Redmond ready to join marijuana tax move

As the debate over legal marijuana heats up in Oregon, cities on the High Desert are making it a high priority.

“The single biggest issue discussed was marijuana taxation,” Redmond Mayor George Endicott said Tuesday of a recent Oregon League of Cities meeting he attended.

Endicott said later the council agreed Tuesday night to have staff prepare an ordinance for a vote next week to tax medical marijuana at 5 percent and recreational marijuana at 15 percent, the latter should Oregon voters approve Measure 91 next month.

Endicott said a public hearing will be held at next Tuesday night’s meeting before the ordinance vote. One person spoke at Tuesday’s work session, he noted, a woman who supported the proposed tax and shared a personal story about the adverse impact of frequent use of marijuana, the mayor said.

The city attorney “was very helpful in explaining all the ramifications”of the action, Endicott said, as well as a related court case involving the city of Cave Junction, which seeks a ruling that the state can’t force a local jurisdiction to legalize a federally banned substance.

Endicott said Redmond’s planned move is not a stamp of the city’s approval of legal marijuana, but rather a step to protect the city.

“If we get the tax passed, and most jurisdictions do around the state, then our argument is we are grandfathered in because we have the tax in place,” Endicott said.

It’s a move several governing bodies around the state have already taken, and it’s a step to head off language in Measure 91, which says:

“No county or city of this state shall impose any fee or tax in connection with the purchase, sale, production, processing, transportation, and delivery of marijuana items.”

Other governments in Central Oregon, including the Crook and Jefferson county commissions and the city of Sisters, also have been exploring options to tax marijuana.

“We want to be forward-thinking. We want to have some options out there, so we can best prepare ourselves,” said Sisters City Council President McKibben Womack.

Crook County Judge Mike McCabe said the county was prepared to pass a tax, but then discovered operational laws prohibiting it.

Jefferson County commissioners told NewsChannel 21 they are researching rules, but suspect they’ll be in the same boat.

The city of Prineville is also discussing passing some sort of tax. Bend city officials and Deschutes County commissioners said they will not be exploring a tax.

Endicott noted that “unlike Bend, the Redmond City Council has the authority, under the (city) charter, to impose a tax.”