Cascade CounterPoint

On September 15, the Oregon Department of Energy (ODOE) released its 2025 Biennial Zero-Emissions Vehicle  Report , revealing that Oregon is far behind on its goal of purchasing 250,000 “zero emissions vehicles” (ZEV) by 2025. The report was established in 2019 by  SB 1044  to push ZEV adoption. As of May 2025, 119,850 such vehicles were registered in Oregon, equaling 3.2 percent of the total vehi...

The Portland Public School board is set to approve the sale for the “One North Building” as a home for the “Center for Black Student Excellence.” The District is prepared to spend $16 million from the 2020 construction bond. Yet, they’ve never explained how the Center will operate or who it will serve. The name of the Center implies it will serve Black students, but the staff report claims it will...

In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregating school children by race was unconstitutional. As a result, districts across America spent the rest of the century integrating schools. In Portland, though, segregation is back in vogue. A group called Albina Vision Trust began promoting the idea of a Center for Black Student Excellence (CBSE) in the summer of 2020 and persuaded the Portland Pub...

The Oregon Legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation Funding will consider legislation this week called “LC 2” as they head into a special session to address transportation funding. The Governor’s Transportation Budget Framework defines the problem as an ODOT “budget gap” that needs to be addressed with a “funding solution.” She says that the cause is a lack of revenue for ODOT, oft repeated...

Governor Tina Kotek has called a special session of the legislature to secure more funding for the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT). She wants to raise gas taxes by six cents per gallon, double vehicle registration fees, and increase titling fees. The governor claims that ODOT revenue has been declining due to improved fuel economy of cars, but comprehensive annual reports  online  show...

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has a $350 million deficit. Governor Tina Kotek has said that if this funding is not secured, she will lay off about 500 ODOT employees. During the regular legislative session that ended in June, Democrats (who hold a supermajority in both the House and the Senate) could not reach a consensus on a transportation funding bill (HB 2025). Sidelining and...

Governor Tina Kotek has long expressed support for wind power. In 2024, the Biden administration approved 195,000acres off the southern Oregon coast for wind farm construction (Wind Energy Areas) as part of its push to grow offshore wind power capacity, which gave her the means to enact this vision. However, widespread opposition from residents, including fishermen, tribal nations, and local polit...

On July 31st, the seven Metro councilors will vote to borrow $88.5 million to help pay for five transit projects that include “road diets” in and around Portland. Once approved, Metro will have to repay the loan until 2039. To obtain the $88.5 million now, Metro will pay $140 million in principal and interest over the next 14 years. That’s nearly $50 million lost to debt service, money the agency...

The new “Earthquake Ready Burnside Bridge” lane designs, backed with funding by the Metro Council, are intended to force Portlanders out of their cars. Metro will be meeting on July 31st to vote on and pass the Step 1A.1 Regional Flexible Funds Allocation bond, which includes the Burnside Bridge among other “road diet” projects. The current Burnside Bridge serves approximately 58,000 people daily...

TriMet has a new “road diet” planned for Portland, this time on  82nd Avenue . Working with Metro, TriMet is proposing a transit corridor entirely dedicated to buses. They plan to dedicate bus-only lanes, up and down both sides of the street, shrinking 82nd from a four-lane avenue down to a two-lane road for up to seven miles—from Clackamas Town Center to Portland’s Cully neighborhood. The project...

With the passage of House Bill 2089 in late June, Oregon has ended the practice of “home equity theft,” by bringing state law into compliance with the Supreme Court’s unanimous 2023 Tyler ruling. Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Minnesota grandmother, Geraldine Tyler, who lost her condo when she failed to pay the property taxes. Ms. Tyler argued that her county violated th...

The Oregon legislature ended on  June 27  without addressing the deterioration of Oregon’s road system. This turned out to be a stunning defeat for the Democratic majority on House Bill  2025 -B, also known as the Transportation Reinvestment Package (TRIP). For more than a year, Democrats held several hearings promising to address the problem with a “transportation package” of reforms. They never ...

