Cascade CounterPoint

Full text: Did you just have an order for a desktop computer or gaming system cancelled by Dell? You have Oregon elected officials to thank for that. Dell recently stated that it will cancel all orders of certain energy-intensive computer systems to Oregon and five other states due to local energy regulations. California naturally led the way in limiting computer energy use through tight appl...

Full text: Recently, Governor Kate Brown quietly signed Senate Bill 744 . The new law drops the requirement that high school students show proficiency in math, reading, and writing in order to graduate. The move has received significant media coverage. But little attention is being paid to what will happen once these students receive their diplomas. A high school diploma is a sign of accomplishmen...

Full text: Portland’s Harriet Tubman Middle School might be on the move. The Oregonian reported last week that Portland Public Schools’ board demanded the state pay for the relocation of the school away from the I-5 corridor. PPS claims emissions from the freeway endanger the health of Tubman students, though it’s unclear why they didn’t express the same care and urgency when Tubman reopened back...

Listen to Micah Perry interview Mia Tiwana and Stew Robertson about their experience interning at Cascade Policy Institute. Mia and Stew recently joined Cascade as research associates for its nine week summer internship program, which runs from June to August. 

Full Text: You would think that Portland Parks and Rec is on a roll. Since 2013, the city has opened six new parks. Last year, Portland voters approved a property tax increase expected to bring in an additional $48 million a year to the parks department. Even so, the city has put off park maintenance. It’s gotten so bad that 73 of the city’s 103 tennis courts have fallen into disrepair. You may be...

When Uri Rafaeli accidentally underpaid his property taxes by $8, Oakland County took his Michigan rental home. The county sold it for $25,000 and kept all the profits. Shockingly, this same kind of home equity theft is happening in approximately a dozen states including Oregon. Listen to Christina Martin speak about the dangers of home equity theft in this recording of Cascade Policy Institute's...

Full text: If we want to continue seeing downtown Portland improve, maybe it’s time to refund the police. City leaders reopened Portland this weekend, hosting a flurry of festivities meant to attract people back into downtown. The reopening, called “Welcome Back to the Heart of Portland,” included concerts, musical performances, and pop-up vaccination centers. Portland does seem to be slowly getti...

According to a recent poll, 74% of voters support school choice in the United States. Micah and Helen discuss the reasons behind this surge in support, policy wins in the past year that have resulted from it, and the outlook for school choice in Oregon. 

Full text: The City of Portland’s housing state of emergency, first declared in October 2015 and recently extended into next year, is set to turn six years old this fall. Over the course of two mayors, we were told the declaration would expedite the building of affordable housing and help alleviate our housing shortage. By that measure the city has failed. In fact, the city has taken steps to make...

Full Text: Portland is on its way to having more than three shootings per day. Last year amid nationwide protests, Portlanders were among some of the loudest voices shouting, “Defund the Police.” Last summer, Mayor Ted Wheeler disbanded the city’s Gun Violence Reduction team, claiming that the team excessively targeted black people. What do we have to show for it? As expected, we’re seeing a sharp...

Listen to Helen Doran interview Micah Perry, Cascade's newest staff member! Micah interned with Cascade in 2019 and is now serving as a program assistant for External Affairs.  Micah can be contacted at micah@cascadepolicy.org.

Full text: The U.S. Postal Service boasts that “neither snow nor rain nor heat” can keep mail carriers from swiftly completing their rounds; TriMet’s MAX Light Rail service can make no such claim. Last week, the heatwave brought temperatures well into the 100s, causing MAX services to shut down from Saturday to Tuesday. If you are from the Portland area, you know these closures aren’t just limited...

A proposed ordinance aims to deprioritize some homeless camps considered “low impact” Full text: The city says a camp is low impact if it’s 150 feet away from a childcare facility, preschool, or primary school. That’s a 30-second walk. I’m sure most parents would think having a sprawling homeless camp less than a minute from their kids’ school isn’t low impact. Once kids hit high school, the Counc...

Full text: If you get the Sunday New York Times, your Fathers’ Day edition had a very special message from Travel Portland, whose job is to convince people that the Rose City is a great place to visit. Don’t get me wrong. Portland is a great place to visit. But, not right now. You see, we’ve got some issues to work out before we’re ready for visitors. First, we’ve got to get the plywood off of our...

Listen to Helen Doran interview Vlad Yurlov, policy analyst at Cascade Policy Institute, on the current state of homelessness in the Portland-metro region and what needs to happen to actually address the root cause of the crisis. 

Full text: On Saturday, police responded to a call that a man was in the middle of I-84, swinging a pipe at cars. As police approached, the man jumped the freeway barrier onto the MAX tracks, where he got creamed by a train and was pronounced dead at the scene. But there’s more. Just two hours earlier, the same man entered a house and confronted a woman working upstairs. He refused her order to le...

Full text: The Portland region’s top homelessness officials delivered another set of promises and excuses in a statement last Thursday. Instead of cutting off funds to failed approaches, our policymakers promise to “permanently end homelessness” with another $1 billion over ten years. In the same breath, they blame untreated mental health and substance abuse disorders for the homelessness crisis,...

Full text: Yesterday, the Oregon Senate overwhelmingly approved a $9.3 billion education budget. That amounts to $11,800 per student—and that doesn’t count the money from local sources. What do we get from that kind of spending? We get the third worst graduation rate in the country and a middle-of-the-pack ranking in college preparedness. What could we get with that kind of money? One thing you do...

Full text: A newly redeveloped model used by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council to calculate annual loss of load probability (LOLP) shows significantly higher LOLP in 2023 compared to previous predictions. The LOLP calculates the likelihood that utilities will have to take some kind of emergency measure in order to prevent a blackout. Emergency measures could include initiating rolling b...

Listen to Vlad Yurlov explain why Portland Street Response has been struggling to operate at full capacity. Full text: "Portland’s Lents neighborhood got a new homeless program in 2021. Could you tell? For the past three months, a paramedic and a social worker have been connecting homeless people to social services and addressing disturbances. But the pilot team has been waiting for police dispatc...

Remember Portland’s 10-year plan to end homelessness by 2015 ? The plan fizzled out, along with hundreds of millions of dollars in investment. Roughly $70 million flowed into affordable housing production, homelessness prevention, and support services each year. Despite all these efforts and all that spending, the number of homeless continues to rise in the Portland area. Portland’s homeless servi...

Last week, a Craigslist post brought it home—we’re in the era of Do It Yourself Government. The Craigslist post offered $50 an hour to so-called “real men” to monitor police scanners and to “find the troublemakers” vandalizing downtown Portland. It brought home the fact that many residents have lost confidence in their local government and are doing the jobs that government won’t or can’t do anymo...

Learning pods have become a popular solution for parents searching for additional support for their children struggling to learn during the pandemic. Here are four things you should know about learning pods in Oregon: A recent survey conducted hints that learning pods are here to stay. In March, one out of every five families was actively participating in a pod and another was looking to find one....

As a new driver, I avoid Portland’s Rose Quarter because I’m not eager to test my car’s insurance policy. There were over 800 crashes in the Rose Quarter between 2011 and 2017. It’s congested for most of the day and drivers must bob-and-weave through the short lanes between ramps. That could change with the Rose Quarter Improvement Project. The project, approved by the Oregon legislature and signe...

We’ve heard a lot of bad news during the pandemic: business closures, job losses, weight gain. But, there’s one area that’s seen a massive boom—online charter schools. Over the past year, enrollment in online charter schools has increased by a whopping 58%. But, like many things, government is getting in the way of growth. Under Oregon law, online charter school enrollment is capped at 3% of a spo...