 
   
   If passed, the bill would go into effect on July 1, 2018. The bill did not mention an estimate of how much revenue this new tax would provide, but Oregon is facing a $1.8 billion budget gap. 
   
   This new tax would require a three-fifths majority from both the Oregon House of Representatives and Senate in order to pass. 
   
   A spokesman for House Republicans released the following statement on the proposal: 
   
   “I’ll say this about House Democrats; they never seem to run out of ideas for new tax increases. A tax on coffee is clearly not a proposal Oregonians would support, and we hope Democrats will disavow it just as quickly as they introduced it.” 
   
   On Friday, Scott Moore of the Oregon House Democrats told KOIN 6 News the bill is not going to even get out of committee. Lindsey O’Brien, the director of communications for House Speaker Tina Kotek, told KOIN 6 News there are “more than a 100 bills introduced to the Revenue committee alone, most of which will not move forward.” 
   
   Read the entire bill below. ||||| That's insignificant in the context of a gap between what lawmakers want to spend and available revenues for the next two years of $1.8 billion. It's common early in a legislative session for lawmakers to propose a wide variety of ideas to see what might get traction, and with this year's budget gap, all sorts of new tax ideas are on the table. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — With the Oregon Legislature set to convene on February 1, Republicans and Democrats will gather in Salem to decide how best to deal with the state’s $1.8 billion budget gap, whether to ditch the statewide ban on rent control and other pressing issues. 
   
   Oregon’s Budget 
   
   A budget framework for the 2017-2019 biennium was released on January 19 by the Co-Chairs of the Joint Ways and Means Committee, and it detailed how Oregon’s incoming revenue is 8% lower than what’s needed at current levels. 
   
   The framework listed a number of spending categories where cuts would need to take place, including education and health care. Needless to say, the cuts would have a large impact on several departments and would lead to layoffs in schools, declining health insurance coverage for Oregonians covered by the Oregon Health Plan, declining state funding for TANF and more. Furthermore, cuts to state funding could trigger a reduction in federal funding, creating a much greater loss to programs. 
   
   After the framework was released, House Republican Caucus Budget Chair Greg Smith, R-Heppner, issued the following statement: 
   
   “Like many Oregonians, I am deeply frustrated by the financial situation our state finds itself in. It is difficult to comprehend that at the same time our state is taking in record tax revenues, we are being told we do not have enough money to pay our bills.” 
   
   Smith went on to say House Republicans “stand ready” to work with Democrats in order to deliver on a budget that’ll acknowledge the need for spending reform. 
   
   Gov. Kate Brown unveiled her budget in December 2016, focusing on education, health care and job growth. 
   
   She proposed closing a loophole in so-called pass-through taxes, increasing a tobacco tax and discarding the customary increases in budgets for state universities and community colleges. Her budget will also look for inefficiencies, including keeping vacant state jobs open for 60 days and eliminating non-mandatory travel for state employees. Together, cuts and revenue increases are expected to address the current $1.8 billion gap. 
   
   Statewide Ban on Rent Control 
   
   With rent prices in Portland continuing to climb, many in the Rose City (like Commissioner Chloe Eudaly) are calling for quick action to protect renters. In November 2016, Eudaly called for a rent freeze and an end to no-cause evictions. A poll in September 2016 found 52% of Oregonians support repealing the statewide ban on rent control. 
   
   In response to these calls for action, House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland, filed House Bill 2001 to repeal Oregon’s ban on city and county ordinances regulating rents. Her bill also aims to allow cities and counties to adopt rent stabilization programs (with certain restrictions) and impose a temporary moratorium on rent increases greater than 5% for residential tenancies (with some exceptions). 
   
   The House Speaker announced that she supported a state limit on rent increases and banning no-cause evictions at the state level back in September 2016. 
   
   A similar bill, sponsored by multiple representatives, also seeks to allow cities and counties to create ordinances regulating rent. Like Kotek’s legislation, House Bill 2003 would also repeal ORS 91.225 (the legislation prohibiting local rent control). House Bill 2003 differs, in that it doesn’t contain a cap on rent increases. 
   
   Both bills will face opposition from House Republicans. 
   
   A spokesman for House Republicans told KOIN 6 News more government intrusion into the marketplace wasn’t the answer to high rent prices. House Republicans said although rent control is potentially beneficial in the very short-term, it has proven to have negative impacts in the long-term. They cite a consensus among economists that rent control doesn’t produce the results it aims to achieve. 
   
   House Republicans believe that high rent prices are a result of a “basic breakdown in the laws of supply and demand” and suggest relieving pressure by incentivizing the development and construction of affordable units, to increase supply and lower demand. 
   
   Rural Communities 
   
   House Republicans said they want to prioritize rural Oregon during this legislative session by “forcing the majority party to be mindful of the impact of new laws on rural communities” and “advocating for policies that will help incentivize economic growth in rural Oregon.” 
   
   Despite the Portland-metro area having recovered from the depths of the great recession, some rural communities have not yet bounced back. 
   
   Rural Oregon still has a high unemployment rate, lower annual incomes for its workforce and downward demographic trends, according to the State of Oregon Employment Department. 
   
   Kotek also mentioned rural communities in her opening day remarks, saying “Despite these successes, we have more work to do to build an economy that creates equal opportunity for all. We cannot leave our rural communities behind as the state’s economy grows.” 
   
   She went on to speak on equal pay for women and supporting working families through affordable child care and policies that’ll allow workers to care for family members. 
   
   Justice and Ethics 
   
   In 2015, Oregon outlawed profiling by law enforcement based on race, ethnicity or other characteristics. 
   
   Kotek said she wants to “take the next steps” down that road, including setting up data collection, policies and training necessary to further cut down on profiling. 
   
   She also wants the legislature to consider reforms to how people are charged for certain drug offenses, how grand juries operate and to adequately fund public defense and increase support for legal assistance in civil cases. 
   
   Meanwhile, House Republicans are drafting legislation to limit the number of Salem employees that move from influential government positions to eventually turning into lobbyists that interact with the government, as well as the reverse. 
   
   The legislature will also have a number of other important issues to tackle, and it all begins in just over a week. ||||| In Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor. 
   
   The midnight raid, popularly known as the “Boston Tea Party,” was in protest of the British Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny. 
   
   When three tea ships, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver, arrived in Boston Harbor, the colonists demanded that the tea be returned to England. After Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused, Patriot leader Samuel Adams organized the “tea party” with about 60 members of the Sons of Liberty, his underground resistance group. The British tea dumped in Boston Harbor on the night of December 16 was valued at some $18,000. 
   
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   Parliament, outraged by the blatant destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to quarter British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British. 
   
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target: – Nearly 250 years after the Boston Tea Party, we could have a Salem Coffee Party on our hands. The Oregon Legislature is weighing a tax of 5 cents per pound on wholesale coffee, including coffee beans and ground coffee. KOIN reports that no revenue projection was given in House Bill 2875, but the Willamette Week's math suggests it could bring in about $2 million a year. (The state's budget gap stands at $1.8 billion.) The money would be earmarked for the Oregon National Guard Youth Challenge Program, alternative high school programs, and primary school reading programs. Willamette Week sees a disconnect there, reporting that lawmakers typically try to "establish a clear connection" between the tax and what the revenue will do, like property taxes paid by homeowners covering fire services. "The relationship between coffee consumption and alternative education is less clear," it writes. That said, the bill will go into effect on July 1, 2018, if it receives a three-fifths majority in the state House and Senate. A rep for House Republicans says "a tax on coffee is clearly not a proposal Oregonians would support, and we hope Democrats will disavow it just as quickly as they introduced it."