Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 19 - Juan Carlos Ordoñez, Oregon Center for Public Policy

Send us Fan MailThis week on Oregon Voices Podcast, we sit with Juan Carlos Ordoñez, Communications Director for the Oregon Center for Public Policy and host of the syndicated radio show and podcast Policy for the People. Juan Carlos was born in Guatemala during the longest civil war in Central America, came to the United States with his family in the 1980s, went on to Harvard Law School, and practiced commercial litigation in New York City before walking away from that life and landing, eventually, in Oregon. Now he spends his days doing something most lawyers never do with their training. He explains this state's tax system to the people it is burying.Eric McGuire hosts alongside State Representative Lesly Munoz, who serves Oregon House District 22, filling in while Katherine attends a Rural Organizing Project retreat. Together they dig into what it would actually take to build a millionaire's tax in Oregon, why the legislature's disconnect from the federal tax bill left hundreds of millions on the table, and how Oregon's much vaunted progressive reputation hides a tax structure that asks more of the poor than the rich. Juan Carlos breaks down workforce standards boards, the fight to renew and expand the Oregon Kids Credit, the long overdue push for universal preschool, and why subsidizing data centers and corporate research credits often amounts to handing money to companies for doing what they were going to do anyway.Lesly brings her own story into the conversation, the daughter of a landscaper and a homemaker, the first in her family to walk the halls of the Capitol, carrying the failed 2025 farmworker standards board bill and a promise to bring it back in 2027. Between the two of them, this episode lays out exactly what it would take to turn Oregon's tax system right side up, and why the people with the least are still paying the most.Thanks for listening to the Oregon Voices Podcast!If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you never miss a conversation. Sharing the show with others helps these stories travel farther.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@oregonvoicespodcastInstagram: https://instagram.com/oregonvoicespodcastBuzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2550069/episodes/18811599Oregon Campaign Finance Watch: https://orcampaigns.lovable.app/