New Hampshire has  removed the income cap  for families applying to its Education Freedom Account program, making it the first state in New England to offer school choice to all K-12 children. Governor Kelly Ayotte signed the program expansion into law on June 10. Previously, first-time applicants had to have incomes below 350% of the federal poverty level to qualify. Total program enrollment will...

Last week, Portland Public Schools Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong announced her plan to end Jefferson High School’s “dual-enrollment policy”—which allows families in its boundaries to choose between Jefferson or nearby Grant, Roosevelt, or McDaniel high schools instead. Translation? No more school choice for families in North Portland, choices they have enjoyed since 2011. As Willamette Week’s...

Groundbreaking, school choice legislation called the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) was included in the budget reconciliation bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on May 22. ECCA would establish a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit for individual taxpayers who make voluntary donations to nonprofit, scholarship-granting organizations (SGOs). SGOs offer school choice to K-1...

The Oregon legislature is about to pass Senate Bill 1182, which would authorize the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) to give away the half-billion dollar, four-acre, I-5 lid over the Rose Quarter—plus all property and development rights and contracts—to a single black-owned nonprofit, the Albina Vision Trust or AVT. ODOT’s Design Summary for the cover states that a “Black-led, community...

Metro will soon be revising its 1995 Regional Framework Plan , also known as the 2040 plan. The vision of 2040 advocates was for the Portland region to “build up,not out” by maintaining a tight urban growth boundary, mandating the construction of apartments rather than single family homes, stopping any more highway building, and spending billions of tax dollars on transit. They assumedthat this wo...

House Bill 2808  and  House Bill 2165  seek to address the Oregon Water Resources Department (OWRD) budget shortfall of $875,000, but through different methods. Instead of choosing which bill offers the best path towards good governance, the legislature is saying, “both.”  HB 2808  would increase the permitting and licensing fees related to wells.  HB 2165  would provide an increase in funding to...

Over-promising and under-delivering has been the habit of Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) for decades, with businesses and counties enduring financial hardships from ODF’s inconsistent timber sales.  House Bill 3103  with the -1 amendment seeks to  address  these concerns by requiring ODF to create five-year projections on Sustainable Harvest Levels (SHL) by December 31, 2026 and to offer one-...

It’s official: More than half of America’s K-12 students are now eligible to participate in a school choice program. Last Saturday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 2 into law, making the Lone Star State the latest to enact a universal Education Savings Account program. According to the American Federation for Children, the one-billion-dollar Texas legislation will be the  largest new...

Recently The Oregonian published a feature about TriMet’s ongoing death spiral. Since 2015, the agency’s annual revenue from passenger fares has dropped from $117 million to $59 million, while operating expenses have grown. As a result, TriMet’s operating loss last year was $850 million. TriMet is begging state legislators for a bailout, but we’ve already tried that. The legislature approved payro...

On Monday, the North Dakota legislature passed the state’s first private school choice program . If signed by Governor Kelly Armstrong, House Bill 1540 would establishEducation Savings Accounts for North Dakota students beginning in the 2026-27 school year. Award amounts wouldbe determined by a family’s income level, and the lowest-income students could receive more than $4,000 each. A separate bi...

On April 14, Governor Tina Kotek held a press conference to reaffirm her commitment to protecting students from discrimination based on race, national origin, or immigration status in Oregon schools. The point of the announcement was to focus on the implied future threat from President Trump, but discrimination is already occurring in Portland. For the past decade, the Portland Public School distr...

What if every child could attend the school where he or she would learn most successfully? Empowering parents to choose their children’s school is called educational—orschool—choice.  School choice allows parents to better meet their children’s tailored educational needs and circumstances. Nationwide polling shows that strong majorities of voters support parents having “the right to use tax dollar...

A decade ago, 21 youth plaintiffs in Oregon filed a lawsuit asserting that the government had violated their due process rights of life, liberty, and property by encouraging and permitting the combustion of hydrocarbon fuels such as oil and gas. The plaintiffs were represented by Our Children’s Trust, a litigation firm based in Eugene. The case, known as  Juliana v. United States , was dismissed b...