Cascade CounterPoint

Full Text: Too much, all at once. Portland’s city charter is long overdue for some rewrites. Few people deny that. Last month, the city’s Charter Review Commission announced its proposal to overhaul the city’s charter, with the reforms going to the voters on the November ballot. A central part of the reforms is shifting Portland to a “City Manager” form of government. But, the proposed changes do...

Full Text: Last week, an Oregonian story reported that for years, the city’s parks bureau claimed it did not have the money for capital improvements, maintenance, or security in one of its rundown parks. The article noted that the streetlights in the area stopped working and were never fixed, leading to crime in and around a food cart pod in the park. A few days later, a local TV station reported...

Full Text: Portland City Council is trying its best to bring electric vehicles to the masses. But by mistake, they’re really saying, “Let them eat cake.” Last year, Oregon passed HB 2180, which requires a fifth of new multi-family residential parking spots to be “Electric Vehicle Ready,” meaning they have the electrical capacity to host EV chargers. Not to be outdone, Portland proposed the “EV Rea...

Full Text: Starting July 1, Portland property owners will have new choices about how residential land can be used. The Portland City Council unanimously approved a wide array of changes to the city’s restrictive zoning policies, ending zoning laws that limited what types of homes could be constructed. Specifically, the decision removes a regulation known as single-family zoning, a requirement that...

Full Text: It’s budget season for local governments in Oregon. Budgets may sound boring. In reality, they are the best demonstration of what politicians truly prioritize. Forget the campaign promises and the press releases. The budget is where the action is. This year, there is a line item tucked into the City of Portland budget for Prosper Portland to provide money to small businesses that were d...

Full Text: This year, Portland Public Schools is in a financial sweet spot. Federal and state COVID relief funds will add nearly $100 million to the district’s coffers. But, next year much of that one-time money will be gone. Since the pandemic began, parents have increasingly favored alternatives to their district schools, including public charter schools, private schools, homeschooling, and lear...

Full Text: Over-promised and under-delivered. Throughout its 18-year life, TriMet’s Yellow Line MAX has never met its promised ridership projections. In fact, just before the pandemic hit, Yellow Line ridership was more than 25% lower than where it was projected to be for 2020. Following the COVID-19 drop-off in ridership, TriMet now doesn’t expect transit ridership to hit pre-pandemic levels unti...

Full Text: By the time you’re reading this, your May primary ballot should have been counted. I say “should” because some ballots are still in the mail on the way to county elections offices. That’s because this is the first year in which mailed-in ballots can be postmarked as late as 11:59 PM on Election Day. Under this new law, any ballot received within seven days will be counted. As these ball...

Full Text: According to a revised report from economic consulting firm ECONorthwest, Portland lost 14% of its single family rental houses between 2017 and 2020. That’s a decline of more than 1,300 rental homes per year. This steep drop shouldn’t come as a surprise given the policies enacted by the Portland City Council in recent years, which have made it increasingly difficult for landlords to ope...

QP: Next week is National Charter Schools Week. Oregon passed charter school legislation in 1999, and today, families can choose from more than 130 charter schools for their students. During the pandemic, enrollment in online charter schools skyrocketed and interest remains strong. So much, in fact, that many charters now have a waiting list. But, why are there waiting lists? Simple. The legislatu...

Full Text: For more than a year, Cascade Policy Institute has urged Metro to convert all or part of its Expo Center into a shelter for the region’s homeless. For much of that year, the City of Portland and Metro have had on-again, off-again conversations about using the site. Let’s face it. The Expo Center is a money pit. It needs subsidies from Metro, Portland, and Multnomah County just to cover...

Full Text: The last two years have made it clear: Oregon parents deserve real choices in their children’s education. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, government and teachers’ union policies have disappointed and angered parents whose students’ academic needs haven’t been met by their assigned public schools. In addition, the online public instruction options available while schools we...

Full Text: For years, Portland residents have dealt with homeless individuals parking cars and RVs along neighborhood sidewalks, bringing garbage, drug usage, and even blazing fires along with them. This illegal parking has drastically reduced the safety and cleanliness of the city. In late 2020, the City of Portland and Metro began to consider a simple solution: Allow those who live out of their...

