After hours of public briefings, discussions and a public listening session, Multnomah County Commissioners are pumping the brakes on a controversial move to change Preschool For All’s funding stream.

Commissioners were set to have an official first reading of a proposal on Thursday morning — a necessary precursor to a vote the commission had scheduled for next week. The draft ordinance would have annually adjusted the program’s income tax threshold based on inflation, also known as tax indexing.

But at the last minute Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards put forth a motion to postpone the proposal, citing a need for more time to understand the potential impacts of the tax index. A majority of the commission agreed with her.

Brim-Edwards called the commission’s work on Preschool For All this month, which included a series of meetings and educational sessions on the program, a “rushed process.”

The postponement comes after months of debate between local and state leaders on the rollout of the ambitious preschool program as well as concerns over tax burdens for the county’s high-income earners. Back in June, Gov. Tina Kotek gave county commissioners an end-of-year deadline to make significant changes to the program.

Kotek said the program was “breaking under its own weight, with $485 million in unspent funds,” among other problems such as “spotty implementation, scope creep” and “stacks of paperwork” preventing providers from participating in the program. Oregon legislators were also pressuring county leaders, by introducing — but then shelving — a bill that threatened to end the preschool program.

Supporters of the program have been pushing county leaders to forgo Kotek’s call, saying any changes to its funding structure would undermine the universal preschool effort and hurt children and families. Preschool For All officials also forecast that the hundreds of millions of dollars currently in reserve will be spent down over the next several years, as the program ramps up and serves more children.

A main concern of commissioners was that the program’s financial advisory committee, called the Preschool For All Technical Advisory Group, declined to make a formal recommendation on the tax proposal.

An Aug. 15 memo from the group, made up of early childhood and economics experts, said its members were split on whether the county should move forward with the proposal.

“This evenly split outcome reflects the complexity of the issue, as well as the limited information, time constraints, and strong perspectives — grounded in historical knowledge of the original tax mechanisms — that shaped our discussion,” read the committee’s memo to commissioners.

The advisory group plans to present a more comprehensive report on the tax proposal to commissioners by February 2026. The report is expected to include a review of how tax indexing could affect the preschool program.

County officials are concerned that reduced revenue could impede the program from delivering on multiple goals: paying for longer preschool days, expanding the child care workforce, and reaching the program’s goal of universal preschool by 2030.

Preschool For All supporters tell Multnomah County leaders to keep the program as is

Preschool For All is expected to serve 3,800 three- and four-year-olds in the upcoming school year. Voters approved a marginal income tax to fund the program in 2020.

The program currently imposes a 1.5% income tax on earnings above $125,000 for individuals and $200,000 for households. Earnings above $250,000 are taxed an additional 1.5%.

The delayed proposal would have continued the current tax rate but increased the income threshold in which it would kick in by tens of thousands of dollars. However, Multnomah County’s wealthiest residents — single filers making more than $307,000 and joint filers earning more than $491,000 — would not receive tax relief.

In briefings this month, county staff estimated that tax indexing could reduce revenue for the program by about $2 million annually.

For now it’s unclear if this proposal has any legs to move forward. The county has not yet set a date to reconsider pending changes to Preschool For All.

Waiting for the advisory group’s February recommendations would push the county past the deadline given to them by Gov. Kotek. The governor’s office declined to comment on the county’s latest deliberations.

At Thursday’s meeting Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson said any future decisions on the program should be guided by economic research and community feedback.

“The process we’ve undertaken has moved the conversation from secret and closed room conversations into the public sphere, which is exactly where a debate on potential changes to a measure passed by a two-to-one margin by Multnomah County voters belongs,” she said.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/08/21/multnomah-county-delay-preschool-for-all-funding/