Where We Stand

The data center agreements were structured as staggered "rolling" Enterprise Zone deals — labeled as temporary 3-5 year incentives but renewed sequentially to extend benefits for decades. City staff presented these as routine economic development. The council was not briefed on their scope or cumulative impact until community members and a new council member demanded a public work session in June 2026.

Structural transparency reforms Karim will push for: mandatory community benefit analysis before any Enterprise Zone or SIP deal is approved; public disclosure of permanent job counts, wage levels, and tax revenue projections; and a requirement that the full council be briefed before any major subsidy agreement is executed.

The city's adopted budget for 2025–27 contains no mandatory notice requirement before rent increases, no right to counsel in eviction proceedings, and no anti-displacement fund. The Willow Creek affordable housing project — 110 units, $15.9 million in Metro bond funds — won't break ground until early 2027. It is the city's third affordable housing project from the Metro bond.

The connection to corporate tax policy is direct: when $4 billion in assessed value sits off the property tax rolls under the Intel SIP deal, and $7.2 billion more is shielded by data center exemptions, every overlapping taxing district — including the housing programs funded by property taxes — is underfunded. The city can't build its way out of a housing crisis while giving away the tax base that would fund the solution.

The Hillsboro Recovery Center, which opened June 2, 2025, provides mental health services, addiction recovery, and Spanish-language outpatient care. It was funded by Washington County — the city did not lead on this. Mobile crisis response routes mental health and substance use calls to trained counselors rather than law enforcement. Programs like CAHOOTS in Eugene have operated this model for decades; the question for Hillsboro is whether the city is willing to fund it adequately.

Meanwhile, the city is spending $70 million in bond proceeds this biennium on a new police headquarters — justified in the city's own budget document in two sentences: it will consolidate the east and west precincts. The mobile crisis team budget is a fraction of that. A serious community safety strategy funds both, and it is honest about which kinds of calls need which kind of response.

Oregon's Enterprise Zone program allows cities to waive property taxes for qualifying businesses in exchange for job creation — but the state does not mandate minimum wage levels, benefits, or local hire requirements. Hillsboro negotiates these deals individually, and has not consistently required community benefit agreements as a condition of approval.

What community benefit agreements can include: minimum wage floors indexed to local cost of living, requirements that a set percentage of employees be hired from within the city or county, health coverage requirements, and affordable housing contributions proportional to the development's impact. Hillsboro has the authority to require them. It has chosen not to.

Oregon Health Plan covers more than a million Oregonians, but significant gaps remain: undocumented residents face eligibility restrictions and dental and vision coverage is limited. City-level tools are limited but real: Karim will push for state-level universal coverage legislation, ensure comprehensive coverage for all city employees, and use the city's procurement leverage to require that contractors carry their employees on qualifying health plans.

The connection to Hillsboro's tax policy: when the city's corporate tax deals come with no health coverage requirements for workers, the cost of uninsured or underinsured employees shifts to county emergency rooms, OHP, and the public generally. Requiring health coverage in enterprise zone deals is not a mandate on business — it is a condition on receiving public subsidy.

Oregon DEQ cited Intel for failing to monitor unsafe emissions at its Hillsboro facility — a failure that went on for months before it was caught. The city's financial relationship with Intel, built over two decades of SIP deal dependency, gives it no structural incentive to push back. The city's budget response to industrial pollution is a Sustainability Revolving Fund and fleet electrification goals for city vehicles. Neither touches industrial emitters. There is no environmental compliance condition in any SIP or Enterprise Zone agreement.

On transit: the comparison between individual accountability (vehicle emissions testing, where working people pay hundreds of dollars to fix their cars or lose their registration) and industrial accountability (a state agency citation for the largest industrial emitter in the region) makes the disparity plain. Karim will push for environmental compliance as a condition of all future subsidy agreements, and for real capital investment in Hillsboro's transit infrastructure.

City council members have limited but real tools for protecting immigrant residents. Karim will push for a formal policy limiting city resources used for federal civil immigration enforcement, a legal defense fund for residents facing deportation proceedings, and a guarantee that all city services — from housing assistance to public safety response — are accessible regardless of immigration status.

Washington County has a significant and growing immigrant and refugee population. Many of these residents are employed in the agricultural and industrial sectors that Hillsboro's economic development strategy is built around. They are the workforce the city courts corporations to employ. They deserve a city government that takes their security as seriously as it takes the tax base they help generate.

Property tax exemptions don't just affect the city's General Fund. They affect every overlapping taxing district that draws from the same assessed value base — including the Hillsboro School District. When Intel's SIP deal shields $4 billion from the rolls, that missing value costs the school district directly. The city negotiated that deal. The school district absorbed the cost.

Karim will push for school funding contributions as a required element of any future enterprise zone deal — not charity, but a proportional return on the public investment being made. He will also advocate at the state level for education funding reform that breaks the link between local property tax base and school quality.

The electricity rate gap is not a market outcome. Oregon's POWER Act (HB 3546) promised rate adjustments for large industrial users, but those changes had not fully taken effect as of mid-2026. In the meantime, PGE recovers its costs — including the franchise fees the city doubled from 3.5% to 7% in 2018 — primarily from residential ratepayers, who have no ability to negotiate. Industrial customers do.

The Intel SIP deal runs from 2005 to 2025 and shielded over $4 billion in assessed value from the tax rolls. When it finally expired, the city had built its entire General Fund capital strategy around the replacement fee payments. The city's own budget states that General Fund capital needs will "rely solely on SIP Funds into the foreseeable future." That is what two decades of dependency looks like.

Data center jobs: the permanent on-site employment per site is not publicly disclosed by the city. No local hire requirements exist. No community benefit agreements were required as a condition of any of the 18 deals rushed through before the moratorium. The city's economic development argument rests on construction jobs and tax revenue projections that have not been independently verified.