Thread by @robwdavis

For years, Oregon's logging industry has been booming. But its logging towns haven’t.

One big reason? State lawmakers gave the industry huge tax breaks that cost counties at least $3 BILLION in the last 30 years.

Here's how it happened 👇

2/ Half of Oregon is covered by trees. In the 1990s, its national forests were put off-limits to logging to protect species like the spotted owl 🦉

Timber towns have been in crisis ever since...
🚨 911 calls went unanswered
📚 libraries closed
🍎️schools needed funding

3/ The industry blamed the crisis on environmental protections.

But it didn’t acknowledge another HUGE factor: The major state tax breaks it pushed through in the '90s.

4/ Oregon used to tax timber companies on the trees they cut down. This *severance tax* generated tens of millions a year for counties and schools.

5/ Today, the largest timber corporations don’t pay that tax anymore. Oregon, unlike California & Washington, allows Wall Street investment companies worth tens of billions to cut trees down almost for free 🌲

6/ (Brief interlude: This is where it’s worth pointing out the timber industry gives more money to lawmakers in Oregon than anywhere else in the nation.)

7/ OPB reporter @tonyvschick & ProPublica data journalist @lyllayounes crunched the numbers: Half the 18 counties in Oregon’s timber region lost more from the tax cuts than the reduction in logging in national forests.

8/ Want to know what’s strange? Almost no one remembers the tax cut. Not the lawmaker (now president of @oeconline) who introduced the final bill in 1999. And not the governor (@GovKitz) who signed it.

9/ Today, Oregon has the West Coast’s weakest environmental protections for logging. And it gets less in return. Investors log in a way that ecologists say is worse for jobs, wood volume/quality, water supplies and the climate.

But it is good for one thing: Profits.

10/ The timber industry has been giving hundreds of millions in profits to shareholders, while Oregon residents and public services continued to struggle.

11/ Helen Kennedy is 64 and lives in Marcola, Oregon. She pays nearly 100 times the tax rate of the state’s largest timber investment company: Weyerhaeuser.

“The old adage that ‘what is good for the timber industry is good for Oregon’ is no longer true,” she said.

12/ To learn more about how Oregon is prioritizing logging corporations over its own economy and environment, read the full story by @tonyvschick, @lyllayounes and me: features.propublica.org/oregon-timber/…

13/ And if you have tips about Oregon’s timber industry, share them with us 🔍 propublica.org/getinvolved/he…