Accountable Government
Karim will hold open office hours, meet constituents where they are, and vote no when the council is wrong.
For years, Hillsboro's City Council operated as a near-unanimous bloc, routinely siding with developers and city staff over residents. That is starting to change. When city staff moved 18 data center tax-break applications through in three months, just before the statewide moratorium took effect, the council wasn't even briefed until community members forced a special session. That's a pattern. Karim intends to continue the shift toward a council that answers to people.
The Details▾
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.
No Corporate Handouts
Karim will oppose corporate tax holidays that don't deliver housing, living wages, or community benefit — Hillsboro's land and public resources belong to its residents, not to the highest bidder.
Data centers are taking roughly $85 million off their Hillsboro property tax bills in a single year, part of more than $450 million statewide. The city took in 18 data center tax-break applications from just eight companies in three months, ahead of the statewide moratorium (HB 4084), including a rolling set of agreements that keeps one campus tax-free through 2051. For years, data centers paid about 8¢ per kilowatt hour while households paid more than double, near 20¢, according to the state's utility watchdog. The council can't set that rate. It can set how many power-hungry data centers it zones in, then collect a franchise fee on the higher bills residents pay.
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The Hillsboro City Council has no power over electricity rates. PGE sets them, the state Public Utility Commission regulates them. What the council controls is demand: how many power-hungry data centers it zones and subsidizes in. According to the Citizens' Utility Board, the state's ratepayer watchdog, that data center growth is what drove PGE to recover its costs, including the franchise fees the city collects on its gross revenue, primarily from residential customers who can't negotiate. Industrial customers can. In June 2026 the state finally stepped in: under the POWER Act, PGE filed to raise rates on large data-center users 29% and cut residential rates about 1.3%, a change driven by exactly this disparity. The state had to act because the city wouldn't stop piling on data centers.
Under its Intel SIP deals, the city has collected about $256.72 million in fees and built its entire General Fund capital strategy around them. 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: Hillsboro's eleven largest tech-owned data centers average about 26 full-time employees each while receiving an average of $7.6 million apiece in annual property tax breaks, roughly $294,000 in foregone taxes per job. One TikTok-linked facility gets $5.5 million in breaks for 11 employees. No local hire requirements exist. No community benefit agreements were required as a condition of any of the applications 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.
Full analysis It's not pro-business policy, it's anti-resident policy: how Hillsboro got here →Workers & Wages
Karim will make living wages and benefits a condition of every public subsidy, permit, and enterprise zone deal the council approves.
Karim owns and operates The 649, a local bar that offers a guaranteed living wage in line with the MIT Living Wage Calculator for Washington County, covers 80% of health and dental premiums, provides paid time off, and matches retirement contributions at 5%. A 10-person bar can do this. There is no excuse for corporations collecting billions in city tax exemptions to do any less. Right now, there are no wage conditions on any of it.
The Details▾
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.
Housing & Displacement
Karim will fight for mandatory notice before rent increases, the right to counsel in eviction court, anti-displacement protections, and community land trusts — so the people who built Hillsboro can afford to stay here.
Only about a third of Hillsboro households can afford a typical mortgage today. Renters are one landlord decision away from losing their home. Seniors in manufactured home parks are one developer buyout away from losing everything. That is the kind of displacement nobody talks about until it happens to them.
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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 industrial assessed value sits off the property tax rolls under the Intel SIP deal, and tens of millions more is waived every year through 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.
Community Safety
Karim will fully fund mobile crisis response so trained counselors show up when people need help — alongside police, or instead of them, depending on the call.
Washington County's new Hillsboro Recovery Center opened in 2025, offering mental health, addiction recovery, and Spanish-language outpatient services. It's proof that investing in people works. Karim already does this himself: he personally walks with unhoused neighbors and de-escalates mental health situations as a regular part of his week. He knows what it looks like on the ground, and what the gaps are.
Public safety also means equal protection. Every Hillsboro resident deserves the same rights and the same due process, regardless of race, ethnicity, class, or creed. Karim will use every tool a council member has to make sure no family in this city is treated as less than another under the law.
The Details▾
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.
Immigrant Rights & Belonging
Karim will use every tool available as a council member to protect immigrant families and stand between them and federal overreach.
When federal agents came to his Hillsboro neighborhood, Karim and his wife physically blocked their van with their own vehicles to protect a neighbor from being taken without due process — a constitutional right guaranteed to every person on US soil. That's not a talking point. It's who he is. Hillsboro has one of the largest Latino communities in Oregon. Washington County is home to significant refugee and immigrant populations. They are not a political constituency. They are neighbors.
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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.
Schools & Youth
Karim will fight for fully funded schools from pre-K through community college, and one rule: if you profit from our workforce, you pay back into the schools that built it.
Hillsboro gives up more school property tax revenue to corporate tax breaks than any district in Oregon: more than $143 million in 2024, with the Intel SIP deal most responsible. Because Oregon equalizes school funding statewide, that loss spreads to every district. Karim taught in Title I schools and used the GI Bill to get from a GED to Columbia University. He knows every rung of this ladder, and what happens when one is missing.
The Details▾
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. Hillsboro forgoes more school property tax revenue to these breaks than any district in Oregon, over $143 million in 2024. Because Oregon equalizes school funding statewide, that loss is spread across every district, not just this one. The city negotiates the deals. Schools across the state share 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.
Environmental Accountability
Industrial polluters will be held accountable, and Hillsboro will invest in the clean, reliable transit that working families need.
Intel received an air quality permit making it the second largest greenhouse gas emitter in Oregon, with a new cap of nearly 1.7 million tons per year. Oregon DEQ cited the company for failing to monitor unsafe emissions for months. Meanwhile, roughly 35% of Oregon's carbon comes from transportation, and transit in Hillsboro remains inadequate for the people who need it most.
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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.
Healthcare Access
Karim will require health coverage in every subsidy and enterprise-zone deal the city signs, cover every city worker in full, and put the city behind the community clinics residents depend on.
As a Marine veteran, Karim has seen firsthand what it looks like when your government takes care of your health. The VA has real problems, but it proves the government is capable of providing care. An insurance company standing between you and your doctor is a business decision made at your expense. That is not healthcare. That is a toll booth between you and the care you need, operated for profit. The city hands employers millions in tax breaks and asks nothing about whether their workers can see a doctor. It has that power. It has never used it.
The Details▾
The city has real tools and hasn't used them. Karim will require health coverage as a condition of every subsidy and enterprise-zone deal, cover every city employee in full, and use the city's purchasing power to require that contractors carry their workers on qualifying health plans. Today the city attaches none of these conditions to the public money it gives away.
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.