OPB Audio

OPB politics reporter Dirk VanderHart to talk about the record 5 billion dollar kicker that is making its way back to taxpayers next year.

WA County Public Defender Lawsuit

School staff are working to ensure a smooth and celebratory start to the new school year. Here’s a look inside a few Oregon schools.

Some special education programs are not required to report the same information to the state as other educational institutions, leading to a lack of accountability for systems serving Oregon's most vulnerable students.

QA with Dawn Nolt from OHSU on covid and schools

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Colegio Cesar Chavez is coming up on its 50th anniversary.

Gov. Tina Kotek, who briefed reporters on a new task forced aimed at reviving the city, says she’s not ruling anything out.

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Addressing questions of race and representation in Oregon’s political system can be fraught. That can be especially true in some Eastern Oregon communities. In Ontario, a recent discussion about the city code defining its diversity committee became a full-on debate over what the committee’s actually accomplishing.

We wrap up the week's Northwest news with OPB's Anna Griffin. We also hear from Bend Bulletin reporter Taylor Bayly about her reporting on student discipline reform efforts in Bend and throughout the state of Oregon.

Summer is a time for festivals – and celebrating the bounty of the Pacific Northwest. And one of the most fragrant celebrations takes place in Washington County: the North Plains Elephant Garlic Festival.

Radical Abundance is a new Southeast Portland thrift shop that opened July 23rd. Like many other thrift shops, volunteers take clothing donations, resell them at a low price, and use the proceeds for charitable causes. Their cause? Helping trans* and non-binary folks afford gender-affirming medical care.

There’s a growing push in Oregon to decriminalize consensual sex work – in other words, to stop charging people who engage in prostitution with crimes. But recently, it’s gotten some push back from perhaps the most influential place: The governor’s office. Earlier this month, Governor Tina Kotek quietly vetoed two attempts to use public money to study the idea.

This week’s oppressive and deadly heat wave is finally beginning to wind down in some parts of Oregon. But although some relief from the extreme heat is coming soon, climate scientists predict heat waves could happen more frequently in the Pacific Northwest.

In Central Oregon, roughly a quarter of a million people float the Deschutes River through Bend each summer, and many of them lose things along the way. But, thanks to a local diving group, some lost items are finding their way home.

Bend police data paints a complicated picture around encampment clearings

This small town in Oregon embraces green energy after fossil fuel disaster

The Oregon state agency charged with monitoring discrimination in workplaces across the state was itself a hostile work environment for the Black woman who was hired to head the civil rights division of the Oregon Bureau of Labor & Industries.

Audio for QA: Tillamook Burn anniversary

New study shows terrible pay and working conditions for nonprofit service providers who work on homelessness

The recent on-the-job deaths of a Portland hospital security guard and a Gresham mental health aide have put a fresh spotlight on the violence that many working in health care experience routinely.

Oregon state leaders have agreed to let tech giant Amazon install a new trans-Pacific cable stretching from the Tillamook County coastline to Asia. But in the process, they also said they want tighter restrictions on undersea cables off the Oregon coast.

Portland’s Old Town has become a microcosm of the many challenges the city is facing now: homelessness, the opioid crisis and public safety. But despite this, entrepreneurs and social services are continuing to invest in the neighborhood.

St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch struck a deal this week to sell Bend’s 10-Barrel Brewing Company and Portland’s Widmer Brothers Brewing and Square Mile Cider Company as part of a 8 brand acquisition by Tilray Brands.