Full Text: The Oregon Transportation Commission recently decided how to allocate $412 million in discretionary federal funds from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The commission’s plan, though, was quickly criticized by a coalition of environmental and transportation groups. The coalition complained that the spending plan prioritizes “highways over community safety,” even though about h...

Full Text: The Census just released the latest population estimates and, for the first time in nearly two decades, Multnomah County’s population has dropped. From 2020 to 2021, the county’s population decreased by more than 12,000 people, or 1.5%. Neighboring Washington and Clackamas counties reported almost no change, while Clark County in Washington saw a 1.3% increase in population. With months...

Full Text: This time they’re coming for your home. Earlier this month, Oregon’s Secretary of State released an audit of Oregon’s mortgage interest tax deduction. According to the audit, the tax deduction is “regressive and inequitable.” This audit is unusual in that it calls into question policy decisions made by the legislature. In particular, it claims that the deduction has no “clear purpose.”...

Full Text: According to a new survey from the Oregon Values and Beliefs Center, 71% of Oregonians are either somewhat or very concerned about hospitals having enough beds to take care of all patients requiring care. These fears aren’t unfounded—even as the pandemic comes to an end. Oregon has the fewest number of hospital beds per capita in the nation, leaving its health care system vulnerable to...

Over the past five years, Portland and Multnomah County have spent more than $280 million addressing homelessness. Even so, the crisis is worse today than ever before, and it's clear that a different approach is needed. In an interview with Greg Frick of HFO-TV, Cascade Policy Institute's VP of Research Dr. Eric Fruits proposes practical solutions to homelessness that can help those in need and cr...

Homelessness is the biggest issue facing Portland—and the state of Oregon—today. Tarps, tents, and heaps of garbage are a common sight in nearly every neighborhood of the city. But how did the crisis get so bad? In an interview with Greg Frick of HFO-TV, Cascade Policy Institute's VP of Research Dr. Eric Fruits outlines the history of homelessness in Portland from the end of World War II to the pr...

Full Text: Just five months ago, Portland City Council announced that the city was going to have an unexpected $62 million surplus. Earlier that year, the mayor was begging people to come back downtown to shop in stores and eat in restaurants. Fast forward to today, and Portland has revealed that, somehow, the city’s transportation budget is underwater by more than $12 million dollars. To fill tha...

Full Text: Everyone loves getting a raise. Our Oregon state legislators are no exception. Recently, a large group of senators and representatives tried to increase their yearly salary from $33,000 to around $63,000. The proposed pay increase would have made Oregon’s state legislature the highest paid part-time legislature in the United States. Even though Oregon’s legislature only meets for a frac...

Full Text: People in the Portland area love their parks and they love nature. So much that in 2019, voters approved $475 million in bonds for Metro’s “Parks and Nature” program. What voters thought they were voting for—and what they were told they would get—was  more public parks for people and the protection of natural areas. However a recent job posting placed by the regional government rev...

The Oregon State Legislature could turn the Elliott State Forest into the "Elliott State Research Forest" by passing Senate Bill 1546 during the 2022 legislative session. Many have hailed SB 1546 as a grand compromise between loggers and environmentalists, and the Oregonian editorial board called it a "win" for the state of Oregon. However, few know the full history of the Elliott State Forest and...

Full Text: Why does Oregon still have a mask mandate? Oregon is now one of the last states to have a statewide mask mandate for both vaccinated and unvaccinated people. If you listen closely to our public health experts, they say they’re focused on hospitalizations. Once the hospitalizations come down, they say then we can throw off our masks. Way back in August, when Governor Kate Brown re-impose...

Full Text: Land use regulations in Oregon are adversely impacting the state’s residents and economy. A quick glance at recent news headlines reveals as much. OPB reports that the Oregon Department of Transportation cannot repair key portions of Highway 101 along the Oregon coast due to a land use regulation that prohibits the fortification of highway infrastructure along the shoreline. Thanks to